Lt Hober Mallow | Chief Engineer | Not really a day off

Posted on 241909.18 @ 9:35pm by Lieutenant Hober Mallow

=/\= Jeffries Tube between Deck 25 and Deck 26 =/\=

The unexpected downtime was welcome by Mallow, but not for the reasons most of the crew welcomed it. Mallow had learned that being docked at a major port was a great time for repairs or modifications; items off of his ever-growing to-do list. Mallow had been generous with the shore leave he gave the Engineering crew. For one they very much deserved it, but also they could be supplemented with borrowed engineers from Versailles, so Mallow's gesture was not hard to grant.

He divvied up the routine maintenance tasks to the Versailles strangers, but nothing too critical. He enjoyed the extra help and trusted the expertise of the starbase folk, but he still preferred to handle the critical systems in-house. This particular morning found Mallow knocking off a request from some of the enlisted crew. There were a few minor complaints that some replicators were slow and caused lines in the shared mess halls during shift changes.

The problem originated from a modification they had made to Cargo Bay 9. On a previous mission, the Enterprise transported some dangerous cargo that required level 9 forcefields round the clock for an extended period. Normally this would be fine with power routed to spec, but the protocol for this particular cargo called for triple redundant backups in containment. Something about blowing up half a deck if it got into contact with a bulkhead. Regardless, that cargo had since left the ship and the triple redundancies could be taken out.

How these affected the crew quarters on deck 26, the chief engineer had yet to figure out, but he suspected it was the eps cyclical conduit behind the panel he was currently yanking from the wall. He set the slender panel behind him and took stock of what he assumed was the work of a rushed EPS tech. With a sigh, he set to work untangling the spaghetti routing. Deftly he transitioned between scanning with his tricorder, passing over sections of cable with his tools, an adjustment here, a calibration there.

While his hands worked, his mind wandered. Mallow had yet to meet his new boss, and his only knowledge of the new officer was that Enterprises' new first officer had a noteworthy military background. He stood frozen for a moment, caught imagining horrible scenarios of an overbearing commander. The previous first officer had more or less let Mallow run the department as he wanted, as long as his reasonable expectations were met. Mallow's hands went back to moving deeper into the wall as he shook his head, attempting to loosen the bad thoughts and let them float away. He figured no matter the type of commander he would figure out how to get along and keep his department in shape. He liked to think himself adaptable.

Mallow started humming while finishing his work in the lonely Jeffries tube, looking forward to the next thing to knock off his list.

=/\= end log =/\=

Lieutenant Hober Mallow
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Enterprise