Tactical Inspection
Posted on 14 Oct 2020 @ 11:22pm by Captain Corvus DeHavilland & Commander Calliope Zahn & Lieutenant Commander Neil Orzahn
Mission:
M1 - Emergence
Location: Shield Control Room
Timeline: MD03 - 1204HRS
1480 words - 3 OF Standard Post Measure
As they stepped out of the remnant warzone that was the security office and brig, Calliope exhaled slowly and checked updates on her padd. "The Caelian is reported as having docked in the last hour. Engineering personnel from the Caelian are disembarking, as well as our Tactical Chief, Lt Commander Neil Orzahn." She paused at the name. That was bound to cause a few missives to get mixed in the mail between them. "I'd love to see his first reactions..."
"If he has any sense at all, he'll be in fits," Corvus answered, shaking her own head, trying to imagine just how quickly she'd have requested a transfer if she had walked into this situation as a Tactical Officer. The Challenger had been trying enough on its own, and that had been on a ship that was extremely well-established with a crew that had been working together for years. Even still, she'd considered walking. Had she walked into this mess, she might have run.
They boarded a turbolift and Calliope checked her padd, pin pointing Orzahn's whereabouts before calling out the destination to the computer. "He's close by, actually, in the Shielding control room." Which probably meant Orzahn had similar concerns and priorities about the station's defenses to their own already.
She'd barely explained when the lift doors opened once again. "That was the shortest ride I've had on the turbolift yet today." Calliope mused, following Corvus out.
"Maybe the system's finally registering rank appropriately and rerouting us," Corvus shrugged hopefully.
Calliope was busily taping away on her padd and motioning and flicking through the raised lighted display as they walked. "Shielding was one of the systems under a great deal of emergency rerouting and modifications when the last crew was working feverishly to resist the decent into the void and buy time. It looks like much of the frantic rework has remained in such a state since." Calliope once again muttered the obvious out loud, mostly to herself as she paged through the summaries and acclimated her self. She looked up at the personnel in the control room to compare notes with reality.
Neil stood hands on his hips as he stared at the main shield control room for the upper section of the Starbase. It was in a right mess of a state, consoles missing panels, wires hanging from the roof and there was just outright a section of wall missing, though that one he had to admit was likely intentional as it revealed the inner workings of the routing and control circuts that were typically hidden and not easily accessible. "We'll I guess she's going to need a bit more then a buff job to fix that." He muttered more to himself then the engineer beside him. While leaving the Caelian he had commandeered one of the smaller teams for some work on his own projects.
And by own projects, essentially anything he deemed of urgent need that the chief engineer might not. Most of the rest of the teams were going into refurbishing the reactors that powered the massive station, and while the bulk of the systems he commanded required their power, Neil wanted them ready for when he did have the power. "Right, if you need to get anything from the ship I've already cleared it with the Admiral. Just make sure we have the main command ring shields ready to go within 48 hours okay?"
"Can do Commander. Gets us away from toiling away in the boiling reactor space." The Lieutenant replied with a nod before stepping towards his team, all currently behind the command consoles staring at the mess of destroyed and overloaded command and control circuits.
"What a mess," Corvus declared as she stepped into the doorway of the shield control room, her and Calliope following the computer's indication on where the Lieutenant Commander was. "I suppose that's par for the course though, isn't it?" she asked Zahn, shaking her head. She wasn't sure what she thought she was going to get, but here they were. For the umpteenth time she wondered if she should have just toiled away on Praetorian another decade and then taken command of a nice, shiny new ship instead of this fixer upper.
Neil smiled as he turned, hearing a new voice entering the room and was greeted by the sight of two woman in Command red. One with Captain's pips and the other with Commanders. "Well, if I had to guess, I'd take it you're Commander Zahn, and you..." he said looking pointedly at Corvus, "Are Captain DeHavilland? If so, welcome to Shield Control for the Command section of the Starbase, if not, I'll kindly ask for your credentials for a secure area and escort you away." He finished with a sly grin.
"Here's our opportunity to deny ownership and desert." Calliope whispered to Corvus behind cupped fingers. "I'll hot-wire a shuttle."
Corvus let out a sharp burst of air through her nose, "I've been looking for the exit since I came aboard. It has to be too good to be true," she whispered back.
"I understand you just landed a couple of hours ago, Mr. Orzahn," said Calliope. "Maybe the shock hasn't set in yet. You look entirely too cool. What's your take so far?"
Neil shrugged, "Could be better, could be worse. The systems actually work so there's that, but most of them are at or below minimum specs for proper operation. We're going to have to overhaul a lot of the main systems. Mostly a few parts here and there but the effects of the void were unexpected, we're still learning how everything was affected."
He turned and waved a hand towards the main controls, "Once we get this one refurbished we'll have the command sections shields mostly restored so in case of an emergency we just move everyone up. After that I want to focus on the engineering sections. The habitat section will be last, but we should be fine."
Calliope looked pleased. "A progressive plan. I like it. Get me a list of what parts need refurbished. I'll be talking with a representative from the Colony tomorrow and they have a sizable industrial replicator if there are parts the Caelian can't supply."
"That sounds good. Anything that they can't create on the surface needs to be sent to Command so that they can get us the parts from whereever can make them the fastest," Corvus chimed in, "Admiral Sepandiyar assured me that we have priority. We just have to let them know what we need." As she said that she realized that it was probably worth trying the Admiral again. He'd told her to report forty-eight hours after her arrival on the status of everything but when she'd made the subspace call there'd been no answer. Alexander wasn't on the grid. That either meant that the stations long-range comms were down (unlikely since she raised Falkirk just fine) or they were purposely not answering hails because of some other, more dramatic reason. Whatever the reason, it was probably time she gave it one more shot.
"Well, lets give the engineers here a little time to go over the thing before we start making lists. I'd say give us a full 24 hours and we'll have a list of everything we need to make sure the station shields will be 100% in no time." Neil said with a smile as he shrugged. "I want to get a good look at some of the offensive systems before we make a list anyways, if we can get everything coming at once rather then batches and be ready to essentially plug and play the parts then the downtime will be shorter."
It sounded like a good enough plan to Calliope. She was just eager to get things rolling, even if it were piecemeal. But the engineers and tactical personnel had barely had the chance to look behind the wall paneling yet. They were all well more in the know on the repair needs than she could lend further comment to herself. "Very good. I'm available if you need help organizing anything. Until then," Calliope looked to Covus to see if she had anything further. She didn't appear to. "We'll leave you to it, Commander."
"Keep me posted to any changes, good or bad. We can't afford to let this station be delayed any further in being operational. Starfleet and 9th Fleet are depending on us to be the beacon of the Federation in this sector. Failure isn't an option here," Corvus warned him. "You and Engineering are who we're depending on the most, Lieutenant Commander," she sighed. "No pressure," she smirked. Corvus waved for Calliope to follow and she turned and left, leaving Orzahn to his work. Lord knew there was enough of it.
