Fixing What's Broken

Posted on Sat Feb 2, 2019 @ 10:03pm by Captain Madelina Weisz & Master Chief Petty Officer Thomas Barnes

Mission: On Slippery Ground
Location: Victorious
Timeline: MD 1 || 1245 Hours

Maddy made her way into Engineering looking a little rough around the edges, but that wasn't going to stop her from doing what needed to be done. "Master Chief Barnes, I hear things are a bit chaotic around here," she commented. "I'm here to help you fix that. We're looking for an isolinear chip, 30987-A to be exact. We find that, and replace it with this," She held up the chip Baker had given her. "Things should start to stabilize."

Tom had his master control station ripped halfway apart by the time Maddy had entered Engineering. He himself was laying underneath the console, trying to use his tools to bypass the primary computer circuits. Looking up at her and the chip she held, Tom couldn't help but color himself confused. "30987-A?" he asked. "You're talking about one of several thousand control chips aboard the ship. It'll be like finding a needle in a haystack."

"I figured as much, which is why we should probably get started," she said. "Though, since you're already down there, why not take a look around? I've already used my access codes and found out an isolinear chip was replicated and used here in Engineering. That's what's causing all the trouble. The new chip will replace it."

He sighed. "That really doesn't narrow it down, Commander." Tom set down his tools and picked up his tricorder. "Every console in here has a series of control chips, and several of those are replicated due to various circumstances. You'd be surprised how often replicated ones are used on starships." He activated his tricorder and started to adjust its settings for materials used in replicated chips.

Why was nothing ever easy? She already knew the answer to that, and it was a simple one word answer. Life. There wasn't really much about life that was easy. "We have to at least try to find it," she said with a frown. "And I know that yanking random chips will cause more harm than good."

"That's the understatement of the year," Tom muttered, crawling out from under the console. "My tricorder detects no less than two hundred replicated chips in Engineering alone. Eighty of those are command chips."

"No one ever said being in Starfleet was going to be easy," she said, reaching for a flashlight. "There's no log or record of what chip goes where?" Wishful thinking, perhaps, but it was worth asking.

"Consoles are opened multiple times a day," Tom answered. "Imagine all of the alarms and unnecessary quality control that follows. Only Douglas Adams' Zorgons would enjoy such minutia." He sighed as he looked around the room. "I suggest we start with the ancillary stations. Those are the least monitored and would have been the easiest for someone to..."

He froze, thinking of just a few hours earlier of Lieutenant Rho coming by Engineering during the busyness of getting the ship up and running. "That son of a..." He pointed a finger at a particular console and made a beeline for it.

Maddy blinked, looking toward the console he was pointing at before following him toward it. "What? What's wrong?"

"Lieutenant Rho was in here earlier," Tom said, stepping up to the console and pulling off the chip covers. "Said something about checking on Intelligence systems, and he was the only person I wasn't keeping an eye on. He had to have been the person to switch it all!" He started scanning each of the replicated chips, looking for a 30987-A.

"Lieutenant Rho?" she asked, unable to keep the shock from her face or voice. Then, she thought back to her encounter with William, or Jarash. "Did you happen to get a look at his eyes while he was here?"

"His eyes?" Tom asked, removing a couple of the orange chips just to give them a thorough scan. "I looked at him, but I was quite occupied with the warp engine startup. Why?"

Maddy took a breath. "I've apprehended the individual responsible for the sabotage here. It was Warrant Officer William Fontaine, one of our Medical Officers," she said. "But, it wasn't him in the end. It turned out he was really Chameloid by the name of Jarash. We aren't the only ones who are going through this. They're trying to stall us and are targeting the Apollo. That's why we have to find this chip and replace it, or they're going to get the cargo the Apollo is carrying."

Tom paused to look at Maddy. "Chameloid?" he echoed. Shaking his head, he looked down at the scans his tricorder was collecting. "I wouldn't have noticed his eye color, but he definitely seemed determined about something. These aren't the chips we're looking for." Tom reinserted the chips into the station, still unsure of what to think about the Chief of Intelligence.

"I'll contact Commodore Aravan and have him look into it. Lieutenant Rho is still on board the Triumphant and could be responsible for the chaos over there."

He sighed, not at all surprised both ships were being affected by some sort of crisis. "There's got to be more to this than gelpacks," he muttered before pointing off to another console. "Start checking chips over there," he said, knowing he couldn't actually order the XO around. "I'll move over to the warp engine controls."

"You and I are thinking along the same lines," she stated, moving over to the area he indicated. Maddy felt they'd have an easier time trying to find a needle in a haystack, and had she that kind of time, perhaps a trip to the holodeck might be in order to attempt suck a thing. However, there wasn't much time for anything like that. Not when there were more important things that needed her attention. "There's always more than meets the eye lately. And here I thought I was just jaded."

