Chaplain's Log Chapter 3: Open File, an orville fanfic

Chapter Three
Open File

Lieutenant Crystal McGee stands two steps into her three-room quarters, already in her mind 'Bedroom', 'Living Room / Office' and 'Personal'. She has said goodbye to Lt. Kitan, who has assured her that she will see her later, expressing thoughts that she is also new to the Service and is available for any help in settling into her new life.

She slowly inscribes the Sign of the Cross to forehead, full reach down, touch to left and right shoulders and flat over her heart and thinks a prayer of Establishment, drops her duffle bag beside her feet, takes a lung bursting breath, very slowly lets it free and tries to relax her body.

Again.

Twenty seconds later she gives up.

"Father, please Help."

The room is huge, bigger than any two of her rooms back home and huge, way more huge than her chamber at the Seminary. Starting from left wall (all the walls are faux wood) there's a large silver statue that suggests an Infinity symbol, two couches linked at one side surrounding two tables and a floor set potted plant that looks like a rubber tree. They call focus toward the widest wide screen monitor she's seen in years. This is enough to watch movies with at least one other friend or even set up a 'Quarters Theater'.

Along the opposite wall three tremendous windows show the stars shooting from right to left with their rainbow doppler effects. 'Right to left, I'm on the Port side, good to know when I get lost and have to ask someone where I live.'

In front of the right window is a desk with three decorative bottles (empty) on the left corner, a computer interface and a desk lamp. Opposite that, also on her right, is a round table set with four chairs. 'Okay, that will be fine for Counseling as well as entertaining at least 7 guests, 8 with the desk chair. But trying to use the desk for writing or anything else I'll be too mesmerized by the stars and God knows what else.'

The entrance to the bedroom is in the far right corner beside the desk, and she's been assured that the refresher is on the other side of her bed.

Last, but certainly not least, is a huge synthesizer nitch big enough for her to throw a banquet. 'Okay, nonsense, you do things one at a time but that's still a whopping big thing.'

She crosses the room to the desk set before the third window, reaches into the right pocket of her green uniform jacket, and pulls out a blue data chip barely as large as her thumbnail. There's a Reader set into the top right of the desk and, still unable to relax enough to sit down, she forces herself to ignore the right to left rainbow lights for they could hypnotize if she lets them and reaches to that far right corner, places the chip into the tiny slot and touches a button on the control panel.

"Computer, record for voice print." She straightens, takes and holds a deep calming and steadying breath that does neither.

Maybe the interstellar vista isn't such a bad idea.

"This is the Reverend and Lieutenant Crystal McGee, Planetary Union ID eight two blue five three seven Antares nine one six Minerva four eight two."

**Voice print matches Union records transmitted this date.** the device tells her in a most natural female voice.

'Of course.' She'd thought she'd had to go through the whole set-up. "Read data chip in slot. Append to existing file." With the answering beep she knows she can put this off no longer.

She closes her eyes and tries to breathe herself into ease. Five slow in-out breaths, six, seven… eight.

Nine.

'Oh, Father, please help me.'

'We are not given the spirit of fear,' she thinks / remembers, 'but of daughter-ship.'

When it is but moderately successful, she tries another.

'Fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the LORD thy God, He it is that doth go with thee; He will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.'

And another try.

'Be strong and of a good courage: for thou must go with this people...'

Keeping her eyes closed, she says "Chaplain's Log, December 22, 2420." Her mouth is so dry. 'Why didn't I get some water first?' "I'm aboard the USS Orville, I met Captain … Captain – the Captain, First Officer and Security Chief." Another deep breath, another failure. "They're nice and I'm scareder – more scared than I've been since …. Ever."

She pulls out the apparently comfortable chair, removes her green and black jacket with barely bending arms, drapes it from the back of the chair and tries to fight her way into the seat. Her body won't go down. She wishes that she had someone behind her to kick her knees because it takes so long to fight her way into the chair, and even when in it she can't break the stiffness.

"Note to self: Thank uncle Tim for all those Acting lessons. Without them I just know I wouldn't have made it through the Intake interview with Captain Mercer and Commander Grayson without crying.

"Some horrible impression that would have made."

She fights to take another slow breath, hold it, let it out very slowly. It takes nothing with it.

