The Ins and Outs

The secondary power grid had been on Mei-Lin's list since day three and she had not gotten to it until now because there was always something more urgent and the secondary grid was the kind of problem that was easy to defer right up until it wasn't. She had pulled the access panel on the port side housing and was halfway into the conduit space with a diagnostic scanner in one hand and a plasma torch in the other when the readings came back and confirmed what she had already suspected.

Three relay junctions running at elevated resistance. Not critical yet. Would be in about two weeks if nobody touched them.

She made a note and kept going.

Engineering on the Dutchman had a particular quality that she had been cataloguing since she came aboard, the way the systems talked to each other, the small idiosyncrasies that every ship developed over time and that told you more about its history than any maintenance log did. This one had been pushed hard at some point in the last year, she could see it in the wear patterns on the EPS conduit housings and in the way the core compensated slightly on the port side under sustained load. Not damage exactly. More like a ship that had been asked to do more than it was designed for and had done it and was still carrying the memory of that in its systems.

She respected that actually. Ships that had been through something tended to be more reliable than ships that hadn't. They knew their own limits in a way that newer vessels did not.

She extracted herself from the conduit space and sat up and pushed her hair back and looked at the readings on her PADD. The relay junctions were the priority. After that the starboard EPS secondary feed had a seal that was showing early wear and she wanted to get eyes on the warp plasma injector housing before the end of the week because the variance readings from two days ago had not entirely resolved the way she expected them to.

She was still looking at the PADD when she heard the engineering bay door open behind her.

Morgan stepped across the threshold at the entrance to main engineering carrying a large container of coffee. “Good morning, at least I think it’s morning,” he said to his colleague Mei-Lin. “I was up late last night doing some diagnostics. Wanted to get a feel for the department before the day started. From what I could gather, the EPS feeds are a little wonky. Technical term. But you’ve done a nice job down here, Mei-Lin. The plasma manifolds are pretty clean. Should be happy about that. No one wants to be crawling around all night digging through all that crap. I heard you have robots for that now,” he grinned. “Excellent”.

"Thank you Chief. The robots have been quite helpful with a lot of the menial tasks, but replacing conduits and relays require a real person, so I've been working through what I can find. Whomever had her before put the ship through it's paces, but all in all it's looking good. I guess that's what you get when you buy used from a Ferengi dealer. I hope Zedd didn't overpay for it all."

She picked up her own mug of coffee and took a sip before handing him the PADD she'd been looking over. "The checklist for today unless there is something else you want to focus on first."

“This is good, Mei-Lin, thank you. Very good,” Morgan said as he perused the PADD. “I would like to set up a maintenance schedule, if you think it will work. There are two of us and whoever Zedd gets for the labor rotation. I see you’ve covered all the bases. You mentioned dilithium the other day. There should be a matrix compositor that recrystallizes the dilithium in the chamber. Is that why we need more crystals? Are they in that bad of a condition?”

“We should also check the plasma injectors and magnetic resonance generators. Last night I noticed the impulse control interface is a little sluggish. Should add that to the list.”

"A maintenance schedule is definitely needed from what I've found so far. I think we should try and delegate some of the more menial maintenance that we can't give to the robots to the temporary hands, and then you and I an focus on the more important stuff. And then we can also do a rotation on work inspection if that sounds good. As for the crystals, Zedd is planning on making his way down to buy some, it sounds like he got a line on where we can finally get them. The issue with the ones we have now is they've broken down so far that maintain the proper resonance frequencies is almost impossible, and so recrystallization will buy us some time, but that's not a process I've done before to be honest. However even if we do, the projections don't go in our favor. We might be lucky to hit eighty percent after." She thought for a moment before continuing so she could answer all of the mans questions.

"I'll check with Lindsy later about the helm controls, I'm sure what you found is correct, although to my understanding she's on the duty roster to going forward to fly the ship so I'll run the checks and then talk to her this afternoon and see what she says."

“I haven’t met Lindsy yet, not sure why. Maybe our paths just haven’t crossed yet. I want to make sure the bridge engineering station is operating at full capacity. Hoping that whatever she does will shake loose whatever is bogging down the master control system down here. I agree that delegation is our best friend here. I’ll talk to Zedd about the crystals. I don’t know if he wants to expend the power and energy to build a compositor. The replicator could do it, with some tweaks. May not be worth it in the long run.”

Avery continued, pleased that he and Mei-Lin were collaborating and coming to a consensus on the varied issues. “Well, Ms. Zhao, it appears we’re starting things out on the right foot. I think we will work well together. Let’s take a look at those power couplings you were having a problem with.”

She gave a and picked up her tool kit and walked over grabbing a case of parts. "If you'll follow me Chief, I'll show you the secondary conduits giving power spikes..."

“Gladly,” Avery allowed Mei-Lin to lead the way. He was still getting to know the ins and outs of the department. He grabbed his own PADD and tucked it into waistband of his pants. He thought maybe he should get some more appropriate work clothes with pockets . “In the meantime, I have a personal question to ask. Tell me more about T’Vara…..”