The Reins

What she didn't expect was its beauty.  It was beautiful.  That was all there simply was to it.  It gleamed.  Her eyes twinkled, panning slowly over the setting, taking it all in.  She looked like a kid in a candy store... who had just been handed a hundred credits to blow.

Blue deck lights glowed under beige walls and polished consoles.  Around the room monitors made synaptic connections, flashing, moving, mixing, rotating in a dance of light and color – warm lavenders, soft yellows, pastel blues: a symphony of visual appeal.  Console banks, lining walls and freestanding, complemented each other in a curving style that somehow felt safe, comforting.  And it was alive.  So alive.  Purpose, sharp and specific, echoed in every groove, every contour and screen and mounted chair.  This was more than just an operations center; more than just the brain of the ship.  Other bridges bore hard-angled, clunky efficiency.  This one had been designed with artistic symmetry in mind... at once both forward-thinking and inward-centered.  It hinted of readiness, to leap out, go forward at any time, yet simmered gracefully at rest.  It was undeniably, aesthetically pleasing.

One could tell when a starship was getting ready to move, by the air of its bridge.  There was just a certain 'feel'.  Activity jumped a notch; crewmen picked up their pace; com-channels buzzed with the chatter between departments coordinating for the event.  It was not so simple as pushing a button and going, not by a long shot.  Preparations had to be made... and as the new XO, Patricia Lorelai Maguire, lowered herself into the first officer's chair, she saw that familiar ripple spread through the bridge and the dozen-plus personnel manning their stations.  That was nothing new to her.  What was new, was the palpable sense of it, and the gladness to be doing so – thick and solid enough to wrap it around one's self like a blanket.

Even so, it happened quickly.  With practiced ease.  The background hum, ever-present on starships, that reassuring throb of power channeling through hundreds of systems, kicked up a notch... and just before it spiked and leveled out, Maguire looked at April.  He stood at a sort of parade rest at the exact center of the bridge, facing away from her – hands folded behind his back, casual, confident.  He had done this a thousand times; he was used to it, she could tell.  But it still excited him.  She could have sworn his muscles twitched in the black fabric of his uniform.  He had already been preparing the Arcadia to get underway, before she arrived.

"Engines standing by," Joycelyn Havercroft called out from the helm.  "Warp or slipstream available at your command, sir."  Her hands which would guide the ship rested on the conn, waiting for the hand which would guide their course.

April looked at Maguire, then, gave his uniform a tug and mimicked her action – sinking into his chair with that same calm urgency, a pent-up electric charge waiting to complete the circuit and come alive.  He put his elbows on the arms of his chair, fingers interlaced over his chest.  Kwyn sat in the chair on the other side of him, taking it all in as well.  Just before April spoke, watching him from the corner of her eye, Maguire realized – the captain's chair fit April like a glove.  When he sat there, he was right where he belonged.  He was home.