To Boldly Go, part 3
Posted on Wed May 14th, 2025 @ 4:51am by Cadet Junior Grade Lien & Lieutenant Njalia Sayffier
Mission:
Take My Hand
1630 words - 3.3 OF Standard Post Measure
As the boy moved through the hallways of the ship, people immediately ducked out of his way.
Not because he was important. His reputation didn't precede him as much as the smell did.
The small cadet was exhausted, shoulders slumped in defeat as he waited for the turbolift that would take him to deck nineteen.
When the doors popped open, the people inside immediately reacted as the stench waifed in. "I don't think so," a lieutenant snapped, as the turbolift doors slammed shut in the boy's face.
He gave a sigh as he waited for the next one. But, when the doors opened, there was another person inside who just took one look at the cadet and went, "Oh, hell no."
As the doors slammed shut, the boy just planted his head against the wall. Then pulled himself away as he went to try and find a Jeffries Tube so he could crawl up through the ship that way. By the time he'd finally made it to deck nineteen, section seven, all he wanted was a shower and bed.
Well, actually, he wanted a bath. But sonic showers had been all he'd had the option for since he joined the Academy. And that didn't seem to be changing anytime soon.
As the doors to his shared quarters popped open, the afro-headed Only wandered in like a zombie.
"Oh, good, you're-- WOW, YOU REEK!"
The boy's blue eyes lazily glanced over at where one of his roommates was presently using his turtleneck to cover his nose and mouth. Then the boy started toward the bathroom when he heard.
"The shower's offline."
Lien just proceeded to the nearest wall. And applied his head to it.
"I figured it'd be faster to just have you repair it when you got back, rather than put in a maintenance request," the roommate prattled on, adding, "Chase and Skye both just showered at the gym."
With a sigh, Lien dragged himself away to his bunk. Returning a moment later with a tricorder and a multitool.
=========
In retrospect, he wasn't sure what he'd been expecting when he joined Starfleet. Seeking out new life? New civilizations? Scanning stuff. Beaming. Like, so much beaming.
Somehow, the last twenty-four hours had done a lot to take the motivation he'd had and stomp it flat.
And today was shaping up to be a repeat.
"The secondary matter reclamation system went down, again, last night..." a lieutenant was saying, briefing the oncoming duty section on the division of duties.
"Wow. Imagine that," Anjohl snapped from the back of the duty section.
"Delta shift made the repairs," the lieutenant noted, leveling a glare toward the Bajoran woman as he added, "Perhaps they will have succeeded where you failed."
"We placing bets on that?" Anjohl deadpanned.
Shifting his attention elsewhere, the lieutenant called out the afro-headed boy. "Cadet Lien, you'll be in Maintenance Bay Two today."
Apparently, Maintenance Bay Two was where replicators went to die. One after another, they came in, and Lien was left to figure out what was salvageable, whether the unit was repairable, or if it was going to be stripped for whatever parts might be working.
That is, until he got to one where the tricorder found no fault at all. "This replicator should be working," the boy noted, double-checking that the power was connected as he tried to power the device up. And yet there was no sign of power at all. Even though he could confirm the circuits were energized.
Swapping for a different tricorder, the boy tried it again. "There's nothing wrong with it," he remarked, confused. Then he tried to look at the operating protocol. "Maybe it a software issue?"
That was a lot of code.
A lot of code that he had no idea how to read.
"You should have Ops look at it," one of the ensigns remarked.
Before the boy could take a step, another ensign threw a padd his way.
"Oh, if you're going up to Ops, drop this off!"
Blinking, the boy looked down and saw he'd just been handed off a supply requisition list. "Where's..." he began.
"Deck Four," the ensigns chimed in unison.
He'd never been that far up in the ship. Making his way to the turbolift, the boy rode through the ship until he'd arrived at the doors to Ops.
The door hissed open and a human with their hair in a mohawk hurried out with a bundle of something under one arm. "Head right in," he said.
Njalia looked up from a holographic display. "Hello, ensign?"
