The new captain and commander of the Orville looked straight ahead. The captain, known only as Xistan, was a six-foot tall Katangan, an alien race that just joined the Union. Her skin was a dark purple, her hair jet black, and she had eyes that were silver pupils with dark blue irises. She would rarely speak to the crew directly, would relay what few orders she did give through her executive office, Commander John Findlay, a five-foot ten humanoid who resembled a Caucasian human in appearance, but apparently had some Xelayan DNA in him. He never demonstrated it, but the scuttlebutt is he has enhanced strength, though not at the level of the Xelayan security officer, Lt. Alara Kitan.
Commander Findlay would give many of the orders himself, the captain already informing the crew that all orders given by him are to be treated as orders from her, unless she explicitly countermands one. So far that hasn't happened. So formidable is she that no one has questioned any of his orders, not daring to risk her wrath. Her reputation definitely preceded her.
Commander Findlay, on the other hand, has no reputation. No one seems to have heard of him. He appears to be of the same cloth as the captain as far as being by the book, but not quite as hardnosed.
The bridge was quiet, with none of the banter that was present when Captain Ed Mercer was in command. He and his first officer, Commander Kelly Grayson had an easy rapport with the crew. Having a new captain and XO was part of the reason the bridge was quiet except for information asked for and given, and orders and responses, although Findlay would occasionally ask someone about the ship, what simulator programs were worth checking out, any unique menu items programmed in the synthesizers, usually getting one-word answers given with no enthusiasm. He would still thank them, though, which seemed to slightly thaw the proverbial ice. The other part was that the crew were still angry on some level with their security officer. Instead of flouting direct orders and attempting to rescue Mercer and Grayson, she followed them and had the ship report to Earth. Since they couldn't explicitly gripe to her about doing what she's supposed to, they effectively ostracized her, only speaking to her when official business demanded it.
Findlay reflected that Mercer and Grayson were not commanding the ship for very long when they were taken. It was a testament to their personal skills that the crew felt a strong bond with them even with their brief tenure and felt betrayed on some level by the security officer.
Lt. Kitan wasn't totally ostracized. The ship's doctor still talked to her, as well as the Kaylon robot Isaac, and the new officers who transferred in after Ed and Kelly were taken and the more by-the-book officers that served under Mercer who thought that giving an officer who followed orders the silent treatment was ridiculous would greet her in the halls. Her staff was among those who felt that way for the most part so she would mostly hang around with them during off hours.
Unfortunately during duty hours, she had to serve with two other officers, former friends, who don't give her the time of day. Although Bortus and Isaac also serve on the bridge, they rarely initiate conversation, besides until recently Bortus was sitting on an egg and now is preoccupied with his daughter. John and especially Gordon, were the usual instigators spurring lively discussions on the bridge, but except for occasional murmurs between the two of them, they were quiet. When Kitan responded to a question by Findlay, they made a point of stiffening up and sitting as rigidly as possible. She pretended not to notice, but Findlay could see her sneak a glance and then sadness in her eyes.
She tried to transfer out but was denied. John Lamarr had also requested one. Denied. Surprisingly, the helmsman, Gordon Malloy did not request one. Either because he suspected it, too, would be denied, or because since no ship would have his best friend as Captain, there wasn't any point.
Under normal circumstances, the transfer requests would be honored, even expedited, for the sake of morale, especially for Alara Kitan. But these were not normal circumstances.
At the moment they were waiting for the Moclan ship to take Bortus's little girl to Moclus for the operation to make her a boy. Findlay and Xistan headed to the Captain's office, ostensibly to prepare for the ship's arrival.
Truthfully, they couldn't care less about the Moclans. Their assignment is to avert catastrophe. Xistan dropped the stoic act. "By the scrotum of J'kal, how many times do we have to through this," she growled.
Findlay always found her curses amusing. But he could understand her frustration. He felt it, too.
Alarms went off at the Time Bureau. Time was altered catastrophically.
Findlay, a technician and Xistan, a facilitator, were appointed to handle the issue. The issue being total annihilation of galaxies by the Kaylon, a race of artificial lifeforms who systematically wiped out the Milky Way galaxy, then spread out to neighboring galaxies to begin their wave of destruction of them as well. It would take centuries, even millennia to do it, but time is no object to the Kaylons. They almost avoided this in the prime timeline. Analysis showed that the event that caused this in the subsequent timelines was the failure of the Orville to rescue Captain Ed Mercer from the Calivon zoo. Initially it was treated as a statistical anomaly, that while tragic, there would be other timelines that would follow the initial path of the prime and could be substituted in. But analysis showed that the only consistent path now is the one where the rescue doesn't take place. They have zeroed in on the prime variable. A lieutenant named Alara Kitan. A secondary variable named Pria Lavesque had to intervene and then fail in order to massage the prime timeline to continue with the Orville intact. It was complicated but doable. Alara deciding whether to rescue her commanding officers was simple, but effectively impossible to manipulate.
In only one instance (the first one) did Alara rescue her Captain and Commander. But Pria Lavesque failed to prevent the destruction of the Orville. Plans were then set in place for Pria to succeed. However, in subsequent instances Alara decided not to do the rescue.
Xistan, the facilitator, was a field agent who permanently resided in the time period and actually served and rose through the ranks as a Union officer. She was recruited by the time bureau to facilitate the insertion of a technician, usually as a fellow officer, to change or fix the timeline. She has experienced being sent back in time as her younger self to relive the same time period, multiple times, if necessary. She remembered an old motion picture she watched called Groundhog Day. It was played for laughs, but it was a very close analog to her experiences.
They've already reset the timeline three times. They've inserted agents and placed devices aboard the ship to record and report the events that led up to Alara deciding to follow orders and return the ship. Then Xistan and Findlay would serve as the replacements viewing and reviewing recordings from all different angles to determine what changed. So far everything looks the same. Gordon's tirade was exactly the same each instance, including the initial instance when Alara rescued Mercer and Grayson. Yet in the subsequent timelines her reaction was perceptibly different and so was her decision.
This led to insubordination by Lieutenant Gordon Malloy, who hadn't returned to the bridge after being kicked off it by Lieutenant Kitan. She caught him trying to steal a shuttle so he could attempt a rescue and had him thrown in the brig. This resulted in his discharge from the service, which exacerbated the ill will toward her on the ship, even among her own staff. She resigned from the service soon after.
Strangely enough, Malloy and Kitan met again, eventually grew very close and were part of a team that actually did rescue Ed Mercer and Kelly Grayson but did so too late to save the galaxy.