Repairs

Posted on Thu Feb 2, 2017 @ 5:00am by Master Chief Petty Officer Thomas Barnes & Lieutenant Vincent Kramer & Lieutenant JG Zander Devereaux

Mission: An Orion to Die For
Location: Several about the ship
Timeline: MD 3 || 1330 Hours

Thomas passed through the docking portal to board the Victorious. Based on Ensign sh'Paveress' initial report, the small ship had performed remarkably well, except several phaser and shield emitters had come close to overloading. He knew the Chief Engineer wouldn't be far behind him -- or perhaps already here -- but Tom wanted to find out why the emitters had been so stressed. Repairing was one thing. Preventing it from happening again was even better.

Lieutenant JG Zander Devereaux stood over a table as he organized a kit full of tools while muttering. A cup of coffee with a knuckle duster handle was near him and he paused to take a drink before he continued to assemble the kit. "I swear, the next time someone touches my toolkit is the next time I'm going to be demoted," he muttered.

Lieutenant JG Michel Kawalski had been the Chief Engineer on the Victorious during the latest battle. He had been very pleased with how this 'fiery little ship' had done so well. Kawalski had been notified that SCPO Barnes had come aboard. Michel made his way to the Port side phaser emitters to meet up with him.

Tom had just set his toolkit on a nearby table in the phaser control room when he heard the doors open behind him. He didn't look to see who'd come in, but instead looked over to Lieutenant Devereaux who was fussing with a tool kit. "Something the matter, Lieutenant?"

Zander looked up when he had been addressed and gave a lopsided grin. "Some git was using my tool kit again without askin' and of course, nothin' is back the way it was supposed to be. You'd think that they would know what tool when in what slot. Probably some enlisted schlep, no disrespect intended to you, Master Chief."

The Chief raised an eyebrow. The lieutenant seemed to be distraught enough to forget the Ops Chief's rank. "None taken," he replied. "As soon as you can, grab a tricorder and a flux spectrometer and join me at the primary relay."

"Gotcha," Zander said as he grabbed his modified engineering tricorder and attached it to a tool belt he had around his waist, then added the flux spectrometer.

Kawalski walked in during the explanation and could relate, but Zander's fastidiousness just had to be overlooked because he was very good at what he did. "I can bring up what ever you need, just let me know."

"Kawalski, glad you could make it," Barnes said. "Pull up the log files from the fight with Raimus. We need to specifically take a look at what caused the overloads."

"Probably them tryin' to treat Vicky like she was a full sized ship of the line," Zander grunted as he headed for the emitters.

"If that's the case," Tom replied, trying to sync his PADD with the primary relay, "then I'm sure the Captain will love to hear that members of his command crew acted with negligence."

Kawalski began searching through the log files on his large PADD. He had data scrolling across the page with time stamp, weapons fired, impact times. He was beginning to see a sequence reoccurring. He called out, "Senior Chief I'm getting an indication in the data that whenever the Victorious pulled to starboard, the portside shield would drop in intensity for just a few seconds." He looked up to Barnes, "Could there be a correlation? Or is this just coincidence?"

"It's worth checking out," Tom replied immediately. "And, just Chief will do, Lieutenant. Senior Chief is for when we're in dress blues." He looked at his own PADD to see that the sync was complete. "I'm definitely reading fluctuations in the power flow. Lieutenant Devereaux, run a Level 4 Diagnostic on the relay connections."

Kawalski took a couple steps over to stand next to Devereaux and watched the scans begin. Ski leaned over and asked softly, "What's it been like working for the Chief?"

"I have no idea," Zander said as he calibrated the diagnostic and began to check them. "I never met him before now. Why?"

"Oh," Ski replied, "just curious. I'm sure he knows his stuff."

"I wouldn't know," Zander replied with a grunt. "I've been on this ship for two years and every damned time I get to know someone, they transfer off. That's the price of being on a flagship. We get the shit detail and people end up flipping out and wanting off."

Ski felt that Zander wasn't very happy with his current situation, but didn't know what to say, some remained quiet and focused on his own assignment.

Tom watched as the results of the diagnostics came through, but nothing really indicated what was wrong. "Looks like this is a dead end," he remarked. "What about you, Kawalski. Any theories about your pulling to starboard?"

Ski scratched his head as he twisted his lips slightly in thought before replying, "I've been reviewing the wiring and truncating schema . ." He stopped talking mid word when his eyes caught something. "This might be something. One deck down, . . the thruster containment system in the wall runs just a few centimeters from the GSI for the shield generator." He looked up to the Chief, "I don't read any damage in that area, but we should check that out."