"I sat in his office, opposite the Captain, with the First Officer next to me, and I could not think. I Acted, pretended to be the nice, sociable woman I see and hear in my head and every second I'm so scared I – I don't know what. I'd even wanted to comment on this uniform, how green is the most common Liturgical color, that of Ordinary Time, but I knew it would sound so stupid. I was even going to say something inspired about Time and this ship's history, just to show I was up on something, but not even that would come out.

"I faked every second, pretended to be me, that woman I see in my head and they had to have caught on that I was acting and they forgave me.

"I couldn't even faint."

She pushes away from the desk on the chair's wheels, but as an escape it's not much and then less.

"I prayed. Oh God Father, Jesus and Holy Spirit did I pray. I prayed like I haven't since that man–!

"NO! No more of that!" She flings the images away with her arms, prays they will go away – stay away. "I'm over that. No more memories." Fists clenched upon the white desk before the rushing star stuff, she fights down the feelings, that particular fear she exchanges for this one, fights to think, to locate her composure. She rolls herself forward to the desk and forces her palms flat upon the white top. "Computer, delete those last seven sentences."

**Final seven sentences deleted.** the invisible woman says.

"Where was I?"

/I couldn't even faint,/ her own voice says.

"No. Computer, delete that one too."

**Deleted.**

She falls forward, elbows on the desk, her head crashing into her raised hands. "Oh God. Jesus. Computer, delete the whole darn thing!"

**December 22 Log entry deleted.**

She sits for many breaths; head resting heavily in her supporting hands and struggles to put her prayers into thoughts. 'Pray without ceasing', Saint Francis said. 'If necessary, use words.'

'Well, I can't even think of any words.'

"Computer." Her voice sounds wrong in the valley of her forearms so she forces herself to look up, forces a voice she also owes thanks to her uncle Tim for.

"What am I doing here?" is a whisper that shakes in the middle and she fights back, fights the tears that threaten to break through. "I know what I'm doing here," is equally quiet. She can barely hear herself as she tries to keep the computer from hearing and recording her. "Study, pass, graduate, be Ordained and then when I heard the Union had Openings for Chaplains, I nearly broke a nail hitting the button before I could talk myself out of it. And then, after I'm in for five months I hear they're expanding the number and classes of ships to Serve and I, like an idiot, jump on that and as a result I get assigned to the ship with the Officer who started the kilbloxing thing!" She throws her head up. "Computer, delete that!"

**There is no record to delete.**

"Oh. Yeah. Okay. Then Record." She takes another not steadying breath. "Chaplain's Log, December 22, 2420. I'm aboard the Orville, it's three days, no, two days before Christmas Eve, we're well into the fourth week of Advent, I'm about to celebrate my very First Christmas as an Ordained Priest - on a ship - as Chaplain. I've been too excited and scared and I don't know what to organize - even one thought - how do you organize a subset of one? - Professor Lane would whack me in the back of my head but in all this preparing I'm not ready," she looks over her shoulder to the closed quarters door, "and I have to meet my congregation."

She gets off the chair, down to her knees and thinks, before starting her prayers, how nice it would be to stay here and never get up again. But in time that unrealistic ambition must give way to duty. Duty is easier. Duty gets her off her knees and makes her start to translate prayer into action.

Darn duty.

Cold water splashed onto her face, vigorous drying plus using the blower on the forward three inches of her red hair, deep and not so calming breaths, brush into order, then back past the too wide and too inviting bed with the duffle bag tossed upon it to the living room and a half dozen more non-calming breaths. She puts on her green and black jacket, zips it up while finishing the prayers she'd begun before her ablutions and she's not ready to face this ship but deliberately walks toward the door.

'I can walk out or I can chicken out, and I worked too hard to get here.'

The door parts to a blue mountain, she tilts her head back and her shriek gets caught in her instantly clenched throat.

"Is anything wrong, Lieutenant?" the mountain rumbles in a voice so deep it vibrates her chest too. His face, tilted down to her, resembles living rock and is as dark and craggy, three tall peaks extending from forehead back, together with horizontal ridges that distinguish the horrific face - but on his shoulders are silver epaulets, two wide bands on each positioned on either side of a thinner one.

"No." 'Act!' She swallows hard, hopes that word wasn't the bleat of terror it had sounded like. 'Act. What lesson? What lesson?' "Yes. No, I mean everything - everything's fin, Lieutenant Commander. I mean fine. Fine. You just startled me. Merry Christmas."

"What is Christmas?"

'Oh, this is going to be such fun. Wait! Lieutenant Commander?' She snaps to Attention and salutes, prays she didn't do it as badly as it felt.

