Meet and greet

Posted on 15 Jun 2011 @ 5:12pm by

1,028 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: M8: The Kzinti War!!!!
Location: XO's office
Timeline: Current

ON

As he read over the compiled reports from the Engineers, Nate began condensing everything together. With as busy as the Captain had been, he decided to present it to the XO instead. He hadn't really gotten an opportunity to meet the man either. Transferring everything onto a PADD, Nathan turned and shut off the main display in his office. Turning, he looked out the windows and saw the small skeleton crew for the second shift performing some routine maintenance, the activity buzz that had once encircled him for days now seemed to be gone, if only for a short time. Walking out he nodded to a couple crewman as they walked past. Finding the nearest turbo lift, it was commanded to take him to the ships lounge. A cup of coffee and one final review of the report would be in order.

______________________

For once Don was alone, two operations officers having just left after having and before them he sat with a security roster dilemma. he hadn't even gotten to some of the transfers of enlisted crew yet, hell, he hadn't even met some of the senior officers yet. The headache was back firmly, settled around his temples like an iron band. There was no time to go to sickbay, so he took two more of the medication in tablet form he acquired from a nurse on the station still. It was slow in helping, but it did work. The taste in his mouth was absolutely disgusting, so he quickly got a cup of coffee from the replicator to swallow them down, nearly burning his throat in the process.

Thinking again about the senior officers he had not met and needed to see anyway, he was about to tap his badge when his chime rang. "Enter!" he said, still nurturing his burning throat and mouth.

Strolling up to his desk, he paused and stood at attention. " I have an update for you on our status Sir. I also would like to formally introduce myself. I'm Lieutenant Stryker, Chief Engineer. I am pleased to finally be able to meet with you." Noticing the pain that Don was attempting to mask, he slackened and showed concern "Are you ok Sir?"

Don coughed and shook his head. "No I am ok.....Gulped the coffee too quickly..." he said and stretched out his hand. "Likewise, Lieutenant and welcome on board.... even if it is a bit late..." he added with a crooked grin. "You say you have an update, let's hear it," he asked.

Handing the PADD off, Nate began to elaborate. "Well all repairs have been completed, the shuttles are attached and ready, as well as the platform the Captain had requested. I've also gotten a majority of the upgrades I wanted done to the systems, but I'm still working on balancing the power loads between the cores, particularly in the event the ship is separated. We've been busy writing the program code line by line due to the fact that this ship wasn't initially designed in mind with the changes I've done. We've managed to increase output to the deflectors by %12 and re-modulated the frequencies to the phasers giving us a burst that's 3 seconds longer. If I push it much farther than that we risk fusing relays entirely. I know it doesn't seem like much in the way of the Kzinti, but every little bit helps".

"You can say that again..." Don commented. "Thank you Lieutenant," Don said reading through the report again. "How long will it still to get the power loads balanced?" he asked.

"Well Sir I can't say how much of the code you've seen personally for the Core, but I would say with the folks I have working on it, we can probably be done by the time we go to drop off the Marines. Now if I could get your approval on having a holodeck reserved for Engineering and allowing me to maintain full power to it until I'm done, we can conduct alot of our testing there, probably shave off 6 hours. But that's about it as there's just too much to rewrite. I don't want to risk any of the sections of the ship losing power in the event we go into MVAM". In all honesty Nate hated programming, especially on such a large scale, but in the end he knew this would give them slightly better odds.

"I haven't seen anything, but I know it takes time," he said, thinking how the engineer's proposal could be accomodated. "Speak to ops, see if they have people they can release to help as well," he suggested. "Look, I can authorize the use of the holodeck, especially because you are telling me that it will save time, but we need to monitor the power supply. I am letting the operations chief know as we speak," he said, tapping the message on his padd. "Keep me up to date with your progress," he said.

"I appreciate it, I know everyone is busy. I usually have my head buried in work around the ship I miss some of the more administrative functions going on around me. Guess that's why I'm an Engineer, hate politics too much".

Don sighed. "Sometimes I wish I could dig my head in some hands on work and forget about anything else," Don admitted with a crooked grin. "But I was no good at anything else, so they put me as XO.... " he joked.

"Someones gotta do it Sir. Are there any questions or anything you have additional for me regarding any policies? I apologize as I haven't had time to go through everything yet..."

"No, I think get the job done, then if something comes up we can handle it. If you have questions, ask, my door is always open..."

"Will do Sir. I'd better get back to Engineering. Some of them get lost if they don't have someone around telling them what needs to be done. Coding waits for no man". With a nod, Nate retreated from the safety of Dons office and returned back into the fray of another long day.


OFF

Commander Don Killian
XO

Lieutenant Nate Stryker
CEO

 

RSS Feed