"I think I got something," Zander called out with a grunt and the sound of something metallic hitting the floor came a second later.

Ski turned to Devereaux and asked, "What did you find?" He knew that determining the specific damage and then its cause was their real focus. Any monkey these days could do the repairs, but he didn't want these things to happen again if possible.

Zander picked up what looked like a burned out sensor coil and handed it to Kawalski. "This," he said. "I haven't analyzed it yet, but by the look of it, I'd say it hasn't been replaced since the first mission."

Ski pulled a tricorder out of his thigh pocket, flipped it open and began a scan. After a couple seconds the Engineer made a face of frustration then explained, "Not only was it burned out, but it was polarized too." He looked up at Zander then to the Chief, "Chief, what do you think would polarize a sensor coil?"

"Could be one of a half a dozen things," Zander said as he inspected it. "Point is, this should have been replaced already."

"You're right," Ski replied. "I think we should check the others, to see if they might be polarized as well."

"Then let's get to it," Zander replied before he went to start running scans and diagnostics.

Tom frowned upon the polarization. Every Starfleet ship possessed safeguard after safeguard to prevent such a failure in its power distribution systems. "Polarization of this magnitude isn't possible," he told both officers. He didn't want to vocalize his thoughts, but it was worth asking, "What in this sector would cause such a thing?"

Kawalski paused at the Chief's question just a little uncertain of an immediate answer. He looked down at the scan data and replied, "To be honest, I don't know Chief. Either something did his before we left space dock, before we arrived here, or during this battle. By checking them I expect to find out other details and hopefully be able to answer that very question." He looked to the Chief and back to Zander. That was the best 'Academy' answer he could come up with at the time, and hoped that would accept it.

Zander grunted as he checked another coil. "Same shit," he muttered before he stepped back. "Polarization of this magnitude is going to require a magneton sweep and all of these coils are going to need to be swapped out. We need a team on this."

Kawalski looked to Barnes, "Chief, do you want Operations staff on this, or I can contact Lt. Kramer?"

"The Operations staff can handle this," Tom said, running a scan of his own on the coils. "I know Lieutenant Kramer has his hands full back in Engineering. "There's no way these would have been polarized back in space dock. The Victorious has been used twice in the last week, and this problem would have shown up before. No, this is recent..."

Tom sighed. "Anyone know who's had access to her in the last twenty-four hours?"

"Only about forty people in the last hour and who knows how many before that," Zander said. "Check the log files. The sensors check everyone as soon as they enter here."

The Chief shook his head. It could have been caused by any number of things, especially since the last few days had been filled with more weird than anyone wanted. "We should be able to take care of these ourselves, provided there's enough dualitic inverters around. After that, we need to seal off this area for the time being."

Kawalski began to think about possible influences from outside the ship, "Has Science or Tactical observed or reported any unusual phenomenon in this area? I'm curious if it was an outside influence, it may have also comprised something aboard the Triumphant as well."

"I wouldn't know," Zander said as he went to check on another. "I'm just a Damage Control Spec....." The sound of a small explosion and the cursing of the short, stocky engineer followed it.

Several personnel turned at once at the sound of the explosion. Ski took a step closer to Zander, asking with concern, "Are you okay? What happened?"

Zander held his left hand which was bleeding and he grunted as he looked up. "Do I look like I'm okay?" he practically growled. "Damned EPS conduit blew on me!"

Tom, still near to his toolkit, grabbed one of the rags that he kept in his toolkit for occasions such as these. He quickly wrapped it around Zander's hand to contain the bleeding for now.

Kawalski tapped his comm badge, "Emergency Medical to Deck 4 on the Victorious, port side." He then reached out to Zander to help move him back some, away from the EPS conduit.

"I got this," Zander said. "I've had worse. I'll be able to get to medical. Cancel that call."

Ski stepped back, really not sure how to respond. Different people preferred to deal with injuries and challenges differently. "Alright." He tapped his comm badge again, "Cancel Medical request." He then focused on the task at hand and stepped over to the control console and shut down all power going through that area, rerouting the power needs temporarily through a different junction.

"Sorry about that, Lieutenant," Tom said quietly to Zander before pushing him out the door.

Looking back at Kawalski, Tom said, "Thanks for shutting down the power. Grab an inverter and let's start on these coils."

"Aye Sir," Ski replied and moved to get the tools needed.

Zander nodded and made his way out of the escort and headed for sickbay.