Nerd Alert

Posted on Fri Jul 12th, 2024 @ 4:31am by Lieutenant JG Jenna Jade & Lieutenant JG Katie Kellerman

Mission: Doing What We Do Best
Location: Engineering
Timeline: Shortly After the Chaplain Has Arrived

Katie stepped out of the turbolift, straightening her blouse. She had two goals: Meeting with the Chief Engineer and setting up her station in the computer core.

She walked through the Engineering bay, looking around at the various projects the Engineers had going on and was tempted to get a closer look, but she didn't want to disturb anything.

The young woman standing behind the primary console seemed to be checking off a list on her PADD, but her eyes had flitted up and back down when the door opened up. After that, they'd come up every dozen or so seconds, keeping track of where the newcomer was as they seemed to marvel at what was going on. The junior grade Lieutenant pips on her collar seemed brand new, so shiny that they didn't even have any scuff marks.

Finally as the blonde came within fifteen feet, her eyes came up again, "Anythin' Ah can help you with, ma'am?" The voice was melodious with a major Southern accent with a hint of something else in it, a general feel rather than directed at the askee.

Katie whirled around and flashed a grin. "Hi!" she said happily. "I'm Lieutenant Kellerman. I'm your new computer specialist!"

"Mah new computer specialist?" Jenna asked her with one delicate eyebrow raised. "With all due respect, ma'am, Ah am sure that while you're intended to be assistin' here in Engineering that you're Operations? Otherwise, no doubt Captain Skyie would have told me that Ah was gettin' a new boss. Ah am absolutely certain that your commissionin' date as a Jay Gee is prior to mine, ma'am, unless you just got promoted within the last month?"

"Welllllll....." Katie said, thinking. "I guess I've been a Jay gee a bit longer than you, yes," she said, "but I'm definitely not the Operations Chief. Where's the senior Lieutenant here? I mean...who's in charge of Engineering?"

"That's a story that spans from the beginnin' of the Chimera, back when Ah was still a cadet." Jenna slumped in her stance. "Ah'm the senior Lieutenant, because Lieutenant Davenport got dropped off at the Starbase with charges of treason, Ah think they were, then Lieutenant Anderson was on board and off the ship faster than you could think to put his name up on his quarters. Lieutenant Nelson was next, but she was brought up on charges before we'd even undocked from the Starbase, then came Commander Espersen, but just after Ah'd gotten myself introduced, he done got promoted up to Executive Officer and Ah got temporarily put in charge... Again."

"Wow," Katie said, her blue eyes wide in shock. "Well...I suppose so long as you aren't going to do anything treasonous....congratulations are in order?" She smiled, trying to look supportive. "I mean I know it's a big job, but, obviously the Captain thinks you can handle it, if she lets you be in charge."

"With all due respect, ma'am, Ah can't!" Jenna glanced to make sure none of the NCOs were in hearing range and lowered her voice. "Oh sure, Ah can do a lot of the jobs that need doin', but Ah'm in over my head. This time last year, Ah was a Cadet at the Academy, worryin' about my final exams and what ship Ah was gonna be on for my cadet cruise! Ah have exactly two NCOs that are worth their hash marks, plus three Ensigns here, one of whom could easily be my father and almost my grandfather. The rest Ah have to keep my eye on thirty-six hours a day and go back over their work with a fine-toothed comb. The Captain... She's got too much faith in me."

"Or you don't have enough in yourself?" Katie said. "Either way, I'm part of your team now, you're my boss, so I have your back. Give me a couple hours in my office going through the computer and I'll have a report for you on what needs doing, and you can send out teams and sound all official, and then we can go over their work together. How's that sound?"

"Do you want the priority list, or the list of things that are going to need attention in the next week, or the list of things that are on the back burner until we can get more qualified people in or we have time to do them properly?" Jenna gave a half-hearted smile, punching in a command and pointing at a display, "Ah know what needs doin', but there's always somethin' more important to do. This week it's a replicator issue affectin' effectively everythin' forward of frame eighteen, all decks."

Katie whistled. "That's a helluva honey-do list," she said. "My dad would say 'it doesn't matter how sharp the plow is if the horse is sick, and it doesn't matter how strong the horse is if the plow is dull.' You're in a bad catch-22." She looked over the list. "Okay...I bet I can get the replicators fixed in the system. Some of these issues look back-end. If I can get into the guts of the ship's code, I can probably clean some of it up. If you can have the hands-on engineers tackle these six issues immediately," she highlighted a few things on the list, "and I can get the computer cleaned up, we could probably knock out half this list in a few days and avoid further compounding issues."

"Hell's bells, ma'am, Ah am one of those hands-on engineers and a fair one at that." An idea came into Jenna's eyes, "If Ah might have an idea, if you're gonna be starin' at a computer screen for most of these things, Ah can authorize you access into the core programmin', so can the Cap'n and Exec, but if you set up camp here in Main Engineerin', Ah can take a couple of the promisin' crew out with me to work on those projects. McMasters and Villanueva need an eye kept on them or they'll slack off and start playin' cards, Nero is apt to play games on his console if he thinks no one is watchin', so Ah've been havin' to sneak out to even verify a lot of the repairs."

"Okay...give me Nero," she said. "I'll use him as my hands to do things around the ship as I go through the computer. I can try to keep him focused." She looked around. "Let me use the auxiliary computer lab as an office and I'll get set up and I'll dive in. Nero can report to me there for his first assignment. Sound good?"

