The Final Count Down

Posted on Thu Nov 23rd, 2017 @ 3:33am by Lieutenant Commander Shadi Zatra

1,630 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: S1: These Are The Voyages...
Location: OPS Briefing Room
Timeline: MD 2 9.30, T- 5 Hours

"Simmons and Cole, I want you to chase down that salinity problem in the port side water reclamation plant. It's only a 0.05 PH increase, but it could be the sign of a larger failure. On a normal starship that's not a problem, but on this ship I want it nailed down and fixed. We can only repair so much before replacements are needed, and I'll be sending you two back to the Milky Way to get it. Salty water tastes terrible, and kills hydroponic vegetables."

Lieutenant Zark tossed the PADD with the maintenance assignment over to the pair, who quietly began to discuss options. The other teams in the briefing room were similarly involved with their own discussions, giving Zark a momentary flush of satisfaction. After the bombing, the night before, rattled nerves would be expected.

But not his squad of fixers and thinkers.

"And rounding out the assignment roster for the day, Ensign Zatra you are with me on the final check of all primary systems, a walking tour of the Traveller to make sure we've not missed anything," he said and eyed the room with his piggy eyes. "Remember to report to your stations before launch. No one has gone through a phase space jump before, and whilst the models say we'll be fine I want to make sure of that. You all have your assignments, good hunting."

The room muttered their farewells and picked up tool bags and diagnostic kits from the wall mounts.

"And to answer your question, this isn't a punishment," Gark said once they were the only two left in the room.

"Punishment?" Shadi asked in a bewildered falsetto. "This is a tasty honor! Lead the way, sssir."

Zark let out a belly laugh, the only real laugh a Tellarite was able to give in all honesty. The pair picked up their inspection kits and marshalled with the rest of the Op's team.

"In most of my postings, getting lumbered with the Chief tended to be seen as a punishment detail. Either it was make work, or they just did not trust you to get the job done right," Zark shook his head. "Never have I ever understood that. We just do the work that needs to be done."

"Fools abhor inglorious tasks as cowards abhor battle," Shadi quipped. "Ragolar proverb."

The inspection tour went as expected.

The ship was ready, more than ready actually. Whilst the original mission brief for the Long Jump Project had called for an ambitious fleet of starships and portable space stations, a plan that had been cut down to a single ship and her three auto freighters, the Traveller had been left wanting for nothing. Every system brought out of mothballs had been checked, double checked, and then triple checked: and if it had failed any of those passes a replacement was fitted.

The joke went that the Traveller was more new than when she'd drifted free of the Utopia Planitia mass fabricator.

"Huum, if the rest of the mission goes like this we might have an easy time of it," Gark commented as they began the trek back across the ship, heading towards one of the connecting points in the hull allowed the fairing to latch on. "If that's the case, we can begin talking about your advancement. I was thinking about adding a 4th shift rotation, it would need a capable officer to run it."

Shadi spread her lipless mouth into a toothy grin. "Do you mean it? I will not let you down." She knelt down at his side and grasped his hairy palm in both claws to give it a sniff. "I am your talon, sir."

"I'll settle for an assistant," Gark said, stopping to look at her. "You've proven to me over the year that you are capable, imaginative, and more importantly you understand the importance of the Operation's department. You'd be surprised how many Op's officers ask for transfer onto the Engineering track. Sure the Warp Core is sexy as hell from a mechanical standpoint, 'tasty' as you would say. But keeping the air flowing, the lights on, and the water pure and clean...without people like us, we'd sending probes to Messier 4, not a starship."

Gark sighed, turned to an inspection panel and entered his passcode.

"Look at me, quoting the man who hired me away from my last posting. I sound like a human, praising and patting your head like a pet," the Tellarite groused. "Okay. Tell me what we need to check on this mounting joint? Call this a test."

"The flanges which secure the mounting joint to the power control module get toasty under stress," Shadi said. "We ought to check for famine in their settings to ensssure they're locked down good and tight with no corrosion."

