Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Odina Marshell (Chief Engineer) in Main Sim - CE Office

Posted by Ensign Elemirre Serinde (Engineering Officer) in Main Sim - CE Office

Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Odina Marshell (Chief Engineer) in Main Sim - CE Office
Posted by… suppressed (8) by the Post Ghost! 👻
El approached the Chief’s office, having come from her machine shop where she had been tinkering with possibilities relating to the bridge tactical station. She didn’t have anything definite but in her passive frustration she felt like she could do a fair run of two tin cans and a wire between them to adequately manage the transfer of information. She couldn’t help but smile as she came near the small square room that doubled as the Chief’s office not to mention occasional equipment ‘to be fixed’ storage when they were between Chief’s. Her smile came from seeing Lt Green in there and how his bulk made the room so much smaller and how he had to shift about in it like he was a too large doll for the dollhouse. The only thing that would have made the picture funnier was if the ceiling was too low for him to stand.

She came to the door and knocked. “Lt Marshell? Do you have a minute?” She was curious what the Chief would make of the room. It likely wasn’t even set for the Chief Engineer but was an afterthought. She was sure when she had first come aboard that she had noticed bracketing that had been removed that may have been for locker space. She surmised that some ranking engineer in the design team had urged them to take them out because the Chief Engineer would need somewhere to administer things from.

Odina called up from her position on the floor as she was looking through a container, “Sure thing just let me set this aside.” She moved the container of mixed chips and spare parts out of the way and got to her feet with a wry grin, “What can I help you with Serinde or would you prefer I address you by rank or other preference?” she added with a more sheepish grin. She still wasn’t used to being in charge and her laid back approach might rub some folks the wrong way.

“Not much of an office I guess,” El commented. There had to be a rule of physics relating to nature abhorring a vacuum variant relating to engineers hating an empty space. How did she want to be addressed. She certainly had many a name; even Elemirre was not precisely her actual name, so to her anything would do. Lt Green called her Serinde more than anything. Funny how a question as simple as that could be so complicated. “The others like to call me El. That’s okay.” She paused to look around to see if there was something she could help with to make the room a little less chaotic. “I’m trying to find a solution regarding the damage to the tactical station.” She gestured to the chip container. “Seems that the chips were rated as classified and so were disallowed from inventory, as were the whole boards to replace it. That has removed the auto targeting from the bridge as an option, for now.”

Her mind went back to the ‘improvising’ that she had spent the better part of the day on since the away mission and the attack by the creature. Enter the cargo ships, a new chief engineer and this made for a busy day and they had worked extra hours on this as well. A messed up tactical station was not something that one just left for the next day on a ship in unexplored space a month away from Earth. It rankled her senses that they didn’t have spares for something like that or even the ‘box’ of chips to put a board together to replace such a sensitive and critical component. But as she had learned, one must work with what one had and do the best with it and not pine on what wasn’t. It was easy to do things in the classroom or, back as a child in her instruction, in the sheltered places. It was when one was sent out from there that the true challenges came and which showed one’s character and dedication to one’s values. Who knew that they would be so inexact? Knowledge was easy, she was told and agreed for learning came easy for her. But wisdom was harder. It was taking what one knew and mixing it with the values that one held and trying to steer a course through whatever dilemma one had in life. Like being trapped on a ship with a Warden? she thought to herself. What did one do with that? And her sister’s notes that had eluded her all these weeks to understand them. What did an old role playing game have to do with her nearly two centuries later? But first things first. The console.
- El, Eng

Odina pointed to a closed crate, “Use the improvised chair there, let’s see what we can come up with as solutions.”

Marshell, CEO

El noted the crate and sat slowly. Some lids were less than others. While she was hardly a heavyweight El would rather avoid something awkward. “I feel there should be some way of generating a solution that is as effective. Might as well put the tactical officer down in the armory and a secondary officer on the bridge for that matter chatting on communicators. It just feels so .. 18th Century.”
- El, Eng

OOC: Bump :) OOC: Thanks for making this easy to find! :)

Odina gave a slight frown as she thought over the parts she had seen and what she knew was available for them to work with. “Chatting on communicators does seem best bet at the moment until we can get our hands on more spare parts.” She might even have a few spare parts that she had scavenged from scrap yards while working on expanding Tionas’ current composition. She would check through her personal parts collection and see if she had anything that might be more useful in the current situation. “Anything else you want to bring to my attention?” she asked softly as she regarded El.

Odina Marshell, CEO

El was curious about Odina and how she seemed to have a non traditional name with her being so obviously Asian like her. But then El had a non traditional name based almost entirely on Tolkien’s Elvish language. Yes she had a traditional Chinese name but that was long buried and for good reason. However, to not spark that conversation she kept her curiosity in check relating to the Lt’s name. El’s Buddhist upbringing fought with her own personality and Odina could tell there was a bit of a battle going on inside her even as she shifted in the seat. “I have lived with little and I have lived with plenty. I have lived with simplicity and I have lived with technology. I can make do with the former but in a ship like this it frustrates me to think there can’t be a better solution.”

