Repairs

Posted on Sat Jul 12th, 2025 @ 11:13am by Lieutenant Kiran Arai & Captain Piraa sh'Zamhlass

1,655 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Project EDEN
Location: Main Engineering
Timeline: 1015; July 26, 2401

A loud metallic groan echoed throughout Engineering as the ship slowly shifted in the ion storm it was trapped in. Engineering, unlike the bridge at the top of the ship, featured no exterior windows as it was always intended to be embedded deep in the ship's bulbous secondary hull. As such, there was no way to see what was happening outside the ship, nor could it be illuminated by its bright blue hues.

Instead, worklights had to be positioned throughout the area as much of the emergency lighting had already failed to start. The small engineering staff, many still coming in from their off-shift locations, struggled to get any of their normal instrumentation or equipment working. This only fueled the already growing tension throughout the room.

From the Master Systems Display table, a table which was basically his own office at this point, Kiran was still trying to pinpoint the various issues cropping up. There had been more power failures, which was having a domino effect on not only the other systems, but also the repair schedule. Life support was fully functional, for now, but relays were going out all over the ship.

"Lieutenant!" called out a Grazerite petty officer from the upper deck. "Structural integrity has dropped to eighty percent. The field emitters are losing their focus, and it's getting difficult keeping a solid plasma stream into the forward generator."

"Try and reroute it manually, and push everything that can be to secondary systems. Let's focus on maintaining what we have before we start trying to repair what we don't." Kiran replied. "I wouldn't say no to getting the lights back on, it would make things run much smoother.

The Grazerite turned back to his console and began to tap feverishly, only to pause and retype when sections of the console stopped working or responding. "Chief, I think our ODN connections are going out!"

Kiran thought to himself 'Great, something else breaking.' He didn't want to say it out loud in case the universe was testing him. "It must be related to the issues we're having keeping structural integrity field emitters focused." He tapped a button on his console. "Engineering to Jones. How far along are you with the environmental systems?"

""I was just about to let you know, Lieutenant. There don’t seem to be any issues with the systems themselves. The real problem is with the ODN relays. One of the EPS relays redirected all its power to the temperature systems. It’s not damaged, but my diagnostic shows its power was maxed out by a command sent through the ODN network. This might be an even bigger problem than we anticipated."

"Ok, new plan. Ignore the environmental issues, unless they become life endangering. Let's see if we can work out why the ODN connections aren't running properly." Kiran replied, as his hands tapped away redirecting engineering damage control teams.

"Will do El Tee. I'll keep you updated. Jones out.

Kiran turned to the Grazarite officer. "Nice catch, Ensign. Try and reroute what you can, when you can. But let's focus and try and find out what's causing the issue in the first place."

"Copy that, Lieutenant," replied the Grazerite. He tapped a few things on the console and then stepped away bound for a damage control locker. "I can't do that from here," he informed the Lieutenant. "I'll hop into the tube and work on a manual bypass to the hard lines. The engineering computer should be able to sustain the compartment until Ops can get the ODN lines back in place."

"Did someone say Ops?" asked a Bolian Petty Officer that found his way into Engineering.

Kiran turned, at the sound of the new voice. "Yes, we're having a problem with the ODN network. You're from Ops, Petty Officer..." He wasn't sure of the name.

"Syile," replied the Bolian. "What exactly is the problem?" he asked, approaching the Chief Engineer. "Though where is the problem may be the more accurate question. Are we in an ion storm? Did I hear that right?"

Kiran nodded, both acknowledging the name, and confirming the ion storm. "Yes, Petty Office Syile, we're in an ion storm. It's apparently knocked out a few systems, though I'm starting to suspect it's just wreaking havok on the ODN network, and that's causing the system outages."

"Ion storm?" repeated Syile, turning to one of the barely functioning monitors. "If I had to guess, I bet we took an energy surge when an ion blast hit the lateral sensor array. Normally, sensor palettes are coated with two layers of a nanopolymer. But I was reading in the logs the other day that due to all of the excitement around Frontier Day, there were portions of the Valiant's sensors that didn't receive their required coats. And if that guess is correct, I would bet that sections of our ODN and EPS networks have been depolarized. Unless we can bypass or fix that, we're not going anywhere."

