Fixing the USS Forthright

Posted on Mon Dec 31st, 2018 @ 7:55pm by Rear Admiral Farenia Meowlith & Lieutenant Commander Thex sh'Zoarhi

Mission: Escaped Pantheons
Location: Oberth Class USS Forthright
Timeline: 2395

While Enalia had promised the resources of the USS Hera to speed up the repairs of the Commodore's ship, the Oberth class vessel, USS Forthright, Farenia Meowlith wasn't exactly sure how to go about it. She had a crew of six aboard this small ship - nothing but the absolute bare minimum, and it showed. The ship was built for eighty people and it had taken a beating so while her people had been focusing on getting the main systems back online, all the secondary systems had all but died and the ship was currently running on an emergency generator. It was enough to keep life support and a couple replicators going, but the Commodore had decided to stay out of her crew's way and work on her primary mission for the duration of their stay. Hence why she had no idea how bad it really was as she set foot onto the bridge amidst a mass of conduits and open panels all over.

"I see repairs are still underway..." The Vulcanoid Rigelian commented as she made her way to the center chair, which was occupied by part of the Helm controls. "Do the coms work at least?"

The ensign that passed for the chief engineer aboard the small vessel looked up from her work. "Aye, Commodore. We can talk to the Hera at least. Audio only though."

"That'll be good enough." Farenia pressed one of the buttons on the captain's chair and was thankful to receive the chirrup of the computer. "Commodore Farenia Meowlith of the USS Forthright to the USS Hera's Chief Engineer, Commander Thex sh'Zoarhi. I've been informed that you may have some extra hands and resources that you can spare to help get my ship up and running. Is there any way we can get that help soon? This little ship seems to still be in some pretty dire straits."

" I have two damage control teams ready to go Commodore," Thex replied over the comms as she pulled on her tool belt and grabbed a backpack full of spare parts. " Prepare for beam over." She said as she stepped onto the transporter.

"Our transporters are out so please beam over at your discretion," Farenia added before hitting the comm switch again, eliciting a spark and some smoke from the command chair console. "And now that's fried..."

It was only a moment before the andorian and six of her enginers were standing on the bridge. The andorian gave the Commodore a polite smile as she stepped forward. " Nice to meet you, Commodore. Shall we start getting your ship fixed?"

"Welcome aboard, Commander. I'd like you to meet Ensign Galdine - she's our engineer. If you need anything, just let her know." Farenia motioned towards the human woman that waved at the repair teams with a spanner as she worked on an open panel.

" Okay." The andorian said turning to her team. " Get the emergency generators plugged in and check on the other one I do not want life support giving out. " She said calmly before walking over to the ensign. " So how's the girl doing? Is it still as bad as the reports say? "

Standing up and sheepishly looking around at the mess, Ensign Galdine cleared her throat. "A bit worse, actually. While we can run the whole ship on the spare emergency generator and even go to warp two for a few days, it's about out of steam. If you hadn't come along, we'd have had to move to the worldship as permanent residents in another few hours and try to do repairs in EV suits. We had to eject our micro-matter-antimatter reactor, nineteen of our twenty four warp coils are fused, eighty percent of our power grid is registering as ruptured, we only have one working injector, and out of our eighty power relays, only nine will cycle. On the bright side, our sensors, when I power cycled them, test out as mostly functional. The relays spared us that at least. The shield grid mostly survived as well, thanks to the reinforcements. As for our engines... The fusion reactor died right after it fused the entire manifold assembly. Feedback from the worldship's tractors. Our two little phasers are... Well... They melted clean off the hull. Not that they would have helped."

She then looked hopefully to her Andorian senior from the USS Hera. "But you're from a Nebula class ship, right? I bet you have enough teams and resources to rebuild this old bird several times over."

" Easily ensign. We'll start by getting you're warp core and life support up and running. Then you're not relying on the emergency generators. " The andorian said as she stood up and tapped her combadge. " Thex to engineering i need a warp core for an Oberth class starship replicated and prepped for insertion." She said calmly before looking back at the ensign. " Anything else you need to be replicated as a priority?" She inquired.

"The magnetic constrictors on the antimatter storage didn't look too good, but the bottles themselves are fine. It might be easier to outright replace them. Also, I've had to reroute the power for life support through these conduits laying on the floor of the bridge, so... That should probably be a priority as well..." Ensign Galdine rubbed the back of her neck sheepishly as she surveyed the emergency hack job she had to do just to keep things together the way she had.

