Thanks for the Fish and Headache's

Posted on 2026, Thu Mar 12th, @ 4:34pm by Lieutenant Bill Meeeeeeehehehheheeheh & Corporal Roy Fitzroy

1,968 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Episode 1 "Operation Iron Justice" USS Halo, Star Base 113, USS Vigilance
Location: Cetacean Ops
Timeline: its 5-oclock somewhere
Tags: Fish, Headaches, terra-byts of data

Corporal Roy Fitzroy had headaches on top of his headaches. Commander Titus had stated OH hell NO!. Not that he had used those exact words, but the meaning was clear when Roy had requested priority access to stellar cartography's main lab / Holodeck and computer system.

After spending 30 seconds to figure out who was who in that department Roy was shocked to find out he would be dealing with a dolphin. He knew that there were members in starfleet who inhabited bodily forms other than human, he met hundreds back at the academy. But actually working with dolphins...

"Fresh fish!" Roy muttered out loud. The starbase would have them... Roy then Set out to find what the hell the form was called to requisition fresh fish for a "Study" ... All you had to do was find the correct form and you could do almost anything... he had been offered a verry cushy job back at the academy due to his ability to navigate the Logistics system that starfleet used to get object "A" to point "B"... The quartermaster had accused him of having Ferengi blood and spirit. If Roy had not hated paperwork so much, he just might have had a cushy job in San Francisco. But the wilds and unknow called to him and made his spirit soar.... That and he hated dog and pony shows with a passion. And that's what academy was... ONE ....Giant... batch of dog and pony shows.... Roy had took in the first set of orders that had an Departure date of the next day. Just to get out.

After five minutes of research, Roy found that Dolphins ate pinfish, pigfish, ballyhoo, mullet, spot, and toadfish. From the way most of the articles talked, Dolphins prefered or seemed to eat mostly ballyhoo and mullet. Roy then spent the next ten minuets to find the correct form. After Roy printed it, hardcopies had to be included for live biological sample (fish) transport and or delivery. Roy checked is uniform, brushed Feta at a few food stains, and rushed / headed to find the chief science officer

When Corporal Roy Fitzroy show's up in Cetacean Ops with a hover pallet load of fresh (still swimming) fish. It caught the attention of most of the pool.

"Whatever it is you want me to do, double it, and you got a deal." Bill then submerged his head under the water and sqeeked to his fellow cetaceans, "Yo, some marine brought fish! I'll bet we can trick him into skinny dipping with us!"

Roy looked at the old-fashioned wood-fiber clipboard that he had jumped through hoops to get the fresh fish with. It figures these fellas knew that they had him over a barrel. Two could play those games. Horse trading... sometimes you had to barter like your soul depended on it. If you got played once, the next thing you knew, you had the reputation of a chump.

Playing it cool, Roy set the clipboard on top of the container. Scratching his head, Roy walked over to the edge of the POOL, or whatever the tank or enclosure was called. "Well", Roy said, "I am not sure if the extra hassle is worth it." Scratching his chin, Roy leaned over and ran his hand through the water. It was warm. Roy was ready to jump in and splash a bit, but work came first. If he wanted to get access, and he wanted it bad, Roy would have to make these fella's work for him, not the other way around.

"Well, it took four hours to get this mess of fish. I would have to do this again, and invent new reasons for more fish." Roy played the redneck card to the hilt; he was trying to sound stupid, because being underestimated was the idea. There was one born every minute. Roy walked over to the tank slowly, opened the top, and reached in, as if musing to himself. As Roy tried to catch a fish, looking for a mullet, He said, "Well I suppose I could start again tomorrow with a bigger scope for the Project. The Quarter master should understand cost overruns and such nonsense." Roy looked back at the pool at the dolphins while he played around, trying to grab a fish. They were slippery.

"So, whats up Corporal l, want a drink?" Bill tapped an underwater console that lowered a translucent hose from a port in the ceiling.

Roy looked up at the hose. "Ahhh", Roy said, " Keep Fore'n debris out of the system. Got it!" Roy stripped off his unifrom. Roy planned ahead, prepping by putting his Tan Marine swiming trunks on under his uniform to save time. It took 30 seconds to trip everything off, placing his mask/ oxygen transfer sysem on. Standing under the hose, roy prepared to take a quick shower. His diving gear consisted of fins, and his aqua mask. The Aqua mask was like a enlarged face mask, 210 degrees of vision, comms, and external speakers, and a set of gills that pulled oxygen out of the water to keep the travel time to the surface down to a minimum.

"Dude, whats the fuck are you doing! Thats premium booze! Not a shower. Put the tube in your mouth and suck, don't just stand under it." The dolohin exclaimed in a squeek. The tube dispensed ice cool coconut rum, chilled to a perfect 1.2 degrees Celsius. It had taken some of the top cetacean mixologists over 2 decades to discover the holy grail of liqour, and Bill wasn't gonna stand by and watch a jarhead spill a bunch of theluscious liquor all over the pool deck.

