1st Lesson - What goes up ......

Posted on Tuesday 18 April 2017 @ 10:23 by Captain Melody Jones

Mission: The Perez Nebula
Location: Holodeck 1
Timeline: 239404.18
2773 words - 5.5 OF Standard Post Measure

ON:

Melody stood outside holodeck 1. She had already entered the program and was now just waiting for Mackenzie to turn up.

Kenzie had been in school all day and found the message on her school PADD when she got home. The door chime sounded and David said 'Enter' ... A Crewman was stood in the doorway:

"Crewman Williams is assigned to you Kenzie." he said, kneeling in front of her as he saw that mischievous glint appear in her eye, "That isn't to say you can run her in circles OK, she will accompany you to 'and from' your lessons with Commander Jones."

"You mean Melody Daddy." Mackenzie had said laughing, but David said if she wasn't going to take this seriously she might need to wait a few years. Kenzie got serious quickly, "Yes Daddy, I mean Lieutenant. What's your name ?" she asked the Crewman, who looked at David before saying her name was Grace.

"Then after you, Grace." she said, kissing her Daddy quickly before running out the door ....

=== ===

Arriving at Holodeck One she was a little confused. Grace informed her that she would be right outside when she was done, Kenzie entered, seeing the gleaming holographic projection of a Type Nine Shuttle. She looked back as the doors closed then vanished, replaced by part of the Shuttle-bay bulkhead, she turned to the waiting Melody:

"I thought this was going to be my first lesson Melody, why are we in a holodeck and not the shuttle-bay ?"

Melody shook her head "First, we start off in the holodeck. As a pilot, you are responsible for the condition of your ship. Sure, engineers do the majority of the maintenance but ultimate its your responsibility."

"Ahhh." Mackenzie said, suddenly brightening as she understood what was being asked of her, after all 'a Captain doesn't just walk onto a Star ship from the street' she thought, "So we'll begin in here." she said, her initial disgruntlement now a thing of the past.

Melody could see that the young girl was eager but understood the responsibility at the same time. "To begin with we're going to inspect our ship today, which is a type 9 shuttle. We will go over the external then the internal. I've programmed in some faults for you to pick up on, lets see how much of the material I gave you sank in. Then for the last half of the lesson we will start looking at take off and landing, probably the most important parts of any flight. Are you ready?"

"Erm, I guess so ...." Kenzie said, placing her PADD on the deck and beginning a slow walk around the craft. She went around once without speaking, Melody a few paces behind, then she looked the shuttle up and down, moving closer. She had noticed a difference between one side of the shuttle and the other, but needed to go round the other side for another look before coming to stand at the bow:

"The nacelle, there ?" Melody remained silent, "Is cooler .... The one on the other side is not right, but without dia, diag nostics, I can't tell what the problem is." she continued her close inspection, knowing she must be missing countless obvious issues, but she was six, and a half, so couldn't be expected to solve every single problem on her first day. Kneeling she grinned, "The cover is missing on the external power coupling too." she said.

Melody watched the young girl with a smile. She had a good eye and was quickly picking up on the subtle faults melody had programmed into the situation. They stopped at the front on the shuttle and Melody nodded with satisfaction. "Very good Mackenzie, you picked up on some good points. Just remember while you're looking for the not so obvious you missed a big obvious point."

Kenzie stepped back, eyes taking in the white craft. She looked at the deck-plating beneath the shuttle but couldn't see anything out of place, she looked at Melody, who reached out to touch the front cockpit window......... and her hand passed right into the shuttle. The window was missing.

"The window !" the six year old said, confused then a little embarrassed she hadn't noticed the gaping hole, "Kinda cheating if you ask me." she muttered.

Melody chuckled "Don't worry about it, My instructor pulled that on me my first lesson and he never let me forget it. Come on, lets go inside and see what the diagnostic readout tells us."

Melody followed Mackenzie into the shuttle and let her sit in the pilots seat. "See, the power taps on the port nacelle are closed, that's why is cooler. This diagnostic program will bring up any faults with the shuttle giving you a chance to rectify the problems." Melody then spoke to the computer "Computer, run grease monkey pre flight"

"We're having a monkey ?" Kenzie said, knowing full well it was more likely some technical term rather than the real thing.

"It's an old earth term for a mechanic. The program fixes all the faults and get the shuttle in optimum condition, see ?" She reached out and her hand now touched the transparent aluminium of the front window. "In the real world, we'd have to get an actual engineer to fix any problem you couldn't fix yourself, but this saves us time. Besides, that's another lesson."

