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Day 18 [0900 hrs] Exosuit Training

[Lt. Reggie Suder, callsign "Gemini" | “The Den” | Fighter Assault Bay | U.S.S. Theurgy ] Attn: @Tae‍ 

The briefing announcing Janus as the new SCO had gotten out and while the plan had been to snatch up VanVinter right away and dive right into training him on the Tac CONN exosuit, Reggie couldn’t help but stop for a quick bite of breakfast.  Despite his crash course during his attempt to prove himself to her two and a half weeks ago, the course would run the better part of the day.  There was, of course, also the matter that although she was technically off duty today, she was out of uniform.  She’d come to the briefing in her squadron warm ups, having chosen to to leave the duty uniform back in her quarters.

She was over thinking it, she knew.  Once they actually started working with the hardware, it wouldn't matter what she’d chosen to wear as she’d be wearing the skin suit anyways.  Hell, back on Tac CONN Omega, the uniform regs were relaxed on Exo Suit training days. 

For all the good it did there.

Whatever.  Didn’t matter.  As far as she knew, Reggie was the only training officer in the squadron.  If Janus wanted to chastise her for her wardrobe choices, well then he could find a new TO, or do it himself.  She took a sip of her raktajino and finished her breakfast sandwich as she skimmed through the highlights of the curriculum on her PADD.  It was all familiar to her, of course, but it made sense to review it just in case.

There was very little in there that surprised her, so as she finished off her drink and took care of the largest of the sandwich debris that had fallen to her plate, she pushed herself up, bussed her table, and went to go find the newly minted Ensign.

The Betazoid didn’t have to look too long and she found him in short order as he hadn’t left the FAB complex.

“Congratulations on your promotion, Ensign VanVinter,” she offered.  “Now, you ready to be my bitch for the next 8 hours or so?”

She gave him a playful wink

Re: Day 18 [0900 hrs] Exosuit Training

Reply #1 –
Ens. Victor VanVinter | “The Den” | Fighter Assault Bay | U.S.S. Theurgy ] @P.C. Haring


Victor had a bit of a smile as he strolled into the locker room, wearing a set of gym clothes. He shrugged a little at the question and Reggie's demeanor. He was growing to like her. Notably, Victor's scars on his legs and upper body seemed reduced. Clearly, he'd been getting treated for scar removal.

"About as ready as I can be, and thank you, just don't call me Ensign Kim, and I think we'll be ok." Victor's twisted visage warped in a wry grin as he began looking over the exosuit. At least this one wasn't a hologram like the previous one. His head tilted slightly as he sized it up.

"You know, I never thought I'd get one of these. The regular flight suits work just fine in most cases, but the systems integration with these Exo's always weirded me out a little bit." Victor went silent and then examined the suit and the locker. After he gave a nod of approval, the usually garrulous man grabbed the undersuit, silently and then thought about putting it on, his brows furrowed after a moment.

"Uhh, I seem to be forgetting if there's anything I need under this, contact sensors, undergarments?" He looked over at Reggie and smiled sheepishly, the man clearly experiencing a bit of a brain fart for whatever good that would do him. And then he just sat down, looking at Reggie expectantly.

"Or am I getting too far ahead of myself?" At least he hadn't started to strip, nor had he started actually to pull the suit on.

Re: Day 18 [0900 hrs] Exosuit Training

Reply #2 –
[Lt. Reggie Suder, callsign "Gemini" | Squadron Locker Room| Fighter Assault Bay | U.S.S. Theurgy ] Attn: @Tae‍ 

Reggie resisted the desire to roll her eyes.  As usual, VanVinter was getting ahead of himself.  But at least this time he had the good sense to realize that might be an option and to even ask about it.  In his defense, though, she suspected no one had walked him through the details of the curriculum.  She knew she hadn’t yet.

Still, given how gung-ho he’d been during their first flight training disaster she shouldn’t have been all that surprised.  To be honest, she did appreciate the Ensign’s enthusiasm, but as with most enthusiastic cadets, he needed to temper that with first hand knowledge.

“You are a little ahead of yourself, Ensign.  Back when you were a test pilot, they didn’t just plunk you down in the cockpit without orientating you to the equipment did they?”

She already knew the answer.  When they retired the Peregrine fighters and brought the Valkyrie’s in, she’d spent three days in the classroom before they’d even started with simulations and then it was another week before they’d permitted her class to even launch a test flight with the actual spacecraft.

“No.  We’ll be starting in a classroom environment first.  It’ll be an hour and a half to two hours before you start suiting up.  When you’re ready, report to the squad briefing room.  Make sure you bring the technical manual I send you a last week.  Also, feel free to bring something to drink if you’d like.  I’ll meet you there.”

