CAPTAIN’S BLOG, STARDATE July 19th 2010
Everything to date has been a bit hands-off for me thus far. I’m much more of a “set phasers to stun and let’s go” type-of-guy, so have been keen to get my hands dirty and lead the team into action. What with the mission agreed and clear (Sulu has had everyone memorising it), and research done, it’s finally time to do some work. Spock was gibbering on about wanting to perfect the business plan; I get his pointy-eared point, but I told him that our work was going to exist in the real world not on the page, so ultimately it would live or die by what we did out there.
So Scotty got the power going and Chekov beamed us down to a planet called Piloti in the galaxy we were passing through. Handily, it seemed to be the perfect size and demographic to do a mapping and protection exercise with: nice choice, though I say myself. The investigation bit went well, aside from the random guy in a red jumper (was it Steve?) who got eaten by a hairy alien monster, and we helped build up a picture of their planet surface for the Pilotians. We then killed a few of the hairy monsters, and built a new protection system for them round their main town.
All seemed to go pretty well, and I was all set to head home, but Spock insisted on getting them all to fill in some paperwork. He said it was important to get data on the numbers of people helped, their ages / gender / background and so on, how much they understood about their planet now (as opposed to earlier), and also a sense of how much safer and more secure they now felt. So much blah, if you ask me; he’s just looking for an excuse to fire up another spreadsheet. Still, Uhura reckons it’s that sort of stuff that will help us get some more backers on board.
Anyway, the test stage has gone well. One of the finest pilots since, well, Chekov and Sulu I guess. We’ll refine a few techniques and methods off the back of it, and try and price it better: the Pilotians barely covered our costs, and I’m looking for a margin. As my Uncle Bob used to say, you get what you charge for.
Ciao.
