Extra Pieces Left

Posted on 03 May 2012 @ 5:41pm by Command Master Chief Markum Quinn & Lieutenant Lilou Zaren & Captain Jonathan Holliday

2,798 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Episode 01 - Project Sienna
Location: USS Galileo/Main Engineering
Timeline: MD04 - 1400hrs

[ON]

"Peers, get your ass over here!" Markum bellowed. After updating the Bridge of the situation he looked around for Peers.

Lilou sprinted to Main Engineering, nearly running over Slak on her way to Markum. "What? What happened?" She glanced towards the MSD, back at Markum, and then gaped, her gaze rocketing back to the console. "You're shutting the core down- we're in the middle of-" The rest of the information zigzagged into her brain. "The- how is that even possible? The PTCs have eighteen fail safes! They all went down at once?"

"I know, I know!" barked the gruff engineer. "Willis, get over to sub-system back up!" The young man gave a nod, already halfway there. Quinn looked up to Peers. "The engines are shutting down, but that core is working harder. Peers, get over to the Core's main console and attempt to shut it down manually. We need to hurry, or we're going to be in deep trouble."

=^= Quinn to Bridge. Engines have been shut down, but the core is being a little stubborn. Peers is attempting to execute a manual shut down from the Warp Core main console. If that fails, we will either have to eject the core before it gets critical or......I crawl into the matter-antimatter chamber and essentially pull the plug, leaving us dead in the water. So other than that things a re perfect down here.=^=

Quinn looked around and found the matter/antimatter chamber. He really did not want to have to crawl in there.

Peers sprinted to the hatch in the far corner of Main Engineering and inserted her access codes, spinning the latch four times to make the lock release and dropping down to climb the ladder down to the main console for the warp engine. They made it hard to reach on every ship, mainly because having someone just happen upon it and push buttons meant the end of everyone on board. Warp Cores were generally the most reliable energy system for space travel, but they were generating massive amounts of energy and that sort of thing, ill used, could cause a lot of destruction. When her feet hit the landing at the bottom of the ladder, she turned and input her access codes into the next hatch, then pulled out and spun the latch on the second security block before that, too, opened and she could get inside. Here, at the base of the Core, she couldn't look up to see the rest of the engine. It was an extremely well-lit hutch, and right now the brilliant white light was intermittently disrupted by flashes of red from emergency alarms. =^=Peers to Quinn, I'm at the console. Attempting manual shut down now.=^=

=^=Good. Be careful not to confuse the manual override to the warp core for the manual ignition of the matter/antimatter. The one you want is a green and yellow knob. It should blink red three times once the access code is entered. If it doesn't try it again. If it still won't after the second attempt, hit it hard and do it again.=^= Quinn watched the temperature on the Core start to rise.

=^=Getting warm down here.=^= She rolled up her sleeves and lifted the metal containment hutch over the Warp Core's base console. =^=Drawing out the manual override...=^= She gripped the green and yellow knob and twisted. It didn't budge. Gritting her teeth, she twisted again and felt it give slightly before locking up again. "Come on, come... ON!" The temperature in the hatch was rising by the second and she was cool blooded to begin with. With another expulsion of energy, she finally managed to twist the knob and it gave a soft groan as it turned and the plank with the access code entry panel slowly slid out.

"Please state your Starfleet registration ID."

"Peers charlie-nine-four-lima-six," Lilou replied, pulling at her collar.

"Identity confirmed. Please state your security access clearance."

"Twelve twenty-six delta echo nine kilo ninety-seven."

"Clearance unconfirmed. Manual lockout sequence beginning in ten, nine-"

Lilou scowled. "One two two six delta echo nine kilo nine seven."

"Clearance confirmed. Please enter manual override code."

Lilou blinked a droplet of sweat from her lash and entered the code. For a while, nothing happened. The room continued to heat up, the lights continued to flash. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the knob at the end of the plank blinked red three times. =^=Got it. Commencing manual shut down. Have we transferred power to impulse and auxiliary?=^=

Quinn let out an audible laugh, =^=Good job kid! Now get out of there before you fry to a crisp. We need to find out what caused the initial problem now.=^="

Quinn contacted the bridge to give them an update. Well, this was better than he had feared at least.

