=/\= Lt. Foster's Quarters =/\= Andy closed his eyes for a few moments, took a long pull from his cup of coffee and with a grim expression, re-read the PADD: " ... an insectoid race approximately 3 meters tall and resembling nothing so much as an enormous brown-green grasshopper. Individuals are approximately 300 pounds, possess an exoskeleton, mandibles, and six limbs. Their range of acceptable planets is much larger than that for humans. They are terrifyingly fast runners and long jumpers, and clearly predatory ..." Andy didn't have a huge problem with bugs, in general ... then again, he was more accostomed to bugs that weren't three meters tall. He'd heard Capt. Walsh had his ODA team practicing with mock-ups of the X'Chi in the holodeck on the Nova ship's specs Andy provided. Andy had walked through the program a couple of times, prior to the addition of the aliens, re-familiarizing himself with his old ship. The t'Rathna had been his first post, where he'd served as Operations Assistant about 4 years ago. Or, technically, 7 years ago ... but from Andy's point of view, it had been only four. A literalist would say that Andy had never worked aboard the 'Rath, that only the "original" Andersen Foster had. Andy was nothing more than a clone of his original self, created three years ago. Three years after his original self had died. Andy had no recollection of the years during which his ship was adrift, all hands dead. It was discovered in 240202 by the USS Archer and Andy was created by an accidental fluke set in motion by an officer on the Archer's away team. Nonetheless, he still had all the same memories of his original self, which meant, for all intents and purposes, he had a year's service experience aboard a Nova vessel, and General Bretam wanted to tap that as a resource for the coming mission. And as an operations officer, his knowledge of the inside of the USS Gott, another Nova, would be rivaled only by an engineer who had served on one. Still, for as much as he had re-familiarized himself with the ship, it never really sunk in that he'd be walking through a ship infested with three hundred pound grasshoppers ... no matter how familiar the layout, it was a variable that Andy wasn't quite prepared for. Much as it galled him, Andy sent a communique to Cpt. Walsh, and requested at least one training simulation with the team he'd be with, in the holodeck, complete with holo-bugs. He hit send, pulled on his uniform tunic over his undershirt, and reported for duty on the bridge. =/\= USS Chimera, Bridge =/\= Bretam was already on the bridge, and turned slightly to nod a greeting to Andy as he emerged from the turbolift and took his post behind and to the right of the command chair. Andy was mildly on edge; he saw that they were due to arrive at the outer sector of the Marsh any moment now. He pulled up his Operations screen to get a quick overview of ship's status, and agreed with the ACEO's assessment that all systems running at 100 percent efficiency was damned strange. New equipment or no, it just wasn't right, particularly considering the collective headache the refit had caused the engineering team. Andy had mulled over whether he should join the Acting CEO for a lunch one day, having a common link through the Lieutenant's brother Angus McTaggart, with whom Andy served on the Archer. Casual observation, however, showed that Sean McTaggart shared his brother's tempermant. Andy resigned himself to steer clear of Sean soon enough, figuring he was probably just as big an asshole as his brother was. But asshole or not, McTaggart's instincts should probably be trusted, and Andy was relieved to hear the General agree to a level 1 diagnostic shortly after they dropped out of warp. Once Harker slowed the ship to a holding pattern several hundred thousand kilometers outside the Marsh, Bretam continued to dole out assignments. “Lieutenant," he said, coming to Andy, "Make sure Lieutenant Oriana and her department have the resources they need,” to begin a thorough scan of the Marsh, in an attempt to locate the USS Gott. ”Aye sir,” replied Andy, puzzling his way through what resources the ship could do without for a few hours in order to maintain full power to both the long range sensors while performing a level 1 diagnostic of the ship. “Also start preparations on the shuttles we will use for the assault," added the CO. "Make sure they are ready to go at a moments notice.” Andy nodded, and hit another panel on his console to bring up Flight Ops, hoping the crew there was on the ball, and preparations would be minimal. Bretam than turned the command over to Guzman, and made his way back to the turbolift, with instructions to be notified when they found the Gott. Andy suddenly felt a mild spasm of what felt like motion sickness, but then dismissed it, turning back to monitoring power levels for long range sensors, while making sure McTaggart had enough resources to carry on with his diagnostic. Lt. Andersen Foster Operations Officer USS Chimera