A New Ship, A New Assignment

Posted on Sat Feb 26th, 2022 @ 5:16am by Lieutenant JG Jenna Jade & Lieutenant Commander Alexander Espersen

Mission: Pirates! (Or Yo Ho Ho And A Bottle Of Yum)
Location: Transporter Room One

Starbase 614 spun slowly in the void of space, no one side of it ever pointing in the same direction for very long. But thanks to some assistance offered by station operations, Lieutenant Commander Alexander Espersen knew where and when the USS Chimera would be exiting warp, and could figure out where to stand in the station's outer promenade observation deck in order to see it.

He was mostly right. The ship, his new assignment, came out of warp just a couple of minutes late, so Alexander was a little further to the right than he wanted to be, but he still saw the ship come out of warp.

His ship. His new engines to keep running. Something he hadn't done, or even considered doing, for almost ten years.

A tractor beam came on and pulled the Chimera to an outer docking port below the station's massive mushroom cap of an interior bay. Alexander left the promenade and headed for a second lounge where he could see the docked vessel up close. And what a ship it was! The Luna-class was bigger and more advanced than any other ship he'd served on before. Its lines were also much sleeker than his previous ships. Aside from some scorchmarks near the shuttlebay, it looked pristine.

Beautiful.

Part of him wanted to take out his notebook and begin sketching what he saw. A small book of paper and a pencil were on his person, after all. But he had to get on board. He'd find another opportunity to draw the ship later.

He tapped his commbadge. "Espersen to Chimera bridge. I'll be beaming on board in ten minutes. Please have the Assistant Chief Engineering Officer meet me in Transporter Room One.

"Copy that Espersen, Transporter Room One will be standing by for your request. Lieutenant Maurnier and Cadet Jade will meet you upon arrival." The voice of the duty Ops officer was calm and settled, "Chimera clear."

The new chief engineer made his way to a station transporter room, stopping at an ops station to make arrangements for his personal effects to be brought to the ship. Almost exactly ten minutes from his comm call, he was ordering a transporter chief to energize the system and send him to his new assignment.

He materialized on a shiny platform, with two humans standing in front of him. The first was of average height for a Terran, male, his head shaved but with black stubble showing. A Lieutenant. The second was a woman, a bit shorter, medium length black hair. A fourth-year cadet.

Alexander looked to the Lieutenant. "You must be Mr. Maurnier. Commodore Everly spoke of you. And you're Cadet Jade, I presume?"

The Lieutenant grabbed his bag from the Cadet standing next to him and gave Alexander a look of pure relief, "Thank GOD you're here. This is Chimera, she's YOUR responsibility now." He patted the Commander on the shoulder, "I'm going right back where I belong, on a starbase, not one of these hunks of junk just ready to blow up, like we tried to do." He didn't even bother to wait for anything, "The Cadet will get you up to date on the ship, I'm outta here."

"Wait, what?" Alexander said as he tried to follow the Lieutenant, but to no avail.

The transporter flickered as the Lieutenant was whisked away from Chimera and left Alexander and Jenna standing there watching him go. Jenna was standing there, back stiff, not having said a word, but exhaled deeply as Oliver left literally as quick as he possibly could, "Good morning, suh, Ah am indeed Cadet Fourth Class Jenna Jade, suh, Acting Ensign." She remained at attention, "Ah thought that you were still at the Academy, Lieu-" She caught the pips on his collar, "Commander, suh, Ah wasn't aware that you were goin' to be assigned to a ship all the way out he'ah."

Jenna Jade. Just as he remembered. The accent was hard to forget. And she remembered him, as he expected.

"No one expected this, Ms. Jade," Alexander said, "especially not your classmates. But here I am. Now I need to check in with the Captain, but we're going to take the long way. Bridge via Main Engineering. Walk with me, and explain to me the problem with the dilithium crystals and have you fixed it. Commodore Everly praised you for it, but couldn't tell me what actually happened." He began walking to the door. "Coming?"

Jenna shook her head as he got ahead of her wool-gathering, then half-trotted to catch up to him, having to walk faster than him just to keep up "Of course, suh. The problem was that since Chimera was in the reserve since she was rebuilt from the Aegir's wreck, no one had given her any of the updates software or even replicator mass, much less overhaul the power systems or the mandatory crystal matrix replacement, which Ah'm sure you know for a Luna-class is every ten years."

