Makin' Do

Posted on Fri 21st Oct, 2016 @ 11:29pm by Lieutenant Ricardo Shepard
Edited on on Sat 26th Nov, 2022 @ 9:18pm

1,385 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Cloak & Dagger
Location: Deck 600: Orchids & Jazz
Timeline: MD 2, 1145

In her office, after the conversation with Chef Holmes, Serena sat down and threw her head back on her chair. She took a deep breath, held it a moment and let it all out. Again. A third time. Then she simply sighed. She loved Orchids & Jazz. She loved working for Jade. Someday, maybe she'd open her own place. Right now, she was happy that she wasn't the owner, and glad to turn the chef's problem over to someone else.

After a moment, she leaned forward, and signed into her computer. "Computer, Operations Center, please."

=^= Working ... working ... you are now connected with the Chief of Operations. =^=

"No, but wait, I didn't -" Selena began.

"Lieutenant Shepard. What can I do for you?"

"I'm sorry, Lieutenant," Serena apologized. "I didn't mean to contact the department head. This is Serena Alia, the assistant manager of Orchids & Jazz. We have a little problem in the kitchen here and I thought one of the engineers could maybe take a look?"

The Chief Operations Officer smiled as he sat in his office going over repair requests he had received since arriving on the starbase.

"Well, Serena, any excuse to come down to Orchids for a bit is alright with me. I'm grabbing my tool kit and I am on my way."

Shepard had gotten up from his desk as he was talking to Serena, and by the time he could say tool kit, he was already at the door to his office exiting for the turbo lift.

It surprised Serena that the Chief, himself, was coming, but maybe he was like Jade, liking to keep a finger on the pulse of his department. She walked out of her office and toward the door to greet him when he stepped into the restaurant a few minutes later.

"Thank you for coming so quickly. I'm sure if you can make things right in Chef Holmes's world, she will feed you something absolutely extraordinary," the assistant manager smiled. "Even if you can't, actually. The kitchen is back here, and it's our main grill that seems to be non-functioning at the moment. This is, of course, causing major concern with the mid-day meal coming up."

They stepped into the kitchen and Serena looked around for Marin. She spied her coming out of the refrigeration unit. "There she is. Let me introduce you, and then I'll leave her to describe the problem for you."

Chef Holmes looked up, sensing foreign bodies in her kitchen, like a bloodhound on a trail. Immediately, she came to greet them. "That was fast. Thanks for coming so quickly," she said to the engineer.

Before Marin could get too carried away, Serena smoothly injected, "Chef Holmes, I'd like you to meet the Chief of Operations, Lieutenant Shepard. Lieutenant, this is our Chief Chef, Marin Holmes."

"Chief, eh?" Marin smiled, shaking the man's hand. "Good, that means it will be fixed soon."

"Well that's the plan." Rico responded jokingly. "So, what exactly is happening here?"

Serena took that as her cue to step back and let the two of them get on with solving this problem. She left the kitchen to check on the servers. They were one short today, due to someone calling in sick. There was always something.

Marin took Shepard's arm and led him to her grill, normally the heart of her kitchen. "This morning, I fired up the grill, as I always do." She stopped and looked at him. "You understand "fire up" is simply semantics? There's no fire involved."

Shepard looked over at Marin to see if she was serious. "You're joking, right? I hope you wouldn't have an open flame here."

Marin just smiled. Some things were best left unsaid, but she made a mental note not to serve the engineer Flaming Cherries Jubilee. "So I fired up the grill, as I always do, only within 30 seconds, it was sparking and threatening to ignite the entire kitchen, and I shut it down again. Another attempt shortly after produced the same results, and there you go. We need this grill. I do hope you can fix it." She didn't exactly resort to flirting to get what she needed ... that would be the next step.

"Sounds like an easy fix," Shepard stated, hoping that this repair job would be easier than the rest he had been on. "O.K. let's pull this modular unit out of the access alcove. and see what we got here."

Rico typed in his access code to release the modular panel the grill was in and was shocked at what he found.

"WHAT IN ALL OF CREATION........!" Shepard cried out in disgust. He quickly looked over to Marin, not knowing how to really react.

Behind the grill, Shepard found a clear viscous ooze coming from out of the panel and coating some fried couplings. The ooze slowly dripped to the ground as if it had the viscosity of old motor oil.

"Uhhhmmm Marin, please tell me this isn't something you guys use in your food here."

The Chef was equally repulsed, if not more so. She was also fascinated, but made a face at his question. "Noooo," she said, drawing out the word. "I've never seen anything like that." She put a finger into a small drop of the substance, which was turning a creamy white as it sat in one spot. It had a slick feel, no graininess to it. Marin rubbed it between her fingers. "It's almost like some kind of vegetable fat or animal fat. You see how it's solidifying slightly as it cools in the kitchen air? Fat does that."

Bringing her fingers cautiously toward her nose, she sniffed. "There's no odor," she said in surprise. She sniffed again. "That's just odd. Almost everything has a smell of some kind. Sort of makes me wish I'd paid more attention in science classes. Maybe you should scoop some of that up and send it to the lab for analysis?"

She watched the area behind the panel, and noted that there was still a clear substance leaking, though more slowly. "Have you ever seen anything like this?"

Still amazed, Rico shook his head and answered. "No I haven't. Never in all my travels."

Shepard tapped his comm badge, =^= "Shepard to Biere, come in."

As he waited for a reply from his engineer, Rico looked over to Marin. "Marin, I need some type of container to get a sample of this..... goo. Think you can find me one?"

"Sure thing," the chef responded, washing her hands in the nearby sink and drying them on a temp towel.

Raising her voice slightly, she called to one of the staff, "Sly, bring me one of those take-out dishes - the small one we put desserts in."

In no time, the assistant addressed handed her a round plastic container with a clear lid. "Here," Marin said, handing the bottom part to the engineer. "And a spoon to scoop it, too. Less contamination."

A voice came over Rico's comms, "Biere here, Sir. Sorry for the delay, these blasted comms are being a pain in the backside!"

"Biere, We've got ourselves a nasty situation down here in Orchids and Jazz. I'm gonna need you to cut the power here until we get this under control. And you won't believe what I have to show you. We might have just found something that could explain our woes of late."

Just then, Rico's communicator chirped to life.

=/=Collins to Operations, Could I get a technician to Lab 12?=/= She waited for a response.

"I'm a little tied up at the moment. What do you have?" The operations chief responded.

=/=The electron microscope in lab 12 has malfunctioned and filled the room with a very pungent smoke. I'm sure it's something with the circuitry and we've ventilated the room, but we need that microscope if we're to do any good with any thing in this lab.=/= Jaz tried to sound insistent without sounding too bossy.

=^= O.k. I'll send Ensign Th'kavig your way to help. Perry out. =^=

"That sounds promising," McCabe commented, feeling Biere hopeful he might still accomplish something today.

=/=Thank you. Collins out=/=

Biere's voice came back over the comms, "Power's out in that section now, I will catch up with you in a bit Sir."

 

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