Waiting

Posted on Sun Jan 4th, 2026 @ 3:50pm by Lieutenant Commander James Smith & Captain Nycolas Temple & Lieutenant Krysia Kaleri-Smith

Mission: A Dawn on Drax
Location: StarFleet Academy, Instructer Intelligence division

On

~StarFleet Academy~

James looked around the classroom and he continued to prepare his lectures for the coming weeks. He had put in a request for a transfer back to the Pandora. He had been away from his family far too long and it was harder for him to stay away. He had missed the twins as they were growing up to fast and he not want to b away from them anymore. In the meantime he had been assigned to StarFleet Academy and helping to shape the minds of the future intelligence officers that were coming into the ranks. Looking at the time he realized that he had been busy with his notes that he had lost track of the time.

Quickly looking at his messages he saw that the Admirals and those in charge of his orders had yet to grant his request. Seeing that he decided to put in a call to Krsys and the kids and then he was going to drop a quick call to his old friend Nyc. “Computer, connect me with the Pandora, and to LT Kaleri-Smith.” James waited until he got connected and in the meantime he continued his work.

~ USS Pandora ~

Aboard the Pandora Krysia was still trying to get her head around being assigned as Chief Diplomatic Officer as well as Counsellor. Granted she had the training, and she was more or less an Ambassador for her people onboard ship, but she hadn’t expected the shift of position. As the computer alerted her to the fact that she had a call she sat down smiling brightly as she connected with James. “James! It’s so good to see you. How are things at the Academy? Any sign of your request being granted yet?”

~StarFleet Academy~

James smiled, as the connection was made, “I haven’t heard anything yet, I’m not sure when my orders are going to come through, and if I’ll hear from the academy or the Captain that my request has been approved. I miss you and the twins. I hope they have been behaving themselves, and how have you been doing while I’ve been gone.” James had put up his lecture notes for the night and was enjoying these moments with his wife.

“Oh they’ve been fine, they were spoilt rotten by my mother while I was on Drax!” Krys grinned. “They're growing so fast, I don't know how Starfleet can drag their feet like this keeping you away from your family.” She sighed. “Fingers crossed you'll be with us soon.”

James smiled as he shook his head some, “I am hoping to hear from the brass soon, even a message from the captain would be nice. I’ve missed being in the forefront of the action, but after being injured during one of the past missions, I had been ordered to have an assessment done of my injuries and to make sure their was no permeant damage done. I’ve enjoyed teaching hear but it’s time for me to get back to my family.”

Smith looked away for moment and asked, “How’s the Captain and the rest of the crew doing. I know most are on shore leave, anything exciting happened while I have been gone.”

“Well you missed out on hunting for Nyx and the Pandora” Krys grinned. “I wish you could have been there for that, all in all though its all lead to this point, now I just have to wait for you to join us.”

James looked at the computer and he noticed a message coming in. Opening it he smiled, turning back toward Krys he said with a smile, "I just got the news I am coming home, my transfer request has been approved, and I have been given the chance to stay in Intelligence, or to take on a new position on board the ship. I was thinking about Chief Engineer, what do you think."

“Chief Engineer? Really?” Krys gave her husband a curious look. “I never thought I’d ever see you outside of your Intel role.” She smiled. “If it’s what you want Imzadi then I’m happy for you to go for it. The sooner we’re back together the better!”

James smiled, "I've decided to continue with intelligence, with the new upgrades to the Pandora I heard that I could be really busy. Hold on a sec. I am going to see if I can get Nyx to join us now too so I can give him the news as well.

"Computer, connect me with the Captain of the Pandora, I have some exciting news to tell him." James said.

“Bear in mind the Captain is probably busy.” Krys added just incase there was no response.

~Pandora: Deck 4~

Nyx had originally said to hold all of his calls while he embarked on a very important, top secret meeting. A strict period of time had been etched into his schedule for this purpose, and he was not to be disturbed unless it was a warp core breach or Admiral Milne. But when he saw the call was coming from Starfleet Academy and a certain old friend, as well as from the ship itself, he chose to wave his original request for privacy.

“On screen.” Nyx panted, trying to catch his breath.

The Captain appeared on the screen in front of the others, wearing a black Starfleet training outfit. Sweat was pouring from his damp brow, for which he used the collar of his shirt to wipe off, as he took in several sharp breaths. He was standing in the new Intelligence Agent training facility; a very serious looking room that was mostly black apart from some neon strip lights around all the shelves of new gadgets and toys in the wall displays. Nyx himself was armed with a new kind of hand-held phaser -from his training test, of course.

“Well hello you two.” The sweaty man greeted the officers.

“Hello Captain!” Krysia smiled warmly at Nyx. “Sorry for interrupting you, James has some news he wants to share with you.”

James smiled as his old friend appeared on the screen it had seen like a lifetime since they had seen each other, “Hey, Nyx hope you and your family are well.” Taking a sip of some water he turned back toward his old friend, “I put in a request to be transferred back to the Pandora, and my transfer request has been approved.” James took a deep breath, “I’ve been away too long from my family and the work that I enjoy so much, teaching at the academy was an honor, especially teaching the next generation of Intelligence officers, but I long for the action and miss the Pandora no and the joy it brings me from being with everyone onboard, and I can’t wait to see what they have done with my department as well.” James stopped as he looked from his wife and his old friend to see his expression.

“Well that is some excellent news.” Nyx exclaimed, “It’ll be great to have you onboard again.”

James smiled as he looked from his wife back to his friend, "I'm looking forward to being back on-board Captain. Can wait to see the new updates to Pandora and to my department. I have one more class to hold before leaving and then I'll be taking a shuttle to the Pandora. Is there anything new I am to expect to see when I get on-board? James asked.

