MISSION START Unstableness

Posted on Thu Oct 29th, 2026 @ 10:23pm by Captain Bethsabée Leroux & Lieutenant Jennifer Matthews

Mission: Sacrifice
Location: Mess Hall
Timeline: Day 472 - December 2156
1567 words - 3.1 OF Standard Post Measure

Breakfast was the time of day that Beth had hated until the morning sickness had gone away leaving her feeling a lot better and alert at 06:30 that she had been previously. She stepped into the quiet mess hall knowing that in half an hour it would be busy and there would be no space for her to just sit and think about everything that was going on. She quickly grabbed some toast, scrambled eggs and a large coffee and headed for a window seat.

She was just finishing buttering the toast when she looked up to see the chief engineer coming in and offered her a smile despite the earliness of their day.

Jenni caught the Captain’s smile as she entered the room. As a reflex, she offered one in reply, though it had been weak. It was no secret that Jenni had been burning the midnight oil the last few nights. She’d buried herself in her newfound crisis, tending to a weakened stabilizer that Atlantis relied on for so many systems and subsystems. It had been much easier for her to think about work or anything else to distract her from the loneliness that threatened to consume her soul.

The engineer stood in front of the cabinets, sliding the translucent doors until she reluctantly surrendered to a bowl of paste-like oatmeal with some berries grown in the hydroponics bay. A stop at the drink dispenser refilled her dented coffee mug, and then a moment of indecision hit. Should she find a table and do her best to ignore how she felt? Or did she dare to break the cycle and actually sit to talk to someone. The voices in her head wrestled with each other, and Jenni didn’t catch that her feet had made the decision for her, directing her to the Captain’s table. There was no escape now, she thought.

“Mind if I join you?” Jenni meekly asked the Captain.

"I would enjoy that, Jennifer." The Captain said, shifting her tray a little to make more space for the woman. "I do not normally see you for breakfast this early." Beth murmured over her coffee as she was trying to warm herself up a little. She had woken up feeling cold, which was not unusual for her but it was certainly making itself known today.

Jenni tensed up a bit as she sat. She didn't introduce herself often as Jennifer, though she had when they ferried the princess recently. "You can call me Jenni if you like," she gently offered to the Captain. "I don't often eat breakfast, but I figured since I didn't have much for dinner that I should fill up."

"I would like that as long as you do not call me Bethsabee as well," Beth said, teasing just a little. She was in good spirits, and she knew her full name amused some of the crew. "And why did you not have much dinner?" Beth wondered, thinking back to the dinner she had, had last night it had been pasta and sauce which was always a favourite among the crew.

The engineer fought the urge to chuckle, wondering if the Captain's inquiry was meant to be commanding or mother-like. "Unless there's a good reason to not call you Captain, I'll stick with that. And as for dinner, I've been crawling around the service tubes all night. Our stabilizer's struggling, and I was trying to reroute a few systems or bypass altogether."

Beth smiled a little more at the way the woman quickly said that she would not be calling her anything other than Captain. It amused her, but she had to remember the woman was new to senior leadership, and it would take time for that type of relationship to happen as it had with the other senior officers. "And how did that go?" She wondered quietly, looking at the toast thoughtfully before she took a bite.

"Couldn't tell you," Jenni honestly replied, the words leaving her mouth before she could filter them. One sigh later and a half-hearted attempt to stir the porridge before her, she admitted, "I've gotten to the point where I'm not sure if the wires really are crossed or if it's my eyes. But I do think the power grid has at least been stabilized."

Beth found herself smiling a little more as the woman spoke something honest for the first time in any interaction. She could not fault her for it, but she needed that honesty if she was going to keep the ship together and functioning. "That leads me to believe that you might need a few days off to get yourself together?" Beth suggested quietly. They had not had any type of shore leave in a while, and being that on all the time was not healthy.

Jenni nearly grunted at the suggestion, but somehow she managed to bite her tongue. The downturn expression on her face most likely betrayed her, however. "It's very difficult as an engineer to walk by work that needs to be done every day and not do it, Captain," she freely admitted to her pregnant superior. There were many aspects of the Atlantis that worried the engineer, and much like childbirth, one day those worries would become reality. And it would always be all too soon.

"I know, but I also do not want you unwell," Beth said kindly. She had had the conversation recently with Benjamin when discovering his work hours and the fact that he was not taking off hours as mandatory and more a suggestion. She did not want any of her senior officers working themselves to the bone.

"It's hard to let the ship be unwell," Jenni countered. Her spoon was stabbed at the sludge once or twice before it stirred the viscous compound. "I'm not saying I don't trust the crew to tend to things while I sit by. Maintaining the ship is more than a full-time job these days."

Beth was about to argue when the ship vibrated, and she felt it under her hand. The glass of water she had shook on the table before the ship jerked several times sending the glass and trays to the floor. She glanced up to where there had been stars passing out the window, to a strange blue glow and no stars around them.

Jenni had barely been able to prevent the coffee mug from taking another dent. Her clothes, however, earned a new stain, providing a new warmth to her sleeve that she hadn't expected to feel during this meal. At first she thought the stabilizer had given out, but a glance out the porthole suggested something else had happened. "I don't think we're at warp anymore, Captain."

Beth slowly approached the window and looked out, preparing herself for whatever was out there. But nothing prepared her to see a shift drifting past them upside down and half damaged. “I think you might be right.” She said wearily.

The engineer jumped out of her seat and joined the window. At first, she just wanted to see if there was anything outside the ship that may have offered a clue about how they stopped, including any debris that might be shooting past the front of the ship. "There's not much by way of forward propulsion," she observed. "Almost like we got a tire stuck in a ditch."

And then she saw the ship. The silhouette was dark, giving the vessel a bit of a horrific look like an horror movie from a century ago. The blue glow of the outside gave it a murky appearance, almost ghostlike. "Is that..." Jenni's voice trailed off, thinking that the spooky outline had a familiar look to it. "That's Starfleet."

Beth looked at the ship and then back at the woman and several crewmen who had been having breakfast at the same time and nodded. She had no idea what ship as the name was not visable but it was certainly a Earth Starfleet design. "It is but what is it doing here?" She wondered as she tried to figure out what exactly the here could be.

"Most likely the same thing we are," Jenni mused. "Wondering why the hell we got pulled out here in the first place." She pushed herself closer to the window and started to look at the ship in the distance. "I don't see lights or field grills illuminated. They might have been stuck in here for a while."

"It is an old ship," Beth said quietly, taking in the familiar lines of the ships that the NX replaced.

"Looks like something my dad was on when I was a teenager." A crewman piped up as the ship lurched again, making Beth grip the window seals to avoid losing her footing.

"Captain to the bridge." Lexi's voice declared over the tannoy as the standby alert sounded through the ship.

"Old or not," Jenni mused, still looking out the viewport, "we should check it out." Part of her wanted to help whomever may still be alive over there, assuming the ship had been here longer than they had. The other part of her hoped that that ship would have something Atlantis urgently needed... spare parts. With that in mind, she turned to follow the Captain to the bridge.

There was no way Jenni was going to miss this.