Kicking the tires

Posted on 03 Nov 2025 @ 9:53pm by Lieutenant JG Dylan McConnor & Lieutenant T'Lara Ahmad

1,002 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Shakedown
Location: Engineering
Timeline: After Launching

The new engine room was impressive. Clean lines, clear lighting, new consoles everywhere. Gone was the old carpet with its stale smell of old engine oil or... Something. Dylan wanted nothing more than to take off his boots, break into a run, and see how far he could slide. But that would be unprofessional, so he refrained. Better to wait until he was alone.

He slowly walked around the room and looked at the layout of the different consoles. Everything had been set up according to the basic specs, and according to standard practices on similar ships around the Fleet, but he knew they could change things and switch consoles around. Some Chief Engineers liked their core intermix chamber diagnostic displays on the left of the engine core, others liked it on the right. That would be Lieutenant Ahmad's call.

But one thing he knew she would definitely not like stared him right in the face.

Fingerprints.

There were dirty fingerprints on the display.

He grabbed a microfiber cloth, a bottle of cleaner, and wiped the smudges off the display.

Dylan was busy polishing when the faint hiss of the engine room doors opened behind him. Lieutenant T’Lara Ahmad stood just inside the threshold. Hands folded neatly behind her back, posture precise, her gaze tracked his movements with the same unblinking focus one might give to a diagnostic readout.

“What are you doing, Crewman Hale?” she asked evenly.

Her voice was calm, but carried that Vulcan clarity — the kind that made every word feel deliberately chosen.

Dylan quickly whisked away the bottle of cleaner and the cloth, turning at the sudden authoritative voice.

"Ma'am," he stuttered. "Just making sure everything's ready for inspection. Umm... Who's Crewman Hale?" he asked, looking around at the empty Engineering area.

There was a pause. A long one. Her pupils narrowed, the faintest tightening around her eyes as some internal diagnostic ran behind her expressionless face. She blinked once — slow — correcting, but not retracting.

“…Yes. You are Lieutenant junior grade Dylan McConnor.” Another two seconds. Her jaw worked once — not with emotion, but re-calibration.

“Crewman Hale is… deceased.” The words slipped out too flatly, too clinically, suggesting she had not intended to say them aloud at all.

She looked past Dylan to the console — not to avoid the topic, but the opposite: to regain her axis. Vulcans rarely fumbled speech. When they did, it was not trivial. It was just another hash mark to place--in her mind--yet another failing of her mind since her 'injury.'

T'Lara stopped precisely one meter from him, hands clasping behind her at parade rest, eyes flicking almost imperceptibly to the now-spotless console.

"Residual marks are an...occupational hazard of the LCARS screens. Perhaps it should be classified as a design flaw..." Her posture shifted slightly, with another fractional tilt of her head, as if weighing — then filing — that fact.

Dylan shrugged. "Part of regular maintenance. Wiping down the panels, I mean. Something each of us should do at the end of a shift. I mean... In an ideal world, anyway," he stammered. He took a breath, realizing he was babbling. "The Starbase staff say they should be done here in about two hours, and then we can take over."

T’Lara gave a slow, acknowledging blink — not quite a nod, but the Vulcan equivalent. “Acceptable.” Another microbeat passed. Had she been Human, she might have sighed, as if resetting some internal tempo before continuing.

“I have already reviewed the final readiness logs from the yard engineers,” she said, stepping further inside. “Their estimates are—” her eyebrow rose a fraction of a millimeter, “—optimistic. I expect an additional hour will be required before the warp plasma regulators are properly calibrated to specification.”

She came to a stop beside him, hands still clasped neatly behind her back. The new engine core cast a faint blue wash across her features, and something in her eyes softened — not emotionally, but in recognition of aesthetic rightness. “This vessel is… quiet,” she observed, gaze flicking back to the polished screen he’d just cleaned.

Then, suddenly: “You prefer the intermix diagnostics on the left side of the warp core, do you not, Lieutenant?”

She did not look at him; she simply knew. It was disconcerting given the memory lapse from her head injury. T'Lara finally turned just enough to meet his eyes.

Dylan blinked, taken aback by that question. No Chief Engineer had ever bothered to ask him that - theirs had always been the final call. But her asusmption was correct. He was left-handed, it was only natural for him to look to the left first.

"Aye," he agreed. "But... That doesn't really matter, it's your engine room, so it's your call."

He turned his eyes to the Warp core. The faint blue glow was indeed restful, the usual throbbing and energy waves coming from it quiescent until they were ready to leave Spacedock. It was an eerie silence, amplified by the lack of activity in the engine room, where upwqards of thirty people could be working on any given shift. Now it was just the two of them.

T’Lara considered him for a long, unreadable moment. “It is my engine room,” she said at last — flat, factual, no bravado — “in the same way a captain ‘owns’ a starship. Meaning: I am accountable for every relay, every diagnostic, and every malfunction, regardless of who caused it.”

A fractional tilt of her head. “Fortunately, ownership does not equate to omnipresence. A team is required.”

She looked back to the spotless console, assessing it like it had passed a micro-inspection. “A competent team,” she amended dryly. “Smudge removal is an encouraging start.”

"Thank you," said Dylan. He paused, letting the Lieutenant take in her new domain. "Word is, we have to test every system to the limit. Where do you want to start?"


[OFF]


----

Lieutenant T'Lara Ahmad
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Cygnus

&

Lieutenant JG Dylan McConnor
Engineer
USS Cygnus

 

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