Chapter 6: The Battle of Snow Dance

Once all the various yard engineers had finally left the ship and they were clear to move to an active ship’s slot on Grissom station, Ty and Angie rearranged their living situation. Angie held a closed door session with the various department heads and chiefs explaining the realities of long space flights and how she intended to manage it so there were as few issues as could be managed. There were a lot of wide eyes at her rather open allowance of sexual activities aboard ship, but she held up her hand and detailed her 13 months on a scout ship with only 28 people aboard. “If this ship is going to be spending months away from port, which is quite likely, this is going to ease your disciplinary work load by a huge amount. Now all you have to do is step on the few who can’t shut up and those who feel entitled.

The ship departed the following day for the long trip to Snow Dance. Within three weeks the senior leadership began to comment on how much less trouble they were noticing and how work quality and timeliness had improved. Some casual discussion revealed that partnerships didn’t want attention or issues, so made sure their work and off duty behavior drew no attention. Disagreements and breakups were handled quietly and without any violence or public rancor. In a few cases the leadership had to guide someone into a better situation, but those situations were rare.

The ship made good time with the new B-C turbines and Angie, as captain, insured training was conducted and when to standard or better, training in higher or related fields was given to broaden the crews horizons. Ty took the sensor crew and taught them all about his long distance sensor. They had two aboard and he told them of how much they were able to learn from the information it gathered.

Ty and Angie read and reread their orders, trying to discern all the facets involved and how they would handle those and the unexpected things that always popped up. The XO, LT Hunter, was a special case as he wanted to know why LT Colla was spending so much time with the CO. They blamed it on the tests they were to run, but he smelled a rat. Still, he had nothing that could possibly let him replace the CO and she had a lot of support from the senior enlisted and quite a few of the officers. LT Hunter had befriended a LTJG in the engineering and power plant section. They took care of each other’s human needs and he didn’t want that pursued, as she was in his chain of command, and thus forbidden fruit officially.

The trip actually passed quietly with very few issues. Their arrival was welcome and they spent only two days with the fleet command before being sent out to relieve the scout BENGHAZI. She was located much closer to the fleet than anyone on COCHISE thought was wise. In the course of the replacement, BENGHAZI offered to let COCHISE just use their scanning antenna and they could just swap theirs to BENGHAZI. The XO, LT Hunter, thought it a great idea and time saver. Ty baulked; he had been carefully going over the antenna and sensors he had and was not too interested in getting an unknown antenna setup, he took it upon himself to look at their antenna’s positioning, suited up and took a shuttle out and immediately noted that their antenna was much smaller than designed.

Despite a significant push from his sensor crew, LT Hunter, the COCHISE command group and of course BENGHAZI to do the simple swap, he threatened to relieve the sensor system commander on COCHISE and any in the command group that tried to force the swap. LTCDR Scalla saw a serious problem brewing and she called Ty to her office “Close the door and tell me why you are so angry and threatening all my officers and me too.”

Ty took a breath, “You noted how far back they are from a decent scanning location, I got a bad feeling, and as no one on this ship had looked at it, I went out and looked at the antenna they are trying to pass off. It has been cut down to about half the size of the standard antenna; it’s vastly less capable ... these people have been fucking off on the job by playing it safe and risking the whole damn fleet. Here, I took pictures.”