" Add a half a dozen magnetic constrictors along with life support spare parts. Start beaming over are spares." Thex added to her comms channel before closing it. Thex other team had beamed in and had been listening in and probably already knew what her orders would be. " Okay, people lets get the life support system ready to go before the warp core ready. " She said before looking at Galdine. " Can you show me main engineering I want to make sure none of the warp core holdings has been damaged?" She asked politely.

As Galdine led Thex off the bridge to the engineering bay, she talked a bit more along the short walk. "The scans I took didn't show any damage, but things were pretty rushed. With all that was going on, it wasn't a high priority, especially since we didn't exactly have anything to put back in it anytime in the foreseeable future."

Bringing up a status readout on a blinking console, Galdine smacked the console a few times to get it to stabilize before giving up and pulling out a tricorder and relying on it to give the readings they needed. Other than the twelve meter across ejection cover in the ceiling and some console railings around an empty pit going down through the entirety of the ship, the room was almost empty now. "These ejection systems are efficient at least... The mountings are a bit scuffed up from the ejection, but I'm not seeing any cracks or anything. Even the injector ports seem to have separated cleanly."

Thex had begun shining a flashlight at the couplings hoping they would be in good enough shape. Thankfully they did as did the beam that would pull the new warp core up into the ship. " Well, everything looks okay at this end. Will be when we get the core in here that we'll be finding problems. You've done a good job by the looks of it ensign." The andorian said giving the woman a polite smile.

"Thank you, Commander. I've got a lot of experience with these Oberth class ships thankfully. Probably why the infamous Oberth Slayer couldn't kill this one." Ensign Galdine grinned wryly, having referred to the Commodore's penchant for having lost every single Oberth class ship that Intel Command had given her within a week. "And thanks for the help getting the old girl back up and running. I really appreciate it."

" Well, hopefully this one will be living a little longer." Thex said as she began a more detailed examination of the system. It wasn't long before she got a chip on her combadge. " Boss we have your warp core directly above the insertion point." Came the voice of her team.

" Okay Galdine can you man the tractor beam and I'll begin the process. " Thex said head towards the main control panel.

Galdine headed towards one of the wall panels and after some tweaking, got it working and interfacing with the tractor beam. "Looks like the tractor beam is still working, but only at half power. I'll have to go slow. Ready when you are, Commander.

The andorian nodded as she began typing in the commands. Across the ship, shields went up as the warp core ejection hole opened as the Hera's shuttle maneuvered it into the correct position. The Forthright shook slightly as the smaller tractor beam began pulling the core up into it's holding position. " It's coming along nicely. " She said from her position as the core passed the hole which the andorian closed. It wouldn't be long before it was in position.

And none too soon as sparks flew out of the panel Ensign Galdine was at as soon as the core was inside and on the rails. "Tractor beam is offline. That's another EPS conduit that will need to be replaced. We should be able to align everything with the ejection system rails though. They're over-engineered for more than just ejecting a core, after all."

" Yeah and thankfully it has it's own independent system so it isn't going to fail on us due to lack of power. " Thex said as she had already begun the slow process of using the rail to move the replacement core into place. It was a long thirty mins before the core began to poke into the room and a further five after that before it had risen up to the top. " Okay let's get it locked into position and begin powering her up." The andorian said with a relieved grin on her face.

The human engineer assigned to the USS Forthright just shook her head in amazement at how smoothly everything was going. "Bringing up the injector assemblies now. Commander, I have to say, I'm impressed. In the time we've been working on this, your people have all but repaired or replaced almost the entire power grid. All six plasma injectors are coming online. Antimatter feed online. EPS relays green across the board. I mean, most of our major systems are still offline, but once they're fixed, we can now power them up straight away."

" The girls on her first step back to recovery. In a day or two she'll be good to go and you'll be able to get back to the nearest starbases for a complete repair. " Thex said with a grin on her face as she double checked the power grid just to be sure.

"I agree. Personally, I think the next step should be to install those engine manifolds your people have made and get a new fusion reactor installed to power the impulse engine." Galdine pulled up the status readouts of the engine systems to confirm that it was just the manifolds and not the rest of the system that were too far gone to be used. "After that, we should be able to focus on getting the warp coils unfused. Really not looking forward to that, to be honest. These smaller nacelles aren't the most comfortable to work with."

" Well someone has to do it and the sooner it's done the sooner we can get shower and something to eat. " Thex responded as she picked up her toolkit. " Come on let's get the engine manifolds installed."


