Spark tending.

Posted on Thu May 14th, 2020 @ 9:06am by Lieutenant Commander Thex sh'Zoarhi & Ensign Briaar Gavarus
Edited on on Tue May 19th, 2020 @ 12:37pm

Mission: Return to the Core
Location: Main Engineering, Thex's Office
Timeline: 2397

" Taanjo, I don't care if the waste system isn't your specialty. If it's broken I want it fixed." The very annoying Andorian chief of engineering yelled into her coms as she looked over the mess that her girl was in. Whatever effect this mess had had the crew it seemed to have affected the ship as well. Every system seemed to be encountering errors and many had broken.

Worse was the Romulan hack attempts that she kept finding. Could they stop being sneaky bastards for once in their lives?

To top off her bad news was the medical monitor on her neck and the taste that was hanging around in her mouth. Despite the two tubes of toothpaste and many strong flavoured foods, she could still taste the gunk being pumped down her throat.

A knock on her office door made her look up and yell. " What is it? "

Stepping in, the towering, tubby Tellarite Ensign Briaar Gavarus has a small stack of PaDD's in her hands. As a member of the newly minted R&D department AND a member of the engineering department, she had been bouncing back and forth during the current crisis, and that combined with the lack of sleep showed on her exhausted-looking face.

Her eyes were a bit sunken and there were a few random, wiry hairs jutting out of her chin that had clearly been missed in the morning. She had a toolkit slung over her shoulder and a few stains on her dark blue tunic from the R&D department. "Uh... sorry Chief. I... uh... got the EPS conduit taps cleaned off and the power flow is back up to... uh..."

Looking at the PaDD, she squinted slightly, "Uh, 96 percent. Ensign Shain said that they need a few extra hands in the port nacelle to lock down a minor leak."

Thex brain was already halfway into a yell before it stopped itself. Even a small spark of good news was some news." Did you run a security check to make sure the Romulans haven't slipped anything into the programming code?" She asked as politely as she could as she poured herself another cup of coffee from the flask on the desk. She wasn't going to let herself fall asleep again until they were out of this pit.

For a moment, Briaar tensed up slightly before answering. As she spoke, the stutter that she had a hard time controlling when she was nervous began to bubble up. "Uh... y... y... yeah. Yes, Commander. I ran the systems through security protocols, and I t... t... talked with K... Kodria when I d... dropped Minnie off at the R&D Daycare, and... and she's going to be... uh... running extra security sweeps of the computer system to keep all that crap out."

Speaking of the sentient holographic copy of the Captain's Andriod Granddaughter from the future who now lived within the Hera's computer core and helped monitor it for things like infiltration, Gavarus was a bit twitchy around the irritable Chief Engineer and a bit more tired as her eyes began to droop a bit. 

" Good at least...." Thex began before the blue girl's face turned into a look of utter disgust. Turning she partly spat partly threw up into a bucket under her desk as the taste came back with a fury. A string of words which didn't translate for several polite reasons, filled the room as the chief of engineering grabbed some towels t clean her face with. " My apologies. I can't get that rancid taste out of my throat. What about the teams working on the backup life support, have they finished?" The Andorian asked breathing in heavily through her nose.

"Y... Y... yeah. Yes, Chief. T... Th... the life support back ups are all in place. And they away team is back from the Warbird and got their S... Singularity core stabilized so they won't implode while we're parked next to 'em." Gavarus replied, looking over everything that was on her to-do PaDD, trying to put Thex at ease that she was on top of her responsibilities. And in truth, she was overworking to ensure that everything she was in charge of was being handled properly, as the fear of her failures as an Engineer had been at the heart of more than one of the night terrors that had plagued the portly porcine.

But here, in Thex's office, she was looking at her Chief and getting past her own internal issues and needed to act on that. "I... I'm sorry, Chief. I... I don't mean t' overstep my pl... place, but what's wrong? Is there anything I can do t' he.. help?"

Part of Thex head wanted to just scream just as she wanted to scream at reality for doing this to her. Fortunately for the ensign, the part of the brain that wanted to get out of this pit shoved her packing self-loathing brain to the back of her head. She had work to do and an example to lead. " Not unless you have something to get a rank taste from hell out of my mouth. I know we're all having to deal with nightmares, so let's get out of here. Is there anything that needs prioritizing? " She said standing up from her desk.

"I... I think we got the programming all set for using the deflector dish as a graviton generator. Th... the teams are all working to make sure everything else is set and ready to go. Priorities should probably be for bolstering the shields once we fire that up so we don't get torn up by the graviton shearing." Gavarus said, biting her bottom lip and wishing she could just sit and hold her adopted daughter, wishing she was anywhere but where she was at the moment, irritation beginning to overwhelm her anxiety. "As for getting funkmouth out, lots of mouthwash gargling helps when I've got a wicked hangover. Saltines. The replicator can also get you some ginger tablets for the nausea, for whatever that's worth."

" Well let's get it bolstered. As for the mouth wash, I've tried that along with several very aromatic kinds of cheese. I just hope when we get out of here it will go away by itself. " Thex said grabbing her toolkit from its shelf.

Nodding, Gavarus stepped to the side of the door to Thex's office to let the Andorian Chief engineer by. "Maybe when shifts over, you can try some of that Romulan blue crap that can strip the stealth coating off of the hull. Mrs. Dox.... has a case in her... shit. Uh... sorry. Never mind."

Clenching her jaw slightly, the two-meter tall Tellarite Engineer had forgotten for a moment, that the Hera's resident Ex-Tal'Shiar agent, intel operative and new ship's nanny, was off ship, her own fate unknown at the time and weighing on Gavarus' mind among everything else. "Yeah, we should just get to that shielding."

