Light the Tires and Kick the Fires

Posted on 03 Dec 2024 @ 11:22am by Ensign Griskredrek & Lieutenant T'Lara Ahmad

1,875 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Stranded
Location: Main Engineering
Timeline: current

Auxililary power was functioning. The dim lighting only served to showcase the egregious damages sustained in main engineering. Siting up on stool that was becoming quite a necessary life-line for her to continue working, Lieutenant Ahmad's attention had focused on the dark reaction assembly that ran through the heart of engineering. Although she was still trying to assemble a comprehensive damages list, the darkened core stood out in stark contrast, almost taunting her in its inoperability.

If she could restart the core - it would provide more power for the ship - something that was desperately needed. Nodding to herself, T'Lara stood, and promptly gripped the edge of the 'pool table' as the world went sideways for a moment before settling. She really should seek further medical attention, but if this wasn't an object lesson in "The needs of the many..."

She carefully walked over various pieces of wreckage before reaching the dilithium housing unit that stood at roughly waist height and served as the center point of the long straw that made up the warp core.

"Alright...inspect crystal integrity...first step." She said aloud to herself as she reached out and grabbed the large handle that served as the fulcrum for the circular unit that housed the crystals. They would need to be inspected for damage and any unusable crystal would need to be manually replaced...This was going to be a job for more than one person.

"Where are all my bloody engineers!" T'Lara suddenly exclaimed in a pique of...anger? Her controls were shot.

The world was still swimming in a strange, pinkish haze. Griskredrek had only been awake for...how long? The young Ktarian/Human hybrid had zero concept of time at the moment. For all he knew, he was no longer alive and this scenario was the conduit that would take him into the eternal bliss of Endless Sky. But he immediately dismissed that thought, because if this was eternal bliss then why did his head hurt so much?

Griskredrek used an auxiliary console to brace himself against as he brought himself off the floor. All he remembered was an impact, one that had thrown him across the Cygnus's auxiliary equipment workshop and onto the floor. He heard someone speak, a distinctly feminine voice, but it was difficult to make out what she was saying. The ringing in Griskredrek’s ears were preventing him from hearing clearly. He was able to walk a few meters toward the warp core, the heart of the ship. There was a figure near the crystal matrix housing that he could not identify in the limited lighting.

"Hello?" he said through a dry throat that gave his voice a gravelly, harsh tone. It came out as slightly louder than a whisper.

The console panel in front of her was becoming increasingly tempting to tear completely apart. If the bloody thing wasn't going to work anyway it might as well get ripped out and--

Wait! T'Lara's mind frantically tried to backtrack from the cliff she was proceeding to barrel over. Whipping her head around, T'Lara looked behind her to the sudden source of the sound...it was a voice, obviously...but whose? You have retrograde amnesia. Why are you attempting to figure this out? No one has been familiar since you woke up.

"If you are not an engineer, you are about to become one. I require assistance." Was she sounding drunk again?

“I…” began the Ensign, just a moment before depositing the partially-digested contents of his stomach onto the deck plating a mere three meters from the warp core assembly. He made a mental note to never have Ensign Krades’s hasperat program for breakfast again. He wiped his mouth and continued. “I am an engineer. Griskredrek here.”

T'Lara's brows rose slightly. The vomiting was not a good sign. She had been vomiting, but it had stopped. She thought she remembered a doctor who treated her, but a doctor in engineering was utterly incongruous, so T'Lara surmised it was a hallucination from her head injury.

"Ideal. Your designation, not your vomiting. That is concerning. Do you require medical assistance? If so...I still require your assistance. I shall attempt expedience. We need to open the crystal matrix housing and inspect the crystals...I am anticipating manual replacements will be necessary. Then we must attempt cold start of the core...if...if you survive that, then...please report to sick bay."

"I am nauseous and my head really hurts," said Griskredrek slowly, carefully. He wished he had something to hold on to, because his balance was way off. "Which means I probably have a low-grade concussion." He walked forward several steps, stationing himself much closer to the Vulcan. "Let's get that crystal matrix chamber open, shall we?" Griskredrek reached for the tricorder in the vinyl pouch on his right hip...and found an empty pouch. The scanning device had apparently fallen out.

T'Lara saw the other officer reaching into an empty holder and handed him the tricorder she had in her possession. "I cannot open the panel...it...the correct steps allude me. I fear...I'll tear the console apart in my irritation. Do you know how to get the chamber open without damage?"

