Reporting In

Posted on Sunday October 5, 2025 @ 9:34pm by Lieutenant Michael Caulfield & Captain Yoralig Gearev

869 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Episode 1: A New Frontier
Location: Captain's Ready Room

Michael straightened his uniform as he stepped onto the bridge, making his way around the rear bridge rail. He paused by the Engineering station, giving it a once over, then continued to the Captain's Ready Room, ringing the chime, hands behind his back.

Yoralig sat on the couch in his ready room, reading a book. The chime rang. Looking towards the door he said, "Enter." He watched as a man in a gold uniform entered the ready room.

Michael stepped in and gave a small salute. "Captain Yoralig? Michael Caulfield. I'm here to head up Engineering."

Yoralig put the bookmark in his book and closed it. "Gearev. Captain Yoralig Gearev." The Coridanite said as he stood up. "Have you had an opportunity to look at engieering yet, Lieutenant?"

Michael blushed a bit and gave a sheepish grin. "Sorry, Sir. Misread my padd. And not yet. Thought I'd give my official 'hey there and hello' before I went and had my team start a crawl through."

Yoralig moved to his desk and took a seat. He was confiused how someone could misread a name on a PADD. Starfleet's format was the same for hundreds of years. Wasn't like he was a Bajoran with his name flipped around. He was unfamiliar with engineering lingo. "What is a crawl through? I am not familiar with that term."

"A crawl through is basically an eyes-on inspection of several junction boxes, maintenance hatches and key isolinear boards throughout the innards of the ship," Michael said. "A lot of crawling through the tubes involved. It'll take several hours, but I'll feel a lot better once it's done and we've got everything checked out."

"Is there an issue with them?" The captain asked.

"Well...Sir, let me put it this way," Michael said. "Deck seventeen, section eight, junction five has an isolinear board in the power grid that has a 1-D-25 chip. Now, do you know the difference between a 1-D-25 isolinear chip versus a 1-D-28 chip?"

"Lieutenant. I am have a security and tactical background. I rarely worked on ships." Yoralig said.

"Right, sorry, so, physically, they look identical. If they weren't labeled, there'd be no way to tell. The only way is looking at the serial number engraved on them. The problem is, well-meaning but overworked junior starbase maintenance engineers will glance at a case, pick the wrong chips and put them in certain spots. The D-28 has a different power regulation cutoff. It won't make a difference right now, or even at warp, but imagine getting in a tight spot, ordering phasers, and the forward phasers simply don't fire. Nothing reads as malfunctioning, because everything is working exactly as it's supposed to, cutting off power flow when it thinks there's about to be an overload, because it isn't used for phaser power regulation."

He shrugged. "Does it happen often? No. But it happened on my last assignment. Twice." He gave a wry smile. "First time, we'd had an overhaul at Starbase 211 including repairs to our phasers. It took us three hours to figure out what happened. We were repelling Orion pirates and couldn't fire the forward phasers the entire time. We finally figured it out and got it fixed. Then we went to Starbase 211 for repairs again, and it happened again, this time against Breen raiders. Two tough little ships and all we could do was shake our aft at them."

"Once we got out of it, the Chief Engineer and I went for a drink and he told me about all the 'how the hell did that happen?' stories he had. So I made a list of things that I'll check now, so it doesn't bite us in the rear later."

The captain sat there an listened to him. Yoralig picked up a PADD, and changed the subject. This kind of talk was not in his liking to do. He preferred to keep it to the point. "Here is your current roster and a list of supplies. If you need anything else, let the station know and they will prioritize it. We will be leaving in 17 hours."

"Appreciate that, Sir," Michael said. "I'll give the roster a once over soon as I get downstairs. And as for supplies, well we can never have enough of those, right? I'll see if we can requisition some spares of things we'll probably run out of faster. Maybe a few bigger pieces if we have the room. Last thing I need is a gravity stator going bad and we're floating on our way to a repair base." He shrugged amiably looking through the PADD quickly, then back up at the Captain. "With your permission, I'll get to work, Sir."

Nodding, "I expect the ship to be ready before we leave. Youcan work with Ops to see what needs to be done. Chief Warrant Officer Makan has been working around the clock to cover Engineering and Operations." Yoralig said.

"Aye, Sir. By the time we launch, we'll be more tuned up than a bull in May," Michael said, grinning. "I'll go find Officer Makan right away, Sir, and get things moving." He gave another quick salute with the PADD and turned, heading back to the bridge.

 

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