Working out the Kinks

Posted on 13 Feb 2026 @ 11:19pm by Lieutenant Ranul Frex & Lieutenant Commander Camila Di Pasquale

1,326 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Epitaph
Location: Engineering
Timeline: July 15, 2390 || 1500 Hours

[ON:]

After her meeting with the new Operations Chief, Aerie Mak, Camila retrieved another PADD from her office and looked it over, then headed to see the Chief Engineer. While the ship was in dock, the crew had a rotating shore leave, but she had sacrificed hers for her department personnel with the exception of the absolute minimum skeleton crew the ship required.

She stepped off the turbolift on deck thirteen, grateful to have arrived on the aft side of the ship instead of the port side where Medical had their morgue. She had been there far too many times to identify personnel after an attack or something gone horribly wrong and had no desire to be any where near it.

She took a calming breath and headed into Engineering, feeling the thrum of the warp core and ship fill her bones. She stood there for a moment, simply enjoying it and letting a loose violin melody start to form in her head to wrap around the hum and thrum. It had been a long time since she had played a violin and yet yet to replace the ones that had been lost on the original Black Hawk during the Consortium Crisis. She had been so young and naive then, she mused, but her love of music still lingered.

Frex was working with Kemm on a nearby station when he heard the doors to Main Engineering open and close. He looked up to see Camila standing there. She stopped by the warp core and was starring at it....almost like he did sometimes. He handed off the stuff to Kemm to continue before walking over and saying, "It does the spirit good sometimes to look at the warp core, doesn't it?"

Camila turned, the beat lost as she faced the Chief Engineer. "It's nice to hear it when it isn't being strained," she admitted. "Do you have time to discuss some Security matters, Lieutenant?"

"Yeah, what do you have on your mind? Does it have to do with what we just experienced with the doppelgangers or is it more of a general request?" Frex offered up with a small smile and chuckle as he thought about the incidents of recently.

"It's far deeper than doppelgangers, Lieutenant," Camila said. "The entire ship is getting an upgrade and I need to make absolutely certain that all departments and personnel are safe. Engineering is going to have a big role in this."

"Sounds like I should probably start writing stuff down then," Frex replied as he walked over to a nearby station and grabbed a PADD. Once everything was opened up, Frex replied, "Well, what did you have in mind Commander? I might have some thoughts to run by you too."

"You'll be taking a lot of notes, I'm sure," Camila said as she followed him with her own PADD in hand. "I would suggest I brief you before you start offering thoughts. No offense, Lieutenant. Shall we go to your office or would you prefer somewhere else?"

Frex smile as he waved for Camila to follow him into his office. Once the door closed, Frex offered up a seat before saying, "Want anything to drink before we begin?" He pointed towards the replicator.

"No, thank you," she said as she took the offered seat with a soft sigh at the lack of comfort, yet ergonomic design that Starfleet insisted made for proper posture. The woman looked tired but determined regardless of what kind of seat she had to sit on. She handed him the PADD. "Sync it with yours and then we'll begin."

Frex took the PADD from Camila and looked on the back of it to get the PADD ID number off of it. He punched in the number to his own PADD before it started to sync up. It only took a moment for the two PADDs to sync as Frex handed the PADD back to Camila. He looked over the information as it began flowing in and he said, "Okay, this is impressive. But, also something totally doable. What part did you think would need the most attention first?"

"Maintaining power and integrity," Camila said without hesitation.

"Yeah, no power means we're defenseless and a few good pot shots would take us out or cripple us. I know that we have priority systems that we want running at all times, like the environmental systems. But, maintaining power to everything makes sure we have the best chances," Frex said as he pulled up the specs on the power and integrity systems. "Something we could do is reinforce the plasma relays throughout the ship and create secondary backups to the secondary backups or something? I might get with Kemm on that this one to see how we can better maintain power and integrity during the times we're fighting or having other issues," Frex said out loud to nobody in particular as he was thinking about how to better reinforce those systems.

Camila waited for him to get back on track and acknowledge that there was much more to be reviewed.

"But, yeah. There's also prevent unauthorized system control, preserve security infrastructure, and refuse unverified orders in that section as well. Would you say that would be the order of importance for stuff in that section as well?" Frex asked, looking over the rest of the stuff in that section.

"That, access control support, transporter security, intrusion and a half a dozen other things," she said. "This is going to take some time."

"Yeah, that's what I'm seeing. You really made sure that everything was covered. Don't tell me you just started on this? Cause, if you did, that's impressive, Commander," Frex said, scrolling through the rest of the list.

"No, it's been in the works for some time," Camila answered.

"Well, the good thing is that it shouldn't take us too long to implement all of this into the Black Hawk. I'm thinking....maybe like a few days to a week. Just depends on if we have anymore issues with doppelgängers or something? Or any fighting between now and then," Frex said as he got to the bottom of the list and finished reading.

"We have twenty days, period," she said. "After that, we'll be leaving this dock and heading back into the unknown."

"Well, we've got our work cut out for us with all of this. But, this is totally doable in that timeframe. I can get the engineers started on it right away, if you'd like?" Frex asked.

"That would be best," Camila said. "You have clearance for everything you need." She hesitated for a moment. "I also would like to apologize to you for treating you as a suspect with the tricobalts."

Frex shrugged his shoulders as he thought about it all. "You were following a lead. It led straight to me. We didn't know that the Commodore or Joey were replaced with doppelgängers. I appreciate the fact that I know if anything were to happen, I'm on the safest starship in the fleet. But, one that does its job in finding the real people who did stuff. So, we're good."

Camila smiled and it reached her eyes. "Thank you," she said. "That means a lot to me and I would like to count on you again some day in a less stressful environment. For now..we have work to do."

"Oh, today! Today, we have a lot of good work ahead of us. I'm excited to see what we can't put together. Especially on this," Frex said as he smiled himself, which reached his eyes as well.

"If you're good for it, then let's get to it," Camila said.

"Alright, I'll get it started and give you an update in the next few days on how everything is going. Unless you have some questions beforehand," Frex said with a small smile before getting up and getting to work.

[OFF:]

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