What Need Have We for the Officers?

Posted on 31 Mar 2022 @ 12:29am by Chief Petty Officer Afthinam Naime & Petty Officer 2nd Class Donald Andrews & Petty Officer 3rd Class John Hollenday & Petty Officer 3rd Class Helliun 'Hel' Inant

2,725 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Episode 18 - Cold Station 31
Location: Deck 7, Engineering
Timeline: MD 05, 06:48

[ON]

It was morning, Galileo had been floating through space for a good few hours at this point. Things were quietening down. The warp core was humming and things were at peace within Galileo's main engineering and its gaggle of enlisted personnel. Amidst the serenity of the moment a door hissed open and from it emerged a tall woman who with a booming voice shattered it all instantly. "Good morning engineers!"

Naime stepped into the room and took a quick glance over the three engineers. The two who she didn't know she could at least identify from having read through the personnel files; the shorter one would be Andrews and the other Hollenday. She gave them both a wave "I'm Naime. New CPO, was with Trial, now I'm here!" She turned over to the woman sitting by the warp core, she really did appreciate that there was going to be at least one familiar face here. "Good to see you Inant, how're you taking to this new warp core?"

"It has a pleasant hum, Chief" Hel said before she gave a small nod. "I'll get used to the little bits of personality." She put her hands on her hips, looking at the warp core. "And then beat it out of it."

Naime really couldn't help but grin. She wasn't a person who got anxious but even if she was hearing Hel talking about warp cores again was more than reassuring. Things were going to be alright.

John just wiped his hands on the jumpsuit. This was real engineering, getting down and dirty in the tubes and elsewhere to fix things. This was a complicated ship, with complex systems, and such things inevitably even on a normal course of duty had issues. He was curious though to see who the knew person was that was going to nominally be in charge.

"You're Hollenday right?" Of course he was, she had been looking at his file less than an hour ago. He'd been a shipwright at Starbase 25, that was something Naime could respect and a skillset that was handy even out here on the move "I read you worked the drydock on 25, that's a tough posting, I know all too well. But I guess you'll know your way around the structural engineering of this ship better than anyone then?" She wandered closer and held out a hand in greeting allowing herself a sly smirk: Yep, I'm taller.

John again absently wiped a hand before holding it out. "Right you are, nut buster third class."

"That's what I like to hear." Naime responded giving the hand a firm shake. Then turning her attention to the last of the engineers in the room "So that makes you Petty Officer Andrews?"

"That's me chief." Donald said smiling slightly at the taller Farian woman.

John piped up, but he was not one for much formality anyway. "Donald there probably best among us. We probably would have blown up more than once if he had not kept everything together."

Naime responded raised an eyebrow "Oh is that so?" It was good to see that the engineers of Galileo trusted one another. She hoped that they would soon come to trust her and Hel just the same "Okay, let's hear it," she continued with a cheeky grin, taking a seat near Hel "Please do tell a story of how Don here managed to save you all from certain doom."

John was not sure if being teased or not on that. "Well, Don there took a major fall, cracked his head and still got to work even being busted up. Crap, we all worked like ants, but we might rib each other somethin' fierce, but this ain't no lie, I really think the man deserved a promotion, hell we all did. All we ever get is more power, more shields, more anything else while everything is fallin' apart." His temper was starting to show. "Sorry, don't mean to get testy, but think everyone up there forgets about down here."

Donald glanced sideways towards John, sure that he was exaggerating his activity after the fall, he didn't remembe anything other than laying on the deck on lower engineering with part of his head scattered across the plating.

Naime had been expecting some light-hearted tale of some engineering wizardry but instead hearing the frustration in John's voice was telling her a completely different story. "That's not right," she mused, her tone changing from jovial to more serious. Who had been looking out for them? How had this department even been functioning? "How long has it been since there was a CPO in this department?" She asked, trying to asses the situation.

Hel watched with interest, also curious about how long it had been. Also, she was studying the other engineers, how they moved, how they talked. There was almost something predatory in her look, but she meant nothing bad by it.