"At ease, Lieutenant." When she lowers her hand "I am Bortus."

'You're not what I pictured. At all.' "Captain … Mercer. Yes, Captain Mercer mentioned you. Now I have a face to go along with the na–" 'Oh God, can I be any more stupid and not need to be put down?' "You're a Moclan, aren - aren't you?" 'Yeah, right, shoot me now - please.'

"That is correct." A shorter rumble of avalanching rocks.

Quick breath. Two. Fall back on Training. "May I help you, Lieutenant Commander?"

"No." Shortest rumble so far.

'What do I say now?'

"I have concluded my duty shift and wished to meet the new crew before returning to my mate and son."

"Oh, you have a son?" Her eyes had gone wide with pleasure, she shuts them tight. 'Blithering idiot, he just told you that.' She forces herself to look and hopes the silence wasn't the ten minutes it'd felt like. "I'd love to meet him." 'Was that a skooch too much enthusiasm?'

"That can be arranged."

'Okay, yes but not now. Okay.' "What's his name?"

"His name is Topa."

"Oh, that's a nice name."

"Yes."

'Oh, we are going to have such nice long conversations together.'

"Have I interrupted you, Lieutenant? You were on your way out."

"Yes. I mean no. I mean - I don't –" She casts right and left, up and down as much of the gently curving corridor as she can see from the threshold and finally has to admit "that is, I don't know where I was going."

"Perhaps, as you are new here, you were on your way to Report to your superior officer."

"Yes. Yes, that was it. My superior officer… is…."

"Doctor Claire Finn."

"Right. I knew that." 'I've known it for a freeping month.'

When she'd looked up the main officers, she'd noticed that two of them are Irish but that's really irrelevant.

She looks right, left, right again.

"Perhaps if I escort you."

She looks up to that stone face which hasn't moved much at all during this conversation. She could wish for someone a bit more flowing. Wait, isn't there already someone who does that? George Saunders, one of her three new friends from the Tesla and the shuttle, had mentioned a Yaphit. The Captain mentioned him too, in the same breath with Bortus, that they were a heady mixture. Oh, this is Bortus. Are they together? Moclans are single gender and Yaphit, she understands, is male and Bortus mentioned his mate but didn't specify –

"Lieutenant McGee?"

"Yes? Oh, God, I'm sorry, I was…."

"Do you wish an escort?"

'KISS. That's my new motto; keep it short and sweet.' "Yes."

"This way," he indicates with a look to her right.

The door hisses shut when she leaves it.

For a long time since being assigned to this duty she had pictured shifting to avoid crewmen moving in the opposite direction or else occasional collisions, but even with a third or more of the crew asleep at any particular hour the crew is sparser than she'd imagined.

But she'd looked it up aboard the Tesla and learned that the number of people on the ship was balanced to an optimum level of breathers to bulkhead area.

The Union Fleet, she had long heard, has incredible ships but aside from being on the Tesla she'd never left the Sol System and she wishes she had the ability to enjoy this vessel. She's especially intrigued by having learned on the Tesla and now here something fascinating, that the walls - bulkheads - are a quasi-plant material that takes in carbon monoxide, or is it dioxide?, from the air and excretes oxygen, but the necessary meeting of the ship's doctor, though technically she already met her, distracts from the man (?) beside her and, unfortunately, even from her prayers. Ever since coming aboard her mind has been so haphazardly unfocused that even her devotions suffer and so she misses Bortus' halt at a door on her right that she should have perceived from the Caduceus painted on the outside wall.

Entering (leave taking from Commander Bortus was a brief thing), she discovers not just a technically advanced medical bay but a red jacketed crewman lying on a diagnostic table a few feet into the room.

'Finally something I know how to do.' Stepping up beside the black man, she waits until he's seen her. "Hello."

"Hello, doc–" He's seen her badge. Green is Sciences but "Not a doctor."

"No, I'm the ship's Chaplain." It's the first time she's said the words aloud to anyone and… they feel good.

"I didn't realize I was that far gone."

"No. That is I don't know, I …." 'May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable to you O Lord my Strength and my Redeemer.' "I thought you'd like to talk."

"About what?"

"Well, how about what happened?"

"Don't know." He puts his hand to his stomach. "I woke up for my shift and felt so queasy I couldn't get off the bed. Finally, I had to call for help."

"That must have been pretty scary."

"Didn't have time to be scared. I was too busy hurting."

"Ah."

