A Busy Man

Posted on Sun Aug 27th, 2023 @ 4:04am by Lieutenant Commander Darrod Hanous

1,380 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Mission 4: Through a Glass, Darkly
Location: Deck 15, Environmental Systems & Deck 11 Forward
Timeline: M4 MD02 (2268.07.11) 1400

Having finished with briefing the team leads for Engineering, Darrod was eager to get started and get his hands dirty with this ship that obviously needed repair. He'd realized from his discussion with the Captain the night before that Faust wanted this investigation done quietly by someone who knew the way pirates sabotaged a vessel; which was something Dar had a little too much hands-on experience with. He started by walking over to a dark corner of Engineering, looking at the environmental monitoring systems. This was one of the more boring parts of the job, but possibly among the most crucial. Flipping a few of the switches, he checked through with as close to deck-by-deck precision as he could get down here, monitoring the artificial atmosphere that was one of the only things between the crew and oblivion.

Starfleet didn't think of it much, and in part he wondered if it was because no one wanted to think about it. It was a single page in the tech manual for the Constitution class; it had long been considered a solved problem. On the other hand, enviro systems ran parallel to EPS, the sensors were often user-readable, and the security on them was low. He saw something out of place - a section of the ship which didn't seem to be fluctuating at all. There was always some change. When a person walked past, the average temperature shifted, the pressure changed; if they didn't it would get affected by the whole deck. But the forward main corridor on Deck 11, from sectors 11-12 to 11-32, seemed like it was frozen in time. He had an idea, and started typing, slightly raising the average temperature and lowering the average humidity in nearby sectors. Overall, they were minor adjustments. If his theory was right, though, then he'd just found a problem. Whether it was just a bad corridor sensor, or something more sinister, it didn't matter, it needed to be fixed.

He waited a full minute with bated breath, then queried that section again. It was exactly the same as before. Every query result matched the norm. His adjusted sectors would raise more flags in the system than this. That was one of the tricks - hit a system that gave so much information no one could parse it all unless they were really bound and determined to do so. The fact that it was the corridor right behind fire control wasn't lost on the engineer either - that EPS line was probably one of the most important, and one of the highest throughput, on the ship. He set up a scan, looking for all sectors that had the same readings, and a quick program to twiddle with the atmospheric conditions as he'd done and recheck. Any sectors that didn't change would get printed out. The program itself would take a while to run since it had to check every environmental region on the ship, but Dar hoped that there would be very little output.

He walked out of the Environmental office and headed back to Engineering, picking up a tricorder and a toolbelt. He looked at the man in the jumpsuit looking over a switchboard that covered the entire ship's network of engineering staff. He also reached into the supply closet and got out one of the environmental corridor panels, about the size of a sheet of paper. "We have an issue on Deck 11 environmental; possibly more. Tell Page I plan to handle it. Alert forward fire control, no tests until we give the all-clear. Oh, and alert Comms, I'm running what amounts to a level two shipwide diagnostic on the environmental systems for all common areas. No need to panic, life support itself will be unaffected, and the temp and humidity shifts are well within common comfort range."

The four-deck turbolift ride was quick in reality, but felt like it took forever. He didn't know what he'd find behind the compromised environmental panel; idly he wondered, should he have brought a life belt along? Since he hadn't, he consigned himself to the fact that if there was an explosion, the folks in fire control would hear and call Sickbay; a cold comfort to be sure, but it was at least something. Arriving on the deck, it was quiet, and he became aware of his environmental twiddling as he stepped out. It wasn't unpleasantly warm by any means, but the change was noticeable. He preferred his work environment colder, but right now, the warmth was a good sign. It meant that the whole system wasn't compromised.

He walked with purpose toward what looked like a nondescript panel of the bulkhead, popping it open. Looking at the situation, he had to stop himself from taking a step back. He didn't even need a tricorder to see the bypass board soldered onto the control unit, and shorted to the EPS conduit. If he'd tried to do anything more than just reading the output from the device, especially adjusting it and thus pushing power to it, the device would have backfed into the EPS system. At best it would have tripped the failsafes and locked the entire section down, including one of the main trunks for the phasers - assuming they were still in place. At worst, it could have caused a sizable explosion and totally disabled the forward phasers (plus starting a fire or other terrible incident). And those phasers were a highly critical system. He spoke, mostly to himself. "Well, someone obviously knew how to be annoying."

In the grand tradition of mad engineers, he would have to work live. Thankfully he'd remembered a pair of insulating gloves. The thick rubber was constricting, but Darrod decided that constriction was leaps and bounds better than possible electrocution.

The process was delicate, since he couldn't dare bring a phaser into play here, or really anything that would cause that bypass to pull power. All he had was a pair of snips and a prayer - actually, he was fresh out of prayers, too. So with his breath held, he winced as as he gingerly moved the components - mounted to the board was a massive capacitor that would dump a spark back into the EPS system the moment its power was cut, connected to a pretty simple duotronic bypass - and it was mounted tight, so it wouldn't be able to be snipped out. A neat little piece of work - Dar could have respected it if he wasn't now faced with the possibility of it killing him or others. With his breath held, he reached in and winced as he snipped what all the sensor devices he had told him was the output line. He positioned himself so that the bulkhead could shield him if something went wrong, and he'd only lose an arm. 'Only' still being a matter that quickened his breath when it wasn't held.

But there was no explosion. He started breathing again after a few moments, and before removing input power, he tapped the ODN output. After a few minutes, he didn't see any errant pulsecodes, just the same readings he'd gotten from the 'panel' in Engineering, That was good, no other device was waiting to dump those supercaps if only one was tampered with. That told him that whichever group in the Syndicate they'd clashed with had fully intended to take this ship whole. Thankfully, they'd failed. Removing the ODN line connections, he then removed the input power from the bypass.

The whole thing came out easily, and Dar replaced the panel with the correct one, plugging it in. Almost instantly, his tricorder (still tapped into the ODN) started getting all the standard data, and showed that the panel was responding correctly. He closed the panel cover gently, and holding the device so that high density capacitor was safely away from him, he walked back to the turbolift.

When he got back to Engineering, he put the bypassed board on a work table in the common area, discharging the capacitor. "I'm certain that we've got more to do, that's just the one I saw. The automated report from Environmental should tell us where to check."

He headed into his office to get a cup of coffee and catch his breath.

 

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