Lilou hissed as she passed through the first hatch on the way to the ladder; the handle had grown so warm it left a red welt o her hand where she'd gripped it. The second was a little easier. By the time she was up the ladder and shutting the hatch behind her, the more normal temperature of Main Engineering felt cold, though her skin still felt hot. "Right," she said, pulling on the gloves she'd left behind and swiping the back of her hand across her forehead. "Any ideas about what happened? Is anyone checking the PTC channels?"

"No, not yet. All I know is that somehow the starboard nacelle's plasma inducers are off line." Quinn stated as he grunted at the MSD. "Pull them up here, and I'll see what I can do with the extra power going to the impulse engines."

Lilou watched, too, as a bedraggled looking Troxx pulled up system analytics of the starboard plasma inducers. Stepping closer, she counted in her head and frowned. "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?" she asked Quinn. "Troxx, do we have any vid feeds of the injectors?"

"I don't think-"

"Just the system analysis?" Lilou frowned, "Do we have any reason to think the feedback is slowed down?"

"All the other systems are reporting real-time-" He scowled. "What are you looking at?"

"Fifty-eight nano seconds." Lilou shook her head. "And the warp core's been in shut down for over a minute. How long were they cycling when it was on?"

Quinn looked closer at the data. "Well I'll be damned. The relay was the problem, not the inducers themselves. Looks like the inducers have been ripped apart from the overload. The delay must have caused a static pulse."

"Awesome," Lilou uttered a dry, eye-rolling laugh. "That's... awesome." She yanked her hair out of it's low bun and started frenetically rebraiding it over her shoulder. "What now, boss?"

"Now we get this ship back in working order before the Klingons decide to blow us out of the water Miss Peers"

A voice called out from the Engineering entrance, the voice of the XO, newly arrived from the Bridge under the orders of the Captain. The current mess around him was more than enough to alert John to the fact that things weren't going that well, as if the rude awakening from his bed earlier on hadn't been enough of an indication.

Engineers were running around furiously trying to figure out exactly what still worked and what didn't, and the Commander knew that if he was going to have a ship left by the end of the day, then it would be up to the work of the individuals down here, in the bowels of the Galileo, to get back up and running.

"Give me an update, how screwed are we right now?"

Quinn smiled at Peers as Holliday walked toward them. "Well, boss. The Warp Core isn't an issue really. It's that fact that the plasma inducers to the starboard nacelle were ripped to shreds from a repetitious static pulse from a faulty relay. So....that being said...and we do it by the book...all we have to do is crawl up into the nacelle strut, take out whats left of the old plasma inducers, fabricate some new ones, replace the relay, then reattach the newly fabricated inducers back into the nacelle strut. Then run a Level-One diagnostic starting with the relay from the matter-antimatter chamber, to the Warp Core. Then from the relay from the Warp Core to the newly fabricated plasma inducers, then to the relay in in the nacelle that gives the required commands to enact propulsion. So, nine hours or so....if we go by the book."

The level of technobabble that a well versed engineer was capable of always made John smirk. To the untrained ear, the essentially biblical knowledge of the inside and outside of a starship was nothing more than an exercise in frying someone's brain. However, to someone who had gone through years of training, either as an enlisted crewman or an officer, it was a recipe for success.

"And if we throw the book into the waste disposal? I'd rather get this thing up and running and listen to some Admiral moan at me about ignoring protocol later."

Lilou bit her lip, tying off the end of her braid and crossing her arms behind her back. It wasn't about listening to the Admirals's complaints about protocol. It was about whether the fix worked and they didn't explode the next time they attempted Warp speed. She searched her knowledge of the ship's schematics... and for once, couldn't think of any way to shortcut the solution. "We don't know yet if the problem with the old plasma inducers comes from a design flaw or a network command flaw. We might not have to fabricate replacements for the whole line, but we won't know that until we get in there and see the results." She looked at Quinn. If there was a way to fix this quicker than she saw, he would be the one to know it.

After scratching his beard for several long moments, he finally replied. "We could run some new conduits, free weld them I suppose. Then run an ODN cable directly from the MDS, to the Warp Core, then up the strut to the main console to the nacelle itself. It'd take about two, maybe three hours to complete...providing we don't cause a massive reverse in flux into the matrix core and blow us sky high."

"You want to... route past the arrays?" Lilou's eyes flicked this way and that as she considered the ships' schematics in her mind's eye. "Straight to the source, skip the middle man, need to make up for ODN system overload... reroute new optical data lines through a secondary server. Partition a segment of the backup server, maybe. Risky in the first warp jump, but system analysis should help us avoid major glitches... we could do that." She grinned at Quinn. "We could so do that. Should have been done in the first place." She tilted her head to the side, "Safe to leave the other nacelle alone, or should we reroute its ODN as well?"