" We're all getting out of this Gavarus. " Thex said in her best reassuring voice she could muster as she gave the ensign a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder.

Nodding and putting on a slightly forced Smile, Gavaraus did her best to believe the Chief Engineer. "Yeah. Thanks, Chief. So... let's do this and make sure we can."

" Yeah so let's get the shields reinforced so we can get out of here. The only way I'm getting answers is if we get out of here." The Andorian said as she led the way doing her best to keep her gag reflex under control.

As they stepped out into the body of Main Engineering to get to work, quickly making their way to two of the work stations, Gavarus sighed slightly and turned to the chief, hoping she wasn't making a huge mistake. As she spoke, she could almost imagine Fiona's voice in her head, chastising her for her hesitance, "Uh... Chief. I'm... I'm sorry. Just... tell me to shut up if I'm speaking out of turn... but 'answers'? What's going on?"

Thex paused as she breathed in slightly and tried to think of how to reply. " I've had a nightmare, Gavarus. About how many of me there could be. I feel weak and smaller than I ever have." she said slowly.

"Nightmares, I know all about, Chief. But... what do you mean, how many of you? Sorry, I just don't get it?" The confused Tellarite admitted.

" In my nightmare, I was in a facility full of thousands of me. Stored in jars like we're a fucking production line. With our recent incident with the heiress I need to ask my Thavan about what the hell is going on." Thex said trying to remain calm.

Listening, Gavarus was opening up an access panel to beging working on the power connections as she cricked an eyebrow, trying to follow along. "The heiress? Oh, right. On Risa. That obnoxious little diva kid that... huh. Yeah, I guess she did really look a lot like you. That WAS a little trippy."

"I mean... in the scale of weird shit that went down that night, it was about a five, but yeah." The Engineer in the blue R&D tunic said, digging her thick, three-fingered hands into the open wall panel as she worked. "And your Tha... ThaVAN... that's, like, one of your dad's, right?"

" Yeah one of them. " Thex said pulling out a few tools as she got to work. " And the Diva kid didn't just look like me. She was me. Her DNA pattern was identical to me."

Hearing that, Gavarus jerked her head out of the panel, smacking her rather large head on the frame of the wall. "Gyaah!! Ow... wait, what? She was... she was your f***ing CLONE!?!"

" That's what the Risian security scanners were saying. The thug's ones as well. One hundred percent complete identical DNA. Probably why they started following me in the first place." Thex replied feeling very very small.

"Okay, that's... that's effed up. I get that. I'd be screwed up if I found out that someone had cloned me too, not that there's a big demand for more me's." Gavarus said, trying to focus on her task, but finding it difficult to process as her mind kept going back around to what Thex was saying.

"Wait a sec... Chief... There's more, ain't there? Your nightmare. You said it was like an assembly line. Are you worried that... you might be one too?" Gavarus said, almost wishing she had not as the words fell out of her mouth.

" Yeah. I don't feel like me anymore. If I'm a copy what am I a copy of and why was I created? " The Andorian said slowly.

Listening, Gavarus didn't know what to do or what to say. She was still terrified that Fiona, who was left on the other side of the rift, might very well be dead. Still scared that Mona and the Doxes, who left on a ship that she was responsible for the maintenance of, might never have even made it to their destination. The fears of her own nightmares still loomed large in her own brain, chief among them the fear that she, alone, will inevitably fail her adopted daughter, Minerva.

And then, almost without thinking, the two-meter tall Tellarite, began to speak again as she walked over and sat next to the much shorter Andorian. "Chief... I don't know. I mean, I'm sure the doc could tell you an', I'm sure the Captain would do whatever we needed to to help you find out what you want to know as soon as we can. I mean, every time one of us has a crisis, she keeps turning the ship around to deal with it, ya' know? Like we went into the frickin' neutral zone for Lieutenant Commander Dox. She brought us to Mariposa to help out what Fiona's family crap. So... maybe when we get home, you should talk to the Captain about this, ya' know."

Then, Gavarus chewed on her bottom lip for a second and fidged slightly as she kept talking. "But, whatever al that turns out to be, you're... you. I mean, you've got that quad of yours. And you've got your kids, that are totally your own, ya' know. And you're a frickin' CHIEF engineer who can kick ass and dance and shit, and you're nothing like that spoiled little crap we saved on Risa, ya' know. I mean, yeah, so you're genetically identical. Whatever. That obviously don't mean shit because she was a frickin' obnoxious idiot. So... whatever your DNA says, you're still you."

"I know your right Gavarus. " the Andorian said with a weak smile on her face. " But what if the answer to this mystery is worse than wondering what it could be. What did that human horror author once write..." She said thinking back to her days in the academy library. " that if we learned the truth of reality we'd all go mad? " She guessed not able to remember the correct quote.

Man, she had to get out of this dump and hold her girls tight to her. This whole pocket space seemed to be making everyone depressive.

"I dunno. On THIS weird-ass ship, the truth just makes things weirder. That party was proof of that. N' at least that way, you won't have to wonder anymore, you'll just know." Gavarus said, stepping over to the panel she had been working on. "I mean, it's like an engine, ya' know. You hear a knock in the engine and it could be anything. It could be a warp core breach or just a loose bracket rattling. And until you know, you can't fix what's wrong. So, let's get these shields maxed so we can get outta here. Then you'll be able to find out what's up and I'll find out if Fiona's okay or not."

"And we can both stop tearing ourselves up wondering. Ya'know?" Gavarus said, putting on a weak smile of her own.

Thex thought for a minute before replying. " Indeed. Let's get the girl ready to go and get out of here." With that, she stood up and got to work on her girl. She wanted out of this pit.