Unsung Heros (Part I of II)

Posted on Tue Apr 27, 2021 @ 10:00am by Captain Maritza Soran & Lieutenant Annora Tessaro & Lieutenant Alanna Wells & Crewman Steven Phillips

2,259 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Si vis pacem, para bellum
Location: Bowels of Deep Space Five
Timeline: MD 04 0500

[ON]

Deck 1126, Section 27-D, Main EPS Relay Subjunction for Shuttlebay 37

“Hand me that spanner, will ya? This fitting is being stubborn.” The disembodied voice of Crewman Steven Phillips came from the access port that he had crawled inside, with only his legs sticking out.

The requested spanner was handed through the access port. "How bad is it?" Crewman Lash, his full name a complex conglomeration of Vulcan syllables that was barely pronounceable, so everyone called him Lash, tried to poke his head in above Phillips' ankles. Then he yawned. It was only his second night on the graveyard shift and he was feeling it. "Can we go home early?"

"Thanks, Lash," Steven stated as he took possession of the requested tool. As he brought it up to where he was working, he replied with a grunt. "Ugh..probably..ugh..not. Come on..damn you...turn!" He muttered a few more curses under his breath as he fought with the stubbornly stuck part.

"Do you want me to page the others, tell them to bring some grease when they get the new trunking down here?" Lash asked

Steven cursed and strained a little more, then, finally, the fitting he was working on came free. "Yeah, couldn’t hurt any. These damn fittings don't look they've been properly lubricated since they were first installed. And guess who's job it is to makes sure it gets done?" The question was rhetorical, as they both knew exactly whose job it was. Theirs.

"Not mine?" Lash asked hopefully.

Steven's chuckled echoed out from inside the work space. "Wishful thinking, good buddy. You and me, and the rest of the junior enlisted on the station, we are the ones that really get things done. Yeah, the officers give the orders, the noncoms relay those orders to us. But we, my friend, we are the blood of this might beast." Handing the damaged fitting out, he then asked, Give me some number three lubrication oil, please."

"Aren't you supposed to buy me dinner first?" Lash smirked, handing over a can of oil.

Steven neatly spit with laughter at Lash's witty comment. "Sorry, Buddy. You may be a handsome guy, but you're not my type." He chuckled softly.

William Huxley passed a security team on his way to the EPS relay. "Morning Petty Officer, crewman, how are things."

Walkowiak nodded in greeting to the engineer.
"As you humans say, 'all quiet on the Western front.' What about you?"

"Good to hear. As for engineering, there's always something that needs fixing or upgrading. I'm on my way to see if some others need help."

Having finished his other task, William was headed to where another work crew was supposed to be at.

The Arbazan security officer motioned down the corridor. "We passed a repair crew a little ways back. They looked busy so we kept on going. I won't keep you any longer, see you around."

Sure enough, as William turned the corner he came upon Lash handing stuff up an access port to a disembodied hand. "You fellas need some help?" He inquired.

Steven heard the voice and called out. "Huxley! Is that you?!"

Setting down his tool kit, he responded to the question. "Yup, I heard you were breaking things. Figured I'd lend a hand putting everything back together."

"Ha ha, very funny, ya prick." Steven teased. Of everyone he had met so far on the station, which wasn't a lot, William Huxley was one that had been the nicest. The two young men had struck up a strong friendship during their time serving together. "Did you get your assignment finished already?!"

"Yeah, it wasn't near as bad as the request made it seem. Just a couple of burned out Phase coil generators. Once they were replaced, things were more or less back to normal. What'cha working on here?"

He knew they were working on the EPS conduit but hadn't looked at the work order to see just what the problem was.

Piper Grange usually liked working gamma shift as there were fewer people in the corridors, but since the recent problems with the crystal whatever-it-was, repair crews were working round-the-clock, which meant more people banging and swearing in the tubes. There were a couple of men working a deck or so above her. She set down her toolkit and opened the panel. The calibration was off by .0277. That would be enough to cause the vibration detected in the air filtration system. She pulled out her hypersonic spanner and set it to the right frequency. What was the pitch again? She checked the scanner and adjusted the spanner. She almost had it, when the power relay junction next to her sparked. "Blast it!" She dropped her spanner as she was zapped with the electrical surge.

"Ow!" Steve yelped as a circuit by his head sparked. Quickly scrambling out from the access port, he started patting out the smoldering on his right shoulder, he exclaimed. "What the hell caused that?!"

"Not sure," Lash said, slightly distracted. "I'm getting some weird ass readings of the EPS."

"Sorry!" a female voice called from a deck below. "Fixing a problem in the air filtration system." Piper wasn't sure if it was a coincidence or not, but she figured she should apologize anyway.

A perplexed look briefly crossed Steven's face. "Piper?" He leaned over to the open ladderway that led to the decks above and below. "Piper? That you? I thought you were working over in section 30 today?"

"Steven?" she called back. "It's me. Pete traded assignments. Thought Section 30 would be easier. The calibration in the air filtration system is off and it's causing a vibration. I was trying to re-calibrate it when a power conduit shorted. Sorry. You okay?"

Chuckling softly, Steven rolled over and stuck his head and shoulders through the hole in the deck plating where the ladder was. "Yeah, I'm good. Just a little singe. You can buy me a drink later as recompense." He chuckled again. "Your conduit shorted because i was working on the circuit fitting up here. The old fitting was worn out and Lash and I were about to replace it. Hold off a sec for us to finish, K?"

"For that, I'll add a bowl of chili," she replied. "Let me know when I can finish down here. I've got two more jobs before end of shift."

