Shuttle Bay in disarray

Posted on Sun Mar 6th, 2022 @ 6:07am by Lieutenant JG Jenna Jade

Mission: The Dexic Negotiations
Location: USS Chimera - Shuttle Bay

The Shuttle Bay was a mess.

Debris was scattered across the Deck. The damaged shuttle resembled the remains of long dead insects.

Ion generators had been wired into the Bay's structural Integrity system in order to keep the main force field from collapsing and blowing the workers into space, as the external blast doors were inoperable and would remain that way until the Ship could return to dry dock.

Chief Petty Officer Sigrid Muller surveyed the damage as moved a beam from the top of a console. Providing a little concussive engineering (She kicked it), the console sprang to life. She brought up the environmental systems, and was annoyed to find that the remaining air scrubbers were struggling to remove the CO2 and other poisonous and/or damaging chemical from the air supply.

Like all the other Engineers and other workers present, she was in a EVA suit, but they only had a limited supply of clean air.

Finding Lieutenant Maurnier, she alerted him to the problem. "I'll take Crewmen Ramirez and Thoule, and try and get the Scrubbers up and running." Sigrid said.

Oliver Maurnier grumbled at the announcement, but nodded, "Sounds like a plan, Chief." He stated, "Did I ever tell you that I hate being on starships? I'm a Starbase engineer for a reason, because if something like this happens, it's not going to completely cripple the station. Too much crap on this ship can just blow up without warning!"

He glanced over at the good half dozen of his people dealing with the debris and monitoring the dividing forcefield between this 'section' of the shuttlebay and the rest of it, where medical personnel were busy with the injured and dead, "You know what, I'm gonna come with you instead, let Ramirez and Thoule help with this cleanup. Whatcha think is wrong with them? I don't think the blast wave would have done this."

"I'll have to get a look at them first to know for sure, but it could be an overloaded power relay, after all there was some damage to the EPS and Ops had to reroute power. A defective part or, and I'm just spit balling here, sabotage." Sigrid replied.

“Bah..” Oliver shook his head, “If it were just that tit on a boar hog Davenport that pulled the maintenance on it? Sure, a defective part, but outright sabotage? That Jade seems to be a smart cookie and by all accounts she was riding herd on Davenport at the Cap’n’s orders, that is, until she nearly got killed by her incompetence.” He pondered for another moment, “You know what? Run down that defective parts idea of yours.. Damn if we don’t need more officers on board in engineering..”

"Aye, sir." Sigrid said as she headed to the nearest inspection hatch. Removing it, she put her tricorder inside and began a scan. She also looked for tell tale visual clues as he awaited the scan results. While she was in the Corps, defective parts were more of a problem, because they got 'Fleet castoffs.

Oliver was mainly just supervising everything and wandered over to follow the Chief Petty Officer, "If you think about it, Chief, that actually makes more sense.. This used to the USS Aegir before she was recommissioned a month ago or so. Aegir was half destroyed, decommissioned and put into the Sol System Boneyard as a ship in the Reserve. Mostly original Mark One Luna construction and bits and pieces. Add in an exploding shuttle and it could knock out a piece that was just holding together in the first place."

"Indeed." Sigrid agreed as she checked the results. Her brow farrowed. "The power is getting to scrubbers, but they aren't working." She said half to herself. "Looks like we're going have to wear these suits a little longer, Lieutenant, because I'm going to have to remove each scrubber, one by one, until I discover the defective one, as there is a lot of interference." She reported.

"I could probably handle checking out a couple of them myself, speed the process up." Oliver conceded, "This thing is getting stuffy and I'm starting to sweat in it, so getting out of it is a must."

"Okay, I start from one end, and you can start from the other and we'll meet up in the middle." Sigrid suggested.

"Sounds good, Chief." Oliver agreed with her, a sigh escaping from him, "This is going to be FUN... F'd Up, and Neurotic." He shook his head, "Well, let's get this done, why don't we?"

Sigrid began her work. Pulling out the scrubbers, analyising them, returning those that are working and replacing those that were broken or faulty. It was boring, time-consuming, methodical work Most of the bread and butter of starship engineers.

Oliver had gotten his second set of scrubbers broken down and was reassembling them as he saw the Marines enter the shuttlebay and make their way over to the Dexician shuttle, stopping briefly when the COB came onto the deck. He shook his head as the shuttle departed a few minutes later, then got back to work. He tapped his commbadge after he'd gotten the third one open, "I've got the broken link here." He told Sigrid, "Conduit is collapsed and the scrubber itself is smoking. Can you bring over an entire apparatus? It's going to be easier to just yank the whole thing out and replace it."

Sigrid had been quickly, but accurately checking and replacing the the faulty scrubbers and their related parts. She'd found less that a handful that required full replacement. She'd heard a shuttle leave, but didn't look up to see what was happening. She was just completing her third bank, when she received the Lieutenant's message. "Understood." She said grabbing a box of replacement parts. "On my way, sir." She added.

By the time she got there, Oliver was already in the process of cutting away at the conduit, the blackened wreck of the scrubber a few meters away, the remains of the housing apparatus scattered across the ground, "Just one more minute here... We'll have airflow after this if I'm not mistaken.. I've got good flow from both sides and..." He reached into the gap he'd cut in the conduit and withdrew a panel that had come from the shuttle that had blown up, tossing it to the floor with a clang, "That."

Sigrid examined the panel with her tri-corder. It was blackened and twisted. "Lieutenant, I'm detecting residue consistent with a Sarium krellide explosion on this panel." She reported.

"That would probably be their primary explosive down on the planet there." Maurnier muttered as he nodded, then got to digging out the rest of the debris from where they'd be plugging in the new scrubber, "Dedicated assholes, idiots."

"They probably repurposed phasers." Sigrid said. "We should be finished soon, Lieutenant."

"That sounds good to me Senior Chief." Maurnier grumbled, "I'm going to get this sealed up, go back and reactivate the atmospheric srubber system and see if it worked."

"Okay, I'll monitor things from here." Sigrid said.

"Sounds good, Chief... Then we can get to actually doing some good." Maurnier gruffed, then they got back to work.