Commander Mercedes Fernandez
Starbase 36
Mercy had traveled for several weeks to take up her first command. The Intrepid class USS Rainmaker. She had to leave the Fearless and make her way to the wormhole, then from DS9 she caught a ride to the Ryen Sector, and down to Starbase Haven where the ship was going through extensive refits.
She really didn’t understand why it was working out like this. She got here and they told her she couldn’t join her ship yet, it was still not finished and there was some classified work going on to her that Mercy, the new CO was not clear to know or be part of.
The Captain of Heaven itself was going to meet her and explain some of what was going on. So she was heading for Main OPS of the Starbase.
“Commander Fernandez to see Captain Prudence Williams,” Mercy told the Marine at the doors of the turbolift.
He allowed her to pass and she met the receptionist outside the Captain’s Office. She was waved in almost immediately.
As she entered the Office she found a smallish woman brewing tea, if she hadn’t had four pips on her collar Mercy would have assumed the woman to be an aid or steward. This was Captain Williams herself, with a little fussy bone china tea set like cousin Victoria would use back home.
“Have a seat Commander,” Prudence gestured to one of the chairs around the small tea table. “I’m Captain Prudence Williams, this is informal so don’t stand on ceremony. Tea?”
Mercy sat down and smiled, “yes, thank-you.” She looked around the office, there was some kind of abstract picture hanging on the wall, an oil painting on canvas. There was also a bow and arrow case on the floor by a wall. Was Captain Williams into archery?
Prudence set the tea cup and saucer down in front of the Commander, and one across from her before taking her own seat. “I’m sorry things are not quite ready for you yet. And the previous Commander isn’t here to tell you about the ship, Captain Mevynn has already taken up her new command, Admiral Maturin has returned to Earth, he had the Rainmaker before Kate.”
Mercy nodded her understanding, things like this were pretty standard when a ship goes through a major overhaul. “Yes Ma’am, I figured something like this would be the case.” She picked up her tea cup and inhaled the steam appreciatively. It was an honest black tea, brewed strong with a hint of orange. She took a sip, it was still very hot so she set the cup back down for now.
Prudence smiled, “I know that accent. Texas, right? Are you one of the Galveston Fernandez?”
Mercy nodded, “yes'm, I am. My father was Commodore William Fernandez.”
“Met him once,” Prudence said, nodding, “my condolences. That would mean Rear-Admiral Lupe Fernandez is your uncle.”
Mercy nodded again, “yes’m, he is.”
“He commanded the Rainmaker for a short time, but I don’t know much about it. The only parts of the log that weren’t redacted were when he came aboard and took command and where he turned command over to Commodore Esteban Maturin again.” Prudence said with a small smile. “There is a lot of that in the later years on that ship’s log books I am afraid.” She sipped her tea, then continued, “I am not able to tell you what Admiral Maturin and Captain Mevynn were doing, but the Admiral was the local head of the Temporal Division for this area.”
She smiled, “but I digress a bit, there is just so much, I’m Prudence Williams, and grew up near San Angelo. I’ve been to the Museum, and took the tour ride on your father’s boat when I was a kid.”
Mercy nodded, “yes Ma’am, almost a full six hundred years of sailors, and soldiers makes for a pretty big attic of stuff and keepsakes, it was make a museum or a warehouse. Sharing it with others is better than storing it away so… the museum. And I remember when I was a kid, crewing the boat for tourists, giving them an authentic sailboat ride around the bay. It was always interesting and mostly fun.”
It was Prudence’s turn to nod, “it was part of the reason I went into Starfleet, your family history. My uncle had served but it wasn’t a long family tradition like your family has.”
“But, I bet you want to know about your ship,” Prudence grinned, “not talk about your family.” She took another sip of tea, “I have just a few things I know and can tell you,” she set her cup on it’s saucer and the grin vanished, “Admiral Maturin named you to take command of the ship, he ordered her to have a full refit, and certain pieces of equipment removed. Their history of being installed or used redacted from the logs.” She checked if Commander Fernandez was still following her, she was, “the crew dispersed, Commander Kate Mevynn given a promotion to Captain and given a new command.”
Mercy nodded, “named me?” That wasn’t how it was done, Starfleet had a personnel department, a whole department to make those decisions and then recommend to the Admiralty.
