Bonding

Posted on 01 Jan 2016 @ 5:24pm by Staff Warrant Officer William Griffin
Edited on on 18 Mar 2018 @ 9:09pm

1,342 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Rude Awakening
Location: Flight Deck, USS Black Hawk

William Griffin stood on a a service gantry next to a Valkyrie fighter on the Black Hawk's fight deck. he had paused momentarily in his work to watch the carefully choreographed chaos that was the deck crew at work. Fighters were still coming in from the deployment against the USS O'Carroll and the crew chiefs were moving them to their assigned parking bays.

The transfer of his squadron from the USS Halifax had been sudden and without warning. His own transfer to the USS Black Hawk had been equally sudden. His deck crew had been forced, with only a few hours notice, to pack up lock-stock and move to a new ship, they had lost their Squadron Leader and been thrown into a combat situation with barely any time to settle in. The Flight Deck Commander was barking orders, keeping what looked like chaos from descending into the real thing.

The few damaged fighters had been moved to the rear, out of the way, into his domain. In time, when all the fighters had been docked and the chaos settled down, they would be moved into the maintenance bay that he called home. For now, it was the duty of he and his men to get the working fighters serviced and turned around ready to go back out at a moment's notice.

As each fighter 'parked' in it's bay and the pilots disembarked, a small group of engineers and weapons specialists descended upon it. These were his men, the fighter maintenance crews, and a quick scan of the vast hanger identified no problems. They seemed, for the most part, to be a good crew.

He had to admit, coming into this position with little notice and assuming a chief position over an already established crew had been uncomfortable. He hadn't yet had time to get to know his crew chiefs, let alone the engineers and specialists. His first briefing with them had been short and terse, he had spelled out the situation and given them their orders, nothing more. There had been no time for questions or more than the briefest of introductions.

He had caught more than one of them eyeing him when they thought he wasn't looking and there had been whispers already, his men thought he was a cold, foul tempered bastard. Likely as not, they'd never get to see any other side of him than the 'on-duty' persona he projected. Gruff, direct and demanding was his style. He had no time for idiots, sloths, slouchers or wasters, as far as he was concerned the men and women who were here, were here to work.

Bill turned his attention back to his own charge, the Valkyrie fighter belonging to the squadron leader. Diagnostics showed that it was mostly intact. The shield generators had taken some strain, but that wasn't uncommon and they only needed re-tuning for now, along with the phaser emitters and photon targeting sensors. The bulk of his attention was focused on a phaser scar that ran along the port side. The ablative armor had done it's job well in protecting the hull of the little fighter by sacrificing itself and it needed replacing, so he bent to the task.

It was a simple job to separate the armor plate from the hull of the ship and strip it away using a magnetic decoupler. As the plates came free he let them drop to the deck, one by one, until he had removed all of the damaged section. After the last plate fell free, he could begin to work on the underlying insulating material, a polyceramic mat that was affixed directly to the hull. A quick inspection showed that it seemed fine, but he had learned from experience that once removed it was better replaced, it tended to peel away after the adhesive had been used once, so he peeled it off and dropped it aside the damaged plates.

Underneath, the hull looked fine, but he took the time to run a tricorder scan for microfractures and heat distortion. The tricorder signaled the all clear and, satisfied, he began the process of applying new polyceramix matting. The matting was held on with nanofilament glue and he was careful with the application. Again, experience had taught him the hard way that if you got the stuff on your skin it required the attention of a surgeon to remove, he still had memories of walking down corridors with his damn hand stuck to his ear and he wasn't keen to repeat that particular walk of shame.

Working fast, lest the glue set on the hull, he rolled out a strip of the matting and carefully applied it to the hull. It took only moments to set, then he was able to start lifting new armor plates from the stack next to him and magnetically coupling them to the hull. They were heavy, but he was more than strong enough and he appreciated the workout.

The entire job took him five minutes and then he took a half step backwards, satisfied with the job. Another tricorder scan showed that the armor was at full integrity, and hence, the minor repairs to the squad leader's fighter were done. He was just bending down to put his tools away when he heard a distressed cry, and someone shouted "Chief!"

"What!?" He roared back, locating the source of the sound. He jumped the meter and a half off the maintenance platform and took off at a run towards the second bay down from his own. His heart was in his throat, half expecting the worst, half annoyed that he had to make the journey in the first place, but when he skidded to a halt at the bay, the sight that greeted him made him grin despite himself.

A young male crewman with his hand glued. Firmly stuck. Permanently attached at the molecular level, in fact, to the derrière of a young female crewman. The pair of them were blushing, bright red, one kid was trying to pull his hand off the other kid's ass and only succeeding in jerking her backwards like a puppet, and the language she was using would have made a marine blush. The crew chief for the fighter was helplessly doubled over the rail of the maintenance platform in hysterics of laughter. Honestly, it was all Bill could do to hold back his own laughter, the two looked so ridiculous.

"God dammit, you idiots." Griffin barked at them, his gruff tone at odds with the wide grin on his face. "Crewman, stop jerkin' her around before ya both fall off the damn mantenance platform! Work together an' get down here, we're goin' to sickbay."

"Uh... Chief?" The female of the duo asked, her voice sounded aptly horrified. "Could we... transport? This is... not... well... please?"

"Transport's for medical emergencies only, an' this ain't no emergency. Besides, it's tradition." He told her gruffly. By this time, half the mechanics from the surrounding bays had come to watch and at least half of them were grinning like loons. Everyone who had been doing the job for more than a few years had experienced, or at least seen this ritual.

"Come on, you two. Get down here." He told them, "Chief..." he paused for half a second as memory strained, "Jones. Try to pick yerself up off the floor by the time I get back an' pull two crewmen from a finished bird to get this one done, ASAP." He then turned to the assembled engineers, giving them a raised eyebrow, "get back to work, you lazy bums! I'm not runnin' a god damn circus here!" He roared at them, still grinning.

The two crewmen awkwardly made their way down the stairs and then walked, hand to ass, across the maintenance bay with half the engineers in the room chuckling and grinning at them. Griffin had a feeling he had just went up a notch in the deck crew's estimation. Bonding, he mused to himself, happened in the strangest ways.

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