[snip]

Karl didn’t look back “You have two hands and a head, besides don’t they give you all kinds of fancy education in that Academy of yours?” He said mock-chidingly “Come one, we’re burning Starlight” He said as he continued.

SCPO Karl - SCPO

Marcus scrambled up towards the pylon, keeping his phaser at his side, “What are we hoping to find up here?,” he asked, then quickly added, “And I’ll have you know I aced my engineering final.... Just.” There was a cheeky tone in his voice,

-Ensign Marcus Anders: Security Officer-

Karl laughed at his cheeky comment “Whatever it was that made that fractional disturbance, repair the issue. Besides conversing with an ace engineering student might be beneficial” He said in a similarly cheeky tone.

SCPO Karl - ENG

Marcus chuckled, “Ego much? Let’s just agree that I’m more handy with a phaser than I am a hyperspanner.” Anders was surprised at how steep the pylon actually was, having to catch himself occasionally to stop himself sliding back down the sleek plasteel surface.

-Ensign Marcus Anders: Security Officer-

The long crawl up the short pylons for the Independence class was thankfully not as long as it could have been. Finally coming up and out onto the maintenance room for the nacelle they humming and heat of the warp reaction was evident, were it not for the forcefields about them outside this work area they would be fried to a crisp easily. Thankfully they did not have far to go the source of the drain seemed evident. Wrapped around a plasma flow regulation tube that lead to the first junction of the far larger warp coils inside the nacelle was.....something.

Something in this case was a golden bulbous jelly formed blob it was pulsating in time with the warp reactions and it seems it had melted its way through a small crack in the nacelle at some point recently by an acidic compound. It was clearly drawing energy from the warp reactions which was why there were power losses throughout the ship at random intervals, its ‘feeding’ for lack of a term was intermittent it seems.

GM CockRoach