Overwhelmed
Posted on Friday 31 August 2018 @ 18:56 by Ensign Riv O'Malley
Edited on on Friday 14 September 2018 @ 13:14
Mission:
The New Collective
Location: Main Engineering
Timeline: Directly after The New Collective - The Cavalry Arrives: Act II
2271 words - 4.5 OF Standard Post Measure
Stephanie growled as she slammed both fists down on a console. "Work ya blasted piece o' shite!" She screamed at it in vein. After a few seconds, she kicked the base and produced an echoing clang. When it stubornly refused to respond to physical abuse she took a step back. She drew in in a deep breath and blew the tuft of hair that had come loose from her ponytail out of her eyes.
Stephanie looked like death. Her skin and hair were streaked with Grease, and coolant. Blood had caked on her arms and trickled down from a fresh wound on her knee, which could be seen through the hole in her uniform pants. "C'mon bitch. Ya c'n do this. Deep breath. Don't panic!" She said to herself out loud. Her first mission on a starship and she ran afoul of the Borg. The ship was drifting and life support was down. She was understandably feeling a little overwhelmed. "It's only life support. You'll only condemn thousand people t' a slow death if ya can' fix it. Na big."
Stephanie was one of the best Engineers in Starfleet, but the feeling of rising dread was getting harder and harder to ignore. She bent back to the console.
Riv rounded the corner, his uniform still dirty from the caves, with spots of colonist blood here and there, his sleeve ripped exposing his bicep tattoo of the Mobile Construction Brigade Gamma Company. "Nice to meet you in person Lieutenant, where do you need me?"
Stephanie didn't waste any time. No introduction, no preamble. "Ya have 30 seconds t' tell me everythin' ya know about life support systems." She said as she walked around to the back of a console and kicked it once as hard as she could. The access panel bent and fell to the floor, which was what she wanted. She kicked the metal and sent it skidding across the deck until it hit a wall. She bent down and started pulling wires out. "An' while yer at it, do somethin' useful an' find me a tricorder, a hyper-spanner, an' a contact depolarizer."
Riv scanned the room for an engineering kit, finding one close by he sifted through it for the requested tools. "I know the Merlin has a tricyclic life support system with enough backups to choke a horse. Even emergency backups." He handed the tools to O'Hara, and went to a nearby wall panel. "So many, in fact, that a complete failure while emergency power is up should be nearly impossible."
He paused for a second. "You know, the old Saber class ships all of the emergency life support systems on a dedicated EPS line, with emergency flow taps along the main EPS conduit" He brought up an overlay of the power distribution system of the Merlin. "There it is, Lieutenant, look at this." He pointed at the diagram, showing that dedicated line to primary and secondary life support systems, completely down, and all emergency flow taps shut. "Looks like we have a power problem, just need to get 3 or 4 of these flow taps open."
"Good Lad," Stephanie said as she looked at the schematic. She pointed. "That's th' problem. Th' flow regulators're jammed... " She looked over her shoulder to MCPO Hale, who was a short distance away, Her body waist-deep in a Jeffries tube. O'Hara called her name.
Hale wriggled out and stared at Riv for a few moments. "You're new." she said simply. She then turned to O'Hara. "You rang?"
"Liz, Take DC Gamma," she pointed to the spots on the schematic. "We've EPS taps here, here an' here with jammed flow regulators. Go un-jam 'em if ya please? Ya have m' authority t' use whatever personnel and equipment ya need, an' put some bloody wheels on it. If we don't get this sorted out, we're all gonna suffocate in about 3 hours. "
Liz nodded and walked away, collecting Engineers as she went who fell into step behind her as she exited the Engine room.
Stephanie pointed to Riv. "An' you, boyo," she said. "Yer with me."
