The Adventures of the USS Lehigh
Or, how kiffie and eliyes have begun work on a Star Trek-Invaders AU.
It's not finished, nor is it in any way cohesive, but there are a good deal many fic snippets and character-building bits that are none-the-less amusing that we feel like sharing.
Hopefully this falls within the rules of the comm. It uses a great many characters from the WWII-era Invaders series, and takes most of its characterizations from that, but if it doesn't work for the comm's feel, I'll take it down without protest.
The Main Players:
The USS Lehigh: A Miranda-class ship, outfitted as a science-based scout, assigned to the Klingon-Federation border after the loss of the Enterprise-C. Old and cantankerous, but more than able to hold her own in a skirmish, and much beloved by her crew.
Captain Chester Phillips: Human. Command. Has served on the Lehigh for decades, almost as long as the ship has been in service. Has gained a not-entirely-deserved reputation for completely disregarding the Starfleet rulebook, but has also gained a (very deserved) reputation for toughing it out in some of the most difficult space in the Alpha Quadrant.
Commander Peggy Carter: Human. Command. Exceedingly loyal to Captain Phillips, the Lehigh, and her crew. Best known for terrifying new cadets assigned to the ship, and most loved by any who make it past probationary period intact.
Lt. Commander Steve Rogers: Human. Command. The Lehigh’s go-to man for diplomatic missions, and unofficial older brother to any new cadets. Rarely needs discipline, but has the distinction of being one of the only officers in Starfleet history ever written up for “using a Horta like a Frisbee.”
Lieutenant Namor McKenzie: Romulan/Human. Security. Ill-tempered and prone to causing intergalactic incidents, Namor is none the less a great strategist and an excellent head of security. The other officer written up for “using a Horta like a Frisbee.”
Lieutenant, Jr. Grade, Jim: Horta. Security. Named for a hero to the Horta, it seemed only natural that Jim would enter Starfleet. Involved in a transporter accident with Ensign Raymond, granting him the ability to use human speech.
Ensign James Barnes: Bolian. Raised by Human parents on Earth, Bucky joined Starfleet shortly after Steve, but has managed, through various misadventures, to not be promoted despite many years of service. Best known for being able to procure almost any needed good within a week, no matter how far from a starbase.
Ensign Thomas Raymond: Human. Joined Starfleet after his colony was attacked and destroyed in conflicts with the Klingon Empire. Frequently implicated in Bucky’s schemes, but manages to avoid most of the consequences by sheer luck. Involved in a transporter accident with Lt. Jim, granting him the ability to generate acid.
Lieutenant Howard Stark: Human. Engineering. Breaks the ship more than he fixes it, but his fixes are generally timely and advantageous to the Lehigh’s continued existence, so Phillips keeps him around.
Lts. Aubrey, Falsworth, and Falsworth: An engineer and two science lieutenants assigned to keep Stark in line. No one is entirely sure what their relationship is to one another, or to Stark, and they like to keep it that way.
Dr. Abraham Erskine: Human. Medical. The Lehigh’s CMO and everyone’s favorite uncle. The ship’s not-so-official source for real alcohol and fresh lemons.
Captain William Naslund: Human. Command. Assigned command of the Lehigh for a six-month period after the injury of Captain Phillips. A well-meaning, if somewhat rigid, officer, Naslund genuinely wants to do good by his crewmates. Sometimes wonders if he willingly put himself into a bag of wet cats.
The IKS Toothgnasher: A Klingon Bird-of-Prey that is assigned to the same general space as the Lehigh. A state-of-the-art ship of the line, the Toothgnasher is a terrifying and impressive sight when decloaked, and a lurking threat when hidden.
Captain Thor, Son of Ohdan, of the House of Ohdan: Klingon. A surprisingly jovial and friendly Klingon, Thor’s apparent good nature hides a sharp mind and a near-flawless command of any battlefield. A firm believer that enemies are only so useful as long as they are alive, whereas friends can be fought again and again and can be enticed to buy drinks afterwards.
Colonel Sif: Klingon. Thor’s second-in-command, a fierce warrior, and the diplomatic go-between for the two ships. Sif and Peggy maintain a discrete communication that allows for continued cooperation along the border.
Lts. Volstagg, Hogun, and Fandral: Klingon. Three security officers that double as Thor’s away team and personal guard. Collectively have a note in Captain Phillips’ files that reads: “Not allowed to be left alone with either Falsworth for more than 15 minutes.”
Lhoki, Son of Ohdan, of the House of Ohdan: Klingon. Head instigator of a mutiny that brought three top-of-the-line Klingon Birds-of-Prey into Romulan control. Lhoki sees Klingon peace with the Federation as a threat to Klingon identity, and the Romulan Star Empire as the best tool to use to cause chaos between the factions.
Ficlets, Writings, and Various Notes:
In no particular order...
Steve is officially Command track since he's vocationally Science, but aptitude made Security snap him up and he's too duty-minded to deny it. Peggy suggested Command. He's done both.
Bucky has managed to get a hold of pictures of Steve in every colour uniform there is in their time and laaaaughs and laaaaughs.
(E)
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There are sections of the ship that run so thick with science officers that non-science types, like Namor or Bucky, just pretend those sections of the ship do not exist.
"There is no Aft-5!" has become almost a battle-cry among the Security officers of the Lehigh.
(E, K)
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Namor, after rejecting his Romulan heritage in his late teens, went on a bit of an Earth-culture kick. He learned to speak without an accent (even though translators would render that moot), he immersed himself in 19th and 20th century Earth culture, because his father had been interested in that-- or so he'd been told --and made sure to be better at most of the cadet humor than the cadets, albeit in his own, biting, icy way.
By the time he'd completed basics, most of his classmates had almost forgotten he was Romulan. When the subject of the Romulan difficulties came up, they didn't even so much as glance his way to gauge his reaction. When he was offered food, no one thought to see if he'd prefer the vegetarian option.