"A lot longer than there should have been," Donald replied. "we've held the fort as best we can but the department is seriously under represented, we don't even have a single commissioned officer."

"Do not worry, we don't need officers here, they get in the way of the real work," Hel said and smiled, leaning a little closer. "If anyone ever tries to say Engineering is less than it is, Chief Naime here will set them straight. I once saw her march to the Captain's Ready Room to defend her team's performance after a drill..." she looked at Naime, her yellow eyes fond. "And she won."

A small grin spread across Naime's face. Oh how the captain had squirmed... "I honestly didn't realise things were this bad. We can help though, while I am here you can count on me to look after you lot, any problems you come to me and we can try to sort it or I can take it up higher if needs be. Hel here really is a great engineer and with our two pairs of hands hopefully we can take some of the pressure off." Naime spread her hands in an open posture "So what other issues are facing our department at the moment? You can come to me with anything."

"Other than we are still short handed? That we did not have enough dock time? Other than we barely had a chance to check the systems out before being ordered out? Well no," John laughed. "Yes, technically things are showing green, but we are really on a shake down cruise, without any support or chance to return to base in case something goes south. None of us have really had time to really check out the repairs and this ship took a heck of a lot of punishment." He kicked a support strut lightly. "Call me a worrying old hen, but I just don't trust taking somethin' this complicated after all that without a good running test and dependin' everything is really good."

"Back when we were docked at station, I went up to them and I said 'I want to be on Kali' and they told me 'No, Galileo needs engineers' and I shrugged and said I'd do it." Naime could only grimace at the dejected state of Galileo's engineers "I didn't realise it was this bad. You've done great just getting this far, you've kept her afloat and patched her up since the battle and all on a tiny team." Naime really was impressed by what this ship had put the engineers through and that they were still standing after it all, she rubbed the bridge of her nose with one hand preparing for the big question "So what are the officers like? In our department and above us? I know the captain isn't around at the moment but what do you lot feel the culture is like? Do you think they'd be responsive if I came to them with some of these concerns?"

John just shrugged. "Well, lower to middle are pretty much alright. Tell you the truth, I just do not have any real experience with anyone with higher rank. 'Course I just try to avoid officers for the most part anyway."

"The assistant chief Ops is quite nice." Donald said, resisting the urge to nudge John. "She lends a hand down here on occasion."

Naime noticed a glance passing between the two engineers and instantly guessed at the implication "I guess could you say that down here in engineering we have some close relationships with our colleagues operations?" She said teasingly, honestly she thought it was good though, given the overlap between the two department it was always good to have a good relationship with the operations bridge staff.

"Very close chief." Donald added, trying his best not to laugh.

"Sounds like my kinda crew," Hel said with a sly smile, winking before she stretched her arms over her head, yawning. "Especially on long missions. There's only that much talk about dark matter we can have a day before we get bored."

John made a face at Donald, but turned his attention back. "So Chief, what is our first order of business? Still don't feel like we should be out on an actual mission without a shake down."

"Well, I don't want to go and say too much too soon. Chief Marika is technically the new boss, she does outrank me. Me and Hel did work with her back on Trial and she's..." Naime tried off for a moment, glancing in Hel's direction "She's alright."

The chief leaned over from her seat to hit some entries into a nearby console. "Ship's running smoothly it seems, warp core came online when we asked it to so that's a good sign. Good job to you all for that." She gave a nod of acknowledgement in the direction of each of them "So the question is, what can we do to improve the whole ship might fall apart situation? Obvious to me is that we should do a full look over of the repairs that have been made since Latari. No offence to either of you, just you did bring it up and it wouldn't hurt to go over it." She gestured over to the display with the diagram of the ship "Does one of you want to take us all through what damage was sustained during the battle?"

"You'd better take that one John." Donald said, "I don't remember much of the couple days after I hit my head, we were in pretty bad shape though."

