Getting the Labs up to Spec

Posted on Tue Feb 17th, 2009 @ 12:59am by Master Warrant Officer Sam Jackson

765 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Citadel Prime
Location: Science Labs
Timeline: current

[Science Labs]

Dhindara was annoyed. This ship had just come out of the shipyards and everything should be working properly, but this wasn't. She was a trained technician but there was a limit to her ability to fix things on her own, especially since she had only worked as a maintenance technician during wartime. "Vrel to operations", she said after tapping her combadge, "I'm having a technical problem in the geology section, the spectrometric scanner isn't working, and it's improperly vaporising pieces of rock that I put in there to test it. Can you send me a diagnostic engineer to help figure out the problem?"

Sam sighed. First of many problems he'd have to deal with. "On my way" he replied simply. He had nothing better to do after all.

"Thanks", Dhindara responded. She replicated a couple of rocks that would be required to test the system for a proper state of repair, to be prepared for later, and then waited.

--Five Minutes Later--

Sam popped through the door shortly afterwards "Someone call for a technician."

Dhindara smiled. "Yes, that was me", she said, "This is very complicated equipment, and I admit that there are some things that I should better not touch."

"So what were you doing when it began to have problems." Sam said, opening his tool kit in his arms.

"I put one of these rocks in here", Dhindara said, holding one up. "They're standardised rocks that are replicated to an exact composition that is known, to allow me to test the scanner and see whether it works properly by comparing the scan results with the replicator pattern. When I pressed the button this happened." She pointed at a half-vaporised rock. "It didn't vaporise the rocks completely, instead it melted most of it, preventing the scanner from working properly."

"Okay. I'll take a look" Sam paused "But if you don't mind I like to talk whilst I work"

"Talk to yourself or to me?" Dhindara inquired, smirking.

"Everyone else is the usual." Sam grinned.

"Good", Dhindara replied. "You could talk to me about your favourite music, food, colour... or ask me questions." She grinned. Playing games while at work, she liked that.

"Hmm start with a simple one, favourite colour?"

Dhindara hadn't expected him to actually respond to her joke. "Uhm... black. Well, that doesn't count as a colour, so blue. Yours?"

Sam smiled "Yellow" he paused "There's a capacity to vaporise harmful materials in here aren't there?"

"Yes, back there", Dhindara replied, pointing in the direction. "Put it in the bin, then press the button. It's a phaser emitter in the ceiling. What's there to vaporise?"

"Someone mis-wired the console, either that or they made a programming error."

"They shouldn't put raw recruits in charge of maintenance teams at starbases", Dhindara sighed. "Can you fix it easily?"

"Shouldn't be too much of a task." Sam paused a moment "Can you pass me a hyperspanner from my toolkit?"

Dhindara reached for the hyperspanner, then knelt down and handed it to him. "There you go", she said, "have you had more of these already, or is this an isolated incident?"

"So far this is the only one" Sam paused "I'll go check the others when I'm done here."

"I've been crawling through the innards of the labs all day", Dhindara said, "most thing I could fix myself, but with this I didn't dare touch it, in case it was anything more severe."

"Well I still don't know if there are any other issues but this one seems to be fixed. I'd like to run a diagnostic just in case."

Dhindara nodded. "I'll just activate this thing and it should vaporise the rest of the material, then I can out another rock in there and compare the readings. If it matches out it's working."

"Okay" Sam climbed out from under the console and then stood up. "Fire her up."

Dhindara pushed the button and the rest of the rock that had already solidified again was vaporised. "Looks good so far", she said. As the lights went out, the sign that the process was ended and she could move her hand in without it being vaporised along with the rock, she placed the next piece inside, pressing the button again. She smiled as it dissolved and the readings were confirmed by the computer. "Thanks for your help, Sir", she said.

"No dramas" Sam smiled "You know where to find me if you ever need anything else."

Dhindara nodded. "And you'll find me in my cabin", she said, "for the next 45 days, anyway."

"See you around."

 

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