Snagging Lists

Posted on Mon Dec 11th, 2023 @ 9:59pm by Captain Peter Nixon & Lieutenant Riano Lani & Lieutenant T’Sal
Edited on on Tue Dec 12th, 2023 @ 12:04am

903 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: S1E0 - Prologue
Location: Main Engineering, USS Alliance
Timeline: 14:50Hrs Ship Time - Mission Day -3

Peter Nixon stood on the upper level of the Alliance' Main Engineering section, and looked down on the army of crew members who were working hard to ready the ship for departure. He turned his gaze to the main warp core and was hypnotised by its nebula like light show that was generated by the matter-antimatter reaction taking place inside it.

While the ship was still docked with Deep Space Nine, it didn't have the usual audible drone from the ships systems. Turning on his heel, Nixon took a few steps and took the small service elevator down one level. As it finished it's short journey, he stepped off and rounded the perimeter of the warp core's safety rail.

"Has anyone seen the Chief Engineer?" he spoke aloud to no one in particular, as he stopped at an engineering console.

The doors to Engineering opened as Chief Engineered entered in a bluster, reading reports off a PADD. A Bolian ensign followed her with half a dozen more PADDs.


"-The flow regulators are operating at 94 percent efficiency - they will need to be manually realigned. Lieutenant Danes, Ensign Burr, the torque sensors will need to be recalibrated. Diagnostics are showing a 14 micron misalignment", she stated.

"Understood. I uh, think the captain's waiting for you", Danes said, gesturing towards him.

The Chief Engineer stopped for a moment, before handing off her PADD to the ensign next to her, and made her way over to the captain. "How can I assist you, Captain?", she inquired matter-of-factly.

The Captain, who noted the Chief's questioning as almost Vulcan like, glanced up at the warp core, "When we left Antares, we were stuck at Warp 3.5 due to a desynchronisation in the warp field extenuator. I wanted to check in on your investigation and repair job. I had thought the Yard had given us a clean bill of health."

While he wasn't an engineer, the Captain had spent some time as a test pilot and had a deeper knowledge that some other Commanding Officers. He tapped the console in front of him to pull up the logs from their initial flight from Antares to the Station.

"The engineers at the Antares Fleet Yard did not have time for a full test of the warp drive - they appeared to be rather overworked", The Chief Engineer noted, before tapping on the console to bring up excrutiatingly detailed notes next to each log entry. "Repairs are mostly complete - by my calculations, we can manage speeds of Warp 8.3 now. There are numerous other issues throughout the ship that are also being worked on - I estimate 5 days until we are at full capacity."

Other issues? that piqued the Captain's interest. "Other issues Lieutenant? Give me a run down." he crossed his arms in front of his body and waited for the Lieutenants report. The Captain wasn't overly pleased at this information as he would have expected the Fleet Yards to have released the ship post refit with a clean bill of health.

"Replicators on decks 8 and 9 are unable to synthesize certain aromatic molecules. Plasma voltage drops when the starboard phaser arrays are operating at maximum power. There is currently a shipwide torque sensor misalignment of 14 microns. Pyritic radiation can cause drops in dynoscanner sensor resolution", The Chief continued to list several more, before pulling up the full list of relatively minor problems on the LCARS display.

"This ship has seen sustained conflict for two years without a refit, and many of these faults are being found as time goes on. It is best to view the journey from Antares to Deep Space Nine as a... shakedown cruise." She paused before using the human phrase, least of all because it reflected a very human mindset towards maintenance that was prevalent in many fleet yards - much to her frustration.

"And as a shakedown cruise, how has Ally performed?" he used the affectionate female pseudonym for the ship that was common amongst the crew.

"Considering the... Ally's history, the ship is in good condition. Most issues are relatively minor, and those that are not have been resolved. The forward scanning arrays have been recalibrated, 141 meters of plasma conduit have been replaced, the computer core has been rebuilt..." She continued listing off things that had been fixed all around the ship.

Nixon nodded as the Lieutenant gave a rundown of her evaluation of the ship and made some mental notes to come back to later. Her words of reassurance eased his anxiety about the ship being fit for service again. The Alliance had, after all as the Lieutenant had already mentioned seen sustained combat since the inception of the War only to succumb to her wounds at the last hurdle.

"Overall, she is space-worthy and ready for duty, Captain. Even if she is a 'little rough around the edges', to use a human phrase", she stated.

"Good. Let's try and smooth some of those edges out, before we leave Starbase, shall we Chief?" he smiled before joking, "Maybe give the hull a fresh coat of paint also?"

If he didn't know the Chief Engineer as well as he did, he would have sworn that the she gave him a death glare. "I'm kidding. I'm kidding. The paint can wait. Keep me updated Chief, yeah?"

They gave each other a nod and with that the Captain let the Chief get back to her work.

 

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