Priority Repairs

Posted on Fri Mar 24th, 2023 @ 7:33pm by Lieutenant JG Teh'dri Caix & Lieutenant Jackson Rutledge II

1,172 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Episode 0: New Sheriff in Town
Location: Operations Office, USS Defiant
Timeline: MD 3

Lieutenant Caix took a deep breath and let it out very slowly. Her Vulcan training on emotional control was doing some heavy lifting in this moment. She'd made several attempts to repair the EPS nodule supplying the ventral cartographic sensor on her own, and after intensive study, she'd determined the system to simply be faulty. Manufacture error. Which meant she'd just spent the last hour attempting to fix something that was simply unfixable.

She flipped open her communicator. "Lt. Caix to Engineering. I have found a fault EPS Flow Regulator on the ventral side. I require a replacement part."

The voice of an overworked engineering officer came back through the speaker. "Yeah, hello Lieutenant. We have that slotted for repair on Thursday."

"Thursday? Am I expected to just ignore the stars above us until then?" Teh'dri said, feeling her frustration bubbling out. "Can I speak with the Chief Engineer? I might be able to perform the installation myself."

There was a pause. "There...is no Chief Engineer at present. The Operations Chief is in charge of coordinating repairs in the interim. But he just came aboard today..."

Teh'dri let out a sigh. "And where might I find this Operations Chief?"

The Engineering crewman replied a moment later. "Last I heard he was just finishing a session with the counselor."

Teh'dri shook her head. She wasn't about to barge into the Counselor's office over this. "When he returns, can you please let me know?"

---Operations Hub---
An hour later, Lt. Caix made her way to the Operations Hub. She'd busied herself with various other preparation tasks, getting the rest of the cartography suite configured to her liking. There was now little else to do but seek out the repair.

She spotted the tall man in red almost immediately and made her way over. "Lieutenant Rutlidge, may I have a word?"

"I am Lieutenant Rutlidge, and you are?" Jackson asked.

The science officer came to a halt in front of him. Not quite at attention, but certainly utilizing some very stoic Vulcan-esque posture. "Lt. Teh'dri Caix. Navigator and Stellar Cartographer. I could use some assistance, if you can spare the time."

"Tell me, Lieutenant, what assistance are you asking for?" Rutlidge looked at his duty roster.

Teh'dri's posture relaxed ever so slightly. She had expected more initial opposition. Not receiving it was a welcome surprise. "There is an EPS Flow Regulator servicing the ventral cartography sensors. I have made numerous attempts to fix the device, and what I have is that it is not broken. Or rather that it has not stopped functioning. It simply never did function. The blasted thing was built wrong in the first place. I either need a clean onsite rebuild or some really creative power workarounds. I am not certain how the Captain or our future Chief Engineer would feel about the latter."

Rutledge checked his padd. "I can have someone available in 10 minutes. Unless you want me to attend to it. My staff is very busy, lieutenant."

Teh'dri shook her head dismissively. "No need to waste your time. 10 minutes will be more than sufficient. I don't want to take much of your crew's time. If it was repairable on my end, I'd have just done it. I just didn't want this to become something that gets put off for weeks. It's a full quarter of the sky I can't run my sensors on."

"Hey!" Jackson looked at her. "Knock off the attitude, Lieutenant. I'm doing the best I can here with a limited staff, and a list of priority repairs I have to make." He watched her. "Show me where the EPS Flow Regulator is and I'll see what I can do."

"Excuse me?" Caix said as she raised an eyebrow in alarm. She took a deep breath, suppressing her initial reaction. Maybe he was just on edge and over worked. "Perhaps there is some misunderstanding. I am fairly certain I just said that a 10 minute wait is fine by me and that I did not want to take up too much of your team's time. I have no expectation that you will drop what you are doing. I just wanted some assistance when someone was able."

"Then let me apologize. I've been going non-stop since my arrival." Rutlidge looked at his list of repairs. "All my people are on priority repairs. I was going to check on them, but I can take care of your request myself. Would that be satisfactory?"

"Yes, that will be perfect," the Navigator said. She paused for a moment, wondering if she wanted to continue or not. "Though, if I may Lieutenant. Your position is a very important one, but it is one that requires focus. Burning yourself out would do no one any good. If you need an opportunity to rest before you get to my repairs, I would understand."

"Thank you, Lieutenant, but no. This repair is important, so I'll do it myself and when I'm done, I will check on my people then hand off the repairs list and give to it my assistant, then get some sleep." Jackson put the list away. "Now, let's check that EPS Flow Regulator."

Teh'dri nodded. "Fair enough. This way, Lieutenant."

------
The two officers had climbed the short distance up the Jefferies Tube to the EPS Flow Regulator. Caix, situating herself in the left adjoining access tunnel to stay out of the way, pointed at the offending part. "So as you can see, the damned thing just does not work. I have tried a dozen and a half tests and tweaks. It was just built wrong."

Rutlidge pulled out his tricorder. "Yea, it's a piece of junk. Let me check inventory to see if we have another one." Using the tricorder, he scanned the barcode of the Regulator, and clicked on 'inventory'. It took a few seconds, but an answer came up. "Problem, we have no replacements in storage. I could put in an emergency request for a new one and some spares, but it'll take a couple of days to arrive....unless...."

Caix rose an eyebrow. “…unless?”

"We rebuild this one, maybe just enough to get by until we get a replacement." He looked at her. "You up for it?"

If Teh'dri's eyebrow could have risen higher, it would have. "Are you proposing a full rebuild? We would have to take everything offline from the..." She paused mid sentence. The flow regulator wasn't functioning at all. Anything downstream of it was either not getting power at all or not getting any filtering benefits. "Never mind. Your logic is sound. Let's...get our hands dirty, as they say."

Jackson led her to the ship's maintenance department, stopped at a repair station, and turned to her. "What we don't have in stock, we can replicate. If this works, as I think it will, we may not need any replacement regulator, but, if they send us one, we'll keep it in storage." He placed the defective part on the workstation. "Let's get to it."

 

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