Engineering is empty

Posted on Tue Mar 26th, 2019 @ 2:34am by Lieutenant Carter Smith

Mission: MISSION 0 - History Speaks
Location: Main Engineering
455 words - 0.9 OF Standard Post Measure

With almost the entire crew on shore leave, there was only a skeleton staff, two or three people, working in engineering. And since he was in charge, he assigned the staff to a few tasks to keep them busy, while he started running level 3 diagnostics on all engineering systems.

Smith had the computer list all the systems in engineering, then told the computer to start running the diagnostics, including all the panels and consoles.

Doing all these diagnostics was going to take a long time, so when the computer finished one, he checked the results, and if all was normal, he logged it in. If the diagnostic registered an anomaly, he would go to that area and used his tricorder to locate the anomaly. Sometimes it was as simple was replacing a malfunctioning module, sometimes it took awhile to find it....but no matter how long it took, he eventually found it.

When Carter finished one project, he checked the results of the computers diagnostics, and if that one was acceptable, he moved onto the next.

Carter realized that 7 hours had gone by and he hadn't had anything to eat or drink. So he went to the replicator and got himself a sandwich, ham and cheese on sourdough bread...with mustard, and a drink, either water of an iced green tea. He took the sandwich and the drink and sat at the main console and ate, as he watched the readouts.

By hour 10, he realized that the engineering staff had left for the day. No one had left him a report on their assignments, so Carter had to go doublecheck their work as well.

One diagnostic, of the pre-fire chamber for the impulse engines, registered that one of the ignitors was malfunctioning. With the warp and impulse engines off line, Carter opened the access door to the chamber and crawled towards the igniters. There are 10 of them, so it took him awhile to find the malfunctioning one, and when he did, he removed it, placed it in his kit bag, removed the replacement from his bag, rang the tricorder over it to make sure it was operating with normal parameters, plugged it back in, and crawled out. Then he added the replacement igniter to the diagnostic list.

By hour 16, the day skeleton shift started filing in.

All the diagnostics were completed, logged into the computer for the chief's approval, and a record of all repairs and/or replacements were included in the chief's log, which would be waiting for her when she returned.

With that, he was relieved by the day assistant engineer, and he returned to his quarters, satisfied with a job well done.

Lieutenant Junior Grade Carter Smith
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS Elysium