"I do," said the young Ktarian. He moved next to T'Lara, balancing himself with one of the handles on the side of the crystal chamber. "First, we need to release the locking mechanisms...there are two on each side of the door." He reached his hands on either side of the access door, using two fingers of each hand to release the small magnetic locks. "Then push down slightly on the door to vent any residual xenon gas from the chamber." As Griskredrek applied gentle pressure on the door, there was an audible hiss of escaping gas. "Then, we can pull the tray outward and inspect the crystal matrix."

T'Lara watched Griskredek talk through opening the panel without much fanfare and she outright frowned. This was not quantum-temporal mechanics...it was simple engineering - open the door. Her head was pounding. It should not be this difficult. Focus!

"Yes. Inspect the dilithium...replace any that show sign of overt damage or...micro...fractures." She looked down to the kit that held a number of engineering tools. No. No. No....yes. Reaching down, T'Lara picked out the phase coil resonator. The device used subatomic vibrations to look for damage inside the energy gradient of the dilithium crystal. "Open the tray; I will scan the...the...things. Then we replace, restart the core...maybe."

"No pressure," said Griskredrek with a lopsided grin. "Its just the lives of hundreds of persons, including most of my friends, hanging in the balance." With a slight whoosh, the tray that held and protected the crystal matrix slid open. A few of the crystals were colored a deeper red than then others; the young Ktarian hoped that those were the broken ones, because the brighter red far outnumbered the darker.

Scan, replace restart. From a conceptual standpoint, it sounded almost tragically simplistic; however, that simplicity was dependent upon a host of variables, things falling into place just so. There were hundreds of ways that things could go south. First thing out of the gate was the dilithium...would they have enough spare crystals to replace what was fractured? Griskredrek's mind was almost swimming. He held out his left hand. "Would you like me to scan the crystals?"

"Please." T'Lara responded as she looked down at the tray. There were a number of damaged crystals, evidenced by the darkened color and lattice-work of fractures running through them. She stood from her impromptu perch and the world spun in a near vomit-inducing vertigo that she fought against with all of her internal controls. There was no time for this nonsense.

The Vulcan engineer had dragged a crate of replacement crystals towards the station before trying to get the tray opened. It was a good 'past' T'Lara decision to be sure. These crystals were designed for replacing the shuttle cores - but they were here, and they would work. It wasn't like they were going to attempt to go to warp - but it would be nice to have full power restored.

She turned her focus on unlocking the latches. Once the lid had released and fell backwards with a substantial thunk, she peered inside at the replacements. The Cygnus' whole world depended on these crystalline structures. It all, apparently, came down to 'rocks.' She pulled on a pair of thick gloving to protect herself and looked back to Griskredrek with a focused anticipation. "I will replace the faulty crystals...just...just point them out."

Griskredrek took the phase coil resonator from his superior officer’s hand, switching the cylindrical device on with a flick of his thumb. Scanning each crystal individually would be a tedious and very time-consuming process; to save time, the young Ktarian scanned the crystals first that had an obvious color difference. His assumption turned out to be correct - the discolored crystals were fractured. Eight of them in all. “I am removing the fractured crystals now,” he said calmly.

T'Lara watched Griskredrek remove the damaged crystals and she looked at the size and generalized configuration of each one before pulling out a replacement that reasonably approximated the defective crystal and carefully slid it into the newly emptied spot. They worked in relative silence. It wasn't an overly taxing act. Simply remove and replace. All things considered, the duo worked quickly and efficiently together and it wasn't long until the large tray now gleamed with bright, uniformly hued, dilithium crystals. "What is the human saying...moment of truth?" She huffed a breath through her nose in a sense of amusement. "Shall we...kick the tires and...light the fires?" It wasn't a logical thing to say, certainly, but it was an 'engineering' thing to say. Who was she to judge such colloquialism of her 'people?'

Griskredrek closed the dilithium storage tray, which closed with an audible click. “Consider the tires kicked and the fires lit,” he said with a wry grin. The Ktarian Ensign knew that T’Lara was still…impaired, for lack of a better term. He recognized that the remainder of the initialization sequence would be his responsibility. With the high degree of automation on the ship, there was thankfully little left except to combine the deuterium and anti-deuterium in the reaction chamber.

Without fanfare, Griskredrek took three steps to his left and accessed the panel that controlled the matter and antimatter flow. With a few strategic presses, the magnetic constrictors were opened and the slush dispensed from both of the pods into the reaction chamber. At the moment of their contact, they mutually annihilated one another and produced massive amounts of energy. The core began to glow a faint blue and began a slow, rhythmic pulsating.

“Engineering to the Bridge,” said Griskredrek as the lights in Main Engineering came to life. “Main power restored.”

=====

Lieutenant T'Lara Ahmad
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Cygnus

&


Ensign Griskredrek
Staff Engineering Officer
USS Cygnus

 

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