"... and this, Lieutenant, is your station. Main Engineering." The Captain smiled at his newest recruit. He had spent over two days sifting through teraquad upon teraquad of data on potential senior staff for the Journeyman. He still had to fill the positions of First Officer and the helmsman, but he was taking great delight in showing every new member of his crew the finer details of the ship.
"Ah, your famous warp core,
capable of reaching speeds of-"
"Warp Factor
9.99999999999999999, but for the sake of my own and the rest of the
crew's sanity, we'll call it maximum warp factor." He gave a
smug grin to the girl stood in front of him. He claimed to have
chosen her on the finest intricacies of her intellect. The rest of
the crew came to the conclusion that he in fact chose her because she
had written a sixteen page essay entirely on his life and research.
There was also another, more personal reason that much of the crew
did not hasten to discuss, but when confronted about it they had to
agree that he was right. She stood six feet tall, and had long, silky
hair that was tied up neatly in a ponytail. She was one of the few
officers that had not dismissed the idea of Captain Jones'
redesigned uniform, which most Admirals had considered inappropriate,
to say the least. Her name was Sasha Flowers, and her Starfleet
report shone like a single star in the pitch-black night sky.
"If
there are any questions you may have, Lieutenant, please do not
hesitate to ask."
"Well, if you are permitting me to ask, can
I just say, your ship has a distinct lack of medical staff. When I
was shown Sickbay there were only two people in there, and one of
them was a patient!"
"Ah, well, that particular matter would
be more easily displayed, rather than described. If you would like to
see, I'd be more than happy to show you...?" he gestured towards
the turbolift at the back of the room.
"Why of course. Lead the
way!" the Captain gave her a mockingly stern look, "... sir."
He smiled and they headed for the turbolift.
"Deck Five,
Sickbay." The computer made the beeping noise to the affirmative
and set the turbolift off.
Upon arrival at sickbay, the place
was deserted. Ten beds, all laid out in an ordered manner, a biobed,
a small office and a small storage cupboard. All completely devoid of
life.
"This is what I don't understand, Captain. I thought
Starfleet would have at least issued you some medical staff, but this
is just odd." She surveyed the room, checking to see if she could
find at least some sign of humanoid life hiding somewhere amongst the
hyposprays.
"And this, my dear, is what makes this ship so
unique among those of modern-day Starfleet. Computer, activate
Medical Holographic Programs Alpha and Beta." With a click of the
computer's circuits, photons burst from the holoemitters in the
room and two figures appeared in front of the Captain and his Chief
Engineer.
They both stated, in unison; "Please state the nature
of the medical situation."
"There'll be no situation today,
my friends, we haven't even taken off yet. Sasha, I would like you
to meet MHP Alpha, our CMO, and MHP Beta, our nurse. I haven't had
the pleasure of activating them until now, so they currently do not
have names."
"Greetings to you, ma'am" said the Beta
program, prompting a stern look from the Alpha program.
"We
discussed this in the holodeck, Beta, you address the higher ranked
officer first! How many times must we go over this?" The Alpha
program stood about a foot taller than the Beta, and had a colder,
harsher face. The Beta program was female, had long curly brown hair
and a giant grin on her face, enough to crumble even the tritanium
heart of a Romulan.
"Did you program them to do this?" the
puzzled Lieutenant asked the Captian.
"As much as I would like to say I
did, no. Unfortunately I have no time to contact a proper
holoengineer before the ship leaves, so we'll have to keep them
that way for now. Stop that!" the holograms had gotten into an
argument over how to address a patient properly, and the Alpha
program had become so stubborn that he was at the holoemitter control
panel, threatening to deactivate the Beta program. "Now listen to
me... you are the medical staff aboard this ship. This means that
you..." he paused and took a deep breath, and began to speak very
slowly, "will be working together. You get that? Now, stop arguing
like two-year-old organics or you'll traumatise more patients than
you save."
"Yes sir..." they said in unison.
"Now,
before I forget, I had these specially commissioned from Starfleet
Command." The Captain reached into a storage cupboard and pulled
out two small, disc-shaped devices. "These are prototype Mobile
Holoprojectors. They're based off the one used by the Doctor from
the USS Voyager. For now though, their technology is only limited to
within one mile of the ship, but judging by your current lack of
social skills I'm sure that that won't be a problem." He handed
them to the holograms, who accepted them with as much joy as they
could muster on their holographic faces. The Captain hadn't hired
the most sophisticated of holoengineers to design their programs, and
holoengineering was the single subject that the Captain could never
seem to grasp.
"Thank you sir, these are brilliant!" the Beta
program smiled and wandered off to the Medical Office to check on the
medicine stocks.
"Thank you for this, sir; this was a most...
intriguing visit. Hopefully I won't find myself here as often as
I'd expected..." Lieutenant Flowers had been edging towards the
door since the holograms had been activated, trying to get out of the
room as quickly as possible.
"I understand, Lieutenant. Next
time I'll invest some more money in a more experienced
holoengineer. Anyways, would you like to go to the Mess Hall? It's
1200 hours, and I'm starving!"