But then he was assigned to his first ship as an ensign, a little scout on the edge of Klingon space, and suddenly he was out of his circle of, not friends, but familiar acquaintances, and he realized he'd mistaken his classmates' complacency for his own fitting in.
He decided, somewhere between the jabs at his heritage and the frequent reprimands for fighting, that he'd been fooling himself to think that he'd fit in, and so he utterly rebelled and played up the Romulan side, reveling in the way it made his shipmates uncomfortable.
It was around the time he'd logged 2 years on that ship that it met up with the Lehigh for a trade of supplies, and he met then-Commander Phillips. Phillips took one look at him, and said, bluntly, "Son, you are one hell of an ass." Namor had no idea how to respond to that, and from a commander, so he sputtered and said, "Yes, sir." And Phillips laughed and asked for his transfer to the Lehigh.
Once Namor had been transferred and the paperwork out of the way, Commander Phillips pulled a newly-promoted Lieutenant Rogers aside and told him, "This one is yours, son."
"Thank you, Sir," he said, and there was a glint in his eye like he meant it. Steve had always liked a challenge, and he could see the hidden strengths of people without much effort; it would be a fun experiment with the potential for a great payoff.
(E, K)
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Commander Carter takes time at least once a week to sit in the canteen for an hour and read. It isn't the reading, exactly, that appeals to her, though she does enjoy the downtime. It's listening in on all of the conversations going on around her, it's people-watching and just being with the crew. People let their guard down when they're relaxing, and she likes to soak in the atmosphere of a ship not on alert or utterly stressed to breaking point.
She learns that Ensign Mitchell's wife is expecting a son, that Lt. Sabuki's cat just had kittens, and that Bucky's sister has sent him a box of various Bolian sweets and that it should arrive any day. She makes a note to be on the lookout for it, so that the Human officers in charge of the mail sorting don't set it aside as suspicious, as Bolian food can be a bit odd by Human standards.
(K)
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The first week Jim is on the ship, Namor decides he hates him. The Horta doesn't speak, even though he has a translator, and generally keeps to itself-- himself? --even when told to help others with their tasks. Namor loses his temper and all but bodily throws the Horta out of the Jefferies tube where they'd been making repairs, and he doesn't see him again for the rest of the day.
The next week, Namor is assigned on an away mission with Jim. He dreads it, and up until the day of the shuttle ride, he's fighting back the feeling of anticipation in his stomach. But, surprisingly, the shuttle ride goes smoothly and Namor doesn't lose his temper at the Horta once. They get to the planet surface and things go... fair. Communicating with the local population is less than stellar, as the Starfleet databanks haven't been updated on the language in several years and both sides sound stilted and formal to one another, and some words lose meaning altogether; particularly one that they need for current negotiations. Namor is about to have a very undignified and violent moment with the small handheld translator when Jim begins to write out something on the ground. The locals whoop and make pleased motions, and Namor stares at the Horta for a moment, confused. Jim says, "My dictionary has been updated recently," in his mechanical translator voice, and Namor sighs in relief.
It's almost a month before they are assigned together again, and this time Namor is truly neutral about the pairing. He knows the Horta is competent, and that is all that matters. They are to guard a delegate from a small colony as she meets with the ambassador from a mining asteroid in the system. Somewhere in the meeting, someone pulls a phaser, and everything goes firmly to hell. It's a firefight in ridiculously close quarters, and Namor gets the delegate to the ground only to see a phaser aiming for his face for the briefest of moments before the phaser, and the body holding it, are tackled by several hundred pounds of angry-- and Namor wasn't sure he even knew what angry sounded like -airborne Horta.
(K)
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Namor and Bucky are the only ones on the ship who can SOMEHOW do the balancing-a-bucket-on-a-door trick with Starfleet sliding pocket doors.
(E)
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Bucky uses every opportunity to woo the bridge officers of the Toothgnasher.
Toro does not understand how Bucky has such success in this particular arena because Klingons tend to be kind've jerks about Bolian cultural behaviours, but he refuses to let Bucky explain it to him.
(E, K)
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Toro is a scientist.
(E)
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The ship pulled back into the Utopia Planitia Fleetyards for the first time in nearly two decades. The Lehigh's home port was different from the last time she'd been there; new infrastructure to build bigger and newer ships, new docks to support them. Even when the Lehigh was new, her model had already been on the way out, making room for progress.
The crew disembarked to minor fanfare. The Lehigh's contribution to the continued peace in Romulan space was not legendary, but it was significant and Phillips had certainly done his part to talk up the ship's exploits while he'd healed.
The first order of business, once the greetings and official reports had gone through, was that of the need of an interim Captain. While Captain Phillips had been adamant about Commander Carter being promoted, Carter herself had declined, saying that she would wait as long as possible for Phillips to take back his rightful place in the Command Chair. He hadn't turned down promotions for nearly a decade to be pushed out, now.
And so the first prospect was brought forward: a thin, wiry man named Dickson. He was nervous and fidgety, and all but startled when Namor flinched towards him, testing. The meeting went poorly, and the Lehigh's crew wasn't surprised when he declined the offer. Some, like Bucky, were glad for another week's shore leave while the local Admirals decided, while others, like Brian and Roger, were getting tired of the stationary life of the shipyard and wanted to hear the engines humming under their feet, again. At least, that was their official story. Jackie confided to Steve, in that quiet, playful way that one tells a secret-that-isn't-terribly-secret-but-let's-pretend, that the boys had been all-but hounded by Admiral Falsworth since their arrival, and the sooner they escaped his sphere of attention, the better it would be for everyone's sanity.
The second candidate was named Joyce, a brunette Human who looked less like a Captain and more like a Lieutenant on a first contact ship, and who was followed everywhere by a silver-furred Caitian who talked fast and ceaselessly about everything but the current situation. She seemed distressed by the state of the crew, saying, "I'd thought they were exaggerating," before talking in hushed tones to one of the Admirals present. The Admiral shrugged, and Joyce exited without speaking to Peggy or Steve.
