One Snap At A Time

Posted on Sun Dec 7th, 2025 @ 12:32am by Lieutenant JG Jenna Jade & Lieutenant JG Jeanine Jeffries

Mission: A Princess Of Tial
Location: Main Engineering

Jenna walked into the engineering area and dropped her toolkit duffel bag in their normal spot as she re-approached the main center console where the massive list of work needing to be done on the ship still hung in the air. It was something she'd instituted upon their return from Tial when she found out that while several of the engineers had been off the ship that everything had been piling up without enough hands to get it done. She keyed in the task she'd been working on, the replicators in the main mess hall had been glitching to give chocolate syrup whenever a sweetener for a drink was requested, a big red line crossing through it and moving it to the bottom of the list.

There were three items in bold at the top, semi-major issues that had names next to them as well, then a list in yellow that designated moderate issues and a longer list in white for the myriad of minor problems that had been reported and she looked at the console as she inhaled and exhaled, ignoring the bags under her eyes in her reflection before looking up again. "Why is there so much to do? Does the rest of the crew only go around makin' problems for us?" She growled to herself as she scanned the queue floating in front of her.

JJ sauntered up to the large central console, sleeves rolled up, a bright spark to her demeanour. That was when she fully took sight of Jenna. "Well, look who's been up with the crows. You look like you haven't slept."

It was a good natured jibe. JJ took fun in prodding Jenna, but had always kept things short of true malice.

Jenna scowled at JJ in irritation. Why was she so chipper? What was there to be happy about at this time? “That’s because Ah’ve been here since Oh Two Thirty.” She snapped harshly, gesturing at the list, “There is just too much to do, not enough people to do it with and someone’s gotta do it. Ah’m the one in charge, so Ah have to set an example and dig in to get things done. The list ain’t gonna make itself any shorter if Ah just stand around feelin’ sorry for myself, now will it?” Her voice was all staccato as if she were on edge. The fact that she’d left the previous evening at 2100 had gone unspoken.

JJ just stared Jenna down, unwilling to respond immediately, trying to find the right thing to say. "The only example you're setting, is how to burn out in record time. Is that the kind of lesson you want the Ensigns to learn? That Starfleet is just burnout?"

She duplicated the list of tasks, moving things into sub-groups. "Ortiz is our specialist in the plasma grid, so that's his. Carmichael knows replicators better than anyone, so he can handle that. Katie... yup, the sub-processor is now hers to re-calibrate. That's three jobs allocated."

She moved next to Jenna, and lowered her voice. "Jenna, I love you. You know that. But get some sleep before you fuck up." Her expression softened. "Seriously. Just three hours. I can handle the fort. I'll call you if there's a real emergency. You're gonna have a breakdown if you go on like this."

"Ah'm fine." Jenna snapped, then after a moment softened it with a smile, "Ah'll be perfectly fine, Jeanine, Ah promise. Ah just shouldn't have gone down to the surface of the planet for all the time Ah did, shoulda stayed up here to handle all of these problems as they cropped up." She waved at the list up on the screen, keying her name in on one of the next most major issues: a phaser coupling that was in need of recalibration. The problem wasn't a critical one that would take it out of service, but still was higher on the priority list.

Jenna leaned against the console a bit harder than usual, "In a few days, we'll be back to our standard maintenance routines and Ah'll back down, Ah promise." She looked up at the other engineer, "Tell you what, Ah'll even take a couple days off completely at that point, that way y'all can see that even Ah'm able to rest and relax and that Ah'm not goin' nuts!"

JJ's brown knitted. She didn't like it. Fuck, she out right hated it. Jenna was driving herself into the deck plating. Yet, JJ lacked any administrative clout. If Jenna wouldn't listen to reason... she wouldn't listen to reason.

All she could do was double-check diagnostics, and hope Jenna didn't screw something up. God, she hated the idea of running diagnostics behind Jenna's back, but JJ knew that she had to do something to try and protect the woman.

"Okay. Let's get the Red tier priority work cleared, but I am saying this as a friend. You look like crap."

"That's enough about how Ah look." Jenna barked defensively, "Ah've gone through far worse, especially at the Academy, and Ah still graded exceedin'ly well on all those exams. You remember the Academy, they push us harder than this all the time because they know that it can be just as bad out here in the real world."

JJ's eyes slid past Jenna to the warp core, humming away. Oh, she remembered the Academy all right. She remembered the first time she had seen it. That glowing column of power, and danger. She also remembered how the regs never truly fit, and sometimes you had to rewrite them - literally. "Yeah... it also taught pacing. Cram week was meant to be hell, to teach that very lesson: don't cram." She wasn't going to argue, though,

This wasn't the time, or the place to have an all-out spat. "Okay, you've got the phaser array. I wanna go over the warp manifold. It's been way overdue since we looked at the entire warp-prop. If I can do it piece by piece, we won't need to shut down the whole system."

She'd had more than her fair share of classwork, so Jenna had maintained a rather hectic schedule throughout her Academy years. That had meant that the stims running through her system now were familiar friends and she could handle it. Give it a few more days and she'd spend those two days she'd just promised Jeanine she'd take off to come down off of them. Until then, however... She keyed her name in next to the reaction diagnostic that was well down the list, "Ah'll also take the standard diagnostic for the matter-antimatter reaction to slow myself down later on. Ah'll try not to push myself too far, all right?" She made the statement more as a peace offering.

JJ rolled her eyes, reached over the console, and replaced Jenna's name with another. "Standard, routine diagnostics are literally what Petty Officers are for. They ain't ballast. Delegation, Jenna. We handle the complex work, while the NCO's manage the routine,"

Jenna's eyes flared with anger as she glared at JJ for a few seconds, but physically bit her tongue to keep from yelling that she was the Chief Engineer and that SHE could do whatever SHE wanted to do. She'd change it back later when JJ wasn't looking, "Fine." She bit out instead, scanning the list once more and selecting a different, much more detailed task that would definitely take a couple-three hours on it's own, "I'll reconfigure the deflector controls then, is that 'complex enough' for me to work on?" The words came out rather quite harshly.

JJ's brow came down in a look of concern. That was very un-Jenna like. Something was scratching at the back of her mind. Something was up. It wasn't just the lack of sleep. What could she do? Tell someone Jenna was acting weird? That'd go over well. Who could she even tell? The XO? 'Hi, Commander. My boss in Engineering seems to be acting strange.' Yeah, that'd go down well. Besides, Jeanine Jefferies didn't snitch. Unless there was absolutely no other choice.

"You're the boss." JJ said with an attempted neutral tone.

"All right then." Jenna keyed off the terminal she was at and nodded, "Then let's get to work, these things aren't goin' to fix themselves." She put actions to words, once again picking up her duffel bag and heading towards the door once more.

JJ's forced smile vanished the second Jenna disappeared out the door. "That... was odd." She said to herself, and sighed, The Matter/Anti-matter diagnostic was still there on the list, and JJ swiped it into the sub-category. "Leah." She called out to one of the NCO's. "Do we a favour, and start that Level-Three Diagnostic of the Matter/Anti-Matter reaction chamber. I'm going to start on the warp stabiliser manifold."

Her eyes glanced over to the doors that Jenna had left through. Her concerns were still there, in the back of her mind, but she still didn't have a way to settle them.