"So, what's your name?"

She blinks, taken aback by the sudden shift in his tone and gaze, though now she doesn't have to flounder. She's had 'the Suave' used on her a few thousand times since puberty. "Lieutenant McGee."

"You sound Irish. Christian?"

"As a Chaplain my duty is to help, aid and assist everyone but yes, to answer your question, yes, I'm an Episcopalian."

"Now how did someone as lovely as you wind up turning her life over to Jesus Christ?"

"You mean as an Episcopal Priest?"

"Yeah."

"Simple. Back when I received the Call, Rabbinical School was full."

He laughs but immediately clutches his stomach.

"Now let that be a lesson to you," a woman's voice behind her says. "Overindulging in oysters will do that to you." Crystal had whirled at 'let' but the green jacketed black woman isn't done with the man on the table. "And contrary to centuries old myth, they are not an aphrodisiac."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Now you lie there and reconsider your life choices, and I'll be with you shortly."

When her boss turns her attention to her Crystal slams to Attention and comes to a textbook perfect salute. At least she hopes it was textbook; she'd practiced so many times in front of so many mirrors. "Lieutenant Crystal McGee, Ship's Chaplain reporting!"

"Hi, Crystal," Claire Finn says from the opposite end of the formality scale. "Come down from that before you sprain something and wind up on a table beside this fool."

"Ma'am?" she lowers her hand.

"You'll find we're not all spit and polish here."

"Yes, ma'am. I mean Lieutenant Com–"

"Call me Claire. We have one Captain, one Commander, a half dozen LCs and by the time you reach the Lieutenant level I think we have too many."

"Yes, ma'am. I mean Cla –" She shakes her head fast. Nothing rattles. Yet. "I'm Crystal."

"Crystal," the man behind her says with deep appreciation, the suave opened to deluge intensity.

Claire fixes him with a glare. "You mind yourself or I may decide the cure for what ails you is an enema."

He doesn't risk an answer.

"Come with me," Finn says, leading the way across the bay to her office. "We'll get you fixed up," she concludes as they enter the smaller room and the glass door slides shut behind them. "Have you found your office satisfactory?" she asks, going to the desk backed by the wall, the bulk of the medical bay visible through the glass at her right.

The tone makes her realize Finn doesn't mean her quarters so for a second she can pretend she's quick on at least one uptake. Who knows, maybe one will lead to more? She forces herself to sit down opposite the older woman. She'd have preferred the white couch to her left had it been offered, for she'd be more comfortable and her back would be to the Sick Bay, but she concentrates on forcing the stiffness from her posture.

"I haven't even seen it." She will not admit she'd thought she was going to have to use her 'living room'.

"It's six doors down on your right from your quarters."

'Oh, I passed it with Bortus.'

"But let's get acquainted and we can go over your duties and some insights into your new Charges."

She can't mask her expression in time and the woman catches her at it. Finn sits a few inches forward. "You're scared."

"Out of my freeping Mind!" leaps from her mouth before she can stop it, but after a horror of embarrassment and the panting of breath and the moist rims of her eyes that came with the rush she decides she's glad it did. Maybe this woman will be someone she can talk to?

"Why? Did someone threaten you?"

She pushes the moisture away with her fingertips, ashamed, yet glad she hadn't indulged in any make-up and re-ashamed at the irrelevant, errant thought. "No, of course not. Who would?" 'That's right', she realizes. 'Who would?'

"Well, is someone going to hurt you?"

"No."

"Then are you afraid you don't belong here?"

"Yes!"

"Why?"

"What if I mess up?"

"Then you mess up. And you move on. There is not one man, woman or other who hasn't in the year plus that we've been out."

"But what if I'm really needed, some crucial thing someone needs me for and I don't –" Claire had raised her hand to halt the deluge.

"Look, I don't know the future. We did have someone here once that did and that was a disaster of epic proportions–"

"What happened?" is out of her mouth before she can bite the rude interruption back.

"We all died." She feels her face fall, her eyes wide. "But the Captain turned out to be smarter than she was and he un-died us."

She's too flummoxed to interrupt, and she belatedly remembers from one of the crew of the Tesla the tale of Pria Levesque.

"None of us can know for certain what's going to happen. In twenty years, you could be Bishop of the Chaplains' Corps. My point is that you take every day as it happens to you, meet it head on and lick it or you give in to your fears, turn in on yourself and start to wither away."

