Spring Cleaning 2: The Cleanening

Posted on Fri Mar 15th, 2019 @ 4:26pm by The Narrator & Lieutenant Commander Mara Ricci

Mission: S1E2: A Temple To New Gods
Location: Engineering Module
Timeline: MD3 17.00PM

Pipes, metal ductwork, and the sort of aesthetics only classic CyberPunk could generate defined the Engineering Module. The finery of the Support and Command levels, where people were expected to be awed by the minimalist beauty of Federation design, vanished the moment you got near the beating part of Canopus Station. Chemically activated warning signs glowed in the dark low power lighting, highlighting the torso thick cables that would carry entire terra watt's of power that would make death by touching them not only quick by flashy too.

And all through the scything torch beams of the Engineering team's enviro-suits, a pervasive glitter of heavy particulates caught in the air. Some had clumped together, forming into little dust bunnies. Harmless. Cute. Dust Bunnies. That would totally not preceded a rapid madness inducing rampage that would end in bloody murder.

Don't bop the dust bunnies: incinerate them.

"We try to power up anything more than a light panel, and the dust in the air will be the least of our problems," Duke said as he wiped a gloved hand over the clear faceplate of his E-suit. It came away spattered in a light dusting. He looked back at Chief Ricci and Commander Ross. "Any ideas Ma'am? Sir?"

"Sure!" replied Mara, faking cheerfulness. "Vent the whole thing to space!" She sighed and reached up to rub her temples, but that was difficult to do in an E-suit. "I guess we just start burning stuff. This is a mess. Keep an eye on those monitors," she added, indicating the cuffs on their upper arms. "They'll tell us if there's any fungus in the vicinity. I'll feel better if we actually find some, to be honest."

"I thought the dust was from the fungus," Duke said absently as he ran a finger over one of the displays. He held it out to the E-suits reader, but the alarm didn't sound. "We can use thermal torches to burn away a lot of the stuff, but I had a thought. If we brought one of the Work Bee solid-state batteries down here and jury-rigged a bare circuit, the static electricity of it might attract the dust right out of the air. Kill the gravity plating, and it'd go easier. We could set up a few of them around the Engineering Module to act as dust traps."

"Hm," said Mara with a nod. "That is not a bad idea. It's worth a shot, anyway. Yeah, I thought the dust was the fungus, too, but the detectors aren't reacting. Maybe it's dead?" She shrugged. "Better safe than sorry," she added, tapping the side of her head with one finger.

"You ain't kidding," Duke said. "I'll get the dust traps set up, then we can either beam them out into space once they're collected or do something else to them. Either way, I'll be happy when I know I can turn on the main reactor without a stray static charge causing a dust explosion that breaches the hull. But taken all in stride...the Engineering Module came through with next to no damage. The main reactor's in maintenance mode prior to primary ignition when we get back to Carpathia, antimatter storage is in prime condition, and save for every environmental filter needing to be replaced our list of chores is a small one."

Mara nodded. "I'm rather proud of that," she said. "At least the lasso part. That was probably the most fun I've ever had while on duty." She grinned. "Anyway, yeah, let's get to work."

A dual tone alarm blared in the air.

=/\="All Hands, All Hands. Halt all work and secure equipment for hard docking of the Engineering and Support Module. T-minus 20 seconds to capture."=/\=

Around them, engineers in E-suit's secured their tools and grabbed onto hand railings and consoles. And then for a long and awkward moment, no one moved. Outside the two massive structures moved slowly together, a carefully orchestrated ballet of thruster pods and tractor beams moving hundreds of thousands of tons of metal.

=/\="T-minus 10 seconds. Guidance beams locked in. Closing velocity is 5cm a second. Beginning breaking...brace for contact."=/\=

Dust leapt up from the deck and every flat surface as the residual energy of the two starbase components colliding bled through the inertial dampeners. An echoing, harmonic groan rose and fell like a dull sleepy groan.

=/\="Confirm capture! Docking supports are green, and beginning the secondary securing process. All hands, changing call sign of Support and Engineering modules to Canopus Service Module."=/\= The controller's voice echoed over the comm, a muted applause filling the comm line from their end and soon joined by the cheer around Mara and Duke.

"Now all we need to do is get the family camper back home," Duke said to Mara, his voice low enough to not carry through the impromptu celebration.

Mara afforded him a lop-sided grin. "All right," she said. "Let's get this place cleaned up. I feel like I'm in some sort of weird science fiction story in this grime."

"And here I thought the dilithium crystal matrix in the Resolutes warp core screamed high fantasy," Duke grinned and walked over to an equipment crate. He opened it and pulled out a blocky device reminiscent of a phaser rifle. If a phaser rifle was made for children, all rounded edges and blocky design. He handed one to Mara, and then took one for himself.

"Let's get to work," he grinned and turned on the thermal torch. He pointed it at the corner where a clump of dust had gathered. A dull red torch beam passed over the dust, and it sizzled into nothingness.

Activating her own torch, Mara burned up some dust that floated past. "This is fun," she snickered. "Part of me wishes we could do this every day, but that would mean this place is seriously faulty." She ran the torch over another clump near the wall. "I'm sure I'll get tired of this eventually," she added.

"I hear, back in Earth's Dark Age, they used to have this circular cleaning drones that would bounce around at floor level doing this sort of thing," Duke chuckled. "Might be an old school solution, but then again our Chief Engineer did lasso herself a space station so who knows?"

"I've seen those," said Mara. "They were actually pretty briliant. People could clean their homes while they were on vacation. I'm not sure why they ever went out of style."

"Might have been the Third World War, might have been the invention of smart dust. You ever noticed how no one ever has to dust down and clean their quarters regularly? Life Support handles it with quazi nano machines, dumb as bricks but they get the job done," Duke said as he focused his dust buster on a particularly bad patch. "Though this is a job a little to big for them."

“True,” allowed Mara, attacking another clump of dust. “But there’s always something that’s too big for them. Like when you drop a bowl of spaghetti straight from the replicator. Then you have to get the vacuum hose and clean it up manually. But if we had those robot vacuums, we could just activate it and get a new bowl of spaghetti straight away.”

"When we get back to Carpathia, that'll be on the list of things I put on the list of things to do," Duke chuckled.