Fwd: Ensign Boran Jaz - The Geometry of Getting Old
Amanda Nordstrom
(( Access Corridor, USS Ardent ))
There was a universal, standard-issue smell to Starfleet vessels that had been sitting in the dark too long: stale ozone, cold duranium, and the faint, copper tang of overworked recycler coils. But crawling through the belly of the USS Ardent, there was a fourth smell, one they didn’t teach cadets to diagnose at the Academy.
It smelled like an old attic. It smelled like seventy years
of dry dust settling over brushed steel in the span of a
single afternoon.
As chosen by Marine Captain JoNz, the away team took Route
B: the dry primary coolant trunk. Boran took up the rear,
their blue toolbox clanking rhythmically against the thigh
of their EVA suit. Down in the narrow dark of the line, the
Ensign kept their tricorder sweeping in wide, amber arcs.
Silently, Jaz thanked the Prophets for their obsessive
Academy deep-dives into archaic structural dynamics. An
Einstein Class was a language of geometry, leverage, and
stubborn mass. Boran understood stubborn mass.
Their
previous Academy studies were proving to be quite useful,
even if at the time, Boran was haunted by the fear of not
being good enough. They still are, to be honest.
Engineering
was definitely the language the Ensign spoke best, though.
Better than Modern Bajoran, Ancient Bajoran, or Standard
Fleet English, there was nothing better to an ship's
enthusiastic engineering officer to do than scan a whole
different class ship to find an explanation for an
impossible mystery.
That said,
Jaz fully believed The Ardent would
speak to them. And with that silly nerdish thought in
mind, their tricorder lit up and their eyes widened.
As a spike of chronotron radiation bloomed across their
tiny screen, Boran’s thumb hovered over the record toggle,
their old Cadet imposter-syndrome whispering right on cue:
oO Double check it. Don't call it out until you're sure it
isn't just your scanner glitching. Oo
The Ensign kept their voice soft, instinctively tucking the heavy blue toolbox an inch closer to their boots to make themselves slightly smaller in the presence of someone else's grief.
Boran looked over at JoNz, making sure the tactical reality was laid out for the person in charge of keeping them alive.
The Chief Nurse let out a shaky, paper-thin sigh, her trembling hand coming to rest against the edge of the Commodore's bio-bed.
Chief Nurse: The crewmen working the exterior hull sensors and the ones running the high-voltage diagnostic consoles aged almost instantly. The ones sitting in the mess hall or asleep in their quarters barely aged ten years.
oO Like the ship itself conducted it into them. Conducting it. Like a copper wire catching a solar flare. Phekk. Oo
Boran’s eyes didn’t look at the chief nurse, they shot straight upward, tracking the heavy, brushed-steel ceiling panels directly over the primary surgical bay. The faint, mechanical whir of Jaz's prosthetic wrist sounded loud in the quiet room as they re-angled the scanner's sensor snout toward the ceiling.
Boran: Marine Captain, Commander Lahl, check the
overhead conduit.
They stepped back, clearing the line of sight so the
senior officers could look at the physical architecture
themselves.
JoNz/Lahl: Response
Boran: The high-voltage consoles run directly
off the primary Electro-Plasma System. If the
chronotrons are using the ship's own plasma grid as a
carrier wave then...
Boran suddenly paused. A cold spark of realization hit
The Bajoran, their eyes darting back toward the wall
terminal they had scanned not too long ago. A massive
blindspot.
Oo Those were fiber optics, and light cannot carry a
radioactive plasma charge. That's why the scan came back
clean. oO
Boran: Marine Captain, Commander...I think we
have a radioactive problem. Look at the bio-bed heaters.
JoNz/Lahl: Response
==============
Ensign Boran Jaz
Engineering Officer
USS Octavia E. Butler B240306BJ3