Bilge Rat

Posted on 14 Mar 2016 @ 10:54am by Ensign Miraj Derani & Lieutenant JG Natalya Kirilova

2,197 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Episode 10 - Symposium
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 4, Nacelle Access Corridor
Timeline: MD 89 - 2100 hrs

[ON]

There were noises coming from the starboard nacelle. there shouldn't have been, because the Warp Core was totally offline; both the dilithium and the anti-matter had been removed and stored for the duration of the stay at Jupiter Station and wouldn't be reinstalled for at least forty-eight others.

As Natalya listened, she heard the sound start and stop, over and over. The sound was soft, a murmuring. After a moment's listening, the Chief Engineer realised she was hearing words. Some where inside the nacelle, someone was talking.

Natalya pulled off the headphones she'd been wearing, which was plugged into the acoustic monitoring station. She slammed the headphones down on the console in a fit of anger and frustration, a very rare sight for her. The two crewmen facing her, a Human male and a Trill female, both nearly cowered in fear.

"You scanned for lifesigns before starting the cycle, right?" Right!?" She nearly shouted. They both nodded hastily. "How soon before? One minute? Five?" They nodded again when she said five.

Natalya let out a sharp expletive in Russian, which of course the ship's UT faithfully translated into a language the crewmen could both understand. They cringed. Taking a deep breath, she sought to do something more constructive then yell. Whoever was in there, they didn't have much time.

"Computer, identify lifesign reading in starboard nacelle section three."

"Unable to identify." The computer said in it's usual carefree tone. As if something bad wasn't about to happen.

"Computer, what can you tell me about the lifesign? Guess if you can." The last request was probably a futile effort. The ship's computer didn't like to guess unless it was almost certain of an answer.

"Lifesign is Humanoid, probable Human female." The computer said after a moment.

Great. That tells us a lot. Natalya thought. "You realize how bad this is, right?" Natalya said to the two crewmen. They both nodded again, seemingly unable to speak. They both knew how badly they'd screwed up. Whoever was in there, she had ten minutes to get out of there before the entire nacelle filled with a primordial soup of toxic liquid and gas. And nothing short of shutting off main power to the entire ship could stop it. And if she couldn't get out, she would most likely die if she couldn't get to an emergency oxygen supply. And even then she might still not survive.

It was a fail of truly epic proportions.

"I'm going in." Natalya said abruptly, not wanting to take the time to explain the seriousness of the situation any further. She could've sent one of the crewmen in, but that really wasn't her style. "If we're not out in eight minutes, contact main engineering and have them cut main power. Code red-six. Then contact medical and have them prepare for decontamination protocol forty-nine." By that time auxiliary power might have come online.

Natalya moved to hit the button that opened the access hatch leading into the nacelle. Yellow lights started flashing and an alarm klaxon sounded, signaling that the maintenance lockdown had been breached.

----
"So we hooked up some additional boosters to the larboard underside to help the flip. It makes the lines sloppy, but it beats the alternative, right?" Miraj stopped talking to the ship.

Galileo did not reply. She'd been telling it about the time her father had been commissioned to pull a an ambassador class, damaged in the Federation-Cardassian war some forty years ago, and she'd effectively had to flip it over and accelerate hard through the quickest exit to the cloud, before the jury rigged deflector gave up and cooked everyone.

The sounding alarm made her look up suddenly, and the movement started her rotating in the zero gravity inside the dead nacelle. Grabbing for part of a warp coil to steady herself. "What the hell was that? Stay right here, I'll be back."

She pushed off the coils, working her way towards teh access hatch twenty meters away, where a strip of light from the acess tube lay across the nacelle like a finish line.

From the opposite direction Natalya came scurrying in, crawling along the cramped access corridor in the interior warp nacelle matrix. She had a couple breathing masks slung across her shoulder as she approached, just in case whoever she found wasn't in a position to get out right away. Every time she had to crawl into Jeffries' tubes or places like this she thanked the stars that she was relatively short, compared to some of the others in her department.

Natalya saw the other woman seemingly heading her way. What a relief. "Come on, we have to get out of here! The entire nacelle is about to be flooded in a maintenance cycle!" She kept moving forward toward the pink-haired woman until she was sure that she didn't seem injured or in need of help moving.

"Shit!" Miraj grabbed the next warp coil and hauled on it to propel her faster to the engineers side. Getting out was now a priority or this was going to be the shortest assignment in federation history. Though who on earth scheduled a maintenance cycle for the evening when in dock and you could do these things at your leisure?

In reach of the engineer, and the gravity coils still active on the rest of the ship, she half fell, half floated to the walkway in the nacelles, landed awkwardly, and cracked her head on a low rising field generator conduit. "Ow."

Natalya noticed that the woman had seemed quite comfortable navigating in a zero-g environment. The transition, however, had been less than graceful. However, she would learn from it, and like the crewman outside, would more than likely not make the same mistake again. Still, that looked like it had hurt, and Natalya couldn't help but wince.

"We have to keep moving." Natalya said in a hurry, though she did try to give the woman a moment to recover from what have felt like a killer headache. "Here, take this, just in case." She handed over one of the breathing masks. They were not far from the access hatch, but anything could happen.

Miraj paused for a second to get the mask in place, even if they didn't get trapped, just a mouthful of the various fumes and gels coming through would be a bad idea.