The final try came from a tall, broad Human named Naslund, who stood with the confidence of a career Fleet officer, and shook hands like he was following a textbook. Steve and Peggy exchanged worried looks, wondering how anyone so strict would have been offered the chair of such an infamous ship like the Lehigh. Not, Steve thought, that the ship was poorly-run-- far from it! --but that she operated on her own terms and that those selfsame terms often did not mesh with Starfleet regulations. But once the Admirals had left and Naslund and Peggy and Steve sat down to talk things over, Steve understood. Naslund-- Bill, he insisted --had heard of the ship, and it's exploits, and had offered himself because he knew he could be of use. He knew that the Lehigh had a reputation for not going with the flow, and he was willing to adapt. He may be fairly rigid, himself, but he was willing to learn. "If we don't learn in this war," he said, "we won't get very far."
And when Steve shook Bill's hand again, it was confident but comfortable, and felt more like a handshake between friends than the rigid shake from before.
Naslund had signed on for the full six months that the doctors told Phillips he'd need to stay landlocked, and Steve genuinely hoped it would work out.
(E, K)
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Jim may have not been the first Horta to join Starfleet, and he certainly wasn't the last. But his days at Academy were ones that the faculty, staff, and general population remembered for a long while.
The first time the new cadet experienced rain, for instance, San Francisco was treated to the unique sight of a Horta attempting to burrow into a BART bus.
(K)
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Erskine grows lemons in his medbay, which Bucky trades schnapps (real schnapps) for, and Naslund has seen Bucky making his way down the hallway at least once with an armful of lemons.
The ship generally smells... fresh.
Although there was that incident with first contact with the people who were universally allergic to citrus, alas.
(E, K)
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Phillips finally had to put a rule in writing that said, "No Starfleet officer shall be traded, however briefly, to any other ship without express permission of the Captain."
Bucky got around that-- once! --by using a loophole; Lt. Sabuki's cat is named The Captain, and Bucky traded real, non-replicated tuna for the use of the cat's official pawprint.
(K)
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The moment that Naslund realizes that, although he'd kept an open mind and was fully aware that life on the border was different, he was in for more than he bargained for was in the middle of breaking up a fistfight between some of his crew and a group of Romulan sympathizers and... Well, he wouldn't have believed that "flying Horta" was a legitimate weapon, before, and that, somehow, Commander Rogers had made the Lieutenant bounce several times before landing neatly at his feet. The Horta, Jim, seemed relatively unfazed at the maneuver, and happily went back to chewing on some nearby rock, as if nothing had happened.
(K)
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Steve keeps a baseball bat in his quarters. It's too small and the wood is cracked with age, but if he were going to save one thing from his quarters in case of decompression, it'd be that.
(E)
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It actually takes Naslund 5 months to cotton on that Peggy and Steve are an item -- they are that good at not letting it affect their working relationship. At which point he knows enough to just blink and continue on. Compared to the rest of the drama on board, that's downright refreshing in its normalcy.
He never does quite work out if Roger and Brian are dating.
Or if Roger is dating Brian and Jackie.
And he wisely never asks.
(E)
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Getting used to the constant loud arguing over the comm is the hardest, Naslund decides. Carter insists that Jim and Namor accompany them on ground missions. Namor, he's told, is quite a good tactician, and even better in a brawl, and Jim is remarkably good with people and the law side of diplomacy. But keeping the two together for any length of time is like Potassium and water and Naslund has to manually lower the volume of the computer output when he listens in on their shuttle feed. Since taking over command of the Lehigh, Namor and Jim, alone, have taught him several new words and terms that he never would have heard otherwise, and certainly never understood the relevance of. He didn't know, for instance, that Horta have an insult that, literally, translates to "sand sucker."
Namor is, for reasons known only to him, extremely offended by this.
(E, K)
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Naslund learns to condense his reports in a way that leaves out the less believable details like, "LtC Rogers earned the respect of the mining colonies' leaders through demonstration of his physical prowess," instead of explaining that he did 100 left-hand push-up, then 100 right, then 50 clap-pushups, then a handstand for 15 minutes while negotiating the release of Lt McKenzie and En Barnes from the local lock-up after an unfortunate misunderstanding.
Peggy has video, though.
(E)
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One day, Roger confesses to Brian that he thinks the Lehigh might have a crush on LtC Rogers.
"What? What in the world makes you think that?" And Roger now has his full attention, especially now that Jackie has had enough time to steal the last biscuit.
"She just works better for him. And I say that as someone who can and has programmed subroutines that makes the turbolift come faster to me."
Jackie looks up from her tea, "I KNEW IT!"
"I'm an engineer, I need to get places faster than other folks!" Roger is not apologetic in the least.
"Especially if Stark is blowing things up," Brian chuckles. He puts his hands down on the table, "Okay, do you have evidence?"
"I knew you'd go all scientific process on me!"
Jackie remains silent, but her look is fairly screaming, "I will have those codes, Mister Aubrey."
(E, K)
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Naslund had been in command of the Lehigh for 3 months when he has his first encounter with Lhoki. The rogue Klingon and his Romulan allies had been quiet since the attack that had wounded Captain Phillips, but they'd obviously been gathering their forces. Lhoki's Klingon ship appears out of nowhere, flanked by three more Klingon Birds-of-Prey and two Romulan Warbirds. Even though the Shield and the Crusade are in the sector, they couldn't possibly reach the Lehigh in time to render assistance. And, for all the confidence Naslund has in his ship and crew, the Lehigh is no warship. At best, she's a science vessel with a lucky streak, at worst, an outdated dilithium freighter with a pop gun. Naslund is about to call a meeting of his bridge crew to discuss some option of surrender when the space in front of the viewscreen waivers and distorts, and the previously-empty area behind Lhoki's ship is suddenly taken by four huge Klingon Birds-of-Prey. The viewscreen clicks over and Thor's face, pleased through the tenseness of battle, comes through.