She tapped her combadge. "O'Hara t' Bridge, We'll have Life support up in 10 minutes, give or take. Propulsion is manuverin' thrusters only right now. We're lookin' at 30 minutes for impulse an' at least an' an hour f'r warp drive. O'Hara Out." She abruptly closed the comm line before she was inundated with stupid questions.
She turned to Riv, finally seeing him as something other than a warm body in a Starfleet uniform. "Ya say yer name is O'Malley? How'd ya come by it? They don' grow 'em like you in Dublin, that's f'r sure."
Riv gathered up a few tools, and packed them away in his engineering kit. "My father, Lieutenant, he was Irish, mother was Andorian. Was a good engineer in Starfleet, even got to retirement and teaching before being killed early on in the Dominion War." Riv smiled, may not have been the best way to be introduced to his new crew mates, but it would be a good story over a few whiskeys. "Where to now Lieutenant?"
"Well, then," She said. "Once we're all done, we'll drink t' our success. I've some very old Whiskey I've been savin'." She said. The entire time she had been walking and they found themselves at the console that monitored the Impulse Engines. "A wee test for ya. I've looked at the diagnostic. I know whats wrong, how t' fix it an' roughly how long it's gonna take," she said pointing to the console. They're down, ya have 10 minutes t' get 'em up. I need t' go see t' Sarah. Report t' me when yer done."
Riv nodded "Aye aye ma'am", as he turned to work.
Riv brought up the diagnostic output for the impulse drive, and started checking each subsystem. He couldn't see anything directly obvious, except for that the port magnetic constrictors were being charged and discharged. Riv opened the energy flow system, and saw that the constrictor was sending impulse back into the impulse capacitance cells, which discharged back out to the constrictor.
Riv looked around for a crewman, and saw one working quietly a few feet away. "Specialist, what are you currently working on?"
The specialist looked up and said "Resetting the EPS sequencing for the Starboard side phaser emitters."
"I have a more important job, follow me." Riv commanded, turning and headed for the upper engineering platform.
The specialist had a moment where considered obeying or finishing, but decided to follow the mostly blue human.
Riv and the specialist got to the upper platform, and walked to the port side, and entered through a man door to the port side impulse drive access.
"I'm Riv", Riv said, squatting down and getting under the port side impulse constrictor.
"Tony", the specialist replied.
"Ok, so we're going to do something, slightly not by the book. There's a feedback loop between the magnetic constrictor and the impulse capacitance cell, stopping the impulse warm up pre-sequence. To fix it, we need to do two things at once, re-calibrate the constrictor, and simultaneously drain the impulse capacitance cell." The specialist looked bewildered as Riv scanned the constrictor with his tricorder. Riv saw that young human a bit scared, never being in a situation like this.
"Tony, look, come here." Tony climbed under the constrictor with Riv. "Look, when I say now, input this calibration, get it?"
"Yes sir" Tony said, Riv crawled out and started to interact with the configuration controls of the capacitance cell. He looked behind him, judged the wall to be thick at this point, and prayed. He typed a few more commands into controls and said "Now Tony".
Tony input the calibration, and Riv started the exhaust sequence for the capacitance cell. Sparks flew out of the console that Riv was standing by, causing a few small burns on his forearm. A millisecond later, a centimeter wide beam of white energy arced from the cell, to the wall behind Riv, slowly melting it. This should work, let's hope it does Riv thought.
A few seconds later, the energy beam dissipated, and the impulse drive pre-sequence restarted.
"Good job Tony, now get back to those phasers, I owe you a drink."
Tony nodded and headed out.
Riv looked down at his singed uniform, and gritted his teeth against the pain. There will be enough time for that once we can move Riv thought What I'm worried about now is Lieutenant O'Hara, I melted part of the bulk head, that almost never bodes well for the new guy.
"Now where's the CEO?" he said, heading back down to the main engineering deck.
Stephanie was in Jeffries tube Alpha laying on her back and working on something directly over her head. She wasn't hard to find. She was singing as she worked.
"When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me. Speaking words of wisdom, let it be."