With that she headed back to The Den to pick up another Raktajino and then back into the squad briefing room and was very happy to see that the deck crew had brought in a spare Exo Suit for her training.  It was secured around a mannequin, of course but it was more than sufficient for visual referencing and general demonstration purposes. 

She set her own PADD on the podium, and her drink on the shelf underneath and queued up the presentation on the main display while she waited for Victor to arrive.

Re: Day 18 [0900 hrs] Exosuit Training

Reply #3 –
Ens. Victor VanVinter | “The Den” | Fighter Assault Bay | U.S.S. Theurgy ] @P.C. Haring


Victor sat his ass down and grabbed a drink from the replicator, something highly caffeinated to keep him from falling asleep. He had the tech manuals downloaded to his PADD, and he'd gone through them, but they weren't spacecraft systems, so they'd put him to sleep more than once when reading about them. The wiring diagrams, however, had been enjoyable. But even with the most intriguing charts, they could still bore someone to tears or make them nod off.

So it was with no small amount of Relish that Victor was prepared to listen to Reggie teach him about the TacCONN Exosuit.

Honestly, it was an exciting lecture, at least to a gearhead like Victor. How all of the servos linked with one another through the suit circuitry was fascinating. The negative feedback systems that allowed the user to wear the suit and move with little extra training would be endlessly helpful. Of course, the ease of use meant that the difficulties in using the exosuit were in donning and doffing it, a complicated process. It turned out that if his incident on the Holodeck had been real, he'd likely have ended up with shattered knees. So Victor would be more careful with the real thing. Victor had taken copious notes listening to Reggie, but he hadn't had any questions since consulting the technical manuals had answered most of them. And if they hadn't, they'd been answered in due course by Reggie.

So at the end of it Victor stood up with a full bladder and empty mug, giving Reggie a respectful nod. "Give me like three minutes and I'll be ready for the practical."

Re: Day 18 [0900 hrs] Exosuit Training

Reply #4 –
[Lt. Reggie Suder, callsign "Gemini" | Squadron Locker Room| Fighter Assault Bay | U.S.S. Theurgy ] Attn: @Tae‍ 

And so it went.  For the next two hours, Reggie and Victor explained the technical schematics of the TacCONN exo suit.  She hit all of the highlights, of course, including it’s design history, purpose and key functions.  Victor seemed almost as bored with some of it as she was, especially the design history.  For her purposes, she couldn’t care less about the previous versions of it or why it ‘had been created in the first place.  For her needs she only cared about what it did, how it worked, and how to maintain it.  Yet the curriculum had it’s requirements and so she taught. 

For his part, Victor seemed to perk up as she began to run through the technical schematics.  She had the feeling this would be of particular interest and that by the time he was fully trained on the equipment he’d probably know more about how it worked than she did.  That suited her just fine.  Everyone had their own strengths and weaknesses and it was best to let people play to theirs without trying to fore the issue.

“So,” she said at one point, “the muscular servomechanisms, not only provide added stability when moving within the suit so the suit feels lighter on your body, but also in many cases can be used to augment the natrual strength of it’s occupant.  It will by no means give you superhuman strength in the same relative gravity environment, but it will provide additional strength to support injured or damaged limbs.”

Reggie put her pointer down for a moment as she veered off script.  “I was running a training exercise on board Deep Space 9 during my assignment to the Bajoran sector.  Full equipment, high G simulation.  I blew out my knee during a sprint across the station’s Promenade.  Tore the left meniscus while trying to pivot to sight a target.  The Exosuit’s servos were able to take over the majority of the load which allowed me to finish the exercise which, by the way, included a free jump of two decks under 2 standard g’s of gravity.  Don't get me wrong, it was excruciating and I was laid up for almost a week afterwards, but I finished the simulation.  Had that happened in the field, it might have saved my life.”

The Betazoid returned to her script, finishing her remarks about the suit’s life support and supplementary functions before  she advanced to he last subsystem she wanted to highlight. 

“Finally, I want to draw your attention to the Through-Visor Display.  Based on recovered Dominion eye piece tech from the War, the TVD not only provides you with a HUD regardless of where you are looking, but also serves to allow pilots to look through their own ship and see what is happening in their blind spots.  Obviously you have your forward canopy which provides forward and peripheral views, but in the event you need to visually see what is occurring to your aft, or below you where ship bulkheads and equipment would otherwise obstruct your field of view, the TVD is your best friend.  It does take some getting used to and has been known to induce vertigo and dizziness in it’s users until they are acclimated to it.  That said, once we start using it in the practical, please do not hesitate to ask if you need medication to abate the symptoms.  There’s nothing to prove here.”