"Greetings, Captain William Naslund. I am Thor, son of Ohdan, of the Klingon Empire. I come to render aid."
And Naslund is never so glad to see a Klingon in his life.
(K)
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Somewhere, Vulcans are hearing the story of a swimming half-Romulan and trying not to feel horrified.
(E)
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Naslund goes on exactly three away missions during his time as Captain. The first is uneventful, the second ends in a messy report that takes two weeks to word properly and is the start of a small battle with his coffeemaker that he not-quite-affectionately calls "The Battle of the Spilled Grounds," and the third is remarkable for the fact that, due to a translator error, he, Ensign Raymond, and Lt. McKenzie end up under heavy guard in a palatial villa somewhere in the countryside of a recently-industrialized society whose ongoing civil war has somehow changed language just enough to make "We mean to render humanitarian aid" have an unfortunate double meaning that also makes a rather rude comment about someone's aunt and a local banana-like fruit.
McKenzie and Raymond are surprisingly quiet people when Jim isn't around, and Naslund is a little disturbed that such a polite and kind being like the Horta could inspire such energy in people. He wants to ask, but decides against it when he sees the Romulan's deep, introspective look. For his part, Ensign Raymond is passing the time carving cartoonish pictures into the lime-washed walls of the villa with acid, and Naslund thinks it best if he doesn't disturb him, either.
(K)
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Thor makes a habit of showing up on the Lehigh completely unannounced, all pompous and scary, yelling in Klingon and making a scene, and then, with practiced flourish, stopping in front of Phillips and Peggy and Steve and standing. And staring. And then, in English, "WELL MET, MY BATTLE BROTHERS."
And after this happens twice, Phillips puts in an order with Erskine for a small case of whiskey.
Due to the Toothgnasher's frequent visits, however, Phillips also develops a taste for bloodwine. He's not sure he's happy with this, but it made his last poker game with Fury interesting.
(E, K)
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Somewhere in the Admiralty, it is decided that a small collection of ships should be brought together from the various border patrol areas along the Klingon- and Romulan borders and sent into wargames training. The Lehigh, naturally, is caught up in the kerfuffle and, despite official letters of protest from both Phillips and Carter, the ship arrives a few hours early to the appointed sector of space, readying itself to participate.
Just an hour before the other ships should start arriving, Bucky somehow manages to get into a fistfight, and finds himself confined to quarters less as a punishment and more because Phillips can't deal with him at the moment. Steve, ever the good friend, makes sure to sneak him some lemon cake during a lull in action.
To his credit, Phillips had had a particularly hard few days prior to the start of the games, including authoring a special pamphlet entitled "Methods of Conduct for Wargames, or Why Throwing Your Shipmmates is Poor Form." The Stargazer, another ship attending to the games and the Lehigh's assigned skirmish partner, had been sent copies of the pamphlet by Phillips. The crew are not entirely sure that said pamphlet isn't a joke. Phillips had sent it off, not because he wanted them to know what they were dealing with, but because he knew if by chance they did it and his crew saw, however unlikely that was, they would want to do it, too, and they'd Had This Talk Before.
What Phillips neglected to include was anything about throwing other people's shipmates.
The skirmish is the first order of the day. Due to a crafty Lieutenant on the Stargazer, the Lehigh finds it's transporters disabled, and a single enemy boarding party beams on. The squad of Stargazer crew who make it onto the Lehigh make the mistake of trying to take over Engineering, and discover two very important things:
1) Howard Stark is quick like a bunny.
2) Roger Aubrey is perfectly capable of picking up a grown man above his head and throwing him at the rest of the party.
The Lehigh isn't successfully boarded during the rest of the games.
(E, K)
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Aubrey and Stark aren't the only beings who talk to the ship, but they're certainly the most vocal about it. Stark likes to sweet-talk the Lehigh during repairs, talking out his actions as he performs them, soft and coddling and saccharine-sweet in a way that the other engineers mock amongst themselves. Aubrey prefers teasing humor, a friendly jab here or there at the ship's age, her workmanship, her propensity to shudder just a tad as she drops out of high warp. Stark takes offence to these perceived slights, but Aubrey doesn't do them out of any sort of ill-will. He doesn't see his comments as insults, but as goading, urging the ship to keep going. He talks to her like he talks to a friend, and taking the piss out of a pal is what you do.
In the heat of battle, Phillips will yell at each of his officers, in turn, and then, like punctuation, at the Lehigh, telling her to not get them all killed. She always follows his orders.
(K)
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Of all the trouble that went down on the Lehigh, it was always at its worst when it involved Toro and Bucky. On their own, they could be annoying, or troublesome, or sometimes even maddening. But only together did the threat level rise to "inter-galactic incident."
It wasn't because they were particularly smart or crafty, or that they each had some skillset that was particularly useful when mixed. Rather, it was that each seemed to catalyze the other's personality, enhancing their bravado to dangerous levels. And, like the saying goes, once they put their minds to it, they could do anything.
Unfortunately, what they generally wanted to do was cause mischief.
(K)
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Jim is always moving. The ship isn't large, by Federation standards, but it's more than large enough, and filled with enough Jefferies tubes and hatchways that it takes him a full 24-hour cycle to make his way through most of the main pathways. Horta do not stand still. They dig and burrow and constantly move, and even though Jim has spent as much of his life among humans as with other Horta, the need to move is still there.
So when he's not on-duty or sleeping (not exactly what a human would call sleeping, but close enough) or spending time with his friends, he's "off for a walk," as Aubrey says when no one is quite sure where he's gotten to.
Sometimes, Namor joins him for a while, and Jim slows his pace, and they talk about nothing in particular. What new trouble Bucky has gotten into. When the next shipment of supplies will reach them. When they will get shore leave, and if the planet will have a beach. At least once, Namor made sure to request shore leave on a planet with volcanic rock formations along the coast, and Jim may have flop-hugged him extra long when he found out.
