Fixing the Star

Posted on Sat Nov 29th, 2014 @ 4:36pm by Lieutenant Ventarus Nosplet & Staff Warrant Officer Nexi & Petty Officer 2nd Class Amelia Takethen

Mission: Devotion of Time
Location: Shuttle Bay

As soon as Nexi was gone Ven pressed his combadge.

=/\="Ven to Amelia..."

=/\="Amelia here." she replied around a mouthful of food. Belatedly, she washed it down with some replicated Andorian ale.

=/\= "Hey you busy? You should meet me in the shuttle bay."

=/\= "I'm eating dinner, but I can put that off. What's up?" she asked as she grabbed her bottle and dinner and made to head out of the mess hall.

=/\="Oh you'lol see." Ven said with a little grin and leaned back over the warp core he was working on.

=/\= "Then which shuttle bay and which shuttle? Wait... You're not in Nexi's shuttle, are you?" Amelia asked, heading to the auxiliary shuttle bay.

=/\= "You should hurry." Ven said and cut the line. He would wait to tell her they both had permission to do the work for a bit.

Amelia quickly made her way there, finishing her dinner and disposing of her plate in a shuttlebay replicator as she headed to the older Orion class shuttle. Heading up the ramp, she sipped at her bottle. "Ven?"

Ven was sitting on the deck of the shuttle where the couch use to be, he was elbow deep in the warp assembly when he looked up and smiled. "Hey Amelia! Have you seen such an old cloaking device!" He said excitedly. She sure could see it now, because it was disconnected and sitting on the floor next to Ven.

"yeah, the last time I worked on this ship. The power systems were cross polarized. Please tell me Nexi knows you're doing this and you called me to help." Amelia set her bottle aside and got down next to the warp assembly, looking over what he was doing.

Ven laughed a little and nodded to her. "Yeah she does. She said I should call you but I would have called you anyways." Ven sat up and handed Amelia a tricorder. "Nexi said that the ship vibrates when she goes above warp 7.5, found a stabilization strut on the warp assembly that had been knocked out of alignment when Nexi was installing her cloaking device. Its been running so long like that now its riddled with micro fractures and has to be replaced." He rattled off.

"Oh my..." Amelia looked over the tricorder readings. "I thought it was because this model wasn't designed to go over warp 7 and she was pushing it over the energy threshold for normal settings on structural integrity. I told her to route excess bleedover energy from the warp core to structural integrity. That still works, but I never would have thought this was bad too."

"Well if we replace it, then reinforce the manifold here and here I bet that will cut the vibrations by at lest half..." Ven said cutting the strut free. "Give me a hand?"

"Sure," Amelia said, helping Ven pull the strut free and setting it aside. "Good thing these things are semi-hydraulic at least. the gas chamber makes them a lot lighter than they look." Pointing to a couple places, she pointed out stress twist fractures. "It definitely wasn't torqued within specs. Way too tight for it to do its job right."

"I doubt Nexi knows what the torque settings on a stabilization brace." Ven said "We should replicate a new one."

"It should take about half an hour with the industrial replicator. Thankfully we have the pattern already." Amelia said, offering him a hand up.

Ven took her hand and help. "What are you doing for the next half hour?"

"Other than watching a strut being replicated?" she asked with a bit of a grin.

"Great!" Ven said and pick up the old and broken strut. "At lest I'll have good company. "

"Great!" Amelia grabbed her replicated ale and downed most of the rest of it as she followed Ven out of the shuttlebay. "By the way, what do you do for fun?"

"I like to invent things...like my goggles." Ven gave the bulky things on his head a flick. "Or read...or work on Hera. I work on the ship a lot. How about you?"

"I read a lot of tech manuals and go over the power systems in the ship." Amelia said as they got into the turbolift.

"Engineering." Ven said then turned to Amelia. "I have some great old manuals on classic communicators. You could borrow them if you wanted to."

"I might have to take you up on that." Amelia smiled at the offer. "Have you read the reports from the latest tech expo at Utopia Planetia? They say they have a way to fly a shuttle to the bottom of Jupiter."

"I haven't, what's the theory?" Ven said excitedly. He did not find many people who thought on his level.

"Basically, it looks like they're running their shields through a transporter array to keep the pressure equalized on the hull surface." Amelia explained a bit more excitedly.

"How are they routing the quantum phase discriminator?" Ven asked as the life came to a stop and the doors opened. He waited for Amelia to exit first.

Amelia exited, talking excitedly. "They used a modified array of them, switching the load over and over to refresh the beam so that it's dematerializing and rematerializing a nanometer thick layer of the gasses just on the skin of the hull. The QPD array is controlled by a set of deflector relays to handle the load."

"That's ingenious!" Ven said waking sideways so he could look atired Amelia at the same time. "Did they have the spec modifications for the relays? They must have tricked them way out!"