"Yes, you'd have to be pretty silly to try to take off without a window." Mackenzie said as she watched the 'faults' being rectified in the order they were created.

"When you're ready, I'll give you some common faults and what to look out for but so far you're doing really well." Melody reassured her. "Ok, takeoff and landing are the most important part of any flight. It's the time when something is more likely to go wrong, rather than in the middle of a flight. Just remember what goes up....... must come down. I knew someone who flew during the Dominion Wars that used to joke he never landed a fighter in his life because it always use to get shot down. That's not what we're looking for here, ok? We'll go over the start up routine and then look at basic take offs and landings."

"I bet he never took off without a window to look through." Kenzie said wryly, tapping the console to bring up the flight control systems readouts. She had watched Melody do the same on their surprise flight so knew the sequence. Once satisfied everything was ready she looked up at he 'Instructor' who was watching with interest. To her untrained eye the boards showed everything was now ready, and the 'grease monkey' had completed fixing the faults ... Kenzie was six, and had a six year old's impatience, but unlike must children she had learned to be patient, it helped when dealing with her sometimes 'annoying' little sister. She sat waiting for Melody to continue her first training session ....

Melody nodded "Very good Mackenzie. You can initiate the engine startup sequence now. We'll just be using the thrusters for takeoff but it's always wise to bring the impulse engine to standby, just in case."

Kenzie looked over the panel to reassure herself she knew where each control she would need was located. she brought manoeuvring thrusters and the impulse engines on-line, but placed impulse in stand-by.

The simulation had automatically opened the shuttle bay doors. "Were just concentrating on the flying today. You don't need to ask for clearance" Melody explained "We just need a little vertical lift to get us up and then enough forward momentum to get us out of the bay doors."

The two green-lit sliders were there in front of her, she placed fingers on both and moved them upwards very slightly. The shuttle came off the deck, hovering thirty centimeters above the simulated plates. Kenzie adjusted the control parameters and the shuttle began to move forward slowly passing through the 'Bay doors and out between the two massive nacelles.

The shuttle moved gracefully out into space.

"Ok, Mackenzie, just move us a few hundred meters away then come to a complete stop. We'll then rotate through 180 degrees and return though the same bay doors and try a landing, ok?"

She watched the readout showing the relative distance between the shuttle and the Merlin. At three hundred meters she initiated a full stop and activated automatic station-keeping. she used the thrusters to rotate the shuttle to face the ship ... On a real shuttle this would keep the distance constant regardless of whet the bigger craft did.

The shuttle stopped and rotated around, now facing the reverse direction. "Right then, landing is straight forward. Do you think you can take us back in and land us without me telling you too much?" Melody looked at the young girl and gave her a encouraging smile.

"I'll give it a try, but this is just a, just not a real shuttle, so I can't break it can I ?" she asked, suddenly a little nervous. Melody reassured her and she tapped the control tentatively, the shuttle began to close the distance, the well-lit shuttle-bay directly ahead, they were almost level with the aft section of the nacelles when the shuttle drifted fractionally to port. Thinking it was all part of the test, Kenzie tried to correct the drift, but it increased. suddenly a warning sounded, informing them that inertial dampers were fluctuating, the shuttle was almost being drawn towards the port nacelle, Kenzie looked wide-eyed at Melody almost wanting to jump out of the Pilot's seat fearing she had done something drastically wrong !

"Don't panic. Take a deep breath and think." Melody could see the panic in the young girls eyes. "Work the problem. You got this Mackenzie."

Mackenzie's eyes flicked across the suddenly expansive panel until she found what she was looking for, her thought process told her she needed to realign the shuttle, it occurred to her that this could be one of the faults she hadn't detected, but a glance at Melody showed no signs that she knew what was happening. She tapped the lateral thruster control but too far, the shuttle began a slide to Port, the massive nacelle coming into view, too close !

The simulation suddenly froze and the computer beeped "Collision with warp nacelle detected."

"I'm so sorry Melody, I thought, I thought I could fix it by using the thrus ....." she stopped, then continued, "You must be upset that I couldn't do it, but I tried, I really did."

Melody looked at the young girl "Of course I'm not disappointed. I'd be disappointed if you didn't want to see if you could correct the problem and try again. That's why we practice in a holodeck. We try and cover anything and everything that could happen. Then when it dose happen, you don't freeze, you don't panic. Panic is not an option, ok? Not when other people are depending on you. Besides, we can't always be right all the time. If we knew everything, we would be gods. Sometimes you learn more from a mistake than you do from success. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I think so." Kenzie said, happy that she hadn't let Melody down.