Ensign? The boy glanced to make sure there wasn't someone standing behind him and that the Andorian was, in fact, addressing him. "Uh, it's junior," the afro-headed boy corrected. Then he paused. "I mean, cadet. Cadet junior grade. I'm from Maintenance Bay Two," he explained.
Well, it explained who he was. It didn't really explain why he was here. "I think I've got a replicator with a software problem. And then, since I was coming up here, they gave me their shopping list," he said, holding up a padd in either hand. Wait, Starfleet didn't call them shopping lists did they? "Supply list! I mean, supply list... uh, is there someone I should talk to?"
"Sorry, I could not see your collar tag," she said, "I did not know we had any cadets assigned." Cadets really were looking younger every year. "I am Lieutenant Sayffier, Chief of Ops, so I should be able to help you," she said pushing to hologram aside. A smaller hologram popped up above her eye level on the right, it contained Lien's bio.
"Bring that datapad over here," she said. "And tell me about this software issue."
"There's only a handful of us. I think," the cadet answered. "We're in the fleet studies program," he explained, as he passed the padd containing the supply requisition over for inspection.
"A replicator was brought in for maintenance, but I can't find anything wrong with it mechanically," Lien supplied, changing topics. "I even got a second tricorder to go over it. All the circuits and hardware indicate normal function, but it won't power up at all. That's what made me think maybe it was a software control issue."
Handing the second padd over, the boy explained, "I downloaded the operating code to this padd to try and look at it, but I don't actually know what I'm looking for."
Njalia nodded and set the quartermaster request to download so that Maiden could parse it. She opened the file on the uncooperative replicator, she blinked and read it again. "This unit was in Maintainance Two?"
"It was brought down this morning for repair or parts salvage," the boy affirmed with a nod.
"That is extremely odd, it is a Q/V 18.2 Replicator, they were never widely used and were pulled from service almost five years back," she said. "Isi . . . Did it have any ownership tags associated with it?"
The boy thought about that for a moment. "I could probably look at the logs in the maintenance bay to try and figure where it came from."
"Oh, I have a good idea," said Njalia calling up a screen. "Ah, yes, as I suspected, it came from our Quartermaster Noj." She leaned back and pondered. "What is his angle?" she mused and called up the code Lien had brought. "It looks fairly standard on first glance. Let me run it through an analysis." She initiated that.
She looked back to Lien. "Did you take programming in the Academy, Cadet? Is U'zin still teaching?"
"Yes!" the boy chimed, suddenly excited. "I was really looking forward to taking programming during the summer semester because Professor U'zin was teaching it... but then I got selected for the Fleet program so my junior year schedule kind of went out an airlock," he amended with a laugh.
"My first two years were all engineering core. I guess now I'll have to take programming my senior year," he mused aloud, thinking ahead to what the next year would be like back at the Academy.
"U'zin is an excellent teacher, I learned a lot from them," said Njalia with a wistful smile. "We do some informal programming jams occasionally in Ops if you would like to join in sometime. Schedule permitting of course."
"Oh, that would be great!" the boy answered brightly.
A set of red and amber flags showed up on Njalia's screen taking her attention from the Cadet. She moved to type and a holographic keyboard appeared under her hands. "Would it be too much trouble to have the replicator brought up here? I think I understand the situation with it now." She glanced over to Lien. "I can assign some holographic crew to bring it up if you do not think engineering would mind."
"I don't think they'd mind," the boy opined, without much thought. "I mean, I think they just assumed it was broken and wanted me to strip it for parts."
Njalia nodded and initiated the transfer. "I think I can handle the replicator unless you want to help?"
"Yeah!" the boy chirped eagerly. Before he paused and thought about what he'd said. "I mean, yes, Lieutenant."
"If you are interested in programing, we can see about getting you some rotation in here at Ops," she said. "I am a strong supporter of cooperation between Engineering and Operations."
"I'm supposed to do a rotation in Ops as part of my studies aboard the Vesta, but I think it's mostly for the transporter certification I need to graduate," the boy remarked.
A small thing to repair a replicator, but a necessary skill for a Starfleet engineer or operations manager to learn.