"Supposedly they just used some stock ones for a Galaxy class deflector." Amelia said as they walked into main engineering and headed towards the industrial replication room.

"Thats incredible!" Ven said a little too loud and mist the people in engineering looked up at the two. Lowering his voice a but he said, "You should show me the report. It would be fun to talk about it with you."

"As soon as we're done here, I'll forward the whole thing to you." Amelia said with a bright smile. She loved chatting about this sort of thing and it showed.

Her excitement was equally matched with Ven's "Wana get together for lunch tomorrow? I'll read it tonight and we can talk about it over something to eat!" Ven was so excited to find someone who he could relate to He was almost bouncing as he placed the old broken strut on the replicator for recycling.

As the Andorian woman punched up the pattern they needed and started the replication process, she also gave Ven an appreciative glance. It was rare someone understood things the way she did. "Sounds like a date. I'll definitely be there."

"Oh I didn't mean like a date...not that I would not want to go on a date with you...I...just..." Ven stammered. He looked around kind if confused because he didn't know what to say now.

"Nope, too late. It's a date." She said teasingly. "I expect something nice and I'll bring you something too."

Ven became very interested in a spot on the front of his tool belt. "Ok..." Now his brain was working overtime to think of something nice to get her.

"Yeah, I think I'll give you that..." Amelia muttered mysteriously. "I think you'd really like it, though I doubt you could master it..."

Ven turned and looked at her with a quizzical look.

And Amelia smiled mischievously.

Ven fiddled with a tool in his belt and shifted on his feet nervously. "It's been a long time..."

"Since what?" Amelia asked curiously.

"Since I went on a date..." Ven admitted sheepishly.

"Then I hope you don't mind dating an old maid." Amelia may have still been young by most standards at 24, Andorian culture said she was old to not be bonded at 23. Something her parents reminded her of almost constantly in their letters.

"Old maid? You're joking right?" As far as Ven could see she young and beautiful.

"No..." Amelia sighed as she checked the replication process. "24 and no bondsmates means I'm an old maid."

"Interesting..." Ven said watching her. "Why is that?"

"When it takes 4 people to have a baby and the fertility season is short, your society kinda puts a priority on bondsmates." Amelia explained sourly. "And as a zhen, I'm expected to carry them."

"This topic seems to cause you discomfort. If you don't want to talk about it I understand." Ven said to Amelia.

"Discomfort? No, not at all..." Amelia said sarcastically before sighing and continuing. "Sorry, I'm just a bit bitter is all."

"Well...if there is anything I can do for you, to help I mean, I would like to be here for you." Ven said. "Even if it's just to talk."

"Thank you." Amelia said with a sad smile. Just then the computer beeped, releasing the new strut from the industrial replicator.

Ven smiled back and walked over to grab the strut. "Ok, now time to install it and test it."

"Yeah, let's get it in." Amelia said, following Ven from the engineering station.

Ven walked back into the turbolift and waited for Amelia. "We are going to have to test this you know." Ven said with a little smirk.

"How do you intend to test it?" Amelia asked somewhat innocently.

"Field test of course! We need to get Nexi to take us for a spin and monitor the strut. If the shaking continues I should be able to analyze the warp core and devise a plan to have further stabilize it." Ven rambled off.

"So you want a date with her so you can go joyriding, huh?" Amelia said teasingly, giving Ven's arm a playful punch.

"What? No!" Ven said rubbing his arm. "I think you should be there to." He said. "You did as much work as I did... and Nexi kinda scares me."

"Ah, I see." Amelia still had that teasing look in her eye. "You need a chauffeur when you go out with her."

Ven smirked a little at her. "I was thinking she could chauffeur us around."

"If you can convince her to..." Amelia said, back to somewhat aloof seriousness.

Amelia was quite a mystery, and that peaked Ven's interest. "Wanna bet I can?"

"A bet huh?" Amelia said mysteriously. "What are the stakes?"

The lift came to a stop and the doors opened. Ven, as alway let Amelia out fits before following. "Good question, if I fail what do you want?" He asked her as they made their way across the bay to Nexi's shuttle.

Amelia thought about it for a few seconds as she walked towards the shuttle. "What do you have that I might want?"

"I don't know...my time?" Ven offered as he stepped into Nexi's shuttle and set the strut down on the floor.

"That works for me. How about a full evening to the winner then?" Amelia asked as she got ready to help him move the new strut into place.

"A full evening? You're on." Ven said picking up his end of the strut to position it in place.

"Excellent. You have until lunch tomorrow to convince her and 1 week to get the ride." Amelia said as they lowered the strut into place.

Ven started securing the strut with a torque wrench. Ven had a plan up his sleave. "Do I get a bonus if I get it done before tonight?"

"Sure but only if you get the ride tonight as well." Amelia said as she started the bolts on her end of the strut. "What do you want as a bonus?"

