First day at engineering

Posted on Thu Nov 5th, 2009 @ 11:34am by Ensign Glen Rucinter

613 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: The Devils Snare
Location: Deck 10 and Engineering
Timeline: Before Arboretum Protection

ON

[Deck 12]

Rucinter was lucky having his quarter so close to Holodeck 5, just two empty quarters separate him from that marvelous invention. Also, a few feet in the opposite direction was the turbolift corridor, so being so close to this "utilities" he saw as a bonus. It was as the one who distribute the quarters new that he likes spending time in the holosuite. He formed a reflexive to automatically identify turbolifts, sickbay, Jefferies tubes that were close to his quarter... You never now when you need to use them out of the blue.

He woke up earlier than he estimated, probably due to the fact that he was not used to this new environment, although it felt very cozy. So he used the extra time to have a proper meal and to read again some familiarization reports regarding his duties aboard USS Orion.

The plan for today was simple: report to Captain, report to superior officer and then get to work. If everything went along fine, he would have the whole afternoon free, so he could explore the starship and maybe get along with some shipmates.

Before breakfast, he allow himself a few minutes to decorate the room with personal stuff that he had in his luggage. A few books, a replica of the first manned Lunar Lander, a paint of a lovely landscape from Earth and three fragments of meteorites: one from Earth, one from the Moon and one from Mars. There were some pretty high valued items for him, even if only from a historical point of view, since today anyone can possessed easily fragments of celestial bodies, but this rocks reminded him about home.

[Two hours later]

The meeting with the Captain went along fine and Rucinter also had the chance of meeting his superior officer while en-route to engineering, so now he's ready to work.

Turbolift stops and Rucinter is heading to engineering, for the first time. He had read and saw simulation of a Galaxy Class engineering, but never actually got the chance on working in a real one.

[Engineering]

As he passed the main console, towards the warp core, he greeted a few colleagues, exchanged a few words with them and headed for his console. He was sited next to the core and also close to main corridor, so from there he has a good pint of view of everyone coming to engineering. "The privilege of an assistant chief engineer" Rucinter tells to himself.

First job, doing a general diagnostic of the plasma conduits. After that, verifying matter/antimatter injectors alignment. They were off by 0.0038%, so he fixed that by biasing the entrance voltages and carefully balancing the load. He just likes thinks to be perfect, even if the engine ran fine with that faulty alignment.

A strange think he observed was the high rate of neutrino emission coming out from the core, which were up to 1.2% higher than normal. But this is probably due to bad deuterium purity, so there is nothing he can do about it than wait for the next batch of deuterium or alert the officer responsible for the Bussard collectors.

"Alright, next thing on agenda is a level two diagnostic of computer's subroutines related to warp core feedback loop, this should take a couple of hours than probably I can start writing my report for today." thought Rucinter, when his attention was distracted by an attractive blonde woman who entered in engineering and seemed a little confused. As a red light caught his attention on the console, he didn't noticed that the blonde ensign Lizzie Jackson approached him.

[Continues in Arboretum Protection]

OFF

Ensign Glen Rucinter
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS Orion

 

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