Chasing Problems
Posted on Tue Jul 9th, 2019 @ 11:39am by Ensign Dana Wakefield & Lieutenant Elen Diari
Edited on on Tue Jul 9th, 2019 @ 11:04pm
1,015 words; about a 5 minute read
Mission:
Episode 7 - Home Again
Location: Main Engineering - Deck 11
Timeline: MD002 0030 hrs
A few minutes after leaving the bridge, Dana arrived in Main Engineering. Her new Ensign had said something about an intermittent fault that Operations was monitoring and she wanted to ensure that it was not going to turn into a bigger problem, not that she did not trust her new officer, but she was awake with nothing to do, so she may as well make herself useful and do something constructive. After all, Engineering was the main department that Dana worked closely with.
Dana glanced around, the gentle hum of the warp core relaxed her, she was eying who was on duty when Elen caught her eye, she did not expect to see another department head at this time of the morning, especially as the ship was not at red alert.
"Unable to sleep?" Dana asked as she approached the Lieutenant.
"Yeah, Ship's enviro settings are too warm for me." El yawned
"Sleep is so overrated anyway," Dana said, with a slight smile, "My new Ensign said there was a slight problem that Operations were keeping an eye one, I just wanted to ensure all is well and make sure it doesn't turn into a bigger problem, so I thought I would come and see if you needed a hand?"
"It's an intermittent data transmitter problem. Lag from computer core to consoles. Having Ops note which ones and how long when they use them, to nail it down."
"There should be no lag unless a gel pack is on its way out or is malfunctioning and ones?" she questioned, "You're implying it is from more than one location which could indicate a more widespread problem."
"Yeah. had reports from all over the ship. I first noticed it on the bridge. My station up there is a mirror of that one there" El pointed over the console on the other side of her office. "Had a lag of about 30 seconds between the two, but it's usually one or two seconds reported, accessing the databases, or confirming inputs."
Dana sat at a station next to the Lieutenant and pulled up a diagnostic routine on the console. "So how intermittent, I'd hate to think a problem cropped up in a crunch situation," she replied, already pressing several buttons and reading over some preliminary data.
Elan passed over a padd "Here's a list of everything I've got so far, locations, a brief description of the problem, times. The odd thing is one minute it's Ok, the next it's slow or non-responsive- haven't got a pattern yet."
Dana glanced down at the padd and began reading the information on it, the Lieutenant was right, random locations, different systems, and no distinguishable pattern. a small delay may be nothing, but in battle or in an emergency those seconds could mean everything.
"It could be a contaminant or a simple processing error, but that would be more specific to an individual system, it wouldn't be that widespread," she said out loud, her attention focusing, "I mean we did land the ship, we could have picked up some contagion or parasite" she suggested, that could be simply taping it at random intervals.
"Why I asked that ensign to keep an eye out, even though from the look of him should have set him down for a nap. I swear they're getting younger by the day." El jokingly answered, trying to get her console to respond "See, now this one's hanging."
"Oh I know, but I hear he's already familiar with a certain Engineer, who is the x of my second in command. Just what is it with the men in my department," she said as she rerouted more data to the displays.
"Who ? I want to know so they can be mocked mercilessly, getting a bit repetitive on Dave, who drunkenly tried to chat up a blancmange at the last party." El asked, "In my experience, it's men in general, keep your shields up when Jamie gets here."
Dana pondered for a moment, she was not one to really gossip but the whole mood she was in about it she could not help it. "Clarissa, is it." she said raising an eyebrow "And don't worry about me Lieutenant, my shields are always up," she said with a smile.
"Oh, Rissy the cradle-snatcher. " El mocked.
"Not that I'm one to normally pry into the lives of my subordinates." She quickly followed up, diverting her attention to the data "It's just, she seems to have a thing about the men in the operations department and I don't want there to be any, messy or tricky situations between our departments caused the choices of our subordinates." Dana paused for a moment, she didn't really know if she was getting her message across or just sounding like some kind of weirdo who spied on her crew. "I mean to say, whatever actions or drama people may cause, I don't want it to affect the professionalism of our two departments, after all, I have great admirations for Engineering."
"Don't worry about it, we worry about them like they're our kids, and in Rissy's case, well, she's just getting to know operations the easy way. Anyway, it's us goldies together -I've been Ops in the past, hopefully, go back there one day." Elen reassured her friend.
"coffee ?" She asked, holding up the pot while waiting for the screen to restart.
"Oh, you read my mind, coffee would be great," she said with a smile. " before he attention was drawn to the blank screen which was slowly coming life, at least this would be a diversion and would keep her busy for a little while and hopefully together they would be able to solve this before arriving back to Empok Nor if not, they could hand it over to repair crews at the station.
A Joint Post By
Lieutenant Dana Wakefield
Chief Operations Officer, USS Pioneer
Lieutenant Junior Grade Elen Diari
Chief Engineering Officer, USS Pioneer
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