Meeting the Mountain

Posted on Thu Mar 26th, 2020 @ 12:37am by Master Chief Petty Officer Ryan Terry & Lieutenant Commander Mara Ricci

Mission: S0E0: What Came Before
Location: Engineering
Timeline: ???

Ryan climbed out from under the pool table in Engineering, lubricant covering his face and uniform, but he had a broad grin on his rugged face. "Well, that takes care of that," he said as he came to his feet and looked at his work on the table.

He had reconfigured everything from a structural, environmental, and propulsion standpoint, and it suited his purposes perfectly. He lowered his fingers to the console and entered his authentication, then confirmed that he wished it to be locked in that configuration.

Having finally finished the report she had started several hours ago, Mara stepped out of her office. Interruption after interruption- some of them welcome, but most not- had kept her away, but at least the thing was done on time and submitted. That's all that mattered.

Wait. Who was that? He was new, wasn't he? Well, he must be. Mara was certain she would have remembered someone so... large wandering around here before this. If she hadn't been the Chief Engineer, she'd have been able to just pass him by and go about her business, but with a sigh of resignation, she crossed engineering. "Hi," she said as she approached. "I'm Cheif Ricci."

It was instinct for Ryan to look down at most species and he wasn't disappointed to see a humanoid female wearing Engineering gold, and the pips on her color indicated her rank, and her words told him who she was. "Master Chief Terry," he said and held out a slab of beef some might call a hand.

Mara eyed the hand warily for a moment, as if afraid it would bite her, but finally took hold of it as firmly as she could. "Nice to meet you," she replied.

"The pleasure is mine, Chief," Ryan said, his grip as light as a feather.

Which surprised Mara so much, she almost forgot to let go. "So, um..." she started. "Did you just arrive or did they wake up another batch?"

"Woke up," he said as he released her hand and gave a chuckle at her expression. Few expected such a soft touch from the giant of a man. "I'm the old new Environmental, Structural and Propulsion Specialist."

"They should have woken you up when we first got here," she commented. "You might have had a better idea of how to get the second module back to the main station. I ended up lassoing it and towing it back." She shrugged. Perhaps with his propulsion expertise, he might have been able to think up something safer and less hair-brained. Oh, sure, it had worked, but that didn't mean it was the best solution.

"I'll pretend I know what you're talking about and nod," Ryan said with an infectious grin. "And I think I wasn't woken because Admiral Breckenridge said something about somewhere called Hell freezing over before I was brought out of stasis. So either that happened, or he figured I'm far enough away that I can't make anymore improvements to his personal yachts."

Mara grinned. "There's a town called Hell in a place called Michigan on Earth's North American continent," she said. "Apparently, it freezes solid every winter. I think it's winter there now, isn't it? So Hell probably froze over." She grinned again, eyes sparkling mischievously.

"I don't know about that, but I'm free now, so where do you need me, Chief?" he asked.

"Good question," replied Mara. "I haven't seen The repair requests for the day. Hang on," she added, crossing to the nearest console and punching in a few commands. There wasn't much there. When they had first arrived, there had been a ton of stuff to do. Engineering was pulling double shifts for a week to catch up on vital repairs, but now there were fewer every day. "Gel packs keep failing in Stellar Cartography," she commented. "This is the third time they've come up. Want to help me investigate?"

"As in bioneural, advanced gel packs that require a degree and exceptional conditions to grow?" Ryan asked. He had two specialties under his belt, but gel packs wasn't one of them.

"Those are the ones," replied Mara, retrieving a toolkit from a nearby cupboard. "But, we're not growing any, just investigating why they're failing. And hopefully fixing the problem."

"You're the boss," he said agreeably before he grabbed a toolkit that looked small in his big hand. "Let the way and with any luck, we won't blow a bunch of them up."

"I was about to say that that would be difficult, but around here, nothing is difficult," she replied, leading him out of the Engineering section and towards sciences. The first time we tried to go planetside, all the plasma transformed into a totally harmless green goo. Disgusting, but at least the guy who got himself covered in it didn't suffer any burns or end up dead."

"Remind me to get a biohazard suit in my size," Terry muttered. "Green isn't my color, goo or otherwise. Tell me about the first failures of the gel packs."

"It was shortly after we arrived," Mara replied with a shrug. "We chalked it up to an issue with Long Jump. There were a lot of random problems shortly after we got her. It didn't seem like a big deal. When they failed a second time, we decided we must have picked faulty ones and double-checked the system and the gel packs around them- only three gave them problems. Everything checked out, so we swapped them again and everything was fine for awhile. But now, they're bad again. We're gonna have to dig deeper."

"Could it be a virus from the same batch?" He wondered out loud as they walked.

"Possibly," replied Mara. "If it is, it didn't turn up in the last round of tests. I suppose it could be something new, but why only Stellar Cartography? That doesn't really make any sense. Unless the virus is in Stellar Cartography. I don't know. We'll see."

"That's possible. If it is, then we'll have to remove all of them from there, sanitize everything, then start again," Ryan pointed out. "Which will take about two hundred personnel hours and shut down Stellar Cartography until it's completely set up again."

"Exactly," Mara said. They had arrived at Stellar Cartography. "Which is why I hope that's not the issue. I'm hoping for faulty power couplings or something."

"I doubt that would affect the gel packs," the behemoth of an Engineer said. "Whatever did affect them is probably deep inside the circuits, or it's even possible that a bad batch was sent. Did you check all the inventory numbers?"

"Yeah, last time," she replied, going instinctively to the correct panel and finding the three obviously dead gel packs behind it. "Although... something's just occurred to me. What if there are two bacteria- one in the gel packs and the other in the connectors- and they're totally innocuous on their own, which is why they don't show up on the scans, but they duke it out inside the gel packs and totally destroy one another- and the gel packs- in the process? I know, it's not likely, but it's my working theory." She pulled out the first offending gel pack and gazed at it. "I'll have the lab check for dead bacteria this time."

