Ship's History

Posted on Sunday August 1st, 2021 @ 5:16pm by Ensign Lethe Sivarr

1,077 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: S1-A1-Ep. 1: Spectrophobia
Location: Main Shuttlebay Maintenance Crawlway
Timeline: Current

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It was not what Lethe had been expecting, serving aboard the Poseidon. When his transfer to active starship had been approved, he of course was willing to take whatever Starfleet offered, but his unspoken hopes had been for one of the newer heavy cruisers, something modern, well kept, and out there on the frontier. Instead, he was posted to a Miranda class starship, among the oldest vessels still active in the fleet, performing a scientific survey on a nebula that wasn't terribly unusual.

However, all his expectations of a run-down, overworked, antiquated vessel were incorrect, he was pleased to discover. He didn't know the full service history of the ship, but the Poseidon had been retrofitted numerous times to keep her technology up to date, and worn and aging systems were repaired or replaced as needed to keep her fully operational. It was the difference between working on a ship in a surplus depot, and working on an active starship, and it was a much larger difference than Lethe had been expecting.

Carrying out his assignment from Lieutenant Commander Sharpe, Lethe had been performing detailed analyses of the hull and external components, looking for signs of degradation caused by the composition of the nebula, in order to find and keep ahead of any damage before it became more serious or mission-impacting. So far, the damage had been light, with a starboard airlock requiring replacement of the external hatch seals, two sensor palettes being bypassed and slated for replacement when it was safe for EVA, and several variances in the SIF network indicating minor pitting of the hull that would eventually require attention. The most recent incident in the battle against the nebula's effect was a fluctuation in output of the environmental field of the main portside hangar bay door. Without being able to decompress the bay, lower the forcefield, and open the main door to access the systems directly, the next best access was via the deck 6 aft jefferies tube, and then squeezing out from the already-tight tube into the even more cramped service crawlway. Having experienced the crawlway in the past, Lethe knew the space had been cut in half to accommodate upgraded equipment during the first major refit of the Miranda class, and access to the space was of such a low priority that the design had never been changed.

His uniform already caked with dust, Lethe grunted and cursed under his breath as he maneuvered in the too-small space, shoulders and hips contorting in a manner only possible with a semi-cartilaginous skeletal structure; so long as he could get his head through, the rest of him could follow, though it was by no means comfortable or easy. It was too tight a space to ever risk beaming into, though it was quite possible he would just ask to be beamed out when he was done and save himself the extra hassle.

Eventually, scraping a thin wake of dust before him as he went, Lethe reached the maintenance bay, which was only a little larger than the crawlway, but at least gave him a bit of elbow room, and rolling onto his back, he set his two handfuls of tools along his side before pulling out the tricorder and starting a scan above. It didn't take long before he located the fluctuation in the field output, and as he'd suspected, it was a misaligned waveguide causing the issue. There was no evidence of breach by nebular gasses however, so either the problem was caused by a random EM discharge, or it was simply a coincidence of timing. Whatever the case, it needed to be addressed, and getting a grip with all four hands, the engineer released the locking pins and wrestled off the large access panel above him with a clang, mildly surprised to find four different circuit relays and a handful of small stembolts sitting on the panel, most likely dropped by accident when the area was serviced from above, and ending up in such an inaccessible spot that it simply wasn't worth the effort of trying to retrieve them. Setting them aside, Lethe slid the panel further along and out of the way, then looked up into the guts of the mechanism, and gave a sort whistle of air between his teeth.

It wasn't that long since Sharpe had warned him to be on the lookout for illicit isolinear chips in his travels through the ship, but what he saw here was... well, almost the opposite. Part of the main hangar bay door mechanism, the systems here had likely last been accessed during the first major ship refit, and it's possible they had never been changed, even then. Almost reverently, Lethe brushed a hand over the original duotronic components, not only still in place, but active and operational. "How are you still here?" Lethe asked to no one in particular, though the answer was probably pretty simple; 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'. Given that it was a backup control system for the shuttlebay doors, it was not exactly a critical system and an upgrade to isolinear circuits would have no appreciable benefit, given the simplicity of the task it was meant to perform.

As an engineer, Lethe knew he should at least make a note in the log for the system to be upgraded, but his time serving at the fleet museum around Sol had perhaps left more of an impression on him than he realized, and he felt illogically pleased to know that a system dating back to the construction of the Poseidon was still in place and going strong. Not even all the ships in the museum could make that boast -especially in regards to computer systems- so it was something of a rare treat to find it aboard an active, serving starship.

Blinking the dust from his eyes that drifted down as he began accessing the waveguide, Lethe got to work on the issue that had brought him here to begin with. He would of course note the system in his report, but secretly hoped that Sharpe would be similarly inclined to leave the duotronics in place, to continue doing their job until the ship itself was finally berthed for the last time. It just seemed fitting since they had performed fine this far, and after all, just because something is old, is no excuse to simply throw it away.

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Ensign Lethe Silvarr
Damage Control Specialist

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