The smell hit first, then the burning sensation, as the high-octane alcohol hit him. Then he felt the freeze, as the alcohol started evaporating. "Dam, what the....Oh crap!" Roy realized not only had he violated the marine prime directive(don't waste good booze on purpose). Roy realized he had wasted the really good stuff and probably alienated the only people he had to get on his good side. Putting his thumb over the hose outlet, Roy tried to stop the spillage of booze. only to increase pressure and spray it everywhere, including the pool. How it got into his face mask, Roy did not know, only that his eyes were burning something fierce.

"Silly humanoids." Bill slapped an underwater console with his flipper that deactivated the tube.

"Why don't you just level with me? What do you and the quartermaster need? You wanna swim through our water ducts to check for foreign debris? I've been swimming around all day, there ain't no debris, we cetaceans keep a clean pool." Bill asked, wondering why the Corporal had donned a mask in the first place.

Roy sighed, then said, "Ok, I was the Ops tech that captured 200 million terrabytes of data covering several galaxies and paths to hell and back. I need help making any sense of it. All i get from it is Headaches! Please... PLEASE, can you help me! I will get you all the fish you want, err, that they will let me have!"

"Make sense of it? Like you just want us to help you with some data analysis and synthesis? Well shit Corporal, we can help you out for sure. Most of us cetaceans love data analysis. That crate of fish is more then enough pal. What kind of timeline are we looking at? How quickly do you need this all done?" Bill asked.

Roy looked up at the ceiling and then said, "It's not like data analysis, that's easy. With each sensor ping, there is so much layered data going eight or nine dimensions, and multiple layers of data on each reading, almost like each millisecond was a 9-way stop with a real time picure's moving down each road. Like your choice was already surveyed and marked for you. I get nothing but headaches trying to map anything out.
It is worse than that 5th dimension chess. its not that i need data analysis! I just need this map translated down to the 3rd or 4th dimensions, like I was a normal human..."

"Oh yeah, you owe us more fish for that that, for sure. That not easy work, but we can help." He dipped his head us the water and squeeked at his fellow cetaceans. Within 30 seconds 3 dolphins and a pilot whale breathed the surface of the pool.

"Oh, multi-dimensional map translation, my favourite!" One of the dolphins said.

"Someone say free fish?" The pilotnwhale added.

Roy dove into the water; Little did he know, the helmet had quit working about 30 seconds after the unfortunate accident. After several minutes of convincing that the helmet made him look like a comic villain in an old tri-dee holo film about yogurt. Roy did not get the connection, but chalked it up to things to add to his to do list. Roy's to-do list had over 300 things on it and was growing fast... Holding his breath would not work, even with the Cetacean's assurances that he would not need his now broken helmet, but why the Cetacean kept calling him Helmet Lord, he had no clue.

Just then Bill swam up with portable O2 rebreather. He was holding the device by its strap in his mouth, and wiggled it infront of the Marine NCO.


Roy shook his head, then took the rebreather. After spending a couple of seconds putting the rebreather on, Roy said, "Well, how does this work? I get headaches just looking at the raw data, and the computer can't give me a shortcut on how to extrapolate nav data points."

"You need to do differential calculus and warp theory with trinomial recurves in tensor space to figure out where these vectors are going my dude. You just got digest in chunks in order and just crunch these numbers. It'll take us a few days to factor it all but we should have something for you in a couple days on this first set."

Roy looked at the assorted minds trying to help, "Ummm,.." Roy said," I know about half of those terms. I will just follow my gut when it comes to warp navigation theory." Roy hesitated for a couple of seconds, then said, "I will just stay out of the way and try to look impressed."

Bill and the other cetaceans looked back and forth with each other, wondering why the young Marine was swimming with them and needing a rebreather. He could have just asked from the pool deck.

After a couple of minutes, Roy realized that he would be of little help. Roy just did not have the high-level math skills to make a dent in this group. Swimming over to the edge, he hopped out of the pool. At least he had the upper-body muscle mass to get out of the water fast, and not embarrass himself trying to get out of the pool. Grimising at the lieutenant who took ten minutes to roll out of the pool. But then again, that said lieutenant had a rather large waist. After several minutes of musing to himself. Roy realized he was just distracting them from the important stuff. "Ok!", Roy said," Call me if you need anything, more fish, a large hammer, cheesecake?"

On that note, Roy turned and walked out to head to the Marinde detachment barracks.

The orca slowly swam over to the dolphin Bill and said, "So I'm guessing that young Marine just isn't that its sort of our job to do calculations like this."

"Never say no to free fish brother. Never." Bill out of the pool and grabbed a mouth full of mackerel and the wiggled back into the pool and swam and begam to do some of the initial calculations.

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