"We'd need Medical expertise for that level of diagnosis and if the biofilters didn't pick anything up, there would only be a slim chance, Commander," Ryan said. "Or were they shipped aboard?"

“I actually don’t know the answer to that,” replied Mara, removing the other two gel packs. “But I meant the medical lab and technicians would be checking them. I’m going to send them down here, too. Stellar cartography is going to have to live with three fewer gel packs until the tests come back. Unless of course, we find something simpler.”

"Well, if they were beamed aboard, the biofilters would have caught whatever it was, unless it bypassed them somehow," he said as he walked beside of her. "If they were brought aboard normally, then there's no telling."

“True story,” Mara replied, examining the connectors. “Maybe we should replace the connectors, too, just in case. And then we can take everything down to the labs and have them check it out.”

"That would take weeks," Ryan said as he pondered something for a moment. "What if we cycled everything through the transporters and replaced it all back? It would be faster."

"That's... actually not a bad idea," Mara said. She had been about to disagree, but if there was a biological contaminant, cycling everything through the transporters would eliminate it. "With the toleranced as low as possible on the nonorganic components. It's worth a shot."

"I'd place the tolerance at zero for anything not associated with the gel packs," the Engineer said.

Mara hesitated, momentarily confused, but finally shook her head. “That’s what I meant,” she replied. “I momentarily forget from time to time that anything with carbon in it is technically organic. But yes. I say we try it. You wanna contact ops for a transporter specialist to zero in on these while I make sure all power is shut off to them?”

"I can do that, but we're still going to have to pull every last component out of here and put them back in," Ryan pointed out. "It would be impossible for any transporter operator to take out everything without having the skills of a surgeon."

“We’ve got one,” Mara replied. And of course they did. This station had the best of the best in the whole universe. “Ask for Tate. Tell them it’s precision. I saw him do a demonstration. He took a marker and traced a combadge onto the floor. Then he went to a transporter six decks away and beamed the combadge into the outline. It was brilliant.”

"That's all well and good," the other Engineer said. "But was the combadge connected to anything else when he beamed it from one spot to the outline?"

Mara grinned. “His jacket,” she answered. “And he managed to not even remove a single thread from it. He’ll probably come down to take a look, though.”

Ryan debated if he wanted to compare and explain the complexities involved in beaming out very complex electronic equipment that was connected to other very complex equipment versus beaming a combadge off of a uniform jacket, but didn't want to get into an Academy lecture. He'd done his time for that. "Okay. Let's see what he can do," he said and tapped his combadge.

=^=Terry to Tate=^=

=/\=Go ahead for Tate,=/\= came the reply.

=^=Could you come down to Stellar Cartography, please?=^= Ryan requested. =^=There's a project here that Commander Ricci said has your name all over it.=^=

=/\=On my way,=/\= came the reply.

Two minutes later, the doors parted to reveal a tall man with dark skin. His hair was in hundreds of tiny braids, all pulled back into a ponytail at the nape is his neck. “Chief,” he greeted Mara, then nodded at the large man with her. “Michael Tate,” he added by way of greeting, holding out a hand to him.

"Master Chief Ryan Terry, Structural, Environmental and Propulsion Specialist," the giant said with a shake of the other man's hand before he briefly explained the problem.

“That’s a challenge even for me,” replied Tate, gazing at the open panel.

“I wouldn’t ask, but you know how long it takes to remove connectors,” added Mara. “And since this whole area is completely unknown, Stellar Cartog needs their systems fully functional as quickly as possible. So-“

“I got it,” replied Tate. “I’ll head to the transporter room now and let you know when I’m ready.”

With that, he left.

“Yeah, he’s not terribly talkative,” Mara said.

Ryan shook his head. "I don't see how this is going to work," he said. "Everything is connected and active. This is going to cause massive problems that will cascade."

“That’s why I disabled the power from this section,” replied Mara, pulling one more relay; the lights on all the components went off at once. “They made it easier to isolate all the systems on this station. It makes it easier to fix things, at least theoretically. In practice, it just makes it easier to turn off the power to one access point.” She shrugged. “Still, at least we don’t have to shut down all of Stellar Cartog.”

He just didn't see it, but she was the Chief Engineer. "Aye, Chief," he agreed and waited for the red alert to sound, or worse yet, the call to evacuate the station.

Mara was holding her breath, too, but not because she was afraid of blowing up the station- technically the part they were experimenting with wasn't part of the station at the moment- but because if something went wrong, it would make more work for them. Oh, sure, she was confident in Tate's ability, but it was still nerve-wracking.

=/\=Tate to Ricci. I'm ready when you are.=/\=

"Go for it."

A whirl of blue shimmery light and the connectors disappeared. Nothing else went with it. A moment later, the connectors were back, exactly where they were meant to be.

"Great job, Tate!" exclaimed Mara, face breaking into a shining grin.

=/\=Tate out.=/\= was the only reply.

"Like I said, brilliant, but talks even less than I do," Mara added. "I'm gonna take the new gel packs down to the transporter room to be cycled. Feel like babysitting that open panel? I know it's a boring job, but I'll be back with three new gel packs in a moment."

"That...isn't possible. This..wasn't possible," Ryan stammered. "There's no way....how?"

“I told you,” replied Mara with a grin. “Tate is a genius. Be back in a couple of minutes.”

"Okay," the confused Engineer said, wondering what trick had been used to transport a connected part.

Mara only grinned as she headed towards the door. "Artistry," she said as she walked through the door.