“New?!” Nyx gave a playfully haughty laugh. “Well I’m glad you asked. This - “ He took a step back from the screen to show the full room behind him. “Is our new Intel Officer training room. It has all of the latest gadgets, weapons, and toys to play with. And it has my favourite feature. Computer? Run through the Training tour.”

A pinhole of light emitted from the ceiling, then several others from points in the surrounding walls. The lights beamed into the centre of the room and a figure appeared of a hooded figure.

“The latest holoprojection technology can create full replicas of enemy targets.” Nyx explained. The figure was stood silently still but then began to manoeuvre around, flipping, kicking, throwing punches into the air. “For your hand to hand combat training.” Nyx engaged with the enemy, pulling the hooded figure onto the ground. “But it can also do this.”

The projection changed and now it was a crowd of people: aliens of all different races walking past the screen as if in a busy city or space sport. Nyx silently moved around them, lost amongst the crowd. Then, one of the figures shimmered red, indicating that they were an enemy. Nyx suddenly appeared and silently drew a dagger into the back of the enemy and it collapsed into digital pixels. The crowd shimmered away.

“The projections actually take only five percent of the ship’s energy to produce, rather than a traditional Holodeck, and allows for all kinds of potential training scenarios.” Nyx explained. Before them, the projections changed to a full Romulan Bridge schematic, a Borg cube corridor, a Cardassian military base. “It allows for very specific Intel-based training with the latest image generative powers. There’s everything from infiltration planning, plasma bomb defusing, to taking out the power core of any known vessel in the Federation’s database.”

The images faded away, leaving only a black room and Nyx standing in the middle. “Neat, huh?”

James smiled as he watched the Images before him, his and Nyx training had never been thus advanced and they had to rely on holodeck simulations for the training they went through and what he was seeing before his eyes amazed him. He was glad that StarFleets training systems had improved so much and it would allow him to put his team and those Aboard ship through more advance training scenarios. As the images faded back to his old friend he laughed and grinned, "I love what StarFleet has done the Pandora, and I'm thrilled to be part of the new launch of this vessel. To me Pandoea is home and it's crew is family." James looked to his wife and then back to Nyx. "I can't wait to put the ship and it's crew through it's paces as we get assigned out next mission."

“Wait! That’s not even the best part.” Nyx exclaimed like an excited Willy Wonka. He ran up to the console. “One second.”

The view on the two officer’s screens switched to what looked like a different room, with the light of a few consoles just visible in the dark. Moments later, Nyx entered the room in a giddy gallop, and the computer automatically raised the lighting.

Before them now was a group of consoles each with their own screen, in front of a larger wall display. As the room came to life, the consoles began to show different parts of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants with map markers for which ships were currently present in that region. On the wall screen, a full map of Federation space appeared with a live tracker of alerts and ship movements and station locations. There was one red alert on a ship marker, showing that a ship was currently engaged in combat; another with a yellow alert as the ship coasted past the Neutral Zone. There was a hum of voices coming through the speakers.

”USS Saratoga reporting, we’ve engaged with the pirates near the Delavi sector.”

“Starbase 65 is experiencing electrical malfunction due to an incoming plasma storm. Requesting assistance.”

“USS London has completed a sensor sweep of the sector.”

Nyx beamed, “This is Intel HQ. Your live strategic operations division that will show you all of the latest happenings across the Quadrants. Our sensor pod has been recalibrated to receive the constant stream of subspace signals from the Federation network and all of that information is beamed directly into here. The new nerve Center for Intel on the Pandora. It’s a real-time watch tower for Starfleet.”

James looked in awe at what Nyx was showing him, and was amazed at the upgrades he was seeing to his department. He was excited to help with being a more active role on the ship, and that his department was becoming the nerve center of the ship. James replied, “This makes my old intel offices and screens obsolete. I love the new designs and having all information coming into the intel computers will help streamline the missions that are our priority.”

“And there’s this.” Nyx moved to the centre of the room as a new station lit up. Several smaller screens appeared through holographic display above the station in a semi-circle pattern, with a Lcars panel at waist height.

“This is the Pod. All high alert calls will get filtered through to this station. There will be an officer always manning the pod, relaying anything that requires our Rapid Response.” Nyx explained. “Your team will monitor the subspace comms and accept requests for response by the Pandora, or pass the request on to the next nearest vessel.”

“Looks like you get all the best gadgets my love” Krysia smiled as she looked towards James.

James laughed, “I’ve always enjoyed playing with the newest gadgets, and now everything is so much more advanced, I can’t wait to get back and to meet my staff, and get back to work.” James looked back toward Nyx, “
I love the way everything is being filtered through the Pod. I can’t wait to see how it works, considering I’ve had training with it in simulations, but seeing it first hand will be something else.”

“Yes!” Nyx exclaimed, “You need to get your butt out of Starfleet Academy and back on this ship as soon as you can.”

James looked back and forth between Krys and Nyx and said, “Well I need to let you both go, my class is about to start.”

“Well we can’t have you being late can we?” Krys grinned. “I’ll look forward to seeing you when you get here.”

James nodded as his wife disappeared from the screen, “If there is nothing else I’ll see you later and will check in once I get aboard the Pandora.”

Nyx nodded, “I don't know which one of us is more eager for you to get here. Your wife or I. Mostly me because - “ He gestured around the room, “New toys!” He exclaimed loudly. “So, hurry up Smithy. That’s an order!”

James laughed as he shut off he screen. It was time to finish up some last minute details and finally go home.

With that, Nyx’s screen also went blank but as it did, there was a childlike giggle from the Captain as he ran up to the Pod to try it out for himself.

OFF