Clean Up On Aisle 1

Posted on Tue Jun 20th, 2023 @ 11:35pm by Ensign Carter Page
Edited on on Sat Jul 1st, 2023 @ 10:51pm

626 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Mission 4: Through a Glass, Darkly
Location: Science Lab #1
Timeline: M4 MD01 (2268.07.10) 1020

The regular lights slowly flickered on in the auxiliary control room, illuminating the slight figure of Ensign Carter Page. It was another job off the long damage control list he was working down. Still, jobs like this beat fixing clogged waste lines. Damage control outside of combat entailed all of the small time jobs other engineers couldn't bother with. He fixed his slicked black hair in the polished glass of the viewscreen before looking down at his clipboard.

The next job was science lab #1. Apparently some of the terminals and other diagnostic equipment had blown out from the systems overload. Most of the repairs had been addressed, but this was considered low priority. He packed up his toolbox and started down there.

The doors of science lab #1 opened and Carter walked in. The main bay was empty except for Ensign Dora, the bug eyed alien who was interacting with two terminals at once.

"Good afternoon Dora," Carter said with a smile, "I'm here to fix the equipment." He adjusted the toolbox strap which was sliding off of his slight shoulder.

"Heyyyyy, Carter." Dora greeted the young Ensign who he probably wouldn't have recognised (all humans looking quite similar to the Edosian) except the boyish figure seemed to spend awful lot of time popping in to fix problems which could actually have very easily been put on the job list of maintenance crew members like A'Glosz and Stromi.

He and Toby seemed to get on very well whenever he came in and Dora found himself saying, without really even thinking about it, "Toby's not here at the moment."

"Oh that's not a problem," the young man responded, "Just going down my to do list, I heard some of the equipment and terminals went down due to the battle. Could you show me which ones? It won't take long to get them back and running. We had to load in some of the more specialized parts from Starbase 10."

"Urrrrrrrrm" the Edosian tried to remember, it was Toby who kept putting in requisitions for support to Carter's department not him. "I think it was the thermo-coupler on bench 3" he said, wondering why such specifics weren't properly logged on the system.

"Then Karashka crashed in from her office and took one look at Carter before exclaiming "You again Ensign Page! More bogus repair jobs on our equipment? I've been studying these reports from maintenance: all these repair dockets are making my section look like we don't look after our equipment properly."

She looked at the two of them standing there so close, Carter with his tool in his hand.

"Look, if you have a crush on Ensign Dora, just ask him out; and stop meddling with my equipment!" she boomed.

"Sorry Lieutenant," Carter responded with a terrified look on his face, "The report received outlined some specific equipment damaged by the Romulans. Specialized lab equipment we needed to requisition from Starbase 10..." He tried to explain himself, but he knew it was probably useless. Talking to Car Crash was like talking to a brick wall, unless you were a pretty girl... Pretty boys didn't count.

"Well, all right." replied Karashka, looking slightly mollified "But just make sure all your visits here are justified." she grumped and turning a jaundiced eye on Dora, gave him a taste of her tongue lashing, too.

"Ensign, I would rather you do one job well than two jobs badly." and with a swish of a teal minidress, turned and returned to her office.

The Edosian just let out a sad "Ohhhhh"

"Well, I guess I better to get to work, sorry to bother you," Carter said with an embarassed look on his face before walking quickly to the other side of the science lab.

 

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