Inspection: Operations

Posted on 09 Jul 2016 @ 7:03pm by Lieutenant Commander Temerant Bast & Captain Harvey Geisler

930 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Risky Business
Location: Deck 5, Jeffries Tube Junction 5C
Timeline: MD 2

Bast pulled the spanner out of his toolbelt, and opened the outer casing on the power relay. There was no sign that the relay was out of alignment, but the output on this thing was at 90%, slightly below acceptability levels. Since this power relay routed power to the science labs, which would be tasked with trying to peek through the dense stellar material of the nebula, he was making it a top priority to get this up to maximum efficiency. And since Engineering was understaffed and overworked with the preparations, he'd taken it upon himself to get the job done.

He adjusted one of the buffers and realigned one of the power cells, and measured the output, gaining 2% in efficiency. Still below acceptable levels, he hunched back down over the relay, using his tricorder to scan every component.

Harvey was walking down the corridor bound for his next destination, only to hear some faint clattering behind a bulkhead. It didn't take much for him to spot the open Jeffries Tube hatch. Glancing inside, he spotted a familiar face a few sections down. "Commander?" Harvey called down the tube.

Not waiting for the Ops Chief's response, Harvey decided that since he was on an inspection tour, this gave him a good chance to peek inside the ship's delicate innards to see how she was fairing. He climbed inside the tube and began to crawl towards Bast.

The sudden call caught Bast by surprise. He jerked up, and banged his head against the narrow conduit.

"Ow!" he complained, followed by a Trill expletive that the Universal Translator didn't bother with. Rubbing his head, he looked down the tube to see who had called out to him, and was somewhat surprised to see the Captain crawling toward him.

"Captain," he said. "What brings you down into the bowels of the ship?"

"Inspecting," he simply replied. "A captain should know every bolt, every weld of his ship, and I've become unfamiliar with mine." Harvey continued to crawl towards Bast.

"Indeed," agreed Bast. "Though not all captains feel the same way. There are those who rely on their staff, perhaps too much sometimes."

Harvey had arrived to sit next to Bast in the cramped tube. "And what do you think of my relationship with the staff. Do I rely on you too much or not enough?"

"I don't think that's for me to say, I think that's in the eye of the beholder," replied Bast. "You have to rely on your staff as much as you need to, in some departments more than others, and the staff has to be able to give you the support you need. You also need to know the extent to which you can trust your staff to be competent enough to give you the support you require of them."

Harvey was not surprised at the man's diplomatic response. "You sure you're not beckoning for a position in Command one of these days?" he asked rhetorically. "What's the situation down here?" he asked, changing the subject.

Bast chuckled, still rubbing the bruise on his head. "Not in a million years, Captain," he said. "I enjoy life in the trenches way too much. Like now, trying to work out some of this old girl's power distribution issues. We had some problems on Yolvanda since Sickbay and the medical labs were requiring so much power, we had to cut back on a few non-essential systems. I wouldn't want that happening again, at least not while we're in the nebula."

The Captain agreed completely with Temerant's assessment. "I do hope the ship's age isn't becoming an issue. Are we still able to find and replicate the parts that we need?"

"Most of the smaller ones, yes. But for the bulkier parts, such as Warp coils, or phaser emitters, we're going to need the industrial replicators on Deep Space 11. Unity just doesn't have the infrastructure for heavy maintenance."

"So you're giving me motivation to get the Task Force's plans more in motion?" Harvey replied. "We're not that bad off, are we?"

"Not at this point, no. At least in the short term. But there's no telling what will happen inside the nebula," conceded Bast. "I'm just giving you the plain hard truth. Either we upgrade the facilities on Unity, recapture DS11, or we find friends with big replicators. Or we won't make it to the long term."

A grim expression gripped Harvey's face, not relishing the thought of the ship's own mortality. "Let's just hope that never becomes a problem." He paused for a second. "Though, commanding a Sovereign wouldn't be too bad."

"Though it would be quite a challenge to know every bolt and weld on a ship that size," pointed out Bast.

"One thing you need to learn about me, Temerant," Harvey said, purposely using the man's name, "is that I enjoy a good challenge. Is there anything you need to get us back in shape? Aside from a month in stardock of course."

"Don't worry, Captain," said Bast. "We'll be ready. I've got my team working on doing everything they can to stabilize the sensor grid, and I'm tracking down any power distribution anomalies. The computer systems were all completed before we left Unity."

He nodded in reply. "That's good, Commander. I won't keep you any longer. Just... don't injure yourself. You might have a department at your disposal, but I need its Chief on the bridge, not in sickbay."

"Yes, Sir!" replied Bast.

He watched as Geisler crawled away, and returned to his task with the power relay.

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