Something… some… is that… that's almost familiar. "Is that from an audio video entertainment?"

"Mmm, kind of."

A passage from the Valedictorian Address from her Graduating Class at Trinity comes back. 'We will make mistakes,' the man had assured his soon-to-be-former classmates. 'We shall have glorious victories interspersed with grievous failures. Let us admit that to ourselves. But let us always remember that we will never work alone; that God, by whatever Name we call Him, is but a thought away and will stand with us in our Challenges'.

That was how Seamus O'Cathain had expressed it, but she only completely appreciates those words since coming aboard this ship.

"I'm still scared. This is nothing like I pictured it."

"It never is."

"I'm afraid of so much, especially of letting people who come to me with questions who think I have all the answers know how much I don't."

"I'm not."

"I – excuse me?"

"I'm not. I don't expect you to have answers to every, or even most, questions. I don't have the answer at least once a day and I've long ago admitted to myself that that's never going to change. And when you get to be my age, you'll look back on the hundred thousand times when you didn't have all the answers. If not, I'd think you belong on a table next to that fool." She glances to her right at the sick bay and it gives Crystal a moment to catch up.

"I'm supposed to be the one people can come to."

"And in time you will be. Until then, I hope you will feel comfortable coming to me. Think of me as your Obi-Wan."

"I'll try."

"Good. You know, the last one I made a similar offer to had no idea what I'd said."

"In the Seminary we're taught over and again that only God has all the answers."

"There, you see?"

She doesn't. Again. "But God doesn't ever mess up."

"That means you can do something He can't."

She doesn't know whether to be shocked by impiety, taken with the woman's psychological skills which are far in advance of her own pathetic neophyte plodding or uncertain if she's met her major foil in the age-old contest between science and faith.

She suspects, however, that she's going to like her new boss.

xxx

"Captain," Alara Kitan calls from her port side fore Communications / Security station, "we're receiving a Signal from Catonis II."

"On screen."

The 140-degree panoramic image of stars is interrupted by a square from deck to overhead showing a room, a black desktop and a white haired woman.

"I am Agriculture Primus Zaltrun calling Captain Mercer of the USS Orville."

"This is Ed Mercer. Go ahead, Primus."

"Captain, I understand you are transporting emergency supplies of seed and equipment."

"We're carrying 700 crates of various seeds per arrangement with your Primine Council, but no one said anything to me about an emergency."

"That is because when those arrangements were made last month there was no emergency. At the time, those supplies were a useful addition, but our colony has suffered a cataclysmic disaster in the form of a Class 7 hurricane. We are too new to have a truly reliable weather grid, so by the time we realized the severity of the storm it was too late. It came in off the ocean, paused over us and produced damage on a scale we were not prepared for."

"Do you require evacuation?" 'How many ships are we talking about?'

"They think not. Damage to homes and facilities was minimal; we are constructed well enough to survive that, but our crops are devastated. We're nearing the final weeks of the growing cycle in this hemisphere and most of what we had is scattered over hundreds of kilometers."

"Primus, we're carrying seeds, equipment, tools..."

"We've already been in touch with a Dr. Aronov of the Epsilon II Research facility. He confirms that he and his team have developed a system that can accelerate growth. He says he could help us."

"I dare say he can." He'd seen the Quantum Accelerator in operation a year ago, had seen it grow a century-old redwood in seconds, age fruit in as short a time – and turn a young woman into a century -old corpse as quickly. "But you need the seeds."

"As quickly as humanly possible."

"No problem. Ensign Sportelli?"

The young redhead glances back, her answer already researched. "At our present speed we are on schedule to make planetfall in two days, thirteen hours, forty two minutes."

"Gordon, notch it up to full."

"Notching it up." The stars that had been approaching at a rapid pace on either side of the square image leap at them.

"Our new ETA is 1320 hours tomorrow," Sportelli relates.

Mercer looks to the screen. "Primus, we'll see you tomorrow."

"On behalf of all of us, thank you." The image vanishes, letting the stars rush in.

"Alara, contact Union Central, let them know the change of plan and new ETA." He hits the intercom control on the arm of his chair. "Engineering." The computer will route the connection so the response he hears is John LaMarr's.

"Yes, Captain." He had to have known the jump to maximum speed. "We're running at one hundred percent."

"Two hundred."

"I'll get a team out there to push."

A/N: It's an interesting experience to throw in an excerpt from my own Valedictorian Address, something of a blurring of the line between Fiction and Reality.