They don’t have to fix themselves, Lt Waryn lamented internally. Because they never break.

It was a bit of a joke amongst the junior Engineers. The cargo transporters saw much less use than the personnel transporters, so the routine maintenance was more than sufficient to keep them in tip-top shape. Chief O’Nell liked things to run smoothly, and Izak agreed with him.

Although running the diagnostics wasn’t exactly mentally stimulating, it guaranteed the systems would work when they were needed. While fixing a broken system in the heat of the moment required skill and ingenuity, the true testament of an Engineer was preventing the equipment from breaking in the first place.

People don’t remember the nine thousand, nine hundred, and ninety-nine times the replicator worked; they remember the one time their Earl Grey tea came out lukewarm.

Izak was off shift, but volunteered for these checks to give the crewman a break. It was also nice to be out of Main Engineering to get a pulse on the rest of the ship. He’d finished the checks in the two small cargo bays in the engineering section and was now running a diagnostic in one of the main cargo bays located in the saucer.

He looked around at the half dozen or so operations personnel inspecting the cargo they’d brought onboard. It was yet another tedious yet important task… one of the thousands that occurred onboard every day. Join Starfleet… make inventory lists in new and exotic locales! Izak cracked a smile. Not exactly a winning recruitment poster.

Still… they were going off to less populated sections of the galaxy. While not exactly new and uncharted, the area was hardly civilized. That was one of the key reasons the Ark Angel was going rather than a normal supply ship. The sector of space had the potential to be dangerous.

And for that reason, it was important that every system onboard worked correctly when the need arose.

Lt J.G. Izak Waryn - Engineering Officer - U.S.S. Ark Angel