The Woes of Vanguard

Posted on Wed 19th Oct, 2016 @ 11:07pm by Lieutenant JG Patrick Biere & Lieutenant Ricardo Shepard
Edited on on Fri 21st Oct, 2016 @ 8:50am

1,005 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Cloak & Dagger
Location: Chief Operations Officer Office
Timeline: MD-02 1100 Hours

Rico sat at the desk in his office going over a PADD which contained the starbases schematics, trying to get an understanding of the massive station that he now found himself responsible for. "Power conduits down here. Whole sections of the station without power." He said to himself. In frustration he slid the PADD across his desk and rubbed the tiredness from his eyes. After getting the focus of his eyes back, Rico picked up another PADD amongst the numerous other PADDs there and picked up the one that contiained the profiles of his engineering staff.

"Let's see here." The Chief said to himself. "Patrick Biere. Looks like he has been on station for a little bit. Let's see what he thinks."

Rico then tapped the comm badge on his chest and waited for the usual chirp.

=^= "Lieutenant Biere. Please report to the Chief Operations Office ." =^=

Biere received the message loud and clear. He glanced across at his colleague, James Beckworth and raised and eyebrow. Beckworth nodded his head slightly, to which Biere started making his way to Shepherd's office. He had no idea what the Chief wanted but he would soon find out. Biere was a giant of a man, standing at 6 foot 6 inches, pretty much towering over most people. His engineering knowledge was second to none. He had spent a fair bit of time on Vanguard and hadn't even had time to meet the Chief due to so many problems. Earlier the auxiliary control centre went down due to some dodgy wiring. 'Wiring?!' He mused to himself, 'God only knows what else is wrong with this station.'

Before long, the towering man walked into the Shepherd's Office, "Reporting for duty, Sir." Biere stated, looking down upon Shepherd.

Still sitting at the desk looking at another PADD, Rico motioned for his guest to sit down without even looking up at him.

"Lieutenant, I know we haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet......" As Rico looked up from the PADD, he was startled to see a behemoth of a man before him. Realizing that he actually stopped talking, he quickly tried to compose himself.

"Uhhm, as I was saying, we haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet, but I wanted to get your take on a few things." Rico hoped his surprise was not too obvious.

Biere noticed that Shepherd stopped in his tracks before starting again. He was used to that kind of reaction when people first saw him. "Don't worry, I'm used to that reaction! Do these things involve all the problems on Vanguard? It's a death trap!" Biere chuckled to himself before snapping back to seriousness.

Shepard slid a PADD that contained all the sections on the starbase that did not have power to it over to his engineer.

"I know you haven't been here that long, but it looks like we got a bit of a problem on our hands. There are complete sections of the base that don't have power running to them. The weird part is, I can't exactly tell why. Some of the diagnostics I have ran show that some lower level conduits are functioning fine when we know they aren't. And on top of everything else, I know you and I have been chasing down power outages and brown outs that shouldn't be happening."

Shepard reached across his desk for the PADD containing the station schematics and handed it over to Patrick.

"So, what do you think Patrick?" The Operations officer asked?

Patrick picked the PADD up and analysed it before answering, "It seems like every problem on Vanguard has a unique reason behind it. We have had dodgy wiring, mechanical faults, system failures, the lot. If I had to have a guess, I would say there are two reasons behind it. A, The fact that Vanguard has been run down for so long and has not been used so much, or B, dodgy engineering somewhere on board. I would like to say it's the first option and not the second! If, however, it is the second, then I feel we need to look into who has been assigned recently to these specific areas & fixes. What would your thoughts be, Sir?"

"I agree Biere. I don't want to believe dodgy engineering is even an option, but unfortunately we have to consider that as well. It actually would be a welcome problem considering the other option. I would truly hate to find out if there is a more serious problem. But with my luck, that's what it probably will be.." Rico stood up from behind his desk and walked to the replicator. He almost started speaking his order to the computer when he realized he was being rude.

"Patrick, I'm sorry. Would you like something to drink?" He asked.

"No thanks Sir. I prefer not to drink until I clock out, even soft drinks!" He chuckled. "Do we have a plan of action? One to either stop this or find the cause?" Even though Biere looked down on Shephard, he did look up to him as his leader.

"Grape juice, cold." The lieutenant said to the replicator. After the drink materialized in the replicator bay, Shepard took it and walked back to the desk and sat back across from Patrick.

"Well friend. That's gonna be a two pronged approach. First let's respond to the complaints of outages and surges we have now. Secondly we will compile the data and see if we can isolate a spot where there might be a convergence of power. My thinking is that as some point the surges and outages have to emanate from somewhere right?"

"The quicker we find that out, the quicker we can find the solution," Biere stated.

"Agreed." Rico stated. "Let's go see if we can get to the bottom of this." Any questions?"

"Where shall we start?" Biere replied.

Rico reached for a PADD sitting on the desk, grabbed it and handed to Patrick. "Take the first erroneous power outage complaint and follow up with me."

 

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