Flight Con Control Convention
Posted on Sat Aug 8th, 2026 @ 1:14am by Lieutenant Marques Hunt & Ensign Julia Vonner & Ensign Plumzezii
1,754 words; about a 9 minute read
Mission:
Tales of the Twenty-Third Century
Location: USS Hecate - Flight Control Staff Area
Plum sat in the pilot seat of one of the many flight simulators the Hecate had aboard. Arrayed in front of him was a small-scale replica of the ship’s Main Bridge, complete with flight control console and the main viewer.
Immersive, the simulator had been sealed from the outside world and pumped the sounds and smells of his second-favourite duty-station through as he practiced his manoeuvres. Long-range scans provided by the Science Department had shown the Zh’Raj nebula was close to their current course and had proposed a course change to incorporate closer study of the phenomena.
Currently the Saurian was wrestling with the controls as repeated gravity shocks buffeted the Excelsior-class ship into pockets of unstable gases that pooled in the wells of the waves. Muttering under his breath, he fought to right the ship and keep to the clearer parts of the channel.
Standing in the background, Lieutenant Hunt observed the Ensign fighting and clearly struggling to maintain control of the simulated ship. Prior to being an instructor at the Academy, Marques would have tried stepping in or at least shout out some instructions. But after a few years of training cadets. The best lesson at times was a tad bit of failure, followed by sound advice.
Julia stood further back, clutching her duffel strap. The newly embarked helmswoman sought to report to Lieutenant Hunt, and the figure she suspected of being him appeared engrossed in the suitably supervisory undertaking of monitoring the session through a transparent blind. Professional courtesy incited her to defer until it subsided, though she didn't do so idly.
"Move with the medium," she thought of the other pilot's efforts, catching onto indicators of spiking shear stresses just before warning alarms blared.
Marques watched as the left nacelle was torn off the Hecate in the simulation. This caused the ship to spin out of control. Again, he continued to observe and watch as the simulator continued to bring up data regarding feedback. Feeling a pair of eyes watching, he turned to find Julia standing in the background.
Recognizing the familiar face from the profile he read earlier in the day, he waved the Ensign into the room. "Ensign Vonner, welcome to the Hecate."
"Thank you. . .sir," Julia stumbled, wide eyes supplementing her being caught out by the sudden display of Hecate's vulnerability. Extreme scenario or no, it wasn't the sort of first impression she wanted of a ship she'd be piloting.
She took a moment to reset herself.
"It's good to finally be here," she then added, closing the distance between them with a hand. "The station was. . .confining."
Hunt accepted the hand and shook it. "One reason why I would never take a station posting. I'm all being out and seeing everything I can. Have you had a chance to settle in yet?"
Julia shook her head. "Not yet. I figured I'd make that last." She flashed a knowing grin. "Shared quarters always call for extra time to meet the roommates."
"The joy of roommates," Hunt spoke as he reminisced. "I certainly do not miss those days."
Hissing in frustration, the vestigial spines along the crest of his skull flaring, Plum vented his frustrations as the ship continued tumbling out of control for the umpteenth time. The Saurian figured he had run the simulation six times this shift already. HE shut it down, slumping in his chair for a few moments before getting to his feet. His tongue flicked out, scenting two humans in the observation area as he slouched out. 'That's a damned tough nebula,' he said with frustration.
"Plumzezii, you need to relax," Marques spoke over the comm. "Being way too aggressive with the controls. Think of the ship as an extension of yourself."
His tongue flicked out, tasting the air again. 'Yes, sir,' he replied tightly, getting to his feet. His lizard feet were unsuitable for standard Starfleet footwear, so their tough soles padded against the deck quietly. He'd had many an envious comment from Security officers about how stealthily he could move if he wanted. Stepping out into the space his fellow officers shared, Plum gave a shrug. 'I'll try again tomorrow with fresh eyes. Getting better every run!'
"May I try?" Julia piped, eager to try the all-touch interface. Starfleet's patchy commitment to the technology limited her experience to a shuttle equipped with a mid-2280's iteration. Her subsequent disapproval echoed her colleagues throughout the fleet, but if Starfleet's premier class was moving forward with it, surely the improvements she'd read about had proven effective.
Hunt looked from Plumzezii and then back to the new Ensign. "Be my guest. I'm curious to see how you score."
Julia nodded and entered the simulator. The helm wasn't the only station present; a large, semi-spiral readout framed by several smaller square ones gave away its portside neighbor as operations management, heir to many of the duties performed by navigators on older ship classes. Dense groups of blue-green keys, slides, and a handful of small readouts comprised her own, which she adjusted her chair to comfortably reach.