(K)
It's not finished, nor is it in any way cohesive, but there are a good deal many fic snippets and character-building bits that are none-the-less amusing that we feel like sharing.
Hopefully this falls within the rules of the comm. It uses a great many characters from the WWII-era Invaders series, and takes most of its characterizations from that, but if it doesn't work for the comm's feel, I'll take it down without protest.
The Main Players:
The USS Lehigh: A Miranda-class ship, outfitted as a science-based scout, assigned to the Klingon-Federation border after the loss of the Enterprise-C. Old and cantankerous, but more than able to hold her own in a skirmish, and much beloved by her crew.
Captain Chester Phillips: Human. Command. Has served on the Lehigh for decades, almost as long as the ship has been in service. Has gained a not-entirely-deserved reputation for completely disregarding the Starfleet rulebook, but has also gained a (very deserved) reputation for toughing it out in some of the most difficult space in the Alpha Quadrant.
Commander Peggy Carter: Human. Command. Exceedingly loyal to Captain Phillips, the Lehigh, and her crew. Best known for terrifying new cadets assigned to the ship, and most loved by any who make it past probationary period intact.
Lt. Commander Steve Rogers: Human. Command. The Lehigh’s go-to man for diplomatic missions, and unofficial older brother to any new cadets. Rarely needs discipline, but has the distinction of being one of the only officers in Starfleet history ever written up for “using a Horta like a Frisbee.”
Lieutenant Namor McKenzie: Romulan/Human. Security. Ill-tempered and prone to causing intergalactic incidents, Namor is none the less a great strategist and an excellent head of security. The other officer written up for “using a Horta like a Frisbee.”
Lieutenant, Jr. Grade, Jim: Horta. Security. Named for a hero to the Horta, it seemed only natural that Jim would enter Starfleet. Involved in a transporter accident with Ensign Raymond, granting him the ability to use human speech.
Ensign James Barnes: Bolian. Raised by Human parents on Earth, Bucky joined Starfleet shortly after Steve, but has managed, through various misadventures, to not be promoted despite many years of service. Best known for being able to procure almost any needed good within a week, no matter how far from a starbase.
Ensign Thomas Raymond: Human. Joined Starfleet after his colony was attacked and destroyed in conflicts with the Klingon Empire. Frequently implicated in Bucky’s schemes, but manages to avoid most of the consequences by sheer luck. Involved in a transporter accident with Lt. Jim, granting him the ability to generate acid.
Lieutenant Howard Stark: Human. Engineering. Breaks the ship more than he fixes it, but his fixes are generally timely and advantageous to the Lehigh’s continued existence, so Phillips keeps him around.
Lts. Aubrey, Falsworth, and Falsworth: An engineer and two science lieutenants assigned to keep Stark in line. No one is entirely sure what their relationship is to one another, or to Stark, and they like to keep it that way.
Dr. Abraham Erskine: Human. Medical. The Lehigh’s CMO and everyone’s favorite uncle. The ship’s not-so-official source for real alcohol and fresh lemons.
Captain William Naslund: Human. Command. Assigned command of the Lehigh for a six-month period after the injury of Captain Phillips. A well-meaning, if somewhat rigid, officer, Naslund genuinely wants to do good by his crewmates. Sometimes wonders if he willingly put himself into a bag of wet cats.
The IKS Toothgnasher: A Klingon Bird-of-Prey that is assigned to the same general space as the Lehigh. A state-of-the-art ship of the line, the Toothgnasher is a terrifying and impressive sight when decloaked, and a lurking threat when hidden.
Captain Thor, Son of Ohdan, of the House of Ohdan: Klingon. A surprisingly jovial and friendly Klingon, Thor’s apparent good nature hides a sharp mind and a near-flawless command of any battlefield. A firm believer that enemies are only so useful as long as they are alive, whereas friends can be fought again and again and can be enticed to buy drinks afterwards.
Colonel Sif: Klingon. Thor’s second-in-command, a fierce warrior, and the diplomatic go-between for the two ships. Sif and Peggy maintain a discrete communication that allows for continued cooperation along the border.
Lts. Volstagg, Hogun, and Fandral: Klingon. Three security officers that double as Thor’s away team and personal guard. Collectively have a note in Captain Phillips’ files that reads: “Not allowed to be left alone with either Falsworth for more than 15 minutes.”
Lhoki, Son of Ohdan, of the House of Ohdan: Klingon. Head instigator of a mutiny that brought three top-of-the-line Klingon Birds-of-Prey into Romulan control. Lhoki sees Klingon peace with the Federation as a threat to Klingon identity, and the Romulan Star Empire as the best tool to use to cause chaos between the factions.
Ficlets, Writings, and Various Notes:
In no particular order...
Steve is officially Command track since he's vocationally Science, but aptitude made Security snap him up and he's too duty-minded to deny it. Peggy suggested Command. He's done both.
Bucky has managed to get a hold of pictures of Steve in every colour uniform there is in their time and laaaaughs and laaaaughs.
(E)
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There are sections of the ship that run so thick with science officers that non-science types, like Namor or Bucky, just pretend those sections of the ship do not exist.
"There is no Aft-5!" has become almost a battle-cry among the Security officers of the Lehigh.
(E, K)
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Namor, after rejecting his Romulan heritage in his late teens, went on a bit of an Earth-culture kick. He learned to speak without an accent (even though translators would render that moot), he immersed himself in 19th and 20th century Earth culture, because his father had been interested in that-- or so he'd been told --and made sure to be better at most of the cadet humor than the cadets, albeit in his own, biting, icy way.
By the time he'd completed basics, most of his classmates had almost forgotten he was Romulan. When the subject of the Romulan difficulties came up, they didn't even so much as glance his way to gauge his reaction. When he was offered food, no one thought to see if he'd prefer the vegetarian option.