“I am sure if we had more time to really put our heads together we could come up with a real solution but for now, we need the senors and communications to work it won’t be pretty but when we can make it better properly we will, right El?” Odina said lightly with a wry grin, she understood the want for the best for the ship but when there was limited supplies they had to make do with what they had on hand and she was still going to go through her own supply of chips and what not she hadn’t looked at it since she came aboard but now it seemed it should be gone through quick and thoroughly so if something like this happened again she would at least know for certain if she had anything to help.

El looked about the room and noticed it was not all chaos. There were some patches that looked to have been gone over and shifted to at least appear more organized. She shifted on the crate and was reminded of one of her first days aboard the Bonaventure and taking time to meditate on one such as this. And then to have the then chief engineer, Lt Kelleher, come in on her. Her karma was not strong since the Sojourner. She battled expressing a small frown at that thought and instead sighed. While one side appreciated what Odina was saying she felt distinctly patronized. “Right,” she answered, “and a strongly worded letter to the engineers about how a bug dancing on the console took down the tactical system of their latest starship.” In her mind that was a greater sin. Not having parts for a critical system was a byproduct of being ill prepared for such an occurrence. But having utterly messed up the design? That was inexcusable. It was a perfect example of her basic belief that actions had consequences. Still it would not do to vent and have her mind stray from it’s course of seeking peace. Not everyone could see all angles in a design - but still this was a big one!!

She paused at the last question. It had been a long day. Part of a landing party to a new world, a mystery of power drains, a creature who had killed two people aboard in short order - Samuels in decon was a shock. He too had been a vegetarian and she had had breakfast with him prior to the landing party. Certainly of her family only her sister remained in touch and her brushes with death she would rather not think about right now but Samuels was a shock. Perhaps it was being so far from Earth and that which was familiar that did it. Combine that with repairs afterward and the seeming inefficiency of not having critical parts was angering. She let out a small sigh and took a long breath in. “It has been a day of excitement and shock. That creature .. “

• El, Eng

Odina shook her head softly, “I am sorry I didn’t know them that well. I am not a counselor but I have friendly ear and I can listen.” she offered softly as she looked at El. She had missed a lot it seemed in a short span of time.

Ltjg Marshell
Chief Engineering officer

“Nor did I,” she confessed. Since coming aboard she had by design on the one hand and necessity on the other been more or less to herself in the voyage. Between Lt Green and her being on report for a number of things including security, and the original message that first night on the Sojourner, El had been alert and kept to herself. She had avoided these sorts of conversations because of that. (Ooc Tionas only records when Odina asks him too. He doesn’t record everything all the time. ) And a recording dragon about who listened too, she thought. How much did that beast do? El had had another ‘mysterious note’ handed to her. Or rather she had found it in her machine shop earlier when she was returning her tools. It had been cleverly slipped in amongst her field book where she logged work and materials used while she was out of engineering. That slip had fallen out as she picked it up to note what she had used in the repair work. Many just input it into the computer; El wrote it down accompanied by notes. This note was no less chilling as the first. It had read, ‘The tactical cabling was not a simple design fault. As are others. The creature too was not an accident. A Warden’s test.’ People had died during this test, if such was true, and the ship left more vulnerable. That discovery was unlikely to have been engineered given Lt Green’s description of what happened.

Shaking from that reverie, El did wonder, where had the Chief been through all this? “Have you been to other worlds? Seen things you thought not possible?” Most of this had been El’s first, something that had brought her mostly sheltered life out into the stark reality of a senseless universe. Or, if one was to believe the note that self immolated seconds after she had read it, not so much a chaos theory but planned.
- El, Eng

Odina shook her head slightly, “When I was traveling on the Journeyman before my transfer here, all I did was make repairs and general maintenance. I wasn’t invited for landing parties. Only odd thing I saw was a glowing plant that was taken for study. It seemed to enjoy music as much as sunlight.” She said lightly Odina had not asked many questions about the plant because they were not finished in studying it fully. Her brother said he keep her posted if anything developed. She was worried about him too but he was in security for a reason it was a passion for him to protect others.

Ltjg Marshell
Chief Engineering officer

Sounded rather like normal engineering work to her, El thought. Granted with such a wonderful warp drive on the Sojo, well, what more could a girl ask for? Well, besides a useful design. Valid spare parts for critical systems. Air filtration systems that didn’t, when starting up, smell like a dentist’s office. Small things like that. The sign above the transporter room door that someone had put up saying ‘Abandon hope all you who enter here ’ was starting to seem more applicable. Still, she was away from earth. Safe. Or not. Time would tell. But as Uncle Mar would say, ‘Trust no one’. Yet as Master Ko had often said before that, ‘It is only through trusting that we can form a harmonious society.’ El had often battled with both viewpoints; the one had to make way for the other at different points and with different people.

“What is the Journeyman?” El asked. Was it another Starfleet ship she wondered? Starfleet was still a fairly loose organization. In her classes she had learned that Earth was trying to pull things together and loose it from the general Earth organizations that preceded it but was principally something half civilian and half government and pretty much all exploration. It itself had been a child trying to give birth for some 15 years now but who knew when it would be chartered and complete? Were the cargo ships part of the Earth Cargo Service, she wondered, that which was more notable prior to Starfleet gaining greater ground with its technological developments in faster Cochranes. Oh if Zeffie could see what he started!! “A plant that responded to music. Glowed? How?”
- El, Eng