Petty Officer 2nd Class Aidhen Vorsk has been assigned to the Dead Gun for the majority of its service with the Vast Empire and keeping up with the thing was not always a pleasant task.  He specialized in communications technology for the most part.  When your datapad wouldn't connect to the comnet, you called Aidhen.  When the simulators wouldn't link up for team exercises, you called Aidhen.  When holocommunications between two capital ships were murky, Aidhen did the zero-g walk to rewire the power conduits.  It was a niche job that had given him a certain rapport with the crew.  It was not unusual for him to be called in to consult on various problems around the ship.

Petty Officer Vorsk’s shifts usually started the same way: an extra-large thermos of car, an abnormally long walk from his crew quarters to the tech station, and a reading of various technical reports that had been left from the previous shift.  Vorsk was in charge of Besh shift for his team.  Originally designed to be the midday shift, it was the shift in which the ship Executive officer had the com.  Unfortunately for Vorsk, this meant that it was the shift in which all the projects not completed by the Aurum shift and all the projects that needed to be completed before the Cresh shift had to be finished.  Twelve hour shifts were not uncommon for him, as he took up the habit of starting early to go over the day’s workload and, more often than not, finished late while coordinating with the Cresh shift officer who almost never reported in more than a minute before his shift began.

He walked briskly, a young crewman in tow reading from a data pad as Aidhen folded a copy of the VE Today under his arm.  The crewman, CRW Yannle Starboarn, read aloud from the data pad, head down and using only the view of Aidhen’s legs to guide him down the passageways. “Aurek, shift says one of the simulators is lagging again, looks like they marked it low priority and it’s a fall over.  One of the engineering officers is complaining he can’t get network access from his quarters.  Here’s one we haven’t seen in a while, a fire broke out on deck C.  Seems they want someone to check the panels for a funny smell that has been lingering for a few days.  The bridge says the definition on some of the viewscreens is off.  And the supply officer is saying we don’t have room in the budget for another tech.”

“Overworked and understaffed Starboarn, what’s new?  Schedule Crewman Roka to do a hard reset on the simulator before he starts his rounds, then have him check supplies for some sound shielding.  That should take care of the engineer. If that doesn’t work, run a network cable to his quarters and set up a personal wireless access point.  The fire on deck C hasn’t caused any issues on our end but run a routine diagnostic on that section, have crewman Vasquet take care of that after his rounds.  And tell the bridge if they want to keep high resolution viewing they need to stop changing the settings.”  Aidhen sighed before coming to a stop, Starboarn almost walking into him at the abrupt change in pace.

“You want me to tell the bridge to stop changing the settings, sir?”
Aidhen inhaled and exhaled calmingly before turning to face the young tech, “No.  Tell them I’ll be there after the briefing when my shift starts and I’ll see to it personally.  Anything else on there I should know about?” He inquired as he turned to finish the long walk to the tech station.

“Only about another hundred or so items, sir.  Should be a light day.”

“As always, Starboard.” Aidhen finished his thermos as he came to the entrance to the tech Station labeled Communications and Information Station, Group DG-14th Maintenance Group.  Handing the thermos to Handle he entered with a final remark. “Contact mess and have them send my lunch again.”

“As always sir,” the crewman nodded and went off to, among other things, fill his superior’s caf thermos.

Starboarn set the thermos on the desk next to Vorsk’s console. “New item on the agenda, seems one of the consoles in the communications bay is malfunctioning.  Actually, it would be more accurate to say it’s fried from what one of the communications technicians pass it on to us.”

    “Just what I need.” Aidhen sighed before turning off his console. “Alright. . .Have Crewman Roka run the morning briefing. . .wait, better yet.  I want you to run the briefing you already know what I’m going to say.  We’re still in hyperspace, right?”

    “Yes, sir. They’ve synchronized the stasis so that we drop out before Aurum shift ends.”

    “Alright then, go do your thing, grab breakfast or something. I’ll take care of the communications department, and Starboard?”

    “Yes, sir?”

    “Grab me an R&R request from personnel.” Vorsk took his thermos with him, making his way to the turbolift.  It was a long walk through the crew section and two turbolifts to Officer’s row.  All in all he’d have to walk some eight hundred meters and take some three lifts to reach system’s control, which was fine, because it gave him a chance to finish his second thermos of coffee before reaching the communications compartment in question.  Basically a small control room used to monitor incoming traffic, a listening station, the compartment was quite small.  There were three consoles that covered the bulkheads.  Aidhen set his thermos on the ground and pulled a hydrospanner from his utility belt before noticing the access panels were still loose. “Who called maintenance to check on this?”

    A mid thirties watch commander turned from his place on one of the consoles to address Vorsk. “That would be me, one of the grays came to check on it and they said the circuits were fused.” Aidhen had already removed the panel and pulled himself inside, using the light on his spanner to see.

    “Well, he’s partially right.  The power regulator is blown, seems to have gone right through to the main circuit board.  The daughter boards are intact, but some of the risers are fried as well.  For [explitive’s] sake.  I’m going to have to rebuild the whole system.”. Vorsk pulled his coiling up to him, “Starboarn, have someone bring up two type C-X circuit boards and two C2 risers along with whatever power supply they can muster up to the Com Listening Station. Also, notify electrical. We’ve got a power surge.”. Vorsk pulled himself out before looking up at the officer, “Sorry, sir. We’re going to have to cu power to this compartment to fix this.  This console seems to take its power from the main conduit first. When it blew, your other consoles must have switched over to auxiliary power.  Did the all the screens shut off when this console blew?”
    “Come to think of it, yes.  But they powered back on immediately and nothing seemed to be lost.”

    “Yep, we’ve got a wiring problem. Probably a main conduit failure.  Electrical is king o come up and cut power to the compartment and do a full diagnostic.  You may want to get a power droid up here to run the other two consoles.  I’ll be back when electrical is finished.” Vorsk stowed his spanned and comlink; taking his thermos, he made his way back to the tech station.


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    “That was quick, does this mean you’ll be doing the briefing?”. Starboard was fiddling with the holoscreen, highlighting areas of the ship where maintenance was needed.

    “No, I’m going to go down to supply and see if there’s an ups I can hook up to these consoles.”

    “Uninterruptible power supply, why not just send a power Droid?”

    “The compartment is small.  I don’t want to have to disable the blast door and run cables from the passageway.”. Vorsk set his thermos on his desk and stretched a moment.  Aurek shift was filing into the compartment to stow away datapads and larger tools.  The Dead Gun would be dropping out of hyperspace and Besh shift would be starting soon.

    “Well you may want to hold off on that.  I’ve gotten three reports of intermittent power surges on officer’s row.  No less than three access points are blown and we don’t have anyone on to replace them.”

    “And Aurek shift is?”

    “Heading to lunch, good luck, sir.”

    “Alright, just send the parts up and I’ll get to it when I get to it.”

    “And I should tell them?”
   
    “That I’ll get to it when I get to it. . .It’s a big ship Starboarn. They’ll understand.” Vorsk shook his head and made his way to the supply room.