Engineering TBD

Posted on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @ 5:00am by Lieutenant Jieral & Commander Telas (Tel’hasu) Jaxx of the Eighth House of Betazed & Lieutenant Ryan Price & Senior Chief Petty Officer Isem Mesu

1,492 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Prologue: First Steps
Location: Engineering

The Deltan in the command red uniform strode into Engineering. The Captain had last minute sent him to help with the repairs. Commander Jaxx had beat him by a few minutes as he had to wait for a replacement at the helm. When he arrived, the engineering crew was hard at work trying to solve the problem. Approaching the Chief Engineer, Lieutenant Jieral reported in, "Senior Chief. The Captain sent me to help. What can I do?"

The blood on Isem’s head was drying. His head still hurt from hitting the bulkhead. "Join in where you can help. Maybe use a free console and run a diagnostic on flight control. Commander, let's get a Level one diagnostic going on the affected systems. Though until I hear back from my computer team, I'm not trusting too much."

Just then Isem’s combadge chirped. He tapped it. "Simmons to Chief Isem." It was one of the computer specialists.

"Go ahead Simmons." Isem said.

"Sir, the computer seems fine, except the program for running diagnostics. I've just stared looking, but something is wrong. I need to check deeper, but I wouldn't trust anything it says."

"Understood. Get it in working order as fast as you can." Isem replied. He looked to the commander. "That could explain some things."

“Indeed it would,” Telas said somewhat absently, his voice sounding slightly emotionless deep in a Kholinar state suppressing his surging emotions. Walking over to where the chief stood, he held an engineering repair kit in one hand and a tricorder stowed in the holster at his right hip. “Crewman Simmons, visually run the algorithm sequence on all diagnostic programs. Their code should only be changed when there is a software update. Correlate that with the change log stored in the central compute over the last 3 months. That should determine if it was some erroneous code or if it was something else Report your findings to the Chief or to myself.”

Simmons voice replied back. "Understood, sir. I'll get on that now."

Over the last 72 hours, all three shifts of both the Engineering and Ops teams had been hard at work performing the refits and repairs of the Mohawk. Isem and Telas had done multiple system integrity checks on every system. This should have been a flawless departure, yet suddenly there was a random IDF generator malfunction?

Telas looked at Isem and projected a thought at him, arching his right eyebrow severely. Are you thinking what I am thinking, Chief?

That someone messed with the diagnostics so we showed all good before leaving the dock and possibly sabotaged our refit? Isem thought back. thought that after getting a face full of bulkhead.

An incredibly brief spike of white hot anger and disgust could be felt through their telepathic link before Telas locked it down with a Kholinar suppression technique. Followed by a brief My apologies.

“Well Chief, where do you want to start?” Telas said out loud. Telepathically Telas said It is illogical to sabotage our departure on such a routine mission, unless the goal is to make us look incompetent. Would you agree?

Yeah. But who and why? Isem thought back. All of engineering staff had been dragged in. It wasn't many, but enough to spread out. "Kline, T'Vor go to medical, take tricorders and check everything system. Sibol take Horal and get on the flight control systems. Chillu, take your team to the weapons banks and check each one out. Shields too.

He looked to the commander. "Sir, i want to see our work, once more. In case there has been damage." Then he mentally added Can we trust the lieutenants?

“I agree, Chief,” Telas said, nodding once in the affirmative. “Let’s get to work.” Within the telepathic link with Isem he answered At this point, I don’t trust any crew that wasn’t with us on the Poseidon. The real question is, why would anyone want to sabotage us? We aren’t on some Federation shaking mission. It does seem more likely that someone wanted us to look bad.

Telas found it hard to believe that anyone would want to sabotage the Mohawk to stop them from reaching their destination. If that were the case, then why not something more severe? He believed that the Chief might be right. Who would benefit from doing something like this? He continued to muse as he followed the Chief out of engineering toward the nearest damaged IDF generator.

Ryan had been going over some sensor logs, attempting to make some comparisons to his previous experience with Springfield class ships, "Computer...open file Whiskey Omega Lima Foxtrot Three Five Nine, USS Lancaster sensor logs, time index seven minutes eleven seconds."

~"Processing"~ the computer chimed in

Several seconds later the file displayed, It was the sensor records of the battle of wolf three five nine, specifically the sensor files on USS Chekov, a Springfield class ship that was destroyed during the battle, he started making notes, specifically the power levels, Power failure from battle damage, same power loss as we experienced he noted on the pad Regulator controls reported as unreliable, class limited to warp seven until design flaw can be fixed or otherwise.

Ryan looked at what remained of the files on the Springfield class, USS Sherbrooke lost power during a training exercise similar circumstances too their own experiences, he paused to take a sip of coffee, he knew someone had assigned a security officer to follow him so he decided to now have some fun, he wrote a note onto the pad Keep trying then he flipped it face down, leaving it at the workstation and decided to head back too his quarters, Ryan had a hunch as too who was behind this fiasco plus he was tired.

“We need to get to the bottom of this fast” Telas said softly out loud as he walked down the corridor from engineering so his words would not carry past Isem. “Protocol states that we should inform Security if we believe that someone sabotaged the ship, but I want to confirm, without the shadow of a doubt, that’s what happened.”

Having been working at a console close to the Commander and Chief, the Deltan Lieutenant was running diagnostics on the helm systems.

Senior Cheif Isem nodded and added "Yeah. And who would benefit from trying to cripple us?"


-------------

Thrity minutes later, Simmons came back into the engineering department. "Chief? Sir?" He said quietly to both Isem and Telas. I needed to tell you when I'm finding."

“Go ahead, Simmons,” Telas said in his cultured tones, placing the PADD in hand gently upon the Master Systems console at the heart of Engineering. “Don’t keep us in suspense. What did you find?”

Telas believed earlier that the problem lay in the diagnostic suite of the Mohawk as that was the most likely way to sabotage the launch without any significant harm to the crew, thank the Four. He and the Chief had been crawling g around the bowels of the ship for the better part of four hours visually verifying the entire IDF system was completely functional. The software had to have been the problem.

"Sir, it's like you said. I went digging and deep in the program i found something that was set to give us the greenlight. I don't know if I can erase everything without making it worse."

“I can take care of that,” Telas said to the Chief, nodding once in acceptance of the task. “There are back-ups of all the diagnostic subroutines. Give me about two hours and I will have them rebuilt. I might also be able to get some additional data on our saboteur.” He looked at Simmons intently, so he would not miss the point. “And I don’t want a word of this to get out, understood? So far, only the three of us are in the loop as to what exactly caused the issue. I will report to the captain the full details when I am finished.” He looked at both the Chief and Simmons expectantly.

Isem nodded. "Understood sir."

Simmons nodded as well. "Yes sir."

Once he received confirmation of his orders he grabbed his PADD gingerly and walked out of Engineering. He would bring news of this to the Captain and see what he thought about the situation. He needed more information before he could make any kind of real assumptions on who the saboteur was, but he had some ideas that he intended to run by Vott.

Commander Telas Jaxx
Executive Officer
USS Mohawk

Senior Chief Petty Officer Isem Mesu
Chief engineering officer
USS Mohawk

Petty Officer 2nd class Bob Simmons
Computer specialists
USS Mohawk

Lieutenant Ryan Price
Cheif Intelligence Officer
USS Mohawk

Lieutenant Jieral
Chief Flight Control Officer
USS Mohawk

 

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