Engineering Damage

Posted on 08 Sep 2015 @ 6:41pm by Commander Norvi Stace & Ensign K'os Beaumont
Edited on on 09 Sep 2015 @ 2:50am

1,910 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Episode 09 - Empires
Location: USS Galileo - Main Engineering
Timeline: MD 01, 2146 hours

ON:

Stace walked into what used to be Engineering with a heavy heart and a dirty face. For the main part, the bulkheads were still intact but the familiar blue hue of the warp core was no longer thundering about them. Instead the room looked cold and muted, darkened by the lack of power coursing both through and from the engine house of the ship. She stopped at the doors, auxiliary power now online but working hard to even open the doors, and sighed. Spying Lieutenant Grayson, she bee-lined for him and raised both eyebrows in expectation.

"Hi, Lieutenant," she said rather uncheerily. "I'm compiling a full damage report for the captain now that we have some sort of power back online. Could you help me with it?"

"Sure," Grayson said with an equal amount of cheer. He had been working non stop since their incident and was feeling exhausted. Not that he would let on, he was pretty dizzy and light headed after his wound as well. "K'os, you wanna' come down and give me a hand with his?" he called out to his assistant Chief, who was doing an exceptional job to deal with his own weakened state.

"The core is back and running, most of the generators too, but half the eps relays are shot and needing rebuilt before the power can actually make it to the systems. Life support is running at full, grav plating on the ship is working, mostly, again," he paused to let K'os come down and add some of the systems he had been dealing with. Wearily, Grayson took a seat near by, pressing his fingers in at the bridge of his nose, his headache worsening each second.

Cutting a look to the chief engineer, Stace furrowed her brow and shook her head wearily at him. "You don't look so bright, Lieutenant," she said with a concerned and almost maternal lilt. "What's wrong?"

"Stress," Grayson laughed off, "I've been suffering headaches for days, then was thrown into the warp core today, I think it came off worse in the encounter honestly, split my head open. It bled for a while before someone managed to get to me. I think at one point I was trying to do things with a ring of blood orbiting around my head." He tried to laugh a little, but it hurt too much.

"Have you been to see Medical?" Stace then questioned, uneasy about the engineer's description. With one thing and another, she hadn't managed to pick up the casualty report the doctor had submitted. That was meant to be next on her list. But she couldn't put people's lives in danger before the ship's systems.

"Someone was down and quickly saw me, I was patched up, given some pain meds and ordered to bed," Grayson flinched knowing that wouldn't go down to well, "but right now, I am fit and cognizant to help repair systems. See I can even use big words still. K'os has been taking the lead mostly."

"Orders are orders, Lieutenant. Especially from Medical." Stace paused and waited for K'os to now join the two. She placed a hand on her hip and then looked to K'os fully."Looks like you're in charge of Engineering until the chief, here, is given a clean bill of health from the doctor. And if you dare to ignore orders from Sickbay," she added, facing Grayson now with a stern look on her face, "then you certainly better not ignore them from me." She smiled a little and then scrunched up her nose to him. "Now begone. Before I really lose my temper with you. We can handle repairs down here."

K'os had made his way from the second level and had been watching the exchange. He had a small first aid kit strapped to his belt near his lower back, and a tool kit slung over his shoulder. He had taken his work gloves off and had them tucked into his belt. Various other pouches and holsters were also attached to his belt that contained new isolinear chips, a tricorder, and other odds and ends he'd needed while making physical repairs.

"We've got all our teams set up at this point and we all have prioritized jobs." K'os shook the PADD he was holding, "We'll just continue the list, Lieutenant Jones has made." K'os stepped a bit closer when Stace addressed him. "One of our biggest priorities is working to establish external communications and to bring our sensor pallets back online. There was damage to portions of the computer core that we're working to fix. Even if we fed enough energy or repaired the EPS conduits I'm not certain how well some of those systems or programs will perform. We have a team working on that issue as well." He rubbed his forehead to wipe sweat away, but managed only to smear a bit of grease or dark fluid across his forehead.

"And with that, I will take my leave," Grayson said, pulling himself from his chair, "I may quibble with medical at times, but not the boss," he smiled. "All going well I shall see you both in the morning...when the warp core isn't a lovely shade of purple and the room stops spinning." He smiled before adding, "Kidding," to which he really wasn't. Bed sounded and felt like the right place to be just now.