"Might be easier to tell you what was still working than what was damaged. We were going up against full Tholian frigates! Remember us pulling up to take a full on brunt to help protect one of the main ships. Lost some shield generators on the belly, some on the back, hull breaches in all those areas. At least what I can remember, barely kept phasers and launchers though we lost a few of those as well. What I remember being here is barely keeping the warp core online, plasma leaks contained, and keeping some enviromental going. Think we lost gravity for a few moments. Sorry Chief but it was pretty much just pure chaos and when we limped on it to Regula I just left it to the people there to figure it all out. Me, I just wanted off this bucket without getting showered in sparks."

"Right, well, looks like we have to give everything a look over then." the chief mused looking over the display "Starting next shift Andrews I want you to do a full diagnostic of the EPS grid. Full resolution internal scanners, we want to see if any of the repairs left even a microfracture on those plasma conduits."

Donald exhaled very animated, a 'full' diagnostic was a lot of work, he was glad the Galileo was a quite small ship but it also meant there weren't many other engineers to share the workload. "Copy that."

Naime then turned back to John "Hollenday, take propulsion. We won't be able to do a full run down until we stop but until then do what you can. Looking over the impulse drives and warp core, Hel's great with warp systems so if you need an extra hand just ask her. If you do see anything that's a cause for concern then let me or Chief Marika know as soon as possible. Don't want the ship flying into disaster..."

John just chuckled. "This ship always seems to be flying into disaster Chief, but know what you mean. Alright, then I will go take a looksie and see if the nutbusters on base got things put together properly."

"Always a good thing to check..." Hel agreed before she shook her head, studying her nails for a moment. "I might have another lookover the specs myself, unless there's...other stuff for me to do?" she was ope for anything really.

"Well, shield generators along the belly took major hits. Again, everything," John waved a hand at the display. "Show green, we are not under a lot of stress right now. Think I mentioned the captain pulled the ship up to take the full brunt of a couple of Tholian frigates. Basically we fried out generators including emergency force field jobs. Your call though chief."

"That's what I figured, there could be a lot of damage there that didn't get noticed. No knock on your work, just it's the sort of thing that two extra pairs of eyes could help out with." Naime gave a nod in Hel's direction "How about it Hel? You up for conducting a full review of the structural integrity of the USS Galileo?" She said the last part with mock grandeur, it was likely not going to be the most exciting job in the world but from what she was hearing from the others, it would need to be done.

Hel laughed, throwing her head back, unable to stop it. "Oh, this ship does need that. I'll do it. And I'll check the weak points personally. Let's try not to depressurise the ship while we are on it." She stood and stretched before lowering her arms.

"You'll not find any 'weak points' on this ship, when I build a ship I build them good." Donald said quite proudly.

John just laughed lightly as he was walking away. "Good for you Don. Give 'em what for."

"Well, that's for me and Hel to see." Naime responded with a wink in Hel's direction and with a conspiratorial grin continued "If it does turn out that everything is shipshape and Bristol fashion then next time we swing by a friendly port drinks are on me." She clambered up from her and put a hand on Hel's shoulder "And if not then maybe we'll be having a discussion of these weak points over some drinks from the Gal grew."

Hel let out a low whistle before she nodded. "Chief's a good drinking partner. I recommend the experience to anyone," she said before she shrugged. "And, if we can't agree is something is a benefit or a weak spot...drinks are on me. Not betting for or against anyone, I just want an excuse for the drinks."

"No drinks if the ship falls apart under us or the core blows." John growled already starting the job he was asked to do.

"Then I will buy you a drink in the great beyond," Hel countered, smiling before she winked to Naime. "I'll get started, Chief." She moved to grab grab her equipment, heading to start her bit of the inspection.

"In the great beyond or not, if the ship blows up there are no drinks." Naime said with the tone of a very serious order. "Now let's all get to work and make sure that nothing like that ends up happening."

[OFF]

PO3 John Hollenday
Engineering mate
USS Galileo-A
[NPC Allyndra]

CPO Afthinam Naime
Engineer
USS Galileo-A
[NPC Ullswater]

PO3 Donald Andrews
Engineer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Mimi]

PO3 Helliun Inant
Engineering
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Rice]

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