But then he was assigned to his first ship as an ensign, a little scout on the edge of Klingon space, and suddenly he was out of his circle of, not friends, but familiar acquaintances, and he realized he'd mistaken his classmates' complacency for his own fitting in.
He decided, somewhere between the jabs at his heritage and the frequent reprimands for fighting, that he'd been fooling himself to think that he'd fit in, and so he utterly rebelled and played up the Romulan side, reveling in the way it made his shipmates uncomfortable.
It was around the time he'd logged 2 years on that ship that it met up with the Lehigh for a trade of supplies, and he met then-Commander Phillips. Phillips took one look at him, and said, bluntly, "Son, you are one hell of an ass." Namor had no idea how to respond to that, and from a commander, so he sputtered and said, "Yes, sir." And Phillips laughed and asked for his transfer to the Lehigh.
Once Namor had been transferred and the paperwork out of the way, Commander Phillips pulled a newly-promoted Lieutenant Rogers aside and told him, "This one is yours, son."
"Thank you, Sir," he said, and there was a glint in his eye like he meant it. Steve had always liked a challenge, and he could see the hidden strengths of people without much effort; it would be a fun experiment with the potential for a great payoff.
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Commander Carter takes time at least once a week to sit in the canteen for an hour and read. It isn't the reading, exactly, that appeals to her, though she does enjoy the downtime. It's listening in on all of the conversations going on around her, it's people-watching and just being with the crew. People let their guard down when they're relaxing, and she likes to soak in the atmosphere of a ship not on alert or utterly stressed to breaking point.
She learns that Ensign Mitchell's wife is expecting a son, that Lt. Sabuki's cat just had kittens, and that Bucky's sister has sent him a box of various Bolian sweets and that it should arrive any day. She makes a note to be on the lookout for it, so that the Human officers in charge of the mail sorting don't set it aside as suspicious, as Bolian food can be a bit odd by Human standards.
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The first week Jim is on the ship, Namor decides he hates him. The Horta doesn't speak, even though he has a translator, and generally keeps to itself-- himself? --even when told to help others with their tasks. Namor loses his temper and all but bodily throws the Horta out of the Jefferies tube where they'd been making repairs, and he doesn't see him again for the rest of the day.
The next week, Namor is assigned on an away mission with Jim. He dreads it, and up until the day of the shuttle ride, he's fighting back the feeling of anticipation in his stomach. But, surprisingly, the shuttle ride goes smoothly and Namor doesn't lose his temper at the Horta once. They get to the planet surface and things go... fair. Communicating with the local population is less than stellar, as the Starfleet databanks haven't been updated on the language in several years and both sides sound stilted and formal to one another, and some words lose meaning altogether; particularly one that they need for current negotiations. Namor is about to have a very undignified and violent moment with the small handheld translator when Jim begins to write out something on the ground. The locals whoop and make pleased motions, and Namor stares at the Horta for a moment, confused. Jim says, "My dictionary has been updated recently," in his mechanical translator voice, and Namor sighs in relief.
It's almost a month before they are assigned together again, and this time Namor is truly neutral about the pairing. He knows the Horta is competent, and that is all that matters. They are to guard a delegate from a small colony as she meets with the ambassador from a mining asteroid in the system. Somewhere in the meeting, someone pulls a phaser, and everything goes firmly to hell. It's a firefight in ridiculously close quarters, and Namor gets the delegate to the ground only to see a phaser aiming for his face for the briefest of moments before the phaser, and the body holding it, are tackled by several hundred pounds of angry-- and Namor wasn't sure he even knew what angry sounded like -airborne Horta.
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Namor and Bucky are the only ones on the ship who can SOMEHOW do the balancing-a-bucket-on-a-door trick with Starfleet sliding pocket doors.
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Bucky uses every opportunity to woo the bridge officers of the Toothgnasher.
Toro does not understand how Bucky has such success in this particular arena because Klingons tend to be kind've jerks about Bolian cultural behaviours, but he refuses to let Bucky explain it to him.
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Toro is a scientist.
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The ship pulled back into the Utopia Planitia Fleetyards for the first time in nearly two decades. The Lehigh's home port was different from the last time she'd been there; new infrastructure to build bigger and newer ships, new docks to support them. Even when the Lehigh was new, her model had already been on the way out, making room for progress.
The crew disembarked to minor fanfare. The Lehigh's contribution to the continued peace in Romulan space was not legendary, but it was significant and Phillips had certainly done his part to talk up the ship's exploits while he'd healed.
The first order of business, once the greetings and official reports had gone through, was that of the need of an interim Captain. While Captain Phillips had been adamant about Commander Carter being promoted, Carter herself had declined, saying that she would wait as long as possible for Phillips to take back his rightful place in the Command Chair. He hadn't turned down promotions for nearly a decade to be pushed out, now.
And so the first prospect was brought forward: a thin, wiry man named Dickson. He was nervous and fidgety, and all but startled when Namor flinched towards him, testing. The meeting went poorly, and the Lehigh's crew wasn't surprised when he declined the offer. Some, like Bucky, were glad for another week's shore leave while the local Admirals decided, while others, like Brian and Roger, were getting tired of the stationary life of the shipyard and wanted to hear the engines humming under their feet, again. At least, that was their official story. Jackie confided to Steve, in that quiet, playful way that one tells a secret-that-isn't-terribly-secret-but-let's-pretend, that the boys had been all-but hounded by Admiral Falsworth since their arrival, and the sooner they escaped his sphere of attention, the better it would be for everyone's sanity.
The second candidate was named Joyce, a brunette Human who looked less like a Captain and more like a Lieutenant on a first contact ship, and who was followed everywhere by a silver-furred Caitian who talked fast and ceaselessly about everything but the current situation. She seemed distressed by the state of the crew, saying, "I'd thought they were exaggerating," before talking in hushed tones to one of the Admirals present. The Admiral shrugged, and Joyce exited without speaking to Peggy or Steve.