Tom yanked off a maintenance cover and started to visually scan the chips before breaking out the tricorder. "Orions. Blood-thirsty energy beings. Romulans. Sooner or later, we were bound to get an easy assignment like sabotage on a milk run."

Maddy removed a panel and followed suit. This was the longest she'd ever spent in Engineering. It wasn't that she didn't know a thing or two, but mostly because she was always afraid she'd end up breaking something. "And I have a feeling we're just getting started," the redhead pointed out. "I never did get the chance to congratulate you, either."

"It's another notch on the resume," Tom replied, scanning his set of chips now. "Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying the change. And, I have had worst first days on the job. So far, anyway."

"We haven't had to put out a plasma fire yet," she said, hoping like hell that wasn't going to happen.

"The day's still young." The Chief Engineer replaced the cover. "Not here." Even in this small engine room, there were more than a dozen consoles and and several dozen circuit control units for critical systems. The chip could be in any one of those. He moved towards the impulse systems monitors.

The Executive Officer gave an exasperated sigh. "It's not here, either," she said, putting the cover back on and moving on to the next to repeat the process. "I could have simply asked him where he put it, but I had to phaser him twice just to get him to go down. He had plans to blow us all to Kingdom Come."

"There's too many safety protocols with the antimatter pods and the warp drive itself." Tom pulled off two maintenance covers and started to search. "The computer would quickly override any malicious code there. Other systems like phasers and shields are easy to override. It's a design flaw that's exploited every single time the person in the center seat demands more power for either during a crisis."

Maddy shook her head. "We were in the warhead control room. He had his hand in the torpedo ready to detonate it, or so that's what he wanted me to think. It wasn't active, and I called his bluff."

Tom shook his head, not liking the fact that he was now wrong on two counts because he kept making assumptions. "Computer viruses, manual torpedo detonations... what's next? Garanian Bolites in the air circulation system?" He closed the first cover, satisfied that the culprit didn't reside in there.

"Like you pointed out, the day is still young, so who knows what else can happen," the redhead stated, not finding what she was looking for in that console, which meant it was on to the next. "The only real highlight about trying to find this chip is it allows me to spend a little time with you."

"Though I'm sure we both wish we were somewhere else, doing something else." Tom closed the other panel and started to move towards the center stations where he'd set up camp all day. He didn't remember anyone coming through replacing chips, but then again, a lot had transpired today. "Are you absolutely certain it's in here?"

Maddy silently agreed with wishing they were both somewhere else, doing anything other than what they were doing. Hell, chasing down a greased targ sounded better than trying to find a chip among thousands of others. "The computer pinpointed Engineering as its location," she told him, looking through the console in front of her. "If it isn't in here, then we're royally screwed."

Tom pulled off a series of panels under a console and started to scan. "The computer's already been corrupted," he pointed out. "As former Operations, I can assure you that if a simple virus can take down our defensive systems, then I'm sure it can also corrupt internal sensors and logs."

"Then, I suppose we'll know if I was misled soon enough," she stated, looking through the chips on the console. Frustration was starting to set in, and Maddy found herself wanting to throttle something. Nothing living, but something to get rid of the aggression that was building up.

He replaced two of the covers and started looking through the third. He pulled out orange chip after orange chip, scanning each one and putting them back when he was satisfied. He was about to close the hatch when he spotted something. One of the orange chips had an unusual appearance, wasn't as fully translucent as the others. Tom withdrew the chip to give it a close visual examination. He brushed his fingers over the imprinted surface and felt something unusual over the serial number.

30887-A. The first 8 felt different. He held it up to the light to see multiple scratches in that number, as if the 8 was artificially made. "I think I found it," Tom called out.

Maddy closed the cover and moved over to him, looking at the chip he held in his hand. "It definitely stands out from the others now that it's not among them. I think that might be it. What's the number on it?"

Tom handed Maddy the chip for her to see for herself. Other than parroting the number and feeling the vandalism with her own fingers, there wasn't anything he could say.

She examined the chip. "There's only one way to know for sure," the redhead said, holding the good chip toward him. "Pop that one in and see if things improve."

He accepted the new chip and placed it into the console. Nothing seemed to happen immediately, but he did move to a screen to check on readouts. "The virus appears to have stopped spreading. We should be able to lock it down now and start rebuilding our systems. I'm going to need help from the bridge to do it though."

"I can do that. Just let me know what you need done, and I'll do it," Maddy said. "I'll let you know when I've made it back to the bridge."

"I'll relay instructions as soon as you're there," Tom said, sitting back down at his station and starting to let his fingers fly around the controls. "There's a lot to do."

Maddy nodded her head. "We've got this. I'll let you know when I'm in position," she said. Unable to help herself, and since no one else was around, she pressed a kiss to his cheek before departing.

Tom smiled back at her as she left. He supposed enjoying an occasional perk here or there wouldn't hurt... but not while they were still in crisis mode. Tom refocused on his work and started to isolate the virus.