Kiran thought for a moment before speaking. "What is this, a Tuesday? Let's go with that assumption for now, because we have no idea what else it could be right now. Pick a system that we're having issues on, a low level system, and check the isolinear chips for damage, or if they've been depolarized. Swap them out for some blanks from storage, and see if you can get that system online." He tapped the table bringing up a list of the systems that were offline. He found one, and tapped it. "Try the engineering level replicator systems. If we can get them back online, we'll know we're onto a winner."

"Replicators!?" cried the Bolian, his tone incredulous. "We're in the middle of a disaster and you want to get your raktajino fix?" The Petty Officer shook his head in disbelief before moving over to a maintenance hatch with a tricorder and a box of isolinear blanks in his hand.

Kiran stiffened. "Petty Officer Syile," he snapped. "This has nothing to do with my raktajino. I don’t even like the stuff. I asked you to test a low level system because we still don’t know if this will fix anything. I’m not going to waste time or manpower diverting everyone to a repair method we aren't even sure will work yet." He noticed a few officers around the room pretending not to listen. "Do I make myself clear, Petty Officer?"

Sylie blinked, his mouth slightly ajar. He'd been warned on prior assignments that his mouth would continue to get himself in trouble if left unchecked, and once again they'd been proven right. There were too many times that he'd forgotten his place. He could just hear his father's voice now, scolding him for not holding onto Warrant Officer pips like his tight-lipped twin sister. "Y-y-yes, Lieutenant. My apologies."

The Bolian fumbled the tools as he set to work on the replicator. "Sorry, sir. I understand the logic of what you're wanting to do here, sir." He opened the tricorder and began to sync it to the replicator's diagnostic unit. "I am detecting a low-level depolarization here, sir. It doesn't look to be spreading, almost as if the ion surge lacked enough energy to continue forward."

"The ion storm knocked out half the ship, I wonder why the surge was so weak once it got into the systems that it couldn’t go further. Let’s try repolarizing a few chips and see if that corrects the issue. If not, we’ll continue the swap-out. Nice catch, Petty Officer," Kiran replied.

Sylie grabbed a nearby tool, and held it close when he took out the first chip. He thumbed the tool on, ran it over the chip for five seconds, and then turned it off. He ran the tricorder over it once to verify that depolarization was complete. Then, just before he reached up to reinsert the chip, the Bolian thought to verify that the replicator's power source was disconnected. His blue hands ran across seven more chips, performing the depolarization process on six of those and replacing the seventh chip (which had been burnt out) with a fresh item. Satisfied at last, he called out, "Moment of truth!" just as he restored power to the unit.

The replicator hummed back online as Kiran breathed a small sigh of relief. "Running a diagnostic..." he said, his eyes scanning the diagnostic screen on the table. "It seems to have done it. The system's showing as green across the board. That's the confirmation we needed. Let's try it on a another system, a higher level one. Let's try... the internal sensors, might give us a better idea of what we're dealing with ship wide."

"That's..." began the Bolian. "That's going to be a bit more of a challenge, Lieutenant. Internal sensors are managed by substations all throughout the hull. We'll have to reset each one and bring it up piece by piece." He held his hand up quickly to deter any protest that might come. "Doable, yes, but all we're doing is resetting the system, but that is not going to keep it from getting knocked out again by the ion storm."

"Then let's get it started. The quicker we can get everything back online, the better for everyone it is. Plus we can get a better look at the ion storm, and know what we're dealing with." Kiran replied.

Sylie nodded, shifting his weight in order to push himself off the floor and back onto his feet. "I'll contact my team and get fresh chips distributed to the junctions throughout the ship. I'll go ahead and hit the control unit on this deck. That'll be the first piece of the system and I can have it up in about fifteen minutes."

"Sounds good, get too it Petty Officer." Kiran ordered.

 

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