"Right this way, Commander." Galdine packed up her toolkit as well and headed out the back of the engineering bay into the engine bay where they could work on the impulse engine. "The old manifolds should uncouple fairly easily from the back of the..." Tapping a few controls, the entire charred and burnt manifold assembly separated from the ship with ease, the force fields popping on as they should. "Back of the bay, just like that. Thank goodness these little ships are built so modular."

" Well, that's helped us a little. Thex to the Hera do you have the replacement manifolds ready?" The andorian said into her combadge. " On their way commander. " Came the reply as the shuttles had already begun to remove the old manifolds.

Over the next few minutes the maintenance crew of the USS Hera expertly moved the old, fused manifolds out of the way and tractored them back to their ship for recycling and moved the new systems into place, locking them in easily. Galdine barely had anything to do other than unlock the safeties and log all the maintenance that was being done as it was being done. They even had a new fusion core replaced before she could even bring it up.

By the time she could bring the new engine online, everything was purring like a kitten and the maintenance crews were already moving on to their next tasks. "Commander, when we get back to command, I'm going to put in a good word for you and your teams if I can. You've done more, faster, than I think even the drydocks could do. System status reports the last major thing that needs repairs is the warp coils and with nineteen fused coils... That's a bit of a tall order, even in this little ship."

" We have plenty of experience. When you've had to fight what we've fought you get plenty of experience putting the ship back together. " Thex said as they made their way to the warp coils. Thex's team had already brought down some fresh coils as they went about their business. " Well let's get started." Thex said as she pulled out her tools and began to get to work.

Galdine had to chuckle at that. "Most of the experience I have is replacing relays now and then and recalibrating things. I once had to replace a replicator and switch to backup generators while replacing the dilithium matrix, but... Yeah, that's it other than what I learned at the academy. I guess I should count my blessings that I've had a quiet assignment so far, but it would be nice to get a bit more experience."

" Well after the messes the Hera's been in I've had plenty of experience. The state my girl been in after some of the things we've encountered...." Thex said as she started pulling the first of the fused coils.

"I can only imagine. From the way the Commodore talks, the USS Hera is the most legendary unknown ship out there. So classified, she's a ghost ship, and yet when Command needs something no other ship can do, you guys do it with ease." Scanning the first fused coil, Galdine whistled in awe. "Yeah this one is pretty much gone, I think. Even the training coils at the academy were in better condition than this. I'm just glad they only weigh a single ton..."

" So I'm a chief engineer of a ghost ship. " Thex responded with a grin knowing about what the cadets joked happened on ghost ships. Offen ideas that were thought up over some bad earth horror movies and a serious amount of alcohol. Another two of the coils were soon on the floor and Thex was working on a third. " Gee these are in a bad state. The ones on the academy engineering training ship look better and the Inverness is over seventy years old."

"Well, the Forthright did take quite the beating, after all. And our last refit was almost twenty years ago." Galdine was doing her best to assist Thex, but she could barely keep up with the experienced Chief Engineer. She felt like she was ten years old trying to help her mom at work again.

" Well, hopefully, she can get a refit when we get her back to the nearest starbase. " Thex said as she pulled out the last one. Her hands were covered in mechanical juices and grim after all the work. She pulled a wipe from her bag and got to work cleaning her hands.

Looking down at herself, Galdine noticed that her own stained and torn uniform hadn't been cleaned since before they'd arrived at the worldship. Neither had she actually bathed since then, either. "You know, I've never looked forward to a sonic shower more than I have now. Thank you for all your help, Commander. If there's ever anything I can do to help you, just let me know."

" Just do the same for me if you get the opportunity. " Thex said as she finished sliding in the last of the coils. " Thex to Commodore Meowlith we should have main power back online how is everything on the bridge?" She said tapping her combadge.

"Meowlith here. All primary systems show green across the board. The ship is still a bit of a mess, but I think we can handle the blown out panels and consoles. Thanks, Commander. We owe you."

Thex let out a sigh as she leaned back against the computer console wiping her brow with her sleeve. " Good to know commodore." She responded feeling good about herself. " I'll leave you with one, of my teams, to help with the secondary systems, but I think you're good to go if you need to get out of here in a hurry."

"You've done more than we could have hoped in less time than we expected. Any further assistance is just icing on the cake. Please send my regard to your Captain. Meowlith out."

" I will Commodore." Thex said with a grin on her face. By the time her team had finished with this ship you'd think she was brand new out of space dock.