"Wouldn't do for the joint to come loose during the acceleration phase." The inspection panel slid away into the wall, revealing the cramped crawl space beyond. Conduits and power runs lined the walls with warning labels that suggested a great many terrible things could happen to the unwary. "Not that one joint will collapse the faring. It's over-designed. But we all know who they'll blame. After you."

Shadi snorted her agreement. As she entered, she contorted herself into a lithe and nimble strand of limbs pressed against her trunk and slithered ahead of Gark. The crawl space led into a large void against the ships hull, not that it became much roomier. The space beyond was filled with the shock absorbing machinery of the mounting joint, whose long titanium support jutted through the hull via a specially designed gasket.

"I'll check the gasket. You head down to the base of the shock absorber and give me a pressure reading," he said, directing Shadi's attention to the ladder rungs built into the walls.

"Aye, sssir."

Shadi slithered down the gigantic camshaft in a corkscrew. Nothing seemed particularly out of place, although the shock absorber seemed dirtier than it should've been. Unusual. Shadi didn't note any particular scents that were out of place, though, so she stowed the suspicion for now.

When she reached the unit's base, something stood apart from the rest. A small-ish mechanical box mounted to the side of the shock absorber which did not appear to be otherwise connected to the rest of the mechanism. She withdrew her tricorder, a device that felt clumsy in her claws, and scanned a quick reference check. As she suspected, the box was non-standard, did not belong, and seemed to be connected remotely to... something else. A controller unit, perhaps? The tricorder detected no ordnance or pressure switches, so Shadi deftly dislodged it with her talon.

As she was about to contact Gark, the device moved of its own accord. She clutched it tighter, only for the device to vibrate like it had come alive. At the risk of destroying it, Shadi squeezed it with her vice-like Saurian grip before tapping her commbadge. "Zatra to--"

A phaser blaster erupted from above where Gark had last been seen. Shadi narrowed her eyes to slits. "What the famine is going on around here?"

For a moment nothing seemed to happen, and then a shadow dropped bonelessly from the top of the shock absorber. The scent that arose from the crumpled pile of limbs brought to mind roasting joints of meat over fire pits. Gark starred up from where he'd landed, the laser burn on his chest still glowing fainting from bones desperately trying to shed their heat.

A second blast shot down from above, lancing Zark's still warm body a second time. The third shot tracked closer to Shadi as the law of probabilities took over: she was in the bottom of a well, the bottom of a barrel.

Shadi sucked wind at the sight of her lieutenant's bloody supine form. It had been many moons since her last battle, but it seemed the Warrior Goddess had not forgotten the daughter-spawn of Ragolar. The phasers raining down upon her snapped her out of her reverie. She side-stepped the volley and shrieked up at her adversary. "Your blood is mine!"

Quick as a dash, she darted away from the line of attack into the shadows of the mechanical infrastructure. Inhuman contortion allowed her to slither up the jungle of flanges and cams surrounding the central camshaft. Phaser blasts landed all around her, but her erratic pattern dodged them with ease.

When she made it to the starting point where she had last spoken to Gark, the assailant had begun to panic. Masked in an EV suit, he pointed his phaser to and fro in search of his target. Shadi moved quietly and slowly, stalking the man from the shadows.

A hiss was her only giveaway. The assailant spun in the direction from which she sprung, but it was too late. Shadi was now behind him, covered in innards and a thick layer of blood.

The other man tried to raise his phaser, but his arm was unresponsive. Breathing didn't seem to be working either. He looked down at his middle only to find a Saurian shaped hole there. That might explain the numbness in his lower extremities that precipitated the fire burning through the remnant of his nervous system.

"When you stand before whatever god you please, may your vomit never cease." Shadi close-fisted punched the man hard enough to crack his EV's face plate. His body crumpled without protest.

Yet the victory felt hollow. Shadi heaved deep breaths, dumping her adrenaline through her four hearts as to quickly pass her battle frenzy. She should have known...

"Zatra to Security. We have multiple fatalities near the mounting joint of the port-side shock absorber." She spat on the corpse of her fallen enemy. "Send the meat wagon."

 

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