“Yes Commander, named you, and said where you were going to operate. The Rainmaker was an SCE ship before, the biggest ship they ran, being an Intrepid Class, and that is what she is once again being outfitted for. You will be working out of Gamma Base, but the whole Gamma Quadrant will be your purview, including the NEC and Avalon.”
“I’m sorry, what is Admiral Maturin in Starfleet? He just up and named me to command a ship, and told Starfleet and the Corp of Engineers where I was to be assigned?” Mercy’s eyes were wide and she found she was shaking a bit. She set the paper thin tea cup down before she accidentally broke it.
Prudence grinned, “he does that a lot, and for some reason Starfleet follows along.” She set her own cup down and sat back, “I think it’s because of the Temporal Division thing, he knows what’s going to happen, or maybe it’s what might happen or I don’t know, but he seems to, so he arranges for the best outcome. The ship is no longer outfitted for his work, her logs have been thoroughly redacted and cleaned. Both computer cores have been replaced and the old ones destroyed. He oversaw that himself, the warp engines have been replaced, impulse, warp core, phasers, torpedoes, shield generators, in short, everything except the skin and space frame was replaced. He was very particular about that, the skin I mean, we had to match up all repairs and replacement hull plating to the original hull color.”
Mercy looked hard at the Captain, “I’m afraid to ask, what color is the hull?”
“Pink,” Prudence said cheerfully, “to my understanding a mission in a nebula made up of an iron oxide particle impregnated the ship’s skin giving it a light red tint over the white hull. Admiral Maturin, then a Captain, tried for years to get the ship either reskinned or painted but Starfleet wouldn’t do it because of cost. In his orders for the full refit he made a point of ordering the ship stay her current color, that she was not reskinned or repainted, and that any new hull put in because of the refit was to match the older hull in color. They had very detailed scans of the nebula she had gotten her color from, so that really wasn’t hard to do.”
“Pink,” Commander Mercedes Fernandez said hollowly, “I am taking command of a pink Starship.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Prudence said cheerfully, “is it a future thing, or is it because he had to command one so he passed it down. With Admiral Maturin there is no telling.”
“Do you know how soon she will be ready?” Mercy asked.
“I was told, within a week, Commander.” Prudence saw the other woman was now back to serious business.
“Do I have a crew yet?” Mercy had checked but couldn’t find any records.
“Yes and no,” Prudence answered, “yes, you have an Exec, and her SCE Team, but no, they are currently in the Gamma Quadrant, working at New Bajor, you are to meet them on Starbase Gamma.” Prudence paused then added, “I know her, and will tell you a little more about her in a moment. The rest of your crew, the general crewmen and women on the ship’s complement has been pulled from Haven’s pool of Officers and spacers.”
The Captain paused and picked up a PADD to check it. She tapped two or three times on the screen, and took the stylus out and signed it with a flourish. “There, I just approved it. You will be allowed followers of course, and to adjust your people’s duty stations as any Captain can, but now you have the warm bodies to crew your ship.”
“Thank-you Captain,” Mercy said, then asked. “You said you knew my Exec?”
“Lieutenant Commander Jennifer Redcloud. She came to Haven on the Rainmaker where she was acting Chief Engineer, apparently she was acting Chief on that same ship almost her entire Starfleet career. She became the Chief Engineer on the Rainmaker and Assistant Chief of Haven itself. That was till the SCE recruited her. Currently she is Team Leader on one of their roaming teams. She has gotten her new orders by now and will be working to meet up with you and the Rainmaker.” Prudence smiled, “she will like that I am sure. She is the person that painted that painting,” she pointed to the abstract oil painting hanging on a bulkhead, “it doesn’t look like much but it really is a very good map to an artifact that we were looking for.”
Mercy looked at the painting, it didn’t look like a map, it looked like something a six year old would paint and their parents would be obligated to hang on the fridge for the world to see how much they love their child. She knew there was a whole file of that kind of thing from her childhood, in the back of the museum for when she merited being put in as one of the displays, they would have growing up information. “If the SCE grabbed her I have to assume she is good, but if she has her own Team, wouldn’t it be a demotion to become someone else’s Exec?”
“Not really,” Prudence said, “she will still be team leader for your SCE Detachment, if anything it is just another job for her to do, working as your Exec as well as being Team Leader.”
“I hope she sees it the same way,” Mercy said softly.
