Logistics

Jureth had been toying with the idea since they returned from their previous mission. It was only a concept, and would take some support to implement, but he believed it would benefit the Horizon and her crew. What he was envisioning would gather all of his specialists in one space and allow them to all contribute their expertise to any given situation from a central hub as opposed to having them spread out throughout the ship, a strategic operations nerve center of sorts. He would ask the captain for permission later, first he needed to find out if it could be done. So, he entered the ship's bridge looking for the Horizon's chief of operations, Lieutenant Elisha Leone. Finding the Orion at her station he approached her, and addressed her directly.

"Hello Lieutenant, I have a question for you." 

Looking up from her console, Elisha Leône responded immediately to the strategic operations chief.

"Certainly. Proceed with your inquiry Commander" she noted with a keen eye on the Bajoran.

"The Horizon is a large vessel, to say the least, and I was wondering what type of spare spaces we have. My goal is to ideally take a spare conference room or something that size and turn it into a....nerve center of sorts for my strategic operations specialists. It would mean repurposing the space, and adding consoles, displays and other equipment. I have not spoken to the captain yet, I wanted to find out if it could be done first." 

Thinking for a moment about his request, Elisha turned and pulled-up a comprehensive display of the entire desk listings of the Horizon from her station. She studied all of the decks and their allocated spaces for quite a while as she crossed-referenced specific details.

She them zoomed into a specific area on her display with an image and a blueprint. After making a few calculations, she turned back to strategic operations chief as she responded.

"Perhaps Commander, I could partition off a section of one of the Cargo bays on Deck 27 near the entrance" she gestured as she pointed out the region to the commander.

"This would give you the option to design the room's specific size and capacity based on your anticipated needs for equipment, personnel and features while also placing you and your team in relative proximity of the turbolift and the Polaris; should an emergency arise while a meeting is in session."

"That would be ideal, if the captain approves of course," Oseno replied as he studied the blueprint "Right now my people are spread out throughout the ship, but I think I could use their talents better if I could consolidate them. As I said I think I wouldn't need much more than the size of a conference room. Thank you Lieutenant, I will have more information if the captain tells me I can take away one of his cargo bays." The last sentenced was accompanied by a smile and Oseno turned heading for the captain's ready room where he rang the annunciator and waited.

Kheren had just finished reviewing his chief science officer's proposal for the ship's revolutionary telepathic shield grid and was about to send his approval code to log it all in the ship's computer. hearing the chime, he punched in the code then straightened himself in his chair.

"Come."

The door slid open to reveal his strategic ops officer in the doorway. He could hear his heartbeat well enough to sumrize that the Bajoran was both quite enthusiastic and slightly uncertain about something; and his body language was nothing but professional. So this was business and this was important to him... and directly related to the ship, hence why he came to his commanding officer's office. That was exactly what he had gathered from Snowfire K'Leysha's visit not that long ago when she had come to propose her Kyrol project. And he greeted Oseno the same way.

"What can I do for you, Commander?"

Jureth stepped into the ready room and took a moment to compose his thoughts before he spoke.

"Sir, I've been toying with an idea since we've been back. Right now my people are spread out throughout the ship. I want to consolidate them, into one space. I'd like to create a central space for Strategic Operations...a nerve center if you will. I spoke with Lieutenant Leone to see if it could even be done and she believes she could partition one of the cargo bays near the Polaris docking bay to create a conference room sized space which I would populate with workstations and consoles where my specialists could take real time data and information and analyze it along with being able to work together to build them into some kind of unit. All of this of course is contingent on your approval of course."

Oseno finished his presentation and then waited expectantly for his CO's response. He believed he had a good idea, and hoped the captain did too.

Kheren took a moment to think about what the Bajoran proposed. But it didn't took long for him to assess the proposal.

"I wonder why Starfleet... or me for that matter... never thought about this. I guess we all fell into the pattern of seeing the bridge as the focal point of command on a starship, more so when there is an auxilliary bridge usable when the bridge module is away and a battle bridge in the engineering section for saucer separation tactical operations... But considering the size of this ship and especially what the Polaris' role is, what you propose makes a lot of sense."

