| May 12th, 2155
| Shuttlepod 1, departing Los Angeles, North America, Earth
| 0730 hours

Christina stood and watched the shuttlepod coming in to land on the small pad usually set up for civilian atmospheric transports, and couldn't help but be drawn to the name Discovery painted on the side of the pod. The ship's own shuttlepods hadn't seen much action since their spaceflight tests and their loading aboard the ship. Since Curtis had issued the recall order to all members of the ship crew who had either not yet reported aboard or who had taken shoreleave however, she had authorised their use to handle the higher-than usual transport of personnel to orbit. Shuttlepods 1 and 2 had just been to the Starfleet transport centre in San Francisco, but Christina had ordered a seat onboard one of the shuttles be saved for her and the ship diverted to collect her in Los Angeles.

She was the only one to approach the pod once it had settled on the pad, and stepped inside quickly as one of the passengers already onboard pushed the hatch open from within. The pilot began to lift off again as soon as the hatch was sealed shut once more, and Curtis took one of the seats between the hatch and the pilot which had been left spare for her. She nodded politely to the crew members she was joining, but her mind was too occupied on her conversation with Gardner earlier for any of their faces to register for her.

With a lurch, the shuttlepod ascended through the atmosphere. Air resistance caused a small amount of turbulence close to the ground since the air was much thicker at sea level, but as the small craft accelerated and gained altitude, the vibrations diminished. But that did very little to alleviate the nerves of Chloe Bishop. The ensign was sitting across from the newcomer, but she was too busy clutching her back and tapping her foot to really take notice who had just joined them.

Chloe's nerves were not a factor of fear of space flight. Although she had never been out of the system before, even during her Starfleet training missions, she was not afraid of long distance travel. Her nerves were more out of anticipation than anything else. She was starting a new and very big chapter of her life, and the thought of setting off to see new worlds and new cultures left her antsy. She just stared absently out of the bubble window over the pilot, hoping to catch her first glimpse of Earth's newest starship. Bishop was so focused on thinking about what was ahead of her that she didn't even notice how loudly she was tapping her foot.

The rest of the shuttle - unfortunately - did. Even Christina had been pulled from her own thoughts by the noise. The pilot did a good job of ignoring the sound coming from behind him, but the rest of the shuttle's occupants were looking directly over to the offending foot. None of them were saying anything however; which left the task of speaking up to the captain.

Recognising the face as that of her communications officer now that she was actually paying attention, and instantly recalled the woman's service record; or what there was of it, considering her late enlistment in Starfleet. She had been a civilian employee working working with Starfleet Headquarters in San Francisco for two years working on the logs sent back from Enterprise and Columbia before going through training to become an Ensign, and had even worked on prepping the diplomats for the Coalition talks last year. There had been quite a few applications for her post coming across Curtis' monitor at the time, and many of them had been with Starfleet for longer than Bishop had. Nevertheless, Bishop's experience at Headquarters had made her Curtis' prime target for the comm seat.

Her service record did however give a clue to the tapping. She had only had two years of Starfleet officer training. That meant very little off-world training. Discovery was her first starship posting. "Nervous, Ensign?" Christina asked gently, aware that if the woman was preoccupied, sudden conversation might make her jump in surprise.

The question didn't quite make her jump, but it did take her a bit by surprise. Chloe turned to the person asking the question, but didn't really look at her. "Not really nervous, just excited. This will be my first time on board. I haven't even met the captain yet." She turned back to the window, watching the atmosphere give way to stars. She was mesmerized for a moment before the moment had caught back up to her. She thought the woman across from her looked familiar, but it took some time for her memory kicked in. "Oh mon dieu, je suis désolé capitaine," Chloe exclaimed, subconsciously slipping into French. "I didn't recognize you. Ensign Chloe Bishop." She extended a hand.

"Christina," Curtis said, taking the hand and shaking it, not at all offended by the lack of recognition. She was still getting used to the idea of being 'the Captain' herself, and he had always worried about what it would be like after she saw the way people reacted to Jonathan Archer after he came back from the Enterprise's first mission. The guy was now practically a celebrity. Christina didn't know if she could handle that sort of attention when she was out on the streets just trying to be a normal person. Thankfully, other than a few media pieces that the news stations had done on the up-and-coming NX-class ships, the first time Christina's face was due to hit everyone's TV screens was when she and Discovery left Earth. Hopefully any publicity she would get from that would die down by the time she returned.

Chloe pulled her hand back and the foot tapping stopped. Now she had something else to focus on, so the anxiety was passing. "It's great to finally meet you. Like I said, I'm pretty excited to be going aboard. I didn't expect to be leaving for the ship for another week though. Why the sudden increase in timing?"

"I'm not entirely sure, to be honest with you," Curtis answered. "Admiral Gardner is going to brief me aboard Discovery. Whatever it is though, it's urgent. We've had our launch schedule cut by two weeks."

"Two weeks?" asked a surprised Bishop. "I thought the launch was supposed to be in two weeks. When did the move the launch date up to?"

Christina glanced around at the other occupants of the pod, who had by now focussed their rapt attention on the conversation the two women were having. "The day after tomorrow," she said after a moment, trying not to make it sound ominous. She knew that they could get the ship ready in that amount of time; though she would be leaving dock without every one of her non-critical systems finished. But such a drastic change in launch schedule - especially one that brought the date forward - was highly unusual. And it irked Curtis that she wouldn't find out why until the Admiral met her onboard later in the morning.

"C'est ce qui explique que. No wonder I was suddenly called aboard." Chloe was certainly surprised by the sudden change in plans. The hardest part was having to cut short her visit with her parents in Vancouver. But it was still possible to call home, even if there was a bit of a delay from the subspace relays. But it wasn't time to think about that. The deceleration of the shuttle brought her attention back to the matter at hand.

The shuttle shook slightly as it was attached to the docking arm that had lowered out of Discovery's open landing bay, and Christina felt the change in momentum as the arm pulled the pod up into the belly of the larger ship. As soon as the movement stopped, she stood and moved towards he top hatch, ready for the red light next to it to change to green to indicate the bay outside had been re-pressurised. There was a slight click as the light changed colour, and Curtis pushed up on the hatch to release it. As the bay techs moved in to lower the ladder to the pod exit, she turned briefly back to Chloe and the other occupants of the pod. "Get yourselves settled and ready to go as soon as you can. I'll brief all of the crew on our mission as soon as I have the details."

Ensign Bishop grabbed the duffel from under her seat and waited for the other officers to disembark. She was stepping into a brave new world, and much sooner than she could have expected.

[end?]
[I'm fine with ending it there. What now? Just add this to the other thread as a post?]

[OOC: Yup. I've posted it up now, and I'll mark this thread as locked.]