“Hope so,” Prudence agreed, then brightened, “that reminds me, you probably already know your new SCE Computer Specialist, Lieutenant Hope Robins. She is also in the Gamma Quadrant and should be making her way to Gamma Base to meet you.”
“Hope?” Mercy’s voice squeaked a bit, “Hope? On my ship? Does Trouble ride her shoulder still? Of course he does, they are bonded, what am I thinking.”
“Isn’t she a cousin or something,” Prudence asked crestfallen, “I was sure it would be family reunion time.”
Mercy straightened, “Yes Ma’am, she is, sort of kind of. She is adapted, you understand, I didn’t grow up with her so it’s not really a reunion time. Don’t get me wrong, she is a very good officer, and can do scary amazing stuff with computers and anything engineering. Her companion is named Trouble, he can do scary amazing things too, the problem is he is… his name fits him.”
Prudence just looked at Mercy for a long moment before nodding, “I see.”
Commander Fernandez felt chastised, and she looked down, “sorry, it took me by surprise, I had figured she would stay near her father, working on his staff kind of thing.”
“From her files it shows her mother was former SCE, and that she has the same leaning.” Prudence said, then continued, “and I read an article in an engineering journal that she wrote about interfacing organic minds with computer minds without the need for Borg style implants.” Prudence paused and looked at the Commander for a long pause then finished, “she was sixteen when she wrote it, she had already interfaced with a planet wide system and stopped a cyber war that the network had been fighting for over a hundred years.”
“I know, she is very good…” Mercy said softly to the carpet, “and I will hugely benefit from having her as part of my crew and on my SCE Team.”
“Is there a problem?” Captain Prudence Williams asked the Commander in front of her.
“No Ma’am, there is no problem, not on my side, not in the service either. It’s just…” She paused, trying to figure out how to explain, “family issues, I sided with her, but she didn't know that, she wasn’t allowed to be there for the meeting… it’s stupid family things.”
“Commander, can you and her work together professionally?” Captain Williams asked.
Fernandez straightened in her chair, raised her head and looked the Captain in the eye, “Yes Ma’am, we can.”
“Then work out your personal problems together on off duty time, preferably sooner rather than later, and act professional at all times.” Prudence said coldly.
“Yes Ma’am,” Mercy responded.
“I believe we have covered everything I have for you, you will be issued quarters till the ship is ready, it will give you time to read over your personnel files, new orders, and all the joys of a brand new command.” Prudence told the new Captain, “the atrium has a really nice garden park and the roses are blooming, take time to walk through it. Is there anything else you need to ask about?”
Mercy knew a ‘we are done here’ speech when she heard it. “No ma’am, we have covered everything I believe. Thank-you.”
She stood and headed out of the office, the receptionist handed her a PADD, it had her assigned room location on it and vouchers to a bar and a cake shop, complimentary tickets to a local group concert, and maps to all of Haven.
Mercy made her way to her new quarters, she found her luggage had already gotten there before she did.
======================================================================
Lieutenant Commander Jennifer Redcloud
SCE Team Leader, Team 5632
New Bajor
Redcloud took off her hard hat and tossed it on a chair, her gloves went with it and the safety glasses. Her bottom hit the chair beside it a moment later and she let out a sigh. “Ooff,”
Eighteen hour work days for a week will kill a person she decided. She looked over at her computer terminal and noticed a blinking message light. She opened the message queue and checked. New orders.
She read them over, she was being sent to a starship, an SCE ship, her team is to become the core of the ship’s SCE team, and she was to become the Executive Officer and SCE Team Leader. She reread the ship’s name and the Captain’s name. The Rainmaker, her Rainmaker, the Captain wasn’t her Estaban though, it was Mercedes Fernandez, she hadn’t met her, but a quick look up found she had worked with her uncle, Lupe Fernandez, he had commanded the Rainmaker for a brief time.
So, Mayvenn wasn’t in command anymore, and the ship wasn’t attached to Starbase Haven anymore. She was newly refitted and given back to the SCE, and she, Redcloud was to be the Executive Officer and SCE Team leader of her. Was the Rainmaker still pink? Redcloud grinned and wondered. She also wondered about Commander Fernandez, was she the kind of girl that wanted a pink Starship?