"Lets try again and this time, let's see if we can fix the problem shall we?" Melody placed a hand on the girls shoulder "You can do this, trust yourself." She then addressed the computer "Computer, rest simulation for 30 seconds ago just as the shuttle completes the 180 degree turn."

The view out of the window suddenly changed as the simulation reset and the shuttle craft was once again completing its turn to approach the shuttle-bay.

This time Kenzie was waiting for it, which made things worse in her six year old mind, the whole idea of an unexpected fault in one of the systems was that it was 'unexpected' and not something pre-warned. She had almost began the diagnostic on the inertial dampers before the fault presented itself, but this time, simply fixing wasn't an option, she needed to change whatever she didn't do last time around. The computer could see what she was doing and had interpreted her reactions ... The thrusters went off-line as the shuttle got within one hundred meters of the ship !

A warning light indicated the loss of a vital system, but Kenzie hoped this time she could at least not freeze. She looked through the window at the closing nacelles and the fact that the shuttle had once again began to yaw to port. She could see from her panel that the shuttle was negative five degrees in relation to the Merlin's axis, she ran through her maths, angles, degrees, and even the trajectory the shuttle could take if left alone to drift. All this went through her head in seconds then she reached out ... In her head she needed the shuttle to do one of two things: Correct it's course, or move out of the vicinity before there was a risk of collision 'again' she thought wryly.

She checked the distance, forty eight meters to the port nacelle, much closer and the holo-deck will stop them again. She quickly brought the impulse engines on-line from stand-by and without hesitating to consult Melody she initiated one quarter reverse impulse ..... The shuttle dropped behind and away from the Merlin quickly, until the distance between them was almost one thousand kilometers, she tapped the panel again, this time to demand station-keeping.

"Computer. Can you check the thrusters .. Attempt to get them working OK." she said, knowing she wasn't using correct protocol but it was the best she could think of. Then she looked up at Melody, "Well, we didn't crash." she said nervously.

Melody nodded her head. She had to refrain from letting out a low whistle, but she was really impressed.

The computer beeped "Please restate request."

Melody chuckled "It's ok Mackenzie. Computer, run a level 3 diagnostic of the thrusters."

The Computer worked for a moment, then replied "Diagnostic complete. Thruster input field matrix has depolarised. Re initialisation required."

"So the computer tells you what needs to be done, but you have to do it yourself. OK, got that." Mackenzie said, nodding.

"There" Melody said "all sorted. But I can't help but notice we're still not landed." She looked at Mackenzie expectantly.

She began the approach once again. This time the shuttle approached the Merlin without incident. Passing through the atmospheric force-field and approached the landing pad.

Her eyes flicked between the outer edge of the shuttle-bay door, then the inner bulkhead as the strobing indicators passed beneath the shuttle, Kenzie watched the panel indicators until they confirmed they were in place above the set-down point.

The shuttle touched down without so much as a bump. Melody was very proud of her new student. She tried to keep her emotions in check but the look on her face said everything. "I'm very, very impressed Mackenzie. You did really well today. Do you feel like trying a planet side takeoff and landing ?"

"We can try some other places as well as the ship, yes please."

Melody ran Mackenzie through takeoff and landing from various different planets and Star bases each with their own unique conditions. Mackenzie did well with all of them. The rest of the lesson flew by.

As they shut down the holo-program, Kenzie turned to Melody: "I really enjoyed the planets, the one with the erm, higher gravity was interesting, I needed to use more power to get us off the floor did you see ? ... I know I'm only six, but I'm enjoying my training very much Melody." she said as they walked into the corridor, Crewman Williams was stood waiting, in exactly the same place they had left her Kenzie suspected, "It was a little scary doing the one on the night-side of that big moon though, I almost couldn't see how high we were and had to check on the instruments. I almost hit that big bird though, that was funny." she said, giggling at the recollection.

"Well I'm satisfied your familiar with handling take offs and landing now and I feel that you're confident." Melody smiled warmly at her young student. I'll send you what you need to read through before our next lesson."

"OK Melody, thank you ... I can't wait to tell Mia, Mummy, and Daddy about my flying." she said, waving 'bye' to her instructor, they had only gone two paces when she began to tell the Crewman everything in detail. Melody grinned .....

OFF :

Mackenzie Tan
[Unofficial Trainee Pilot]

Lieutenant Commander Melody Jones
Executive officer
USS Merlin