Starship Armstrong - Season 2

Part 25 - The Outlandish Adventures of Marceaux and Guildenstern (I)

Marceaux walked onto the bridge and looked around.

"Hey," he said "Where is everyone?"

"Literally everyone on the ship is on some away mission except us," said Guildenstern.

"Who has the bridge?" asked Marceaux.

"That would be me," said a woman, rising from the command throne "Ensign Anhkbayar."

"With all due respect, Ensign," said Marceaux "But I have been primary operations since this ship launched as an exploration vessel and I have never met you. How far down the chain of command are you?"

"Hey," said Ensign Anhkbayar "I have command of the ship. You need to show me respect."

"Oh give it a rest," said Guildenstern "You're just the substitute teacher."

"If Ensign Anhkbayar has the bridge that means not only is the Captain away, but Commander Gibson, Lieutenant Commander Mitzner, Lieutenant Solarin, Lieutenant Ngige..." mused Marceaux.

"Even Ensign Takahashi had command that one time. Don't you think that's weird? I'm primary on helm and she's secondary so that's almost like I outrank her," said Guildenstern "Why have I never commanded the bridge?"

"Hey who is that at tactical?" asked Marceaux, peering over at the other command console "Is that Ensign Li?"

"Hey!" said Ensign Li, who waved sheepishly.

"You were right," said Ensign Marceaux "Literally everyone on the ship is on an away mission."

"And we're still at our regular stations," added Guildenstern "I thought we were the top Ensigns. We're on the bridge all the time."

"There's no ranking of Ensigns," said Ensign Ankhbayar.

"There are grades of Ensigns in Military Fleet," offered Ensign Li.

"Does anyone know where the entire command structure of this ship even is?" asked Marceaux "Is it dangerous? If they all die is Ensign Ankhbayar really just in command of the whole ship?"

"I'm not sure," admitted Ensign Anhkbayar.

"This is all very distressing," said Guildenstern.

"So we're clear," said Marceaux "No one here has any idea where the rest of the crew is?"

The others all looked away, sheepishly.

"I can settle this," said Anhkbayar "Armstrong: where is the Captain?"

"The Captain is not on board," said the artificial voice of the Armstrong.

"According to the logs where is the Captain right now?" asked Anhkbayar.

"Logs indicate that Captain Littlecrow is on the second moon of the planet Abzu, local name: Terra."

"That's the planet we're currently in orbit of," explained Anhkbayar.

"I should certainly hope so!" said Marceaux.

"Why don't you just scan the moon and figure out what everyone is up to," said Guildenstern.

"I'm already on it," said Marceaux.

"In the future," said Anhkbayar "Wait until I give you the order to do something like that."

"Don't act like there is ever going to be a next time," said Guildenstern.

"You two are both being insubordinate. I am going to note that in the logs," said Anhkbayar.

Nobody objected. Her bluff called, Anhkbayar sat back down into the command throne.

"Well they're all on that moon all right," said Marceaux "I just don't- By the stars! There's a ship incoming at FTL speeds."

"If you're joking I'm really going to note you for insubordination," said Anhkbayar "Because that's not funny!"

"The space/time wake indicates it's not using a Foundation relativity drive," Marceaux continued "Course indicates it's heading straight for Abzu."

Everyone looked to Anhkbayar. Now that someone needed to deal with this new problem suddenly the others took her command seriously. She tried to think of what Captain Littlecrow would do in this situation but she wasn't on the bridge to see this kind of thing very often.

"Page the Captain down on that moon," she said "Once the ship is in visual range I want it on the primary viewing screen."