The Andorian stood up, went to the window of his office to look out at the vista of stars beyond the transparency.

"Where we are going, we need both to centralize our operations and at the same time make sure that our nerve centers are not knocked out with one lucky shot... And instant response time might prove critical if things come to worse."

He turned to face his strategic operations officer.

"Since our chief of ops agrees that we have the resources to implement it, you may proceed, Commander. Thank you for your proposal... and make sure Commander Redding and Lieutenant Somers are informed, as well as our chief engineer; I would not want Lieutenant Solius to implement Romulan anti-sabotage measures were he to discover an unregistered connection to data and power systems."

Oseno smiled slightly at the reference to the ship's chief engineer. "Yes Sir, I will likely need engineering's help anyway. I will work on getting the project started and hopefully get it at least partially running while we are traveling to our meeting with the Undine, and I will submit the appropriate paperwork of course."

"Ensign Blackbird will certainly make sure that you do."

Kheren's Andorian face could not smile but his curving antennae did the job.

"Anything else, Commander?"

"No Sir, thank you."

Later that day Oseno relates his newest idea to First officer Redding.

"I have to admit, I like the idea Commander" and gave an affirmative nod.

"Seems odd to me that no one ever thought of adding a situation room to one of our Federation star ships before, at least not that I can remember and I was around before holodecks." and gave a kind of dismissive shrug.

"I wonder if dedicating a type 4 holoprojector would be a good way to keep it situation adaptable. You know, for furniture and various displays."

He was sure Jureth knew that the type 4's couldn't produce anything as complicated as a true holodeck but was dependable enough to not require the main computer to keep it running if there was any type of system failure.

"An interesting idea Sir. I suspect that I'll have to bring that up with our chief engineer. What I'm looking at so far is several multipurpose consoles that could be adapted by whatever officer is using them for their current task, a central display much like a main conference room would have so that information from any console could be displayed for everyone to view, and possibly a small laboratory workstation so that my science and medical specialists could run short term experiments. I've even considered asking for an emergency transporter pad though I don't know if that can be done."

Oseno offered the XO his personal PADD which displayed a rough outline of what the room would contain showing the possible positioning of six multipurpose consoles in three pairs of two spread out on three bulkheads. The lab station was placed along the furthest bulkhead from the entrance to the room, and in the center was a central display unit that would be connected to the ship's computer and would display whichever information was most needed be it from one of the room's consoles or data from the Horizon herself. 

"I see" Redding said looking it over. "From the looks of it I don't think you really need me trying to give you pointers do you?" He continued reading for a couple more minuets.

"I'd say you have your ducks in a row Commander, let me know if there's any way I can be of help." and handed him back the PADD

And with a smile and a quick nod of the head he was gone again.

After the exchange with the Horizon's XO, Oseno made his way down to main engineering and after entering the cavernous space containing the ship's pulsing warp core he located the Romulan Chief Engineer of the Horizon.

"Hello Lieutenant," Oseno greeted S'tan Soilus as he approached "I was wondering if I might take a moment of your time."

S'Tan adjusted his posture to Attention and saluted his superior. "What can I do for you Sir?"

Oseno was slightly surprised by the salute but then he remembered that the man had been a member of the Romulan military where that type of decorum was expected. The bajoran mimicked S'Tan's gesture though he suspected that his form was probably a bit off and followed it with a proper Romulan greeting

"Jolan Tru, I am working on a project that Captain Kheren has approved. Lieutenant Leone will be partitioning off a cargo bay near the Polaris docking bay to create a sort of situation room or nerve center for my Strategic Operations department. I will be populating the room with several consoles and a central display that I would like to connect directly to the ship's network so that my people can examine real time information from sensors, tactical, and LCARS. I was also wondering if installing a small transporter pad would be possible. Obviously I know you have a good amount of work on your plate so I wouldn't expect you to attend to all of this personally, but I wanted to keep you informed and to find out what the odds are we can have most of the project up and running by the time we reach our meeting with the Undine."