"What do you have that I might want?" Ven echoedher question back to her.

"My time and skills?" Amelia replied with as he finished torquing the bolts to spec.

"Ok..." Ven said moving over to the cloaking device. "What skills do you have that I could use?"

"I'm a pretty good power systems specialist. I'm also good with massage therapy." Amelia said. "Though the massage therapy was more to teach others how to do it on me..."

"Massage...that sounds good to me. Give me a hand with this?" Ven asked her as he moved the device over to the core.

Amelia grabbed one end of the cloaking device and helped Ven reposition it back where it was. "Be careful of the power connection. These things are easy to reverse the polarity on. I just hope the power transfer unit didn't depolarize when you unhooked it."

"Yeah, me to."Ven said as he double checked the connection. "So whe massage therapy on you?" Ven asked.

"Because I'm a zhen." she said simply as if that explained everything.

"I don't understand..." Ven said looking up a Amelia.

Amelia looked at him blankly for a moment. "The zhen carries the child to term and has to know how she needs to be massaged to help the baby."

"Your culture seems to put a lot of attention on procreation. " Ven said as he installed the power to the cloaking device.

"Birth rates are too low not to be." she replied with.

"I can see how that would make sense." He started to tighten the bolts on the cloaking device.

"Each bondgroup has to have 5 kids at least, just to maintain the population. One for each of them and one for the extras that are never bonded. It's hard enough having 3 kids in one lifetime." Amelia rambled on. "On top of that, they expect zhen like me to carry 7 or 8 kids in my lifetime? there's just not enough seasons."

"You would have to be a full time baby making and caring for machine. Certainly no time for Star Fleet." Ven said finishing up with the cloaking device.

"And I couldn't be an engineer." Amelia added.

"Alright, time to see if my plan with Nexi will work." Ven touched his Com badge.

=/\= "Ven to Nexi." =/\=

=/\= "What?" Nexi replied over the comm. "This better be important! You didn't break my ship, did you?!"

=/\= "Don't be ridiculous, if I broke your ship I would just run not call you." Ven grinned at Amelia, proud of his little joke. " Amelia and I just finished installing the new strut and we need to test it. But I know you will want to pilot Star yourself so I called you." Now Ven was smirking at Amelia.

=/\= "Damn right, I'm piloting my ship! If either of you even touched the piloting controls, I will skin you both alive!" Nexi barked out over the comm. "Now, I'm kinda busy at the moment. I'll take her out later and let you know how she rides."

=/\= "That would be great, but someone needs to be here to monitor the strut and note any adjustments that might be necessary. Have Amelia to assist will help." Ven said. Actually it was true.

=/\= I can record the flight logs for you- hold on a second," Nexi said distractedly. "No, I'm not talking to myself... No, you can't talk to them, how can you talk to them through my earpiece?!" she said, clearly talking to someone who was with her. "Fine, I'll tell them you said hello. Now go hide, it's my turn to find you." Nexi gave a heavy sigh. "Alright, what were we talking about?" she asked Ven.

Amelia had to chime in or she was going to crack up laughing. "Ven's trying to talk you into taking us for a warp 9 joyride so we can make sure the work is the best it can be." She wouldn't quite mention the bet they had made just yet. He at least needed a sporting chance.

Now Nexi was torn. On the one hand, that was her ship, her baby, and they shouldn't be messing around with her ship like that! But on the other hand, she did enjoy a good joyride from time to time. Maybe a nice flyby past the Hera's bridge would be fun! But then on the other hand, Nexi didn't want to leave Aewia alone, especially right now when her sister was getting into trouble. But Aewia would eventually go to bed...

=/\= "Does it have to be right this second? I really am kinda busy," Nexi said.

=/\= "Naw." Ven said. "How about later this evening?"

=/\= "Alright, but no promises... I really do have a thing going on over here..." Nexi said, again sounding really distracted.

=/\= "Nexi, if the thing you have going on is a someone, just bring them along." Ven offered. He had heard her playing hide and seek with someone.

=/\= "Oh, gee, thanks for giving me permission to bring someone along on MY SHIP!" Nexi retorted. "Found you... Now if you want me to go hide again, you gotta solve your puzzle... Because those are the rules, now do it," she said to Aewia, then returned to her conversation with Ven. "Alright, I can't bring her with me. It's complicated, so don't ask, I just can't. I'll get someone to keep an eye on her once she's in bed, though. That's the best I can do."

Ven laughed a little, yeah maybe that was kinda silly.=/\= "That's perfect! See you then. Ven out." and he cut the com line and grinned big at Amelia.

"I guess you won." Amelia said, grinning rather mischievously. "Did you ever decide on what you want for your bonus?"

"You said a massage." Ven reminded her with a triumphant grin.

"Fair enough though since we haven't gotten the ride yet, the bonus is still up in the air." Amelia said cheekily.