Reggie then wrapped up he remarks and Victor asked for three minutes.

“Take ten,” she replied, her own voice starting to go a little dry.  “Meet me in the armory when you’re ready and we’ll start working with the hardware directly.”

Re: Day 18 [0900 hrs] Exosuit Training

Reply #5 –
Ens. Victor VanVinter | “The Den” | Fighter Assault Bay | U.S.S. Theurgy ] @P.C. Haring


Honestly, Victor needed the break, so he used it as most mechanics would. A trip to get coffee and take a leak, most likely in that order because priorities mattered, and mechanics were mechanics since time immemorial. So the short walk to care for the two necessities allowed him to clear his head. For the first time, though, he'd realized that he didn't need to clean grease off his hands before performing either task. That thought brought a smile to his face, though. And truthfully, Reggie's lecture hadn't been awful, and he'd sat through worse, and a great deal of it was worthwhile.

So it was nine minutes later that Victor walked into the armory with a pint of coffee in each hand. He moved forward to hand over the overly large mug of coffee.

"Might not be your brew of choice, but we both need that stuff right about now. I hope you don't mind it black and strong." Anyway, I'm ready to do this, and I'm pretty glad I finally got all those damn scars removed." Victor shrugged and gestured to his body. The ones on his face had stuck around. Clearly, he didn't care about vanity.

While sipping his coffee, he reviewed his notes about the exosuit, focusing on the practical information regarding the donning and doffing of the suit since it wasn't precisely intuitive. There was a lot to keep track of, but at least it made sense why it was such specialized training. Even an EVA suit was primarily intuitive, but this was a process.

Re: Day 18 [0900 hrs] Exosuit Training

Reply #6 –
[Lt. Reggie Suder, callsign "Gemini" | Squadron Locker Room| Fighter Assault Bay | U.S.S. Theurgy ] Attn: @Tae‍ 

Reggie hit the head quickly and slipped into the compression underlayer ahead of Victor’s return.  She’d suited up so many times during her career and yet she never tired of the under layer.  The compression spoke to her and while it didn’t exactly accentuate her curves, she did like the way she looked in it and she wondered if she could snag one for a more personal use.

She took the offered mug when Victor arrived.  “Thank you, Ensign.  Very thoughtful.”

She took a sip of the offered drink and while it was not her preferred Raktajino, it was not like her to be picky when someone offered her a random kindness.  She took a sip of the coffee, savoring it’s flavor before she set it aside so it would be out of the way while they worked, but still close enough that she could grab it when needed.

“Before we begin this section of your training, do you have any questions so far?”

After she addressed Victors questions she would begin walking him through the Exosuit proper.

Re: Day 18 [0900 hrs] Exosuit Training

Reply #7 –
Ens. Victor VanVinter | “The Den” | Fighter Assault Bay | U.S.S. Theurgy ] @P.C. Haring


Victor shook his head at that, not having any questions, figuring that he might as well get started with donning the suit following Reggie's instruction. The instructions had been clear, and he went through the process he'd been so recently instructed on. If anything, it was more exciting and complex than a more common EVA suit.

Learning under Reggie has been instructive, educational, and, most importantly, engaging! So all of the information was well seated in his brain for this. So Victor got dressed in the suit, slower than anyone with any practical skill with it, but it progressed, and Victor looked like he knew what he was doing. It wasn't flawless, Victor did get parts caught wrong or misaligned, but he was able to fix his minor hang-ups with no assistance. Eventually, Victor finished donning the Exo-suit, and he stood ready for whatever came next, with his helmet under one arm, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

"Ok, Reggie, gotta admit, I feel pretty cool wearing this thing." There was an amused look to him, and he smirked while chuckling himself over, making sure that he heard all of the clicks and snaps that he was supposed to. If anything, Victor certainly looked ready to hop in the cockpit now.

Re: Day 18 [0900 hrs] Exosuit Training

Reply #8 –
[Lt. Reggie Suder, callsign "Gemini" | Squadron Locker Room| Fighter Assault Bay | U.S.S. Theurgy ] Attn: @Tae‍ 

And so the Exosuit training continued for the rest of the day.  Both Reggie and Tae worked long and hard throughout the hours, balancing both the important technical aspects and a certain amount of levity as they pushed through the otherwise thick and tedious training course.   

By the end of the day, the pilots landed from the training flight, exhausted.  Ever the astute student, Victor passed his marks and by the time the two parted ways, Reggie entered into the ship's log that she was certifying Victor as flight Exo Suit trained.

Victor was now one step closer to becoming the latest pup in the Lone Wolves.

May God have mercy on them all...

~FIN~
 
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