She then gave into her curiosity about the haptic feedback supposedly incorporated in response to tactility complaints. It occurred to her that the simulator might need to be active, yet the flat surface trilled Julia’s ears and fingers when she placed her fingers upon the graphics depicting the impulse thrust sliders. Moving to a different set of controls produced a slightly varied recurrence, intriguing her into additional experimentation.
"This will take adjusting to," Julia thought as she registered an emulative inertial shift, denoting the beginning of her session.
She suspected Plumzezii’s difficulty lay in trying to thread such a large ship through relatively small passages, making for a heavy, yet delicate workload she decided not to emulate. She instead elected to ride the gravimetric currents through the nebula much as she would've air currents while gliding back home.
Her unfamiliarity with the sensor controls made the initial application of her plan jagged. Hecate began bucking at the nebula's perimeter, the motions intensifying until she applied adjustments to the shields and other energy fields. The ride still teetered on unsteady when she had to deviate against a current, but Julia's fine control kept those periods brief, and the ship swam assuredly through the nebula's chaos.
Marques sat back and watched. The Ensign maintained a good level of control. Not as smooth as he would have liked, but for her level of experience it was expected. Staying silent, he reserved any feedback or advice until the simulation came to an end. But she was indeed a natural at the helm.
Plum leaned over towards Hunt, colours on his skin rippling as they changed, betraying the inner turmoil to anyone who could read Saurian emotions. 'She's very good,' he said quietly, instinctively not wanting to disturb Vonner, even though he knew there was a transparent aluminum screen between them. 'One of the best I've seen for a long while.'
"Definitely some raw talent there," Marques admitted. "A tad bit more experience, and she'll be one of the best pilots in the fleet." Turning his attention back to Plum, he smiled. "Don't worry we'll get you there as well."
He hissed in laughter, colour shifting across his hide, 'ah, I might get better, but I'll not get that good at starship piloting,' Plum admitted. 'Shuttles are more my thing - smaller mass to throw around space, you know? Much more sense of freedom with it too.'
The implication for her ship and colleagues’ well-being was inspiring Julia to be at her best. Her focus burned through the white noise inflicted by the unfamiliar haptics, helped in part by the basic flight controls building upon the layout she was trained on. This wasn’t her first run through a nebula, either.
A recurring triple chime caught her attention in the midst of her counteracting some errant currents. She looked down to see the border of the trajectory sensor readout flashing rhythmically.
"Emerging from incident zone," she declared, voice pitched by relief and triumph as the buffeting gradually dissipated.
'Impressive,' Plum said as he leaned against the railing in front of the transparisteel window. 'That's some nifty flying - I think you've got your main candidate for flying us through that nebula if we take Hecate into it.' He nodded at Hunt, then tapped the comm into the simulation room, 'how's the gravitational pull with the planetoids in the nebula?'
"I'd have made atomic confetti out of myself if I tried that with any of the auxiliary craft," Julia admitted, the systems check she'd reflexively initiated having returned green. "Not enough thrust or structural integrity."
"Step on out." Watching the Ensign exit the simulator, Hunt nodded clearly impressed. "How much piloting of the ship did you have on your last posting?"
"Roughly a year and a half," she replied, demeanor subtly questioning. Surely, he'd seen that in her record.
"What class of starship?"
"Krakatoa."
'Unique ship,' Plum interjected favourably. His tongue flicked to his eye, hanging there for a moment as it cleaned it. 'Strange geometry for a ship, even if it is a tender vessel. Was it difficult to pilot? Or,' he continued with undisguised admiration, 'was it easy for you too?'
Plum's acclaim and her realization of why Hunt had asked obvious questions manifested in Julia giggling and reddening. "It was a challenge. It'd been over a year since I'd last piloted a starship when I was promoted to bridge duty. I had to rebuild my acclimation to it."
"I'm glad to have you and that added experience on the Hecate," Hunt mentioned. "We're going to be venturing far out from Federation space. And it's good to know that my people will be ready to step up at any given moment."
'The only way this works is if we're all pulling together as a team,' Plum opined, flashing a reptilian smile at the other two. 'We'll have each other's backs no problem - no way am I letting some rogue Klingon or Romulan marauder get the better of us. Or one piddly nebula.'
Marques placed on hand on Plum's shoulder. "Now that's the type of thinking that I want to hear more of."
=============
Lieutenant Marques Hunt
Chief Flight Control Officer
USS Hecate
Ensign Julia Vonner
Flight Control Officer
USS Hecate
Ensign Plumzezii
Flight Control Officer
USS Hecate
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