Tour of the Bridge

The turbolift doors opened and Lieutenant J'ross and Lieutenant Wright both exited.

"Lieutenant James Wright, reporting for duty Captain." James stated.

"M'eko J'ross reporting for duty as ordered." M'eko stated.

Captain Taybar rose from her own chair and turned around, smiling at the two officers and their formal announcements. M'eko walked down the ramp to the lower Bridge area and took up her seat beside Captain Taybar.

"Welcome to the Bridge, Lieutenant Wright. I take it you are liking what you see ?"

"Do you mean you or the ship ?" He asked. "Because both are very attractive "

Taybar blushed slightly. "Flirting is not encouraged Mister Wright. Take you station."

"I beg your pardon Captain." He said sarcastically as he walked over to his station.

*Too big for his regulation boots." Aki thought to herself, although deep down she admitted to herself that she had enjoyed the compliment.

Aki sat down once more and started to go through the ships status with J'ross. Once that was done, she quietly rose from her seat and walked over behind Lieutenant Wright. She was surprised when he jumped at her enquiry.

"Like what you see ?" Aki said, glancing down at the list of files on the screen. They appeared to be nearly a thousand entries listed, sub-divided into various categories.

"Love it." He said, casually browsing the search list and selecting an entry seemingly at random.

Aki left the young Lieutenant to get on with his work and headed off towards the ready room. For the first time James had an opportunity to observe the Bridge layout, which wasn't too dissimilar to an Intrepid class vessel, if a little larger.

The Bridge was split into an upper and lower level, with four primary consoles on the upper level, in front of the back wall split into two sets by the turbolift doors between them. The Operations and Tactical stations were to the left and the Security and Intelligence stations to the right of the doors. Between the four stations and the lower level was a guard-rail which overlooked the lower Bridge. There were several secondary consoles mounted into the rail, used for general access to the ships' database.

The lower level was reached by one of two ramps, with the Captain's and XO's chairs in the very centre of the Bridge, both having their own flip-up consoles. To the left of the Captain's chair was a more basic bench chair, which was often used by either the CMO or the Senior counsellor. To either side of the lower Bridge there were two more doors, one of which lead to the situation room and the other the Captain's ready room.

In front of each of these doors was a computer station, one for engineering and the other for science. Between them, was the main conn station, combining the helm and navigation roles into one console. The Ops officer handled some of the navigation functions such as accessing the various local starcharts, but for the most part the conn officer was in charge of piloting the ship.

Across the front of the Bridge was the main viewscreen, which for a ship the size of the Taurus was larger than most. It curved slightly and had been specifically designed to give a wider-angle view of the various visual sensor readings.

The Bridge was much quieter than James had expected, half the stations, including both Tactical and Security were unmanned. Apart from J'ross, Lieutenant Lune was the only senior officer still on the Bridge, standing at the Ops station, monitoring the ships' functions. There was a young Engineer working at the engineering console and another Ensign at the Helm making minor course corrections to the ships' orbit around Bopak III. Lieutenant J'ross was now sat in the Captain's chair, working with the console.

*Seems eerily quiet.* James thought to himself before returning back to the console. He typed in a few commands to filter out all the reports of static Dominion forces in the Gamma quadrant. That removed almost half of the search logs, but there were still more than he could handle.

*Time to think again.* He thought. *What about looking for new Dominion activity ?.*

He started to narrow down the search logs by looking only for Dominion activity that had started within the last six months. The list narrowed down considerable and James immediately transferred the relevant files to a secure Padd. He then logged off the SI network and secured his station, before picking up the Padd and heading back to his quarters to review them in private.