Meeting the "family"

Posted on Mon Oct 28th, 2019 @ 2:10pm by Lieutenant Mica Rue

Mission: Sounds of Silence
Location: Engineering
Timeline: arrival on the Astraea

Having dispensed with her official duty of being cleared by medical, Mica strolled down the halls with a sense of rightness although the position of chief would take a long time for her to get used to.

As she walked, she nodded to the rare passer-by and noticed the hum of the power running through the bulkheads. The thrum was soothing, and somehow different than on a starbase, though she figured that was probably a figment of her imagination. The brightness of the lighting, however, was not. A little too bright, a little more make-the-people-cheery-with-artificial-light, she thought.

Mica paused at Engineering's doors, squared her shoulders, and went to meet her new 'family'

Unlike the starbases on which she had served, engineering of the Astraea was fairly quiet. There were officers working, here and there, but none were rushing and huffing about like on the starbase. She had learned, early on, that starbase engineering was typically uneventful, but that meant the monotonous task of running endless routine checks, tweaking small parameters, fixing troublesome replicator glitches. In short, unless it was on the front lines, starbase engineering was second hand to babysitting a giant toddler with attention issues.

As Mica approached the main warp core panel, undisturbed for the most part, she let her fingers touch the panel, caressing the smooth plate.

"Hello, my friend, I'm your new caretaker, for the most part. I see your brothers and sisters are at it, ensuring you've taken your vitamins and had all your shots. Now, let's see how they've done." she let her fingers fly over the console, running diagnostics on the system, aware of the small group of engineers that had gathered while she continued her one-way "conversation" with the machinery.

Once the diagnostic was well underway and the results were, so far, top-notch, Mica turned to the group, quiet, a smile on her lips.

The group looked between themselves, uncertain, before one stepped forward to speak.

"Ma'am? Can I do something for you?"

Mica smiled wider. "Not all all, just making sure our baby here was running right."

"Our...baby..." the Lt drifted off, looking uncertain between the others.

"Despite ships being referred to as gals, we always called our warp cores men. Something to do with the phallic nature of a pulsing rod in the middle of her, I suppose. Not sure if it differs with a starship yet. Time will tell." Mica turned back to the console. "I'm your new chief engineer by the way, and I have to compliment you all, so far he seems to be working top-notch and ready for a new mission."

The lieutenant looked again nervously at her comrades. All of them stepped forward. "call them men? Ma'am, is there something I can do for you? someone I can call? I believe the doctor is in, we could call him for you--"

Mica tapped the screen again, continuing into a level 2 diagnostic. "Actually I just came from there." she laughed as the console chirped. "Don't worry, young man, we will get that taken care of right away." patting the side of the console she turned again to the group. "I just came from there, sickbay. the doctor is a lot more personable than the one I had last time, I'll tell you that. Passed the exam with flying colors, thank you very much." She glanced once at the warp core as she console chirped again. "Yes, yes, I'll let them know."

"Although he is generally healthy, Our young man here is in need of a crystal re-alignment and it wouldn't hurt to do the inertial dampeners as well. I want to make sure he is better than the best when the Commander decides to pull this fine lady back out."

"Um...yes, ma'am, but..."

"And don't worry, you'll get used to the babbling - they all do, eventually."

"Babbling, ma'am, are you sure you're..."

"Yep, top-notch, just like he's going to be after those re-alignments" she gestures toward the warp core as she stared intently at the group. They only held her gaze a moment before they scurried off in every which direction to do her bidding. All except Lt Cole, who silently put in a generally inquiry to the doctor regarding the sanity of the new chief engineer....