It must have seemed like their time would run out, though it couldn't have been more than two or three minutes since Natalya had rushed in to help. Extreme stress could have that effect, just like how it could have a more physical effect on the body. As she crawled out of the final access hatch she almost collapsed in a sprawl, exhausted, even though she couldn't have crawled more than a couple dozen meters. She leaned against the nearest bulkhead, as if needing a moment to calm down and catch her breath.

Miraj dropped out beside her and the hatch sealed. Leaning against it, she could here the gurgle and hiss as the maintenance cycle began. "Er, hi. I'm Miraj."

Natalya didn't reply straightaway. She glanced up, and gestured with her eyes toward her minions, who still stood a short distance away looking guilty as hell. As they should.

"Ah, the new flight control chief. Nice to meet you." She said in slightly over dramatic fashion, to make sure the two crewmen had heard who they'd almost stewed. "I'm Natalya." She said before abruptly getting to her feet. She offered a hand to help Miraj do the same.

Miraj grasped the proffered hand and helped Natalya haul her to her feet. "please to meet you." There was a pause. "I'm sorry about that. I don't often get a chance to spend any significant time in a live ships nacelles."

Natalya was silent at first, and seemed most focused on smoothing out her uniform jumpsuit, which had become a bit ruffled after her brief foray into the nacelle tube. Miraj shouldn't have been the one apologizing. True, she'd wandered into a place where she shouldn't have been, but if the two crewmen had been paying attention she never would have gotten in there in the first place. She wondered what they'd been up to... hopefully not playing grab-ass.

"I'll tell you what... the port-side nacelle is all sparkling clean and waiting to be explored. We can even turn the gravity off if you'd like." Natalya said, gesturing down the corridor with an open hand.

"That would be lovely. I'd really like that." Miraj's enthusiastic agreement set her bunches swinging. "Engineer?" She asked as she stepped past Natalie into main engineering. "What's he run like when he's awake?"

"Well.... I couldn't tell you, actually." Natalya said with a soft laugh. "I'm also relatively new to the ship... Galileo's been docked and on auxiliary power since I've been aboard." It was surprising to hear Miraj refer to the ship as a he... so far Natalya thought she was the only one who did that. There was a strong Human tradition to refer to ships in the feminine, but it didn't really feel right to do that when the Galileo was named after a famous man.

Natalya thought back to how they'd introduced themselves on a first name basis in front of the crewmen earlier. She was surprised that she'd done that.

"Natalya Kirilova, by the way. I'm the ship's chief engineer." She regarded Miraj as a professional equal, as they were both members of the senior staff.

"Look, I'm sorry about what happened back there. They should've been watching the access hatch and it's my fault that you got in there." She paused for a moment, thinking about how it was a bit unusual that Miraj had chosen to explore the nacelle tube. It was not exactly a popular crew destination. The wording of her last question helped explain that a bit though. "Normally I don't have a problem with crew wanting to... connect with the ship."

"I can't imagine you get many." Miraj wasn't oblivious, she knew her love of being inside a ships deep innards was unusual in non-engineers. "Its just something I like to do. Helps me to get to know what I'm flying. Though normally, what I'm flying isn't in good condition so then every little helps."

Natalya guessed that this was Miraj's first posting in Starfleet, going off her last statement. In a way she was quite jealous. She'd toiled for ten years before getting a department head job, and here Miraj had gotten one right out of the academy. But she could be wrong about that... she was assuming. And it wasn't like Natalya had been in a rush to get to where she was.

"Hey, it could be worse. You could've been lost." Natalya joked. Winding up lost in a nacelle tube on a Nova class would be quite the feat for an ensign new to the ship. "Luckily those two crewmen would have more to lose by letting that kind of rumor get loose." She smiled. If their screw-up became common knowledge, it would take a very long time for people to forget.

"I don't get lost in ships. They always tell me where to go." Miraj said before she could stop herself, realised it sounded flaky, and added. "I mean. I've worked on salvaged ships since I was old enough to remember, I've seen the guts of so many I can pretty much figure out where i am in any ship, given time."

Natalya couldn't help but smile knowingly at the time. She was tempted to tell Miraj that some ships were so large that computer guidance literally was needed to navigate them, but she wasn't the kind of person who liked to counter pride with humility. It was a special thing to have an ability to be proud of.

"Looks like we're here." Natalya said. gesturing toward an ubiquitous access hatch that looked like so many others aboard Starfleet vessels. This one was devoid of maintenance equipment or engineering personnel. "We just finished maintenance on this nacelle the other day and we won't be powering up for a few days, so... no one should bother you."

Miraj popped it open. "Thanks very much. I really appreciate it."

"No problem. Have fun." Natalya said with a smile before turning to move off. As much as she would have liked to stay and chat, she did places to be.

Then Miraj squeezed inside, and worked her way along the nacelle until the gravity faded out and she could float comfortably. She pulled out a small narrow bad and flicked it on. "So, shall we begin?" She asked the ship, opening her book, "The Hades was quiet, the Middle Watch was close to the end, but not so close that the crew would stir to wake. Nathaniel Graves, the man better known to rabid dogs of the Royal Navy as Bloodbeard, looked over the floating kingdom of which he was absolute ruler, and smiled..."

[OFF]

Lieutenant JG Natalya Kirilova
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Galileo

Ensign Miraj Derani
Chief Flight Control Officer
USS Galileo

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