Scuffle of the Engineers

Posted on Wed Sep 12th, 2018 @ 5:47pm by Jeassaho Kea (*) & Anthony Hooks

Mission: Mission 7 - Sabotage
Location: Engineering
Timeline: MD02 00:00
1781 words - 3.6 OF Standard Post Measure

Orym exited the turbolift onto deck fifteen and was immediately shoved into a wall by the buffeting effects of the ship's dire situation. Making his way into the main engineering compartment, he spotted the two people he was told would be there. He noticed billowing steam coming from a few ruptured plasma manifolds and a particular door that looked sealed and had red warning lights flashing. He quickly pulled out a Veruvian cigar, one of his favorites for many years. When lit, it gave off a very pleasing aroma that he had been using in many close calls over the years. Pulling out an old fashioned lighter, he proceeded to burn the end of the cigar, the orange glow bouncing off his eyes as he approached the others and commented, "So, how close are we to total annihilation?"

Jeassaho looked up her eyes were still red-rimmed and she was having a hushed conversation that seemed to be quite heated. "I am fine... I don't have the time to..." Jeassaho looked at the Bolian as he appeared in the compartment. Wasn't this man a passenger? "Um..." She glanced back at Angus the argument forgotten for a moment about whether Jeassaho should be there after the shock.

"Long enough. Git out." Angus was having none of anyone today, arms crossed over his chest. "Miss Kea, we've got it all taken care of. You need t'rest after what happened. And you-" he pointed an accusatory finger at Orym, a man he had never met. "That cigar's gonna light the whole place up. Out!"

Orym stood there and gave Angus an incredulous look just before the ship rocked to one side, tossing him into a bulkhead. He managed to throw his hands up in front of his body to brace himself out of instinct, narrowly avoiding his face being smashed. He regained his balance and looked back to the other two as he walked over to what looked to be the warp plasma monitor station. He tapped the console with one hand as he puffed the end of the cigar to be red hot. He exhaled slowly and pulled the cigar out of his mouth to address them. "It looks like you two narrowly avoided a total systems failure just a minute ago." He looked back at them. "Are you going to just stand there or shall we get to work on saving our skins?"

"And we'll be dealin' with a fire if ya don't put out that cigar." Angus snapped, continuing to point his accusatory finger. "Ain' no repairs gettin' done without safety protocols bein' followed. Ya gonna fix it by blowin' us up? The hull's pressurized! Smoke n' fire bad." He turned to Jeassaho, face turning red. "No one's followin' anything anymore, are they?"

The woman look in the trio looked at the man with the cigar and just pulled it out of his mouth and stubbed it out on the floor under her boot. For such a small woman she gave off the aura that she was a lot tougher than she looked. "Just don't ... not tonight," Jeestroyet said as she saw someone else coming in just behind. She didn't have many bits of patience after seeing Kane disappear atom by atom into nothing, the booze wasn't helping. "Hook?" She wondered looking at the man.

"Hooks, at your service...", the man said with a wry grin. "...so this is where the party's at!" He walked closer to the group and looked around, assessing his surroundings with a thoughtful expression. He was dressed as if he'd been on his way to an upscale event, but for some reason had a large weathered bag slung over one shoulder. "Anyone mind telling me what we're dealing with here? This isn't one of those times where the 'CHECK ENGINE' light came on like three months ago and nobody dealt with it...right?"

His attempt to make light of the current state of affairs fell flat as multiple withering stares focused on him. "Seriously, though...what's the situation?". His eyes continued to dart about from damaged manifolds to the people standing around nearby, to flashing displays and lights. He nodded at the steam issuing forth from the plasma manifolds, "...anyone going to get that?"

Before anyone could continue the banter, Angus shoved a spanner into Anthony's hands. "I dunno where ya think yer goin', but if yer gonna be useful, git to work." He leveled a gaze at the Bolian as well, frowning. "You too, unless yer gonna try t'cause spontaneous combustion in this Engineering room. And you," Angus added, eyeing Jeassaho, "Doc told you to keep outta here for another day. So follow them Doctor's orders."