Quinn smiled at Peers, and gave a wink to XO, "Nah, it'll be fine for now. Besides Peers, one day you'll be running the show down here, while I'm enjoying retirement, or whatever. So you need to start thinking about thinking outside of the box. Ask the XO, books are great for fundamentals and learning the basics, but if you really want to see how things work, well, you just gotta rip em' apart, put them back together again,and pray there aren't any extra pieces left."

"As always Chief, your logic is undeniable...even the Vulcans would be impressed by that. Books are good for learning the big do's and don'ts of starship operations....but after that they're more of a suggestion than a standing order"

John had to take a moment to think back to his younger days, mainly at the Academy when the books and rules issued by Starfleet were taken by young cadets as virtually being the words of whichever deity he or she happened to worship. Every officer started out that way, but eventually, they started learning that sometimes, the only way to get things done would be to think with your hands and your wits, not just your memory.

"Ok....it might be a bit on the risky side, but I'd rather have us back up to speed in three or four hours than nine...somehow I don't think the Klingons are too happy with us in their space...and I'm pretty sure putting a ship back together after it's been shot apart by disruptor fire takes a bit more glue and self-sealing stem bolts than a few repairs to the ODN relays...shall we get started?"

Lilou looked between the two men, confused. How had she given them the impression she wasn't willing to think outside the box? They were talking about her like she was fresh out of Academy, but she'd spent the last several years working first on a station, then a ship, flying by the seat of her pants more often than not. Even before that, she'd learned more from taking things apart and putting them back together than she ever had from classes. Why was she getting this patronizing pat on the head about book-learning now? She was almost grateful for the mild burn on her face; maybe it would hide the rush of blood to her cheeks at the indignity. She had a lot to learn, she knew that, but she'd thought she'd proved herself. What had she said to give the impression she couldn't follow the logic of Quinn's proposal? It didn't matter now. She just needed to focus on fixing the problem. Later, when the solution was in place and they were on their way again, she could review and pick apart that portion of the conversation to figure out what she'd missed. With a slight frown, she zipped up the front of her coveralls, moved her combadge to the outside of them, and checked her toolbelt. "I can build the new conduits for the ODN relay and start routing them in," she told them, hitched a laser torch and a cutting beam one over each shoulder. "If that's all right with you."

Quinn knew the look from Peers. He knew it because he had it on his face several times before he got Department Head. He had only tried to ruffle his assistant's feathers some, but maybe he went to far. "Peers, sorry. I was out of line on harassing you like I did. You're the best engineer on this ship...maybe even the best....the best I've ever worked with." He looked at Holliday and then back at Lilou. "So get up there Peers and get to work...and if either of you ever repeat that I made an apology and admitted I was wrong....well...just remember I'm old and close to retirement and can plead insanity." he said with a smile and chuckle.

She ducked her head, feeling like she was blushing out of her eyeballs - not only for the kind words but for the fact that he'd caught her, practically read her mind. See-sawing between feeling mortified and honored, she swallowed hard. "Sir, yes, sir," she managed to say, then bolted.

"It's ok Chief, I'll make sure you don't get retired just yet, after all without you who's going to keep all these junior engineers in shape? Miss Peers here might be able to tell the difference between a warp plasma conduit and a holoemitter, but the rest....well you know how young officers can be. Where do you need me?"

John was glad to find a Chief Engineer with a sense of humour. Ever since that first meeting in the drydock he knew that Quinn was going to be a major asset to their vessel, able to fix anything and everything, even with the most minimal of resources and time. Rolling up the sleeves of his uniform, John prepared to take orders.

"Okay Commander, go to the phase inducers over next to the binary power coupling. There is a small tool kit of everything you'll need to run a digital bypass will be there." He smiled over to the XO, "and don't fry yourself. It causes too much paperwork."

"I'll do my best Chief....its the red wire you don't cut right?" John called out as he headed towards the coupllings. They had a ship to get operational, and nothing was going to stand in their way.

--

[OFF]

MWO Lilou Peers
Assistant Chief Engineering Officer
USS Galileo

Lt Cmdr Jonathan Holliday
Executive Officer
USS Galileo

Chief Warrant Officer Markum Quinn
Chief Egineer
USS Galileo

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