Stace watched Grayson leave and smiled at his enthusiasm. Most Fleeters had an admirable work ethic and Grayson was one of them, if a little foolish to ignire advice from the medical staff. She sucked air in through her teeth and then turned to K'os. "It looks as though there are massive power fluctuations on Deck Six also," she said, getting straight to business with the acting chief. "It might be prudent to knock power completely off until we can stablise the grid. And with Deflector Control being on that deck, we may need a back up plan. We might not know where we we are or where we're going, but we sure won't be able to until the array is back up and running."

"The Exocomp, Copper, is just finishing up with the external communications workaround. I'll have him reassigned to the deflector team when he's finished. We might need a visual on the hardware itself too, ma'am, so we might request exterior access down the line; one of the benefits of having an exocomp on board I suppose." K'os licked his lips. It wasn't that he was particularly nervous about being acting chief -- after all, Jones did say he'd be back in the morning, and he hoped that were true. -- K'os had only just taken the officer's exam and it had only been a mere few days since Admiral Saalm placed the Ensign pip in his hand and promoted him to Assistant Chief. He knew he was highly trained, and while he lacked the experience of an officer, he didn't lack the experience of an engineer. So he took a deep breath and tried his best to match Stace's serious expression in order to appear more confident in front of his executive officer. It didn't quite have the same effect as hers, as his serious frown soon gave way to a grease smudged, suppressed grin. "There are good teams down here, Commander. I'm confident we'll recover quickly.

"I have no doubt in your abilities down here, Ensign," Stace qualified with a weak smile. "I'm not here to check up on anyone's work." She paused and then looked to the un-moving warp core with a scrunch of her nose. "I'm a little lost up-deck, you see," she then added, moving towards it. "I'm not the type of person to sit in a chair and bark orders when we're in a state like this. And I prefer to get my hands dirty. I can report back to the captain with a better understanding of how we are that way.

"This is your arena, Ensign," she then added with a flutter of her brow. "My limited engineering skills are at your complete disposal. Where shall we start?"

The young hybrid placed his hands on his hips and twisted his torso as if to survey his 'arena'.

"Depends how dirty you want your hands to get. We've got people from all over the ship helping to haul ferrocarbonite tubes, and polyduranide sheeting to the damage control teams." K'os pointed his hand towards those that were literally rolling up their sleeves and doing manual labour in lieu of the transporter systems being offline. "Otherwise that's the list." K'os swept his hand over the list of things projected on a screen near them that needed to be done. It was a long list. "Burnt out EPS conduits; damaged ODN subprocessors; broken consoles." K'os turned back to Stace. "It's a mess, Commander."

"Let's start with the EPS conduits, Ensign," Stace replied looking about her with an almost overwhelmed expression. "We need to get the main deflector online and get power back to our sensors." She paused and then cut him a look that cracked her face with a mischievous smile. She then began to roll her own sleeves up - what was left of them - and said, "I'm not adverse to getting my hands dirty. Teal went well with smudge and I can't imagine that command maroon will fair any worse. Let's get the supplies to where they're needed and go from there."

K'os instinctively mirrored the mischievous smile. He too began rolling up his sleeves. "Aye, ma'am." K'os said enthusiastically. He wasn't sure exactly why, but he was getting quite the confidence boost having the XO get into the grind in Engineering with them. Maybe it was the wealth of experience that the woman carried with her, but somehow he felt he could learn a lot from her. And that put K'os in a very good mood. "The ferrocarbonite tubes should go first. I'll get a hover sled. You and you," he said motioning to two crewman as he jogged for a sled, "go help Commander Stace." When he'd turned away, K'os couldn't help but grin.

She walked over to the tubes and with a hand on her hip assessed the amount of materials that needed shifting. "There's a lot more than I thought," she said to K'os over her shoulder. "And we are in a state of emergency." She turned around as one of the sleds was pushed over to her. "Go have a look at your duty roster, Ensign. Grab anyone on Beta shift who you think's useful who's about to knock off back to pull a double shift with us. We need all the able hands we can get to put us back together and in half the time."

K'os grinned, not wanting to admit that he had the duty roster memorized. "Yes of course, ma'am. I have a couple names in mind. I'll muster them down right away."

Stace smiled her reply as she bent down to lift one of the heavy materials and place it on the sled. She waited for K'os to return before pushing the fully loaded and dipping sled to where they needed to be. "After you," she said.

OFF

Lieutenant Commander Norvi Stace
Executive Officer
USS Galileo

Ensign K'os Beaumont
Assitant Chief Engineer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant J.G Grayson Jones
Chief Engineer
USS Galileo

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