Staying in line

Posted on Sun Apr 5th, 2020 @ 10:08am by Ensign Kara Hoffman

Mission: INTERMISSION: Rebuild, Reuse, Recycle
Location: Main Engineering
Timeline: Present
533 words - 1.1 OF Standard Post Measure

Kara sighed, as she looked down the jefferies tube. Lieutenant Holt had arrived for his duty shift late this morning. As fitting punishment, she had sent him to realign several of the EPS conduits and had a few more menial tasks in store for him. Lateness wasn't the largest issue she had faced with Holt, but a firm hand with him was necessary to keep him in line.

Holt put down his tools and sighed. He had been in here nearly an hour, this work was tedious and totally un-necessary."Alright lieutenant, most of the Conduits look fine. Are we done yet?" His low voice, toned with some contempt echoed out to her.

"Not quite lieutenant. I want you to do them all again, just to be sure it's been done correctly." She smirked to herself. ~He must hate this~

Holt appeared headfirst from the shaft, his brow damp from sweat. "Lieutenant." He said, in a firm tone. "This is ridiculous, I'm telling you, they have all been calibrated. Can I please go back to my usual post now?" He hated saying please. In this situation though, being a little nice to the chief might get him out of this punishment early.

With a laugh, she bent down to look into the Jefferies tube. "With any luck if you do this now, you won't have to do it again. Plus your lateness this morning deserves extra work. It really is that simple." She stood back up again, moving back to the main engineering console to continue researching the Quantum Slipstream drive schematics.

Holt was furious but she was right. He had been up late last night, but an hour of work for ten minutes lateness. ~She runs engineering like a bloody bootcamp~ He thought, moving back to the wallpanel and resuming his work.

Within about ten minutes, He climbed out from the shaft toolkit in hand. "Right, i've calibrated the EPS conduits, three times over. I think I'm done now." He brushed himself off. "I'm leaving now lieutenant." He put the toolkit back into the wall hatch, and closed the jefferies tube. "See you tomorrow" As he turned on one foot and walked as fast as he could from engineering.

Kara looked up for a moment. "Tomorrow you're degauzing transporter room 2, 9am sharp!"But Holt was gone.

"Let's see here now..." She spoke to herself. She tapped the console and the Engineering Schematics changed to an intersected blueprint of the drive. "Oh, wow." She mumbled. "So... the chroniton regulator, is fitted through the deflector dish also? Curious."

She changed the view as the blueprint spun around. Examining it carefully. "Seems the Commander was correct, this will not be a simple fitting assignment. We'll have to basically change the power layout of nearly three decks... No wonder this is being done at a Starbase." She mumbled to herself, before picking up her now cold cup of coffee and taking a sip, continuing to examine the blueprints.

Two Engineering officers smiled, as they both looked at one another, then to Kara, then back to the warp core panel. They both shook their heads. "She's on a different planet." One said as they continued their work.