Stardate: 60702:1224
Title: Forgotten Decks
Author: Ensign Yonatan Levi
Time: During "The Goddess Athena"
Scene: Main Hangar Bay, USS Relentless


The dark hangar came to life as the firm figure of the Flight Operations officer, Ensign Levi, walked through the door. The light managed to spread around, revealing several crafts in the bay, which concluded most of the ship's support craft complement. Two other bays across the ship included the rest of the support craft complement the Work Bee hangar and the Aerowing hangar.

Reviewing the PADD he was holding in his hand, Levi tried to study each name that was displayed, pondering in his mind about the changes in the modern operations department onboard the Intrepid class star ship. His sub-department of Flight Ops included 18 hands, not counting himself. The crew consisted of deck hands and shuttle technicians, as well two NICO's and a warrant officer to help him keep these birds flying and ready for missions.

They were divided into two sections: the technical section and the flight management one. In the past, the Ops officer of such a ship would carry this duty as long as his original one, earning by that few hours of sleep every night. But now things were changed, and today Main Ops officer was ranked as Lieutenant and below him whole bunch of young and eager officers, including an experienced aide. It was much closer to what he had learned back in the academy about the Galaxy and Nebula's Ops department. These departments held above a hundred of hands, divided into half a dozen of sub-departments, and to conduct this mess was a Lt. Commander or Commander, sometimes experienced officers just one step from becoming First or Second officers.

He approached one of the Type-8 shuttlecraft and touched it. The hull was full of scratches and space dust hits. The markings read USS Concord, shuttlecraft 6. The next shuttle was brand new and smelled fresh. It had no name and only the basic styling, meaning it arrived from the manufacturing line. Yoni sighed, and moved along to examine the next shuttle. Their first task will be to straighten the line between all shuttles, fix the damaged ones and rename and re-tag them all. For that he should first meet with his Deck Chief and ask him to assign a technical detail to start over.

He then moved to a small elevator at the end of the hangar and activated it. It slid down to the deck below, and the dark view of the Service Bay appeared to him. Dimly lighted, it was as large as the hangar above him and full of mechanical and technical instruments all over, including two large robotic arms attached to the ceiling. It was empty at the moment, but experience told him that most of the shuttles would find themselves lying here when there were not in use, to provide them the essential maintenance they required.

Two large heavy doors at the other end of it led to the spare parts cargo hold, and there were enough materials to construct three new other shuttles. It was really exciting to think this entire kingdom belonged to him. He wandered around the bay, checking the instruments. It was not like in the simulation room at the academy, where the parts were already rusty and tired from use all over the years the room served to train cadets. This was brand-new, a fresh start. Some of the parts were still packed and untagged. Suddenly he viewed again the display on the PADD, looking for the name of his warrant officer. It was Lisam McNelly, who was recently promoted from a petty officer to hold the position of Air boss onboard.

The man was responsible for the entire air traffic around the ship, including of launching and landing. Added by four Flight Controllers, he was one of the senior figures in his department. It was Chief Petty officer Nilsan who filled the position of Deck Chief, and Petty officer 1st class Kangoro Nightwalker who was the department quartermaster. All held a respectful record and all were experienced; much more experienced than he was. But nevertheless, he was the commanding officer and he would show no fear. Now he recognized finally that his first step onboard the ship wouldn't be to this hangar, but to his NCO's who led their sections.

If he was about to achieve any success in his first job, he would first report to the Chief of Operations and than assemble his personnel for lying down the foundations for this department. He paced quickly toward the exit, rushing to the Main Ops office to report in.


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Ensign Yonatan Levi
Operations Officer
USS Relentless
NCC-11966
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