---
Star Base Gamma
Redcloud saw her Rainmaker coming in. It was her ship because she had served on it from the time it came out of storage for Lt Commander Esteban Maturin all those years ago. She had been a green engineer, her first cruise from the academy. How many times had she been made Acting Chief Engineer to have it taken away and some fool put in her place. How many times had she stepped up and ‘fixed’ whatever it was that was going to kill them this time, only to have another engineer come in and slap her down to ‘her place’.
All that aside, she was now the Executive Officer of that ship out there, one step below God herself, and Team Leader for an SCE Team, a big one, more had joined her at Star Base Gamma.
That includes a renowned computer snot that graduated the Academy before she was old enough to even start. Redcloud didn’t believe the stories around this girl, the Changeling rumors or even that she was a Q hiding with humans. She looked over to her newest SCE Team Member, Lt. Hope Robins with a cat on her shoulders, wrapped around her like a stole. The ‘cat’ was required reading also, apparently it was a sentient creature with limited empathic abilities that had crossed a dimensional crack with its whole tribe, and bonded with the girl when she caught it stealing her tricorder. It was what was termed a Scout and could remember where it had been, and what it had seen and was able to tell others of its kind in 3D and graphic detail, including sound and smell.
The ship had locked into her buffers and the main hatch slid open. Redcloud headed up the gangway and showed her id and orders to the Security before entering. She followed the familiar paths to the main turbolifts and from there to the Bridge.
The Bridge hubbub had died down, they were docked, the engines shut down, the ship safe in harbor, that was not where a Starship belonged and Mercy would have her back out as soon as possible.
The turbolift doors opened and someone stepped out, they walked around to the Captain’s Chair and Mercy recognized her from her files, Lt Commander Redcloud. Mercy stood.
Redcloud offered her orders to her and said, “Lt Commander Redcloud, Executive Officer and SCE Team Leader reporting aboard Ma’am.”
Mercy took the orders, then the woman’s hand. Shaking it she said, “Welcome aboard Redcloud, is your team with you? And your kit? I will have to go meet the Admiral of course but after that you and I will have to sit down and talk. Settle in while I am gone.” She turned and plugged the PADD with the orders into the computer and ‘read in’ Jeniffer Redcloud to the ship’s crew as Exec. Once the computer acknowledged the orders and gave Redcloud the authority as Exec Mercy smiled and said, “Number One, the ship is yours, I must see the Admiral and will be back as soon as I can but it will probably be a few hours.”
She then smiled and said in a less official voice, “Oh, and Captain Prudence Williams sends her greetings and congratulations.”
As the Captain left the Bridge Redcloud smiled, Captain Williams remembered her. And now, for a short while, she was in command of the Rainmaker. She sat in the chair and started asking the Bridge Officers their names...
Hope Robins
USS Terpsichore (Formerly known as the Intrepid Class USS King George V)
Secure Drydock Starbase Avalon
Hope was in the Main Computer Control Room, doing the last checks on the computer core. There was something there, she knew it, she could not find what it was. George could not be in the ship anymore, everything had been changed. Even the programing was different, the new computer cores could not run the old system so they had to start over and just load the databases from their archives. Information without the program, if George had been in the Archive, she was now just the flat information, not the person she had been.
The room holoprojector activated and a woman materialized, Hope nodded, there was her something, of course, she should have known it was Lea, not George. The George was Fernandez’s ship, Lea was Fernandez’s Fairy Godmother.
“We have new orders,” Lea said without a greeting.
“Hello Lea, it’s good to see you too,” Hope answered her, “the ship has new orders already, I knew it had been officially commissioned and Fernandez named the Commanding Officer.”
“Greetings child, I always am seeing you, I keep a close eye on you my dear. No, we, you and me, have new orders.” Lea answered with a smile.
Hope looked at her levelly, “that isn’t creepy in any way at all Lea. But I haven’t received my orders yet. Are we officially ordered to join the Ship and Fernandez?”
Hope’s PADD chimed that she had new information of an important nature.
“Open it and read for yourself,” Lea suggested.
From the Office of Starfleet Corps of Engineers
To Lieutenant Hope Robins
Lieutenant Robins, you and your dependent are to report to Starbase Gamma forthwith and meet with the SCE vessel USS Rainmaker, you are to join said vessel and put yourself under the command of her commanding officer Commander Mercedes Fernandez and under the command of the SCE Team Leader Lieutenant Commander Jennifer Redcloud. You are to take up the job and position of Computer Engineer in the SCE Team.