The final try came from a tall, broad Human named Naslund, who stood with the confidence of a career Fleet officer, and shook hands like he was following a textbook. Steve and Peggy exchanged worried looks, wondering how anyone so strict would have been offered the chair of such an infamous ship like the Lehigh. Not, Steve thought, that the ship was poorly-run-- far from it! --but that she operated on her own terms and that those selfsame terms often did not mesh with Starfleet regulations. But once the Admirals had left and Naslund and Peggy and Steve sat down to talk things over, Steve understood. Naslund-- Bill, he insisted --had heard of the ship, and it's exploits, and had offered himself because he knew he could be of use. He knew that the Lehigh had a reputation for not going with the flow, and he was willing to adapt. He may be fairly rigid, himself, but he was willing to learn. "If we don't learn in this war," he said, "we won't get very far."
And when Steve shook Bill's hand again, it was confident but comfortable, and felt more like a handshake between friends than the rigid shake from before.
Naslund had signed on for the full six months that the doctors told Phillips he'd need to stay landlocked, and Steve genuinely hoped it would work out.
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Jim may have not been the first Horta to join Starfleet, and he certainly wasn't the last. But his days at Academy were ones that the faculty, staff, and general population remembered for a long while.
The first time the new cadet experienced rain, for instance, San Francisco was treated to the unique sight of a Horta attempting to burrow into a BART bus.
(K)
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Erskine grows lemons in his medbay, which Bucky trades schnapps (real schnapps) for, and Naslund has seen Bucky making his way down the hallway at least once with an armful of lemons.
The ship generally smells... fresh.
Although there was that incident with first contact with the people who were universally allergic to citrus, alas.
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Phillips finally had to put a rule in writing that said, "No Starfleet officer shall be traded, however briefly, to any other ship without express permission of the Captain."
Bucky got around that-- once! --by using a loophole; Lt. Sabuki's cat is named The Captain, and Bucky traded real, non-replicated tuna for the use of the cat's official pawprint.
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The moment that Naslund realizes that, although he'd kept an open mind and was fully aware that life on the border was different, he was in for more than he bargained for was in the middle of breaking up a fistfight between some of his crew and a group of Romulan sympathizers and... Well, he wouldn't have believed that "flying Horta" was a legitimate weapon, before, and that, somehow, Commander Rogers had made the Lieutenant bounce several times before landing neatly at his feet. The Horta, Jim, seemed relatively unfazed at the maneuver, and happily went back to chewing on some nearby rock, as if nothing had happened.
(K)
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Steve keeps a baseball bat in his quarters. It's too small and the wood is cracked with age, but if he were going to save one thing from his quarters in case of decompression, it'd be that.
(E)
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It actually takes Naslund 5 months to cotton on that Peggy and Steve are an item -- they are that good at not letting it affect their working relationship. At which point he knows enough to just blink and continue on. Compared to the rest of the drama on board, that's downright refreshing in its normalcy.
He never does quite work out if Roger and Brian are dating.
Or if Roger is dating Brian and Jackie.
And he wisely never asks.
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Getting used to the constant loud arguing over the comm is the hardest, Naslund decides. Carter insists that Jim and Namor accompany them on ground missions. Namor, he's told, is quite a good tactician, and even better in a brawl, and Jim is remarkably good with people and the law side of diplomacy. But keeping the two together for any length of time is like Potassium and water and Naslund has to manually lower the volume of the computer output when he listens in on their shuttle feed. Since taking over command of the Lehigh, Namor and Jim, alone, have taught him several new words and terms that he never would have heard otherwise, and certainly never understood the relevance of. He didn't know, for instance, that Horta have an insult that, literally, translates to "sand sucker."
Namor is, for reasons known only to him, extremely offended by this.
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Naslund learns to condense his reports in a way that leaves out the less believable details like, "LtC Rogers earned the respect of the mining colonies' leaders through demonstration of his physical prowess," instead of explaining that he did 100 left-hand push-up, then 100 right, then 50 clap-pushups, then a handstand for 15 minutes while negotiating the release of Lt McKenzie and En Barnes from the local lock-up after an unfortunate misunderstanding.
Peggy has video, though.
(E)
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One day, Roger confesses to Brian that he thinks the Lehigh might have a crush on LtC Rogers.
"What? What in the world makes you think that?" And Roger now has his full attention, especially now that Jackie has had enough time to steal the last biscuit.
"She just works better for him. And I say that as someone who can and has programmed subroutines that makes the turbolift come faster to me."
Jackie looks up from her tea, "I KNEW IT!"
"I'm an engineer, I need to get places faster than other folks!" Roger is not apologetic in the least.
"Especially if Stark is blowing things up," Brian chuckles. He puts his hands down on the table, "Okay, do you have evidence?"
"I knew you'd go all scientific process on me!"
Jackie remains silent, but her look is fairly screaming, "I will have those codes, Mister Aubrey."
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Naslund had been in command of the Lehigh for 3 months when he has his first encounter with Lhoki. The rogue Klingon and his Romulan allies had been quiet since the attack that had wounded Captain Phillips, but they'd obviously been gathering their forces. Lhoki's Klingon ship appears out of nowhere, flanked by three more Klingon Birds-of-Prey and two Romulan Warbirds. Even though the Shield and the Crusade are in the sector, they couldn't possibly reach the Lehigh in time to render assistance. And, for all the confidence Naslund has in his ship and crew, the Lehigh is no warship. At best, she's a science vessel with a lucky streak, at worst, an outdated dilithium freighter with a pop gun. Naslund is about to call a meeting of his bridge crew to discuss some option of surrender when the space in front of the viewscreen waivers and distorts, and the previously-empty area behind Lhoki's ship is suddenly taken by four huge Klingon Birds-of-Prey. The viewscreen clicks over and Thor's face, pleased through the tenseness of battle, comes through.