The engineer slightly squinted his eyes as the officer's use of the Romulan language. He kept his eyes squinted as his Commander explained what he wanted. "That sounds more like a Romulan Investigation Bay. I am surprised this ship did not already have such a location. Our Captain seems to fear every bump in the night, except the one we are about to fly straight at." He sighed, the insanity of the mission had still not cleared his mind. "I can devote a few repair crews to assist in setting everything up, barring any damage that needs to be repaired. I am worried about the system drain that the systems will take. I'll have to figure out something to divert power away from the room when we are in combat...but not so much as to make the room worthless."

Hearing their conversation just a pace from the console he was working at, Robert Baoule flashed them his bright white smile, making his dark bald head all the more somber. But his voice was as friendly as it was professional.

"If I may be allowed to interject... There might be a simple way to solve that problem, Sir; the Polaris."

With a few touches on his panel, the assistant chief engineer brought up between them a tridimensional holographic display of the ship's schematics, using the emitters of the hologrid spread throughout the ship including their present location. As he spoke, the computer zooomed in on the lower half section of the Horizon's schematics display and highlighted the relevant parts with coded colors as he explained his idea in more detail.

"Since this strategic room is essentially for the need of Commander Jureth and his staff and crew, it is obvious it will be mostly if not always used while the Polaris is docked... and left unused when she his launched. Thus, we could provide all the needed power for that new section with ample to spare from the Polaris own power core even at idle status. The hook up would be quite simple to implement, especially with that room so near the ship's docking bay... and no power at all from the Horizon would ever be needed. Even more; in case of a catastrophic situation where all the ship's bridges and even main engineering are lost and main power as well, this would allow this strategic room to be converted as a last resort emergency command center from which the power of the escort ship could be harnessed and channeled for the basic needs of the main vessel."

S'Tan nodded, "I agree that it is the simplest solution, however, what should happen if the Polaris is forced to disembark. I am sure we can send some data to the Information Center, but it would lose a great deal of functionality...Would that be an issue, Commander?"

Oseno considered for a moment what the two engineers were proposing, not being an engineer himself he was relying on his basic Starfleet engineering classes to understand what they were saying.

"The odds are, if the Polaris is not docked, most of my people will be aboard her, unless she is being used for a very specific mission or for some reason she were removed for major repairs or something along those lines. So, I would say that your proposal Mister Baoule should be a viable solution to the power problem."

"Very well," the Romulan concluded, "The repair teams are yours. Now if you will excuse me, I would like to learn more about this transwarp system before I make us implode outside of the starbase."

"That would be explode, Sir, " Baoule reminded his superior officer with a big, friendly smile, knowing by his comment that the Romulan was thinking of the microsingularity-powered starships of his homeworld and not the matter-antimatter powered one he was now in charge of.

As a propulsion expert, Baoule was as knowledgeable about microsingularity drives as he was fascinated by them; with the exception of Solius himself, he was probably the best specialist on the subject in the entire Federation. Working with the Romulan officer was a dream come true for him. Now he could learn from the source... and as far as he could see, from one of the best. The way Solius was adapting to Starfleet technology was nothing short of astounding and said much about the qualifications of this otherwise junior officer. Baoule would make sure to step up his game to his chief's standards as best he could.

Solius saluted the officer and turned his back to return to work.

His assistant then turned his smile back to the Bajoran Commander.

"I will start the work with Lieutenant Leône and the ChOps and ChEng of the Polaris as soon as possible, Sir. Even at the tremendous speed the Horizon will be flying, it will take us at least a month if not two to get to our theatre of operations, to use your own terms. You will have at least a functional room, if not a fully equiped and operational one, by then."

"That would be Lieutenant T'Lana and Lieutenant Akaal," Oseno replied "T'lana is my XO and doubles as operations chief, and Mister Akaal is the senior engineer on my staff...and I should warn you, he's Andorian."