Lt Isabel Pond - Landing Thoughts

[Brell]

 

((USS Atlantis, CMO’s Quarters))

 

::It was almost time and Isabel was hurrying towards her quarters. She had never seen a mighty starship like the Atlantis land, especially not while she had been on board. She wouldn’t miss the sight for anything.::

 

::Unfortunately, this had required some meddling with the shift plans, as she couldn’t be on duty while it happened. That would mean that she had to be in sickbay and there were no windows.::

 

Brell: =/\= Brell to all decks, Blue Alert, we are preparing to land the ship, report to your code blue stations. =/\=

 

::Now, Isabel’s station was her quarters. She had to live with the bad consciousness while thinking of the two poor souls damned to stay in sickbay, just in case. However, she had made sure that they would be able to enjoy the ascent, while she would man sickbay herself. She didn’t know which was the more impressive sight, but she would argue that a launch would probably at least from the outside be a greater attraction.::

 

::Hastily, she changed into something more comfortable, which could easily be a slight bending of the rules already, ordered a hot beverage from the replicator (for once not coffee but a chocolate, but with an equal amount of sugar), took the blanket from the bed and sat by the window.::

 

::With a voice command, she lowered the room temperature a little and tucked herself in quite tightly. From this position, neither the moon nor the planet it was orbiting was not yet visible, but it must have been already on the screens of the bridge for a while.::

 

::She tried to imagine the ship and the dorsal position of her window. She’d imagine that the ship would plunge belly first through the atmosphere, which would mean there were literally nothing to see until they would level out for the final approach.::

 

::The Trill decided to take it as it would come. At the moment, there was nothing unusual to see, except the blackness of space and the occasional star, round as they should be, as they had dropped out of warp some time ago.::

 

::After her redeployment to the Atlantis, she had tried to catch up on astrology to determine which star was which, of course with the intend to find the one where Randal was at the moment. However, even though it was easy enough to get the information about the whereabouts of the Blackwell, the identification of white dots out of the rather restricted viewing port of the window was a challenge to great for Isabel.::

 

::As she had done before, she picked one at random, deciding that this surely would be the one where her boyfriend was at. Time and time again, she was wondering if he was looking to the stars as well, perhaps more adeptly determining her location and waving her, across the stars.::

 

::She waved back, just in case.::

 

::While trying to keep the fake location of Randal in sight, which was not easy with the movement of the ship combined with the sight obstruction of a couple of tears, she suddenly noticed that the stars got fainter. Also, the blackness of space seemed not as black anymore.::

 

::Futilely, she tried to see the edge of the saucer section. If what she had read about the atmospheric entry was true, there should be a couple of flames, as the atmosphere itself pushed against the super fast vessel. However, it would be nowhere as much as in the early times of each space program, as the thrusters would do most of the breaking, instead of the air resistance.::

 

::Slowly, the space between the stars turned from black to blue, a blue that swallowed one star after the other, until even the brightest disappeared behind the reflected sunlight. The ship was rocking and rumbling a bit, but nowhere near as much as Isabel had expected. It felt more like the regular slight hiccup of the warp core than falling back unto a planetary body. This surely was due to the excellent piloting skills of the person at the helm.::

 

::The person at the helm. It used to be Randal she was referring to with this. But it wasn’t anymore. If she thought about it, it was kind of unsettling not knowing who was pushing the buttons that determine their fate, more or less. At least she knew that Brell had the threads in his blue hands.::

 

::Did it make sense anymore? Practically from the first time she and Randal kissed, she knew how the proposal would happen, how the metaphorical wedding bells would sound and what the name of their child would be. Of course these were all subject to change with any input from his side, but the bottomline was: She wanted all this, and now he was somewhere, orbiting a tiny white dot which had just vanished in a blue ocean of sky.::

 

::The Atlantis leveled out and a continent came into view. It was all covered in snow. Isabel loved the sight of it, but really did not enjoy it for its properties. There was no snow on the tropical world of Trill, at least not in the regions she had ever visited. It was cold and stingy and wet in the wrong way.::

 

::Soon, the continent filled the view screen, later small towns and cities became visible. The helmsman buttered the landing, as pilots might say. Pilots like Randal Shayne.::

 

 

__________________
Lt Isabel Pond
Chief Medical Officer
USS Atlantis
D239212IP0