Preparing For Being Prepared

Posted on Thu Nov 25th, 2021 @ 3:01am by Lieutenant Commander Jillian Toomey & The Narrator

Mission: S2:4: If Not Like A Mirror
Location: Canopus Station, Pier 4 Concourse
Timeline: MD-1 10.00

With the clack of mechanical locks disengaging, the heavy blast doors that sealed off the concourse opened. Air that had been trapped inside the unused concourse from its time being assembled in the Antares Very Large Fabrication Facility mingled with the air breathed out by a crew used to the scents of Messier 4. It wasn't exactly a funk, but there was a staleness to the air that made the hopping form of Gal'dwyn's button nose wrinkle.

"This Pier hasn't been brought online yet. Though it was always on the docket for your predecessors, who never found the time," the Leporidite said. They held their custom made data tablet in their small hands, and with a few well practised command's the lighting arrays began to glow to a steady life. A long straight hall that mixed the utilitarian need of a port with the necessary aesthetic sensibilities of Federation design. Cargo transporter stations were shrouded under plastic sheets, information holograms were in standby mode...though a 'Caution Wet Floor' sign was sat just inside of the door.

"So what would you like to start with first?" Gal'dwyn said, ears perking up. "We could assign Op's crews to test the servicing facilities on the exterior of the Pier to ensure readiness, or we could begin with them working inside on the interior systems. Transporter diagnostic won't do themselves."

JT looked around and sighed, then looked at the Wet Floor sign. "And we have how long to do this? Get the crews split up. I want a quarter on the exterior, half on the inside and the rest doing diagnostics. I need this done the day before yesterday. Call in everyone that's off duty if you have to and recruit from Engineering or anyone that has the basic skills needed to make this place habitable in short order."

"We have somewhere shy of three hours. I will conscript from the labour pool!" Gal'dwyn said with an all to eager note to his voice that any tinpot dictator would have wanted in a majordomo. "And I have crews suiting up to begin checking the exterior power and servicing umbilical. Can I say, it's nice having a boss who takes charge and gets things done?"

"Just the ones that have a clue by four," JT warned him. "I don't want some rank Ensign hoping to jump from Security to Operations in the hopes of scoring with some other Lower Decks puke. If they don't know it, they don't come here."

"Of course!" Gal'dwyn said, hopping after JT. "I don't know how they to used to run things back home for you, but here only people with qualification certificates get to work on certain projects. Could you imagine-...oh my."

Gal'dwyn came to a halt as the spreading Operations work team passed by a structural arch. In the shadow cast from its imposing bulk, an image had been daubed. Simple colours, blacks and whites, painted there in sharp strokes of a spray gun. A shadow faced humanoid in a crude depiction of a Starfleet uniform, hunched over the orb of a world with their dagger-like fingers opening it up like an orange.

"For Your Own Good," Gal'dwyn said, reading out the letters curled under the image like the rictus grin of a deaths head mask.

"Take a scan of that and have it wiped," she said as she looked it over. "It's too much like a farce of what's actually happening. Especially here. Now then, let's rewire everything here for maximum output." She pushed her sleeves back and commandeered a toolbox from a passing tech. "Come on, Goddamn. Make yourself useful."

With that, she headed over to a panel, set the toolbox down and retrieved a tool and began to remove it.

There was a moment of stillness, and then people began to move with a will, energised by their Department Head's will. A portable scanner rapidly flash scanned the graffiti, and then with an actinic flash vaporised the in a blaze of ultra violet light and hard edged photons.

"Not to be questioning your directive," Gal'dwyn said questioning Toomey's directive. "But shouldn't we have called station security? This was a sealed section, even the quarantine seals they put in at the Alpha Quadrant were still present when we opened it. If someone can get in here, without alerting someone, well it pays to have your ears up and your feet firmly on the ground to hear the rumble."

"It's just graffiti," JT said and motioned around the abandoned looking facility. "Someone probably did it when this crap was abandoned. But if you want to delay things and take responsibility by the time our visitors get here, then go ahead, Gosh'Darnit. As for me, I have work to do. Make a log, file a complaint, whatever, but do it after we get this place at a hundred and ten percent."

For a brief, terrible moment Gal'dwyn had the thought that all of the rumours were true about Toomey. That she wasn't from an alternative reality, but in fact was some sort of transporter accident aberration that had created a female version of Ingram that was less friendly than the one sat within his glass office. It was unlikely in the extreme, but when stacked up against the rumour she was a nanomachine recreation which was more likely?

"Okay sentients!" Gal'dwyn shouted, a surprisingly large voice from such a small body. "You heard the boss. Anything that is not the job today get's scanned, and moved over. If you are not sure if it needs to be called over me and the Commander and we'll make a choice."

As if on cue the low subsonic hum of the air handlers growled to life from their unseen vents and ducts, and a gentle breeze ruffled the hair of many before dying down. Now all that was needed was to make sure the utilities were working. Or at least not embarrassing.

Suddenly, something which may have been either music or a dirty limerick began to blast from the speakers. "I wanna see your titty breast… "

"What in the name of...?!" JT shouted to be heard over the blasting song. "Computer, kill that and track back the user! Gul'Durat, make it stop!"

"will you please pull them out… and if you follow my request… I’ll put them in my mouth… Tittymon!"

A work crew gave a whistle over the racket, as another 'song' began to play on the heels of the first. This one proclaiming 'The Boy' in a voice best described as a shrill Golbin screech. A floor panel had been removed, evidently, once it was seen its edges were chipped and dented from a break-in. What that floor panel had been covering had once been one of the peirs main data trunks, a braided cable of optical data strands. What was there now was...a mess. The insulation had been cut back, shreds of it still littering the inspection space, and strands had been pulled out and spliced into jerry rigged comm nodes.

A lot of comm nodes.

'A Meme A Day Keeps The Fleeter Away' was daubed on the underside of the inspection panel.

"What in the name of Ezkrekiel's Balls is that?" she howled over the ungodly screech. When she got a look at the comms mess, she nearly had a seizure. Her mouth opened and closed and she started pounding on her chest in an effort to breathe again. She would have hit her combadge to call Ops, but she was Ops and this shit baby was her baby.

"Fuckery!" She bellowed, giving it a good baby name. "Everyone over here now! We have to replace all this yesterday and then string the person up with all the strands and beat them until there's nothing left!"

The techs began to pull the nodes out of the ODN trunk, each disconnect causing the screeching voice to change to another ancient memetic slogan.

"In a way it's sort of impressive," Gal'dwyn said with a wry smile. "I mean, I want to attach EPS hook up's to their tender bits, but you have to be impressed by what they've accomplished."

"I'll be more impressed if Ingrams and Grissom don't try to string me up," JT muttered as she reached in to get her hands dirty, too.