Make and Mend

Posted on 22 Oct 2018 @ 5:15am by Staff Warrant Officer William Griffin

966 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Fractured
Location: Main Engineering
Timeline: MD2, 1300 Hours

Staff Warrant Officer William Griffin had spent the past two hours - interrupted only once by a meeting with Ops and Tactical - working on the exhaustive list of damaged systems and components throughout the Black Hawk. It was a testament to Reggie Hawthorn that the ship was intact and moving under her own power at all - she was being held together by structural integrity fields, backup systems, and emergency generators.

He'd ordered the list by priority - structural integrity and primary power systems first, then primary propulsion and tactical systems, then comms and sensors, then all the other myriad of secondary systems that kept a Starship running. He was grateful that Ops were helping with secondary systems and he was sure that Lieutenant Di Pasquale would be doing her own tactical work on top of and besides what engineering would be doing, but the bulk of the burden fell on what remained of the Engineering team, some twenty short with most of the experienced people gone.

He first sent the list to Captain Geisler, cc'd to the XO and Lieutenant Parks with a note informing him of the priority systems he'd implemented and an action plan to begin repairs which was fairly simple - one repair job at a time until all jobs were complete. Then he was able to stand from the small desk in Regg... in his office and take a moment to stretch before walking out into the large space of main Engineering.

"Gather round, people!" Griffin called to the engineering staff, waiting a few moments for the dozen or so engineers to assemble around him. They were a motley crew, mostly enlisted people, four few warrant officers and two - count them, one two, commissioned officers - an ensign and a junior lieutenant.

"I'm sure you've all heard all kindsa scuttlebutt about what's goin' on, so here it is. First, Lieutenant Hawthorn is MIA. We all know what that probably means." He paused for a moment to let that sink in, and to let the gasps, murmurs, and yelps pass. "The fact that this ship's intact at all is a testament to him, and to all of you. We'll have time to make remembrance of that later, but for now, we've got work to do."

"Second," Griffin continued after a moment's silence, "I'm the new Chief Engineer. I think most of you know who I am," he looked at the faces gathered around him, recognizing most of them. The fighter maintenance department and the engineering department had always had a friendly rivalry and most of his boys and girls down in the hangar spent a fair amount of time hanging out with his new boys and girls in engineering, as a consequence most of the enlisted engineers already knew Griffin, either in person or by reputation. "Just in case, I'm Staff Warrant Officer William Griffin. You can call me Mr. Griffin, Chief, or if you have a thing for being verbose, Staff Warrant Officer Griffin. If you've got questions or comments, stow 'em for now. We've got too much to be doing."

Griffin punched in a command and the master systems display lit up, displaying a diagram of the ship speckled with orange and red markers highlighting damaged systems and components. "As you can see, the ship's a damn mess, we're understaffed and we're short on resources." He saw the engineers studying the display, there were frowns and raised eyebrows all around - the MSD looked like a gaudy Christmas tree. "I don't need to tell you your jobs." He grumbled, "we're gonna focus on structural integrity and primary power as priority one, then propulsion systems, then tactical systems. Sensors, comms and secondary systems can wait."

"You might be wondering - where the hell are we even gonna start with this mess - well I've got an answer for that." The Chief grinned wryly at the assembled team as he pulled up the job list, "I've made up a list of jobs and it's a damn long one. Jobs are sorted by priority - red first, orange second, yellow third. Everybody take a job, get it done, come back an' take another one - we'll keep doin' that 'til we fall down or there ain't no more jobs to be done." He paused to assign the first job, repairing the structural integrity field generator for the starboard nacelle pylon, to himself. "We're Starfleet engineers, this is what we do and we're the best at it, so let's get it done!"

There was a murmur around the room as the first dozen jobs after Griffin's started filling in with names as people took the tasks he had laid out. He had to appreciate the lack of complaining and the get-done attitude the engineers had. They'd just lost their chief and been through hell and they were, it seemed, taking it all in stride.

"One more thing," Griffin announced, "Like I said, we're short on resources. I'm still waiting on a list of supplies from Ops, but for now, it's enough to know that we're short. So... from now on and until further notice every part has gotta be saved. That means repairing components instead of replicating new ones if it's at all practical, patching instead of replacing an' bypassing to secondaries where we can - it don't gotta be pretty, people, it's just gotta work."

That announcement did garner a series of groans and murmurs from the engineers, one that he had been expecting. Honestly, he shared their dismay. It would be twice as hard and take twice as long to make the repairs needed without the ease of simply replicating new components as needed, but without supplies from Starfleet, make and mend was the order of the day.

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