It's Purely Medicinal

Posted on Wed Jul 20th, 2011 @ 6:21am by Lieutenant Jasad Broca & Lieutenant JG Toshie Minamoto

Mission: Too Close for Comfort...
Location: Main Engineering
Timeline: After Man's Gotta Eat

Jasad returned to Engineering to find Chief Minamoto filling her morning checklist. He was about to greet her warmly, and share the details of his misadventure with the Commodore- But then he realized that the scent of alcohol would still be strong on his breath. Nearly turning 180 degrees in alarm, he issued his greeting mostly over one shoulder. "Good Morning, Sir," he said, suddenly finding a wall console very interesting. It was the Tertiary Environmental Control.

"Mmm. Looks like the backups are all in tip-top shape," he added lamely.

Toshie looked over as her assistant's words reached her ears. The young woman had been engrossed in her work and hadn't noticed his approach. She looked much less ragged then she had before, a good night's sleep evident in both her appearance and the easy smile she flashed him.

"Morning, Lieutenant. How is it going so far?" She stood up from her console and started towards him. "I noticed some new repair requests that got logged in. We should get to work on those before we get underway."

"I came in a bit early this morning," Jasad said, still facing the wall console more than his superior. "The Commodore arrived with a repair request of his own. It's the first I'd seen of him. I must say, he's an interesting personality." Jasad edged closer to her, coming like a weasel or a crab in a sideways advance. "His replicator was malfunctioning, but it's fine again, now."

He held out a hand, still not facing her directly. "Do you have the list of new requests? I'd be happy to get it all taken care of for you." In his experience, Chief Engineers rarely fixed anything themselves, preferring to delegate. He didn't think that would be his own technique when the time came, but he wasn't about to imply that Minamoto should break with apparent Starfleet tradition, as established to him aboard the Shras. In fact, in the case of the Shras' Chief Engineer, Jasad had much preferred it when the man removed himself from concerns about maintenance or repair.

Toshie stretched as she put down her PADD on top of the "pool table" systems display. "I got a little bit more shut-eye and I'm glad I did. I feel like I'm running on all thrusters again. It's a good feeling after several days of no sleep." She laughed a little and tilted her head to one side. "The Commodore? A replicator? What, did he not get his coffee this morning?"

Her eyes glanced over him, "You're walking a bit differently today." She shook her head as she looked down at the master display. "Most of our repairs are going well. I have a request from the Marines to refit a cargo bay to use as a training holodeck. That one is a bit more work then their other requests, so I want to get that out of the way if we have the manpower available." She moved her hands quickly across the LCARS screen, highlighting a small cargo bay in the upper engineering hull. "I think cargo bay 7 will do okay for this. It's mostly empty now and we have plenty of room in the other bays for the containers in there. What do you think?"

It seemed that she intended to get her hands dirty. While this was admirable, it was hardly convenient. If he was forced to work closely with her for any length of time, it was likely that his obfuscation would be revealed. "I think he was hungry," Jasad said, "and he must prefer to eat alone in his room." He did not add that other people probably preferred that as well. The Commodore had done him a kindness, and he didn't want to tarnish it.

When Minamoto mentioned that he was walking oddly, Jasad regarded his feet, as though the problem lay there. "Am I? Perhaps I pulled a muscle while repairing the replicator." That seemed plausible enough.

Then, when she proposed the modifications to the cargo bay, Jasad covered his mouth with his right hand, in what was supposed to be a deeply thoughtful gesture. "Hmm," he said as he considered the possibilities. "I suppose we could use the cargo transporter's EPS lines to feed the holo-emitters without much trouble. You're right about the bay being mostly empty. Starfleet seems to enjoy designing its ships as though they might be required to evacuate a dozen very important warehouses at any given moment." This was as close as he was willing to come to saying that all Starfleet ships seemed to waste quite a bit of space.

"Installing the supporting computer hardware will be more involved, I think." As he spoke, he forgot to avoid facing her, becoming drawn into the prospect of interesting work. "The transporter buffers have ample memory capacity that we can re-purpose, but we'll want to bring in a couple of bio-neural sub-processor packets to handle the parallel processing if a whole platoon will be in there conducting training exercises. Still, eminently doable, and a good plan, Sir." He smiled at her.

"Mmm, yes, I feel like that in the morning. Trust me, you don't want to be around me if I haven't gotten my morning tea or coffee yet." Toshie smirked as she looked over the display, not showing any outward signs of suspicion, just polite conversation, even at his reaction to her question. She just nodded and continued. "Oh, stop by sickbay when you get a chance, then."

"Yes, you're right." She ran her fingers over the LCARS interface more, bringing up a cargo manifest, then the schematics for that bay. "Holodeck energy requirements always are a pain in the ass, so we'll run a reinforced line instead of the standard EPS lines to there. It will be smaller then the main ones, so we won't have to install dedicated generators, I don't think. Hmm." She brought up a list of components on the screen and highlighted several of them. "We'll go full-bore with this and give them a proper holodeck, including the replicator capabilities. It will expand what they can train for." His compliment got a nod and a small, approving grin, obviously happy with his input.

Jasad nodded, "I'll meet you there with three technicians, a grav-lifter, and a coffee service." The local EPS lines would be down for the duration of their modifications, and that meant no on-site replication. The last thing he wanted was for the Chief Engineer to be grumpy for lack of caffeine.

"Then we can dig in and make beautiful holograms together." The shift in his mood from concern to excited anticipation over this new project was complete. He winked at her without thinking about what he was doing, and offered his most charming smile. Only belatedly did it occur to him that his inhibitions might have been subtly adjusted by that solitary drink of antique whiskey.

"Sounds good to me." Her fingers continued to manipulate the controls as she expanded the picture from just the cargobay to some of the surrounding rooms. "We will convert some of these rooms into a conference room and armory for the Marines as well. The armory is going to need the usual security and blast protection installed. The conference room just needs some consoles and furniture. We will handle those after the holodeck."

That wink and smile from him brought on a slightly-wider grin from the women, "I haven't used the holodeck in weeks, so I know just the program to test in there when we finish it." She reached for her PADD and her nearby toolkit, "Then shall we get started?"

Jasad reflected her grin like a mirror, "I'm already there."