Hooks looked over the spanner for a brief moment before tossing it back to Angus. "Thanks friend, but I brought my own." He then unslung the bulky duffle and set it on the floor. He pressed his thumb briefly on a small matte-black square at the top of the duffle and a faint click could be heard. He unzipped the bag and started pulling out pieces of a copper-colored EV suit. The suit, like the bag, was well-used but otherwise appeared to be serviceable and of decent quality. As he pulled out the EV suit pieces, he also had to briefly remove a few wrapped bundles and a small lock-box...the impression given was that this was a carefully prepared 'go-bag'. These items were immediately returned to the bag once he had the full suit and a compact (yet versatile) tool-kit out. He zipped the bag back up and latched the zipper handle into the matte-black square before quickly pulling on the suit in a practised, efficient manner. When all that was left was the helmet, he stood with it and the toolkit and motioned at the ruptured conduits. "That looks more like symptoms than a cause... Wixx, want to pursue the cause while I deal with this?" Hooks then turned to look at Angus again, "Ok, you want this done right or done right now?"

Orym frowned at the audacity Jeassaho had to simply grab the cigar out of his mouth like that. Clearly she had been losing her mind down here without supervision. He glanced at Hooks and gave him a curt nod. "Sounds like a plan." He pointed to the plasma manifold that was slowly losing heading toward a rupture. "Go deal with the manifold." He pointed a blue finger at Angus. "You, stop complaining about things that don't matter and grab that hydrospanner and we can work on the warp intermix chamber flow regulator. And you," he said, turning toward Jeassaho. "I need you to monitor the structural integrity field. We need to know how much time we have to un-cluster this mess before our atoms are scattered across the sector."

Jeassaho wasn't a fool, she could see she had pissed the man off but she didn't care. "I'm not watching anyone atoms scatter," Jeassaho said simply looking far away for a moment before she came back from her thoughts. "You'll have minutes." She said softly looking at Angus. Why didn't these men understand that three hours ago she had watched the Chief Engineer disappear?

Angus, who had assumed the temporary leadership role, looked at Orym like he had gone completely crazy. "Y'all didn't hear what I said. What kinda earwax issues they got in ya Bolians that ya didn't listen? Jeass has gotta take a breather, Doctor's orders, and I don't even know who ya are, so what makes ya think ya can just assume leadership 'roun' here? I dun see anythin' sayin' yer in charge. That's up t'me an' Jeass." He jabbed a thumb in Anthony's direction. "At least I got a name for him."

Seeing the challenge for what it was, Wixx slowly walked up to Angus and leaned close. "Now you listen to me, buddy. The captain sent me down here to take charge of this mess and stop the ship from exploding. And I need everyone to pitch in." He pointed a finger at Jeassaho but kept his face close to Angus. "And she won't have to worry about taking a breather if we're all dead. There will be time for that later but if we don't get moving, it won't matter." He grabbed a hydrospanner hand held it up for Angus to grab. "Now, you can either help me to get the flow regulator back to specs or you can get the hell out." He wasn't going to budge. Old Starfleet training died hard. Time was of the essence and there wasn't time to debate. He just hoped that Angus would come around.

Hooks found the conversation taking place behind him interesting, but did his best to block it out as he pulled his helmet on and focused on the task at hand. With his personal scanner, he checked the conduits and fittings carefully to see if there were any hidden weak or damaged points not currently billowing steam. Thankfully, the things that were designed to fail first had done so in this case...gasket material at two couplers had blown out, so the damage was minimal and the repairs were going to practically be child's play. Hooks temporarily bypassed the affected path, paused to see if anything else blew up, and once he was satisfied things were safe he proceeded to remove the segment of conduit affected. Hooks quickly scraped the fittings clean and to them he applied some metallic-looking gak from a tube kept in his kit. He re-installed the conduit and waited a full minute for the fast-curing substance to do its thing. He scanned again to ensure all seemed well and restored flow to the conduit. Finally, he thoroughly scanned the whole thing a third time while it was live, lingering at the fittings he sealed and all seemed well. The sealant he used was both praised and cursed alike in the engineering field, it did a really good job as a sealant...so good in fact that separating those couplers in the future would be challenging. Oh well, that can hopefully be dealt with under better circumstances. They wanted it in minutes, so they get what they asked for. He re-packed his kit and turned to the group, taking off his helmet as he did so. "All better now. What else have you got for me?".

OFF::

Angus Ap Owen
Engineer
SS Mary Rose
(PNPC Uhin)

Orym Wixx
Chief Engineer
SS Mary Rose

Anthony Hooks
Passenger / Free-range Engineer
SS Mary Rose

Jeassaho Kea
Engineer
SS Mary Rose
(PNPC Gregnol)