Riv walked over to the head of the Jeffries tube. "Lieutenant? I don't mean to interrupt."
"Yer na," She said as she rolled over on her stomach and wriggled out of the tube. She walked over to a console checked a readout and put up a finger to silence Riv. "Computer. Begin Warp core Startup sequence, double verbose mode, display output on console 28 with a graph overlay o' tolerance zones on console 30."
The computer responded in it's usual monotone. "Warp Core Startup sequence initiated."
She called him over and sat him down. "I assume you know how to monitor a Core Startup sequence?"
"Yes ma'am. I can monitor this for you." Riv said. Changing the topic, he continued.
"The impulse engines are warming up now ma'am, was a cyclic resonance in the impulse capacitance cell and the port side magnetic constrictor. Due to some damage in the impulse manifold, though, some of the energy had to be dispersed in an unconventional way." Riv said, knowing the next par t would either get him in trouble or get him esteem. "I ended up dispersing it into the interior bulkhead around the port side impulse control. It is safe to do in an emergency, but we will have to replace a section of the wall when things quiet down. Not melted through, mind you, just, uh, a little melted."
Stephanie glared daggers at Riv. "Ya did what, now, boyo?" Her tone was flat and even, her smile had evaporated and her brow furrowed. If looks could kill, this one would have blackened a star. "Are you tellin' me that you ain't even been here f'r an hour an' ya broke m' bloody ship?"
"I wouldn't say broke, it was bulkhead 375, plate 9, it was only deformed about 20%. Wont take long to repair, just not something that needs repair at the moment. The impulse engines are fine, and starting up, although we'll need to replace the manifold, took damager during the battle." Riv replied, defensively, hoping that a bulkhead duranium plate wouldn't be a black mark against him.
Stephane continued to glare at Riv. "Your punishment is t' design an' implement a replacement that won't melt. Ya've 48 hours. An' I see the specs b'fore ya install ANATHIN', Ensign. Understood?"
"Aye Aye Lieutenant." Riv said. Turning, he made his way to the turbolift to head to an engineering lab.
I've had worse first days Riv though, cradling his singed arm.
It was just then that MCPO Hale came walking back into Engineering, announcing that Life Support was back on line. A cheer went up from the crew. Stephanie smiled at this. She let them have a moment. She then raised her voice and said, in a not unfriendly manor, "All right ya gobshites! Back t' work!" She laughed lightly. You take the small victories where you can get them. Stephanie told Liz to report the good news to the Bridge.
Hale looked over Stephanie. "You are going to Sickbay."
Stephanie looked at Liz. "F'r what?" She asked. "I feel fine!"
Liz frowned and poked one of the open wounds on Stephanie's arm.
Stephanie did her best not to wince. She failed.
"Did that hurt? You," Liz began again, speaking very slowly. "Are. Going. To. Sickbay."
Stephanie opened her mouth to protest, But Liz was having none of it. "Steph, If I have to tell you again, I'm going to knock you out, throw you over my shoulder and bring you there myself.
Stephanie believed she would do it, too. She raised her open palms in a surrendering gesture, then threw off a mock salute. "Yes ma'am."
The computer picked that moment to say "Diagnostic and startup sequences complete. Intermix reaction starting in chamber one."
Stephanie ran over to where she left Riv monitoring the warp core and peered over his shoulder. "That's .02% deviation from normal..." She shooed Riv out of the chair and began tapping at the console madly...
Liz had caught up by this time. "It's within tolerances. We can fine tune later. We have damage control to do and you're going to sickbay. O'Malley and I can keep an eye on things here." She adopted a scolding, maternal tone. "You're going to Sickbay."
"Yes, Mom," Stephanie replied in a tone that oozed sarcasm. She left Engineering without another word.
END
LTjg Stephanie O'Hara
Chief Engineer
USS Merlin
Ens Riv O'Malley
Engineering
USS Merlin
