Mixup & Fixup

Posted on Wed Jul 31st, 2013 @ 12:57pm by Ensign Kiean Vox & Ensign Maximillian Cobyassa PhD

1,058 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Episode 2 - Whispers in the Clouds
Location: Jefferies Tubes
Timeline: Day 2 - 1100

Striding out of the captain's ready room, Max was eager to get started working on this special project. But he knew protocol had to be followed, and the last person he wanted to piss off was his immediate supervisor.

When asking the computer for the Chief's location, he wasn't surprised when it pointed him to some Jeffries tubes at the back of the ship. However, what did surprise him was the fact that the Chief of Operations was still ranked as an Ensign. There's no way a captain would take on an ensign as a department chief. This made Max wonder what exactly the department chief had done to get himself demoted. Max crawled through tube after tube as he slowly made his way to the Chief's location. He could see several of the panels and conduits were in a serious state of disrepair. What the hell happened here? Did someone blow out all the.. ahhhh.. Could that be what he did? Being used to the clean organized power conduits of the factories, he found the chaotic mess of ship conduits jarring, almost begging to be tidied. He resisted the urge on several occasions to stop halfway there and start fixing the conduits.

As Max came around another bend in the tubes, he spotted an Andorian covered in dust and grime working away at one of the panels.

"Ensign Vox I presume. Looks like you could use a hand." Max gave a smile, raising a toolbox he had somehow acquired along the way. He knew there was a project awaiting him.. but the conduits.. they called to him!

Kiean untwisted himself from behind the power conduits and gave the young ensign a warm handshake.
"sorry about the state of things but these damn gel packs have been giving me problems with the focusing crystals in the transporter systems. a few of them blew up on me." he pulled out a tricorder and began running scans on the conduit insulators. "you can start by making sure the crystals are resonating between 30-40 thousand teradynes a second." Kiean pointed to a greasy panel behind some spare grav plates.


"Yeah, no problem!" Max moved the grav plates out of the way and popped open the panel.

"Argh!" Max exclaimed as a high frequency hum assaulted his ears. "Oh my god these crystals are out of sync! I feel like my brain is being vibrated to mush." After a few minutes of tinkering with the crystals, the high pitch hum of the crystals died down as he adjusted the resonance. "Ah, much better."

Max replaced the panel as he spoke. Looking over at the adjacent panel, he tilted his head a bit as if listening for something. After a few moments he gave a small sigh, moving over to it, he began to remove that panel.

"Does this entire section need to.. Ack! be resynched?" Not waiting for an answer, he stuck his head into this new alcove and began working again.

"Oh yeah, I almost forgot," Max replied, still buried in the alcove, "The whole reason I came back here was I wanted to report in and let you know I was onboard. The name's Max, Maximillian Cobyassa."

" I don't remember your name in the ops personal manifest. Are you sure your not in engineering or science, they are always transferring people around." kiean sat up on his heels and reached for a hypospanner and hit his head on a bulkhead.
"bloody tubes, Don't you hate them?." he cursed, rubbing his antennae.

"Tell me about it! For all our technological advances, we still can't design a decent crawlspace. It just always makes me wonder what the Jeffries tubes look like on a Klingon warbird. They're either quite spacious or have very good sound suppression!" The thought of a Klingon banging their head on a pipe and ripping out half the tubing and wiring in the ensuing fit of rage caused Max to chuckle.

"Perhaps it was an old copy of the manifest you last saw?" Max offered, "I've been crawling around in Jeffries Tubes since I was 12! Besides, do I really look like a scientist to you?" Max's head popped out from the conduit just long enough for him to flash Kiean a grin and grab another tool from his toolkit before returning to the troublesome insulator.

"nah, you 're probably right. Welcome to ops, ensign. We could use someone like you." Kiean sat and closed the hatch cover.
"let's hope these packs don't give us anymore trouble or I'll have to shut down the entire ship and rebuild her."

Max quickly finished up his bit and carefully put things back in place. "So tell me, what's the story with this ship anyways? Did you guys just come off the front lines? It looks pretty beaten up. That's all everyone seems to be talking about."

"to be honest, i don't actualy know. I just got here a few days ago." kiean sat up and rolled his shoulders.
"i think we're done here, i'll send some up with the duty roster. Thanks for your help ensign cobyassa."

"My pleasure Ensign Vox." Max said, amused that they were both the same rank. One day he'd ask the man what exactly he had done to get himself demoted back to Ensign. "You're new to the ship too huh? Well glad to be of service. Its always fun to poke around beneath the hood sometimes. Something I'm sure I'll get to plenty more chances to play with in future. Besides, its not like I.. had.. anyplace.. oh crap! there IS someplace I needed to be!"

A slightly worried look came over Max. "I'm sorry, I've really got to be going. I was on my way to see someone when I thought I'd stop by to introduce myself. I completely lost track of time with these things." He turned to leave and realized that he still had the unclaimed toolkit in his hands. "Right. This must be yours. I came across it in one of the jeffries tubes on the way over here." he said handing the kit over.

Turning again quickly on his feet he waved over his shoulder as he left. "It was nice to meet you Mr. Vox."
Kiean waved waved awkwardly, then shrugged and turned back to his work.

*tag*

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