"Greetings, Captain William Naslund. I am Thor, son of Ohdan, of the Klingon Empire. I come to render aid."
And Naslund is never so glad to see a Klingon in his life.
(K)
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Somewhere, Vulcans are hearing the story of a swimming half-Romulan and trying not to feel horrified.
(E)
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Naslund goes on exactly three away missions during his time as Captain. The first is uneventful, the second ends in a messy report that takes two weeks to word properly and is the start of a small battle with his coffeemaker that he not-quite-affectionately calls "The Battle of the Spilled Grounds," and the third is remarkable for the fact that, due to a translator error, he, Ensign Raymond, and Lt. McKenzie end up under heavy guard in a palatial villa somewhere in the countryside of a recently-industrialized society whose ongoing civil war has somehow changed language just enough to make "We mean to render humanitarian aid" have an unfortunate double meaning that also makes a rather rude comment about someone's aunt and a local banana-like fruit.
McKenzie and Raymond are surprisingly quiet people when Jim isn't around, and Naslund is a little disturbed that such a polite and kind being like the Horta could inspire such energy in people. He wants to ask, but decides against it when he sees the Romulan's deep, introspective look. For his part, Ensign Raymond is passing the time carving cartoonish pictures into the lime-washed walls of the villa with acid, and Naslund thinks it best if he doesn't disturb him, either.
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Thor makes a habit of showing up on the Lehigh completely unannounced, all pompous and scary, yelling in Klingon and making a scene, and then, with practiced flourish, stopping in front of Phillips and Peggy and Steve and standing. And staring. And then, in English, "WELL MET, MY BATTLE BROTHERS."
And after this happens twice, Phillips puts in an order with Erskine for a small case of whiskey.
Due to the Toothgnasher's frequent visits, however, Phillips also develops a taste for bloodwine. He's not sure he's happy with this, but it made his last poker game with Fury interesting.
(E, K)
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Somewhere in the Admiralty, it is decided that a small collection of ships should be brought together from the various border patrol areas along the Klingon- and Romulan borders and sent into wargames training. The Lehigh, naturally, is caught up in the kerfuffle and, despite official letters of protest from both Phillips and Carter, the ship arrives a few hours early to the appointed sector of space, readying itself to participate.
Just an hour before the other ships should start arriving, Bucky somehow manages to get into a fistfight, and finds himself confined to quarters less as a punishment and more because Phillips can't deal with him at the moment. Steve, ever the good friend, makes sure to sneak him some lemon cake during a lull in action.
To his credit, Phillips had had a particularly hard few days prior to the start of the games, including authoring a special pamphlet entitled "Methods of Conduct for Wargames, or Why Throwing Your Shipmmates is Poor Form." The Stargazer, another ship attending to the games and the Lehigh's assigned skirmish partner, had been sent copies of the pamphlet by Phillips. The crew are not entirely sure that said pamphlet isn't a joke. Phillips had sent it off, not because he wanted them to know what they were dealing with, but because he knew if by chance they did it and his crew saw, however unlikely that was, they would want to do it, too, and they'd Had This Talk Before.
What Phillips neglected to include was anything about throwing other people's shipmates.
The skirmish is the first order of the day. Due to a crafty Lieutenant on the Stargazer, the Lehigh finds it's transporters disabled, and a single enemy boarding party beams on. The squad of Stargazer crew who make it onto the Lehigh make the mistake of trying to take over Engineering, and discover two very important things:
1) Howard Stark is quick like a bunny.
2) Roger Aubrey is perfectly capable of picking up a grown man above his head and throwing him at the rest of the party.
The Lehigh isn't successfully boarded during the rest of the games.
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Aubrey and Stark aren't the only beings who talk to the ship, but they're certainly the most vocal about it. Stark likes to sweet-talk the Lehigh during repairs, talking out his actions as he performs them, soft and coddling and saccharine-sweet in a way that the other engineers mock amongst themselves. Aubrey prefers teasing humor, a friendly jab here or there at the ship's age, her workmanship, her propensity to shudder just a tad as she drops out of high warp. Stark takes offence to these perceived slights, but Aubrey doesn't do them out of any sort of ill-will. He doesn't see his comments as insults, but as goading, urging the ship to keep going. He talks to her like he talks to a friend, and taking the piss out of a pal is what you do.
In the heat of battle, Phillips will yell at each of his officers, in turn, and then, like punctuation, at the Lehigh, telling her to not get them all killed. She always follows his orders.
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Of all the trouble that went down on the Lehigh, it was always at its worst when it involved Toro and Bucky. On their own, they could be annoying, or troublesome, or sometimes even maddening. But only together did the threat level rise to "inter-galactic incident."
It wasn't because they were particularly smart or crafty, or that they each had some skillset that was particularly useful when mixed. Rather, it was that each seemed to catalyze the other's personality, enhancing their bravado to dangerous levels. And, like the saying goes, once they put their minds to it, they could do anything.
Unfortunately, what they generally wanted to do was cause mischief.
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Jim is always moving. The ship isn't large, by Federation standards, but it's more than large enough, and filled with enough Jefferies tubes and hatchways that it takes him a full 24-hour cycle to make his way through most of the main pathways. Horta do not stand still. They dig and burrow and constantly move, and even though Jim has spent as much of his life among humans as with other Horta, the need to move is still there.
So when he's not on-duty or sleeping (not exactly what a human would call sleeping, but close enough) or spending time with his friends, he's "off for a walk," as Aubrey says when no one is quite sure where he's gotten to.
Sometimes, Namor joins him for a while, and Jim slows his pace, and they talk about nothing in particular. What new trouble Bucky has gotten into. When the next shipment of supplies will reach them. When they will get shore leave, and if the planet will have a beach. At least once, Namor made sure to request shore leave on a planet with volcanic rock formations along the coast, and Jim may have flop-hugged him extra long when he found out.
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