Steven perked up at that. "Your chili?! Oh, hell yeah!" He looked back over his left shoulder. "Lash, get in there and finish installing that fitting. Do it just like the one I showed you yesterday, k?"

The younger man nodded and wiggled into the space Steven had just vacated. "I swear, I need to stop oversleeping. And why does it smell of feet in here?"

Admittedly it was amusing to be the observer in this particular situation. Usually he was the one squeezed in an access port somewhere, doing his part to keep the station's systems working properly.

"You could set your alarm five minutes earlier, and I'm sure you could program the lights to come on at that time. Barring that, there's always coffee. There has to be a reason most cultures have some version of the drink."

"Or chocolate," Piper piped in. She wanted to get this job done, but since she had a little time, she checked the other junctions to make sure they weren't damaged, too.

The half-vulcan crewman slipped the fitting on, and applied some percussive maintenance to get it on securely. "I don't like coffee. It tastes of grit and despair. And chocolate makes me sleepy."

Steven leaned back over the opening to tell Piper to go ahead, when suddenly, the red alert klaxons started blaring and the lighting in the tubes dimmed. "What the hell?!" He reached up and slapped his commbadge. "Crewman Phillips to Petty Officer Lorca, what's going on, Sir?"

No reply came.

Slapping his commbadge again, he suddenly heard the malfunction chirp from the device. Trying a third time, he received the same results. "Hey, guys, everyone try your commbadges. Mine's not working."

Piper tapped hers with the same result. "Mine's not working, either. Something else we'll need to fix."

"What the fuck?" Lash backed out of the EPS junction. "Whats going on?"

Piper packed her tools again. They needed to report to their emergency stations. She climbed up to the next deck to get to the turbolift. There was something seriously wrong here, and she didn't like it.

Steven got up and collected his tools and spoke aloud to the group. "The starfighter shuttlebays are the closest to us. Let's all get down there and then we can figure out where to go."

"Right," Piper said, coming up beside him.

William tried his own comm-badge with the same results as the others.
"One or maybe two badges not working could simply be a glitch. All ours being down points to something bigger. I agree the fighter bays are a good location to start with."

Lash swore. "There's a fast turbo lift from fighter control, and I need to get to AHDA control"

Steven carefully led the small group down two decks, then over three sections, until they came to the access hatch leading to Starfighter Hanger Three. As Steven was about to open the hatch, the sound of weapons fire could be heard through the bulkhead. Freezing, he looked to his companions, his eyes wide as saucers. “The hell was that?! It sounded like...like disruptors! One of you do a scan, while I seal this hatch!” He quickly reached into his tool kit and pulled out a welding torch and a pair of goggles. After donning the goggles, he got to work sealing the hatch.

Piper opened her tricorder. Before she could scan, there was a distant boom and a vibration that could be felt through the deck. "Something's going on," she said, scanning. "Is sealing the hatch going to do any good?" she asked. "That's definitely weapons fire. If they wanted in, there are a lot of ways to accomplish that, including the cargo transporters."

Steven replied while he continued his task. "True, but, any point of resistance we give to whomever is out there is more time for security or the Marines to do something."

"Agreed. If whoever is out there has it out for Starfleet, we should make it difficult for them to reach us."

Reaching into his toolkit, William looked for something to use as an improvised weapon should the need arise.

Once the hatch was sealed. Steven put his tools away and tried to think. What could they do? They were just low ranking enlisted! But, his fathers words echoed in his head, Don't ever start a fight, but, if a fight comes to your doorstep, you make damn sure the other guy goes away with more than a bloody nose.

That was when it occured to him. The EPS system! "Guys! I have an idea! We dont have the necessary training to take those soldiers on, hand to hand, but, we do have other training! Lets get back to the EPS junction trunk, up on deck 1126! I'll explain more there!" He started back the way he came, hoping they weren't too late.

"Shouldn't we at least find out what is going on first?" Piper asked. "Otherwise, we might end up hurting our own people instead."

Pausing in his movements, Steven considered Piper's question. Is was a good one. Looking back st his friend, he replied. "I'd love to do that. But, with both comms down and enemy troops on the station, at least the shuttlebay we were just at, how do we do that, without getting nabbed ourselves? Or worse?" Shaking his head, he continued. "It may not be the bravest thing to do, but, by disabling parts of the EPS system, we could slow or, hopefully, expel the enemy. Don't worry, we won't touch anything to do with life support."

"Or power. I'd hate command to come down on us for putting them in the dark during a crisis," Piper said. She decided to follow them to make sure they didn't get into any trouble. She hoped she wouldn't, either.

Steven nodded slowly, thinking furiously. Then, something occured to him. "The doors! We can cut power to the doors, for a start. Then, we could find a way to, uh, cut the gravity plating wherever we find the enemy."

William thought back to the security team he passed several minutes earlier. He didn't know them personally, but still hoped they were safe with whatever crisis had suddenly gripped the station. "I agree we should try and do something to help, but at the same time I'd hate to trap the good guys along with the enemy. Whoever they are."

"I agree," Piper said. "We're supposed to be the god buys. We can't cause trouble for our own people. Or, we can, but we shouldn't."

Steven nodded silently, feeling crestfallen. "But, this..this is our home," he said quietly. "I know we don't have a phaser between us, nor do we have the auth codes to get any from the armories." He shook his head. "What can we do?"

To Be Continued

Crewman Lash
Holographics technician
DS5
[NPC by Soran]

Crewman Piper Grange
Ops/Air Filtration
Deep Space 5
[NPC by Wells]

Crewman Steven Philips
Ops/Structural Engineering
Deep Space 5
[NPC by Tam]'

Crewman William Huxley
Engineering
DS5
(NPC by Bryan)

 

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