"Get yourself set up in the aux lab as your office, but if Ah'm gonna be out of Engineerin' for any sort of extended time, Ah want you here in plain sight of ever'one in Main. Ah'll have a word with the others to let them know about what's goin' on, plus Ah can use you to help guide me and my team to any new problems that come up." The still recent Academy graduate gave a tentative smile. She thought it made sense, what seh was thinking, but she was still just so... New.

Katie thought a moment. "Okay," she said. She ran over to an empty station and grabbed a chair, bringing it over to the Master Systems Display Monitor. "Want to give me that authorization?" she said, sitting down in front of the MSDM.

Jenna glanced down at the small screen in front of her and paused for a moment, just remembering where she had to go for this since she'd never had to grant this sort of authorization before, "One moment..." Finally it clicked in her head and she moved through the menus and finally punched in a 32-character passcode, "There you go, should be all set."

Katie brought up the control panel from the computer lab on the MSDM control station and brought the computer's code up on the main screen. She watched it scroll by, taking in the flavor more than reading specific lines, watching the reference points, and the number of patches and switches that had been put in.

She whistled again. "This...is bad," she said. "Too many cooks spoiling the broth. I'm seeing at least four different 'accents' with how this code was written. I think every Engineer was patching it differently to 'make it work.'" She stopped and folded her arms, thinking. "If we could, I'd ask to shut down the computer for two days and overhaul all of this. As it stands? We're going to have to do a lot of cleanup before any of this will hold." She pulled up six code patches that were conflicting with each other. "This is why the replicators are down in only one section. There's a priority override that's getting in the way. Probably when they needed parts quickly."

She scrolled past several more hundred lines of code. "All right...I see corrupted data files, probably from bad isolinear chips. I'll get Nero on that. If you can tackle some of the engine repairs and get the power relay systems up to snuff, we can at least be more confident about making it to our next destination."

"Engines are my actual speciality." Jenna smiled slightly, "And Ah guarantee we'll make it to our next destination or Ah ain't from South Carolina. And to be fair, Ah have indeed been patchin' things up the best Ah can. Half the time Ah've got one of the others helpin' with the how to do it, sometimes it's a fix Ah've gotten from someone else in the Fleet from the database." Jenna shook her head, "Ah got good grades in programmin', but it was a lot of study and hard work, it didn't come all that natural to me. We did have a few problems in the front end with power transfer to the forward phaser array, Ah used junction... Sixteen Charlie to reroute from secondary sources to make sure we constantly had enough power for them."

"Hmmm...." Katie said, running through the system checks. She then pulled up the repair list on Jenna's padd onto the main screen. "Okay. I'm going to shut down secondary computer systems for the next few hours and reroute primary computer commands through some of the extra servers so I can smooth out the main problems. It'll be a bit of a shell game, but we won't need to put into space dock to get it done." She highlighted six items on the repair list. "Can your team start with those? I'll have Nero start on mine at the same time."

"Ah really should get the Cap'n's go-ahead before we shut down the secondaries." Jenna demurred as she considered the impacts that could happen throughout the ship. "Ah'd really rather wait until we're stopped for a bit before we play with those too much, can we put that part off for a bit?"

Katie blushed hard. "Oh, yeah, sorry," she said. "I kinda got all gung-ho about things, didn't I?" She gave an embarrassed smile, then looked more serious. "The problem is, a lot of these repairs need to be done simultaneously between the hardware and the software. I'd wager the Captain would be okay with us not having holodecks and replicators for a couple hours if it meant we got repairs completed."

"Maybe... If she isn't takin' her mornin' or evenin' swim, or lounging on the beach in one of them, or playin' a match of tennis, or entertainin' one of her favorites at the time." Jenna muttered the last one so that it was barely audible, "And woe betide the person who denies her her favorite drink, which seems to change on a daily basis." She shook her head, "Unless you've got an idea of how to keep her busy for a couple-a hours while we do this?"

Katie thought a moment, biting her lower lip, then lit up. "I have an idea," she said. "I bet our new Chief Medical Officer could occupy her for a while with a physical. That would buy us plenty of time if she stretches things out."

"Ah'd like to see her get the Cap'n in for a physical willingly." Jenna scoffed, "She can't stand doctors for anythin' that ain't patchin' her up, Ah've seen her use an emergency transporter to get away from Doc F'Arra before, push others towards the doctors as in needing an exam more and Ah wouldn't be surprised if she actually shot someone at some point to get outta one!"

"Trust me," Katie said. "Our CMO is my sister. If anyone can convince someone to stick around, it's her."

The young engineer shook her head slightly, "You know what? Screw it. If she gets interrupted from what she's doin' and comes down here to yell at us? Serves her right. Maybe she'll start payin' attention to the whole list of repairs we gotta actually do?"

"That's the spirit!" Katie said, grinning. "Shall we?"

Jenna smiled and nodded, keying in the sequence that would shut down the secondary computer systems. As a result, in the mess hall a warning sign would warn of reduced replicator functionality and anyone involved in a holodeck program would have a warning announced that the program would be shutting down momentarily. Of course, if that person were swimming...

For the life of her, Jenna could have SWORN she'd heard the thump of someone twelve decks above her hitting the ground as the holographic water vanished, then the shout of anger and frustration that followed. It wasn't logical, it wasn't even possible. Still, her smile grew.