There was of course more, all the fanfare and gobbledygook official orders always put in. “My dependent?” Hope asked, and Trouble’s familiar weight around her shoulders shifted, his tail wrapping around her neck. “You are my friend and bond mate, not my child or pet.”
“La, it’s all one to Starfleet, a very unimaginative group,” Lea said airly.
“I belong here with Fernandez, not as an SCE Computer Geek, I’ve been Chief Engineer of this ship for over a year, not just in position, but in name. I should be here again, beside, Fernandez needs me, Mercy doesn’t seem to like me that much, and don’t get me started about her mom.”
Lea bounce on her toes, “but just think what you will get to see as a, what did you call it, SCE Computer Geek, by the way child, that job description is not in any Starfleet records, strange new systems, that we will get to subvert and make our own domain, new hardware, never seen by the Federation before, new devices that our lords and masters would never allow us to make or ever play with again once they find out what they can do. It will be an adventure.”
Hope eyed the hologram, “Check the slang dictionaries and alternate job title listings,” she said dryly. “And why do you keep saying we? We will get to, we will see, never allow us to, you are Fernandez’s Fairy Godmother, aren’t you staying with him?”
“No my child,” Lea said, turning big eyes to Hope and a serious look on her, “I am not his Fairy Godmother, that is a program on a chip he keeps in his safe. I am me, I am what happened when that program interacted with the original alien script that became George.” She smiled, “I am Lea, I am my own person. Fernandez saw fit to release me, well, he tried to shut me down and erase me, la, it’s the same thing, I am not his anymore. You child, are his progeny, his legal heir by the way, and you and I have met, in my own world, in the world of the mind. You called me to watch over you during that interface testing, you and I are bonded. If I am a Fairy Godmother, it, child, is your Fairy Godmother. I will be going with you, to help you, and to watch over you.”
Hope just stared, she didn’t have anything to say about that, well she did, but she wasn’t sure screams would help at all at that point.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Starbase Gamma
Joining the USS Rainmaker
Hope watched at the pink Intrepid slowly worked into the docking buffer and locked in. Pink, the pink ship.
She had a furious row with Fernandez, and with her local SCE superiors, she was unhappy with Fernandez who thought it was a very good idea for her to stay in the SCE and work in different places then what she had previously been. He liked the idea of her working under Mercy, and it turns out he had briefly Commanded the Rainmaker and had met Redcloud, he liked her an awful lot, that she was a very solid and energetic engineer.
She had also talked to Fernandez about Lea, he told her Lea was gone, that he had erased her. He was very upset when Hope told him that Lea wasn’t gone, that she had attached herself to Hope since Fernandez didn’t want her anymore. That was a bad moment for Fernandez, and he warned Hope that Lea was too powerful, that she had no conscience, and that she could and would do anything she wanted, up to invasion of privacy and murder. That if she was attached to Hope, it was Hope’s duty to control her, and keep her within bounds. He was abjectly sorry he had done that to her, and she could see it upset him more than he wanted to show but as he had said more then once, “there is no putting that genie back in the bottle.” If Lea was going to follow Hope, there was no way Hope could stop her, and all she could do would be to make sure Lea didn’t do the things she was not supposed to do. First Trouble, now Lea, Hope knew her life would never be boring. Trouble bit her ear, his way of telling her to quit fretting.
A pink Intrepid, she was going to be serving on a pink ship, as a computer weenie, with her mapper bondmate who had a low sense of humor, a sentient computer intelligence with no conscience, under the command of her cousin that didn’t like her or Trouble. Who was probably in the block that worked so hard to keep her out of the Fernandez family heritage when Fernandez asked for her to be written in.
The main hatch of the pink Intrepid opened up onto the main docking deck.
Time to join my new pink ship...
======================================================================
JP Commander Mercy Fernandez, Lieutenant Hope Robinson, and Lea
Commander Mercedes Fernandez
USS Rainmaker
SCE Computer Labs
Mercy had to take care of this now, early and not make it harder then it had to be.
She approached the Computer lab door and it opened for her.
A woman in the yellow uniform but no rank markings was there to greet her. "Commander, come in and welcome, your favorite beverage is fresh on the replicator pad."