She took a breath as she visualized what she'd done, "Since Lunas are in high demand from the redirection back to exploration, most of the matrices under construction are goin' to the new ships comin' out of the shipyards with the programmed replacements goin' out to the active ships. We were told that we might get a new one in a few months, but we couldn't wait that long." A small shrug, "We didn't have enough time to attempt a true revitalization of the crystals we had either, so Ah had the idea to improvise with somethin' else. The Centaur program is smaller than the Luna, but it has a relatively similar configuration and since dilithium matrices are optimized to promote efficient and effective warp bubble promulgation, that was important. But the upside to the Centaur program is the speed the ships and matrices are made, right?"

"Right," Alexander said, nodding as they stepped onto a turbolift. "Engineering." Their lift began speeding them along. "You couldn't source a Luna matrix, but a Centaur matrix would be easier to obtain, maybe even from the Starbase's component stockpile."

Jenna nodded, "Right, suh, but a Centaur crystal set couldn't power a Luna properly, so what Ah did was use a brand new crystal set and arrayed it with the depleted Luna's, then merged them with a thirty-percent increase in the matter-antimatter reaction for three hours before backing down to the standard. It isn't givin' us a hundred-percent power, but Ah've got about eighty-nine percent of maximum capacity, so until we can actually get a new set of Luna crystals, we should be in at least decent shape."

The new chief engineer listened attentively as the complex process was explained. "Brilliant," he said after a momentary pause. "Thinking outside the box. I know it's cliché but most engineers couldn't come up with something like that. Well done."

“Thank you, suh.” Jenna beamed for a moment before she remembered every other time she’d exceeded this officer’s expectations at the Academy and he’d tended to cut her short, so she composed her face to something like a machine’s as best she could.

The lift came to a stop and Alexander disembarked. The engineers appeared hard at work getting the ship ready to depart once again.

Alexander stood before the mighty warp core and took a deep breath. He was back in it. Whether he wanted to be, in his heart, was up for debate, but for now, he'd ride the high of getting to work on one of the most powerful machines ever invented.

He shook his head to clear the reverie put his fingers to his mouth. He let out a loud whistle.

"Attention on deck!" he called out, at a volume that ensured anyone in the main engine room would hear. "My name is Alexander Espersen. I'm the new chief engineer. I'll get to know you all in due time but right now I have more important business. Please direct your attention to Cadet Fourth Class Slash Acting Ensign Jade."

Green eyes opening wide, Jenna wanted to shrink into the deck. Sure, these were people she’d been overseeing for the last month and a half, protecting some of them from Lieutenant Davenport, then from the rough edges of Lieutenant Maurnier, even the handful of Ensigns had deferred to her despite her status as just a Cadet, not even commissioned yet. And now she had everyone staring at her. HER. But she stood there, she could do no other.

"I have orders from Commodore Everly," he explained, his voice still carrying. "For ingenuity in the face of acute and persistent dilithium crystal problems, Jenna Jade is hereby promoted to the rank of Ensign." He took a small box from his pocket, the same box given to him by the Commodore, and opened it to reveal a single solid rank pip. He cleared the small space to Jenna, took off her Acting Ensign pip, and replaced it with the full one. "Congratulations."

As his hands switched out the old pip (itself less than a month old) and replaced it, a shudder ran through Jenna and electricity seemed to flicker from his touch. “Th-thank you, suh.” She stammered out, unsure of what to actually say. This was supposed to happen at the Academy, not out on a ship, with the pip being arm tracked by Captain Kelton, the Dean of the Engineering curriculum, a PADD with her orders and commission handed to her as she saluted him for the first time as an Ensign in Starfleet. It wasn’t supposed to be in front of those she was due to command, or more likely be instructed by, on an engineering deck, by the most assholish of her instructors well over a hundred light years from the Academy, on a broken-down ship. “Ah, Ah’ll try to do my best, suh.”

“Good.” The senior engineer nodded and then stepped back. “Carry on, everyone,” he called. “Ensign Jade, I need to meet the Captain. Take over down here, and meet me in my office tomorrow morning, oh-eight hundred.”

"Yes, suh." Jenna finally broke a smile, "Absolutely, suh, and Ah'll have a full damage assessment ready for review with any updates from today's work." She finally got some of her normal enthusiasm back, now that it was back to what really mattered.