The chief issue

Posted on Mon Dec 10th, 2018 @ 6:54am by Ensign Kara Hoffman & Lieutenant Commander Matias Grronkil
Edited on on Mon Dec 10th, 2018 @ 6:54am

Mission: Season 2: Mission 2.A: R&R
Location: U.S.S Elysium
Timeline: Present
692 words - 1.4 OF Standard Post Measure

Matias was hard at work in Engineering, trying to solve an imbalance in the warp drive that he hadn't seen before. His ears perked up. "Anybody here?" he said.

Kara poked her head round from her station. Her hair loosened and flew out infront of her face as she moved. "I'm here chief, what's up?" She muffled "I sent the night shift team away for an hour, they deserve a break." She slid her hair away from her face and quickly tied it into her typical ponytail. "Damn my hair clip keeps coming loose, gonna have to replicate a new one I reckon..." She muttered quietly to herself.

"I'm working on an imbalance in the warp core that I haven't seen before," said Matias. His ears perked up. His hearing was better than most. "We can replicate that here, I hope." It could be related.

She smiled wide. I know that chief, but this hair clip has been with me since I was seventeen. My grandmother made it for me. She just needs a little love...like our warp core apparently. What kind of imbalance are we talking about here?" Kara slid out from the corner, and made her way down to her chief. "The antimatter injector's were checked just yesterday, they were in peak operating efficiency. The plasma grid all checked out fine, and the dilithium articulation frame along with the main stage flux chamber were fine. There were also no issues reported with the reaction assembly. There shouldn't be any imbalance, if there's nothing wrong which there isn't as far as my diagnostics show."

"True," said Matias. "It's something I can't put my finger on, but it's there."

"Hmm" Kara bit her top lip. She often did this when she was deep in thought. "Well... let's do another series of diagnostics. If there is something wrong, it will show up, surely. Even the smallest of changes can be detected by the computer. I'll just overlay the test results from yesterday, over today's and compare them. If anything has changed, it'll show up as a discrepancy." Kara headed to the main Engineering station, to setup the diagnostics. "I'm going to set the diagnostic program, to do a full running drive check. it's faster than individually checking each part of the warp assembly, and believe it or not, more accurate for this sort of guesswork based testing. Does that sound fine to you chief?"

"Go for it." said Matias, "You have the right ideas, and I'd like to see the results."

Kara setup the running drive check program,and set it running."Hmm, so far so good...no wait look here chief. there are several discrepancies. Both in reaction rate, reaction temperature and power output. Now what could cause that...the only thing i'm thinking of would be a misaligned dilithium chamber. However that cannot be, maintenance did not find any issues with the chamber whatsoever." Kara Scratched behind her ear, thinking about the problem. Any ideas on your part?

"Kara, as humans say, you're getting warm." said Matias. "Looking in on the dilithium chamber now. Of course, it may stem from the time the Elysium was boarded."

"Aha!" Kara exclaimed. She nimbly moved her fingers from panel to panel. "i think i've found your problem Chief, I was testing different intermix ratios a few days ago. I must have forgotten to delete the presets. Seems as if someone thought this preset was the default one." She looked with nervousness to her senior officer. "Sorry sir, i'll change it back now. I was careless." With embarrassment she began to fix her mistake.

"There's nothing to apologize for," said Matias. "You found it in time, and that's good. Now let's fix it."

"Agreed, I'll get to work on it Immediately. Again my apologies for my carelessness." Kara bowed her head in concentration over the engineering panels and began to fix the intermix ratios, sliding her fingers and tapping through various menus on the console. "Everything will be back to normal in an hour or so."

Lt. Junior Grade Kara Hoffman
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS Elysium

Lt. Commander Matias Grronkil
Chief Engineer
USS Elysium