Ensign Doz Finch - The Flavour of Electric Failure
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Doz Finch
Dec 7, 2022, 7:08:09 PM12/7/22
to sb118-...@googlegroups.com, Doz Finch
((Main Engineering, USS Gorkon))
𝅘𝅥𝅮
Finch had just pressed the singed circuit against her thin lips as though savouring the flavour of electric failure; a hint of silver, a dash and a splash of isolinear du fromage, the faintest allusion of roasted capacitor. But the thoughts burgeoning at the forefront of the white-haired-woman’s mind contrasted greatly to those floating in the background of it.
No; Finch walked towards the replicator with the circuit in front of her, as though it lead her acutely to where she needed to be, so that she could clone a dozen, maybe even several dozens of its kind. It was even possible that she needed to replicate a few hundred, if and only if, the damage was ship-wide. And sods law, it would be.
Gnaxac, the younger and rather brittle Ferengi, had the same inclination as Finch, and had suggested that she replicate more of them. And she’d given him a wrinkled nod in complete agreement before walking with purpose to the location she now stood at. He was an interesting one, that Gnaxac. The stutter fitted him perfectly, and was the icing on the edgy but adroit cake that was his persona. It was early days, but she was fond of him -- he may have been the ideal colleague to rope into a game of impulse-room Klingon chess. She’d become something of an expert at it, despite the person who taught her it.
oO About the only good thing I took from that hairy hound, Faruch! Oo
Gnaxac: What d-d-do you recommend, Ensign?
zh’Tisav: We should send one of the computer specialists check it out. It’s their area of expertise, after all.
As Finch tapped in the information to the replicator and allowed it to scan the singed circuit, she turned around and listened in to the exchange between zh’Tisav and Gnaxac, lips pushed out in thought.
Gnaxac: Worried about f-f-fitting in there? What are you, seven t-t-t-two?
zh’Tisav:Response
Finch: Oh rub it in, why don’t you!
Gnaxac smirked.
Gnaxac: I t-t-think this is a job for someone of my s-s-stature.
zh’Tisav: Response
Finch: I must say, and I’m sure Lieutenant Gnaxac would agree, being smaller in stature has its pros. There’s nothing daunting to me about a tight squeeze. Can almost always guarantee I can get in and out of a place!
𝅘𝅥𝅮
Finch had just pressed the singed circuit against her thin lips as though savouring the flavour of electric failure; a hint of silver, a dash and a splash of isolinear du fromage, the faintest allusion of roasted capacitor. But the thoughts burgeoning at the forefront of the white-haired-woman’s mind contrasted greatly to those floating in the background of it.
No; Finch walked towards the replicator with the circuit in front of her, as though it lead her acutely to where she needed to be, so that she could clone a dozen, maybe even several dozens of its kind. It was even possible that she needed to replicate a few hundred, if and only if, the damage was ship-wide. And sods law, it would be.
Gnaxac, the younger and rather brittle Ferengi, had the same inclination as Finch, and had suggested that she replicate more of them. And she’d given him a wrinkled nod in complete agreement before walking with purpose to the location she now stood at. He was an interesting one, that Gnaxac. The stutter fitted him perfectly, and was the icing on the edgy but adroit cake that was his persona. It was early days, but she was fond of him -- he may have been the ideal colleague to rope into a game of impulse-room Klingon chess. She’d become something of an expert at it, despite the person who taught her it.
oO About the only good thing I took from that hairy hound, Faruch! Oo
Gnaxac: What d-d-do you recommend, Ensign?
zh’Tisav: We should send one of the computer specialists check it out. It’s their area of expertise, after all.
As Finch tapped in the information to the replicator and allowed it to scan the singed circuit, she turned around and listened in to the exchange between zh’Tisav and Gnaxac, lips pushed out in thought.
Gnaxac: Worried about f-f-fitting in there? What are you, seven t-t-t-two?
zh’Tisav:Response
Finch: Oh rub it in, why don’t you!
Gnaxac smirked.
Gnaxac: I t-t-think this is a job for someone of my s-s-stature.
zh’Tisav: Response
Finch: I must say, and I’m sure Lieutenant Gnaxac would agree, being smaller in stature has its pros. There’s nothing daunting to me about a tight squeeze. Can almost always guarantee I can get in and out of a place!
And she had in fact been in many a tight squeeze before. Even as far back as the USS Bonestell, her first posting, where the cantankerous Chief Engineering officer of that time repeatedly taunted and picked on Finch, asking her to undertake duties outside of her contracted areas. One of those duties often involved climbing inside derelict and highly dangerous jefferies tubes or turbo-lifts, to fix obsolete connectors and relays that were no longer in use, a fact he ignored whenever she brought it up.
Her nose flared remembering it. It was a bloody hard first year of service, she'd have you know. But stubborn and as set in her ways as she was, she ploughed on and in the end found those menacing duties opportune; from enclosed and dingy crevices and their inessential repairs came her penchant for nooks, crannies and haunts - places she could recuperate with her comrades, over a game of something or other, tea hard in hand.
It was also that same cantankerous officer who had regularly ordered her to perform maintenance on the outer hull of the ship, despite it not being her actual speciality, something she hadn't clearly explained with Admiral Reynold’s and Commander Neathler up in the Admiral’s deftly decorated ready room.
Instead, she had casually reminisced without being specific, probably side-tracked in part by her unquenched thirst. What she had meant to say was that her speciality was Maintenance Engineering. Because she was versed in damage control and knew how to check, repair and service the subsystems of most Starfleet vessels. Probably all of them too, if you gave her half an hour to scrutinise a manual, lash it in frustration, and then enact her own coarse repairs. And as she stood there, singed circuit in hand, she quietely but amusedly scoffed at herself.
Although technically trained at the Mars Technical Services Academy, nothing could have prepared her for the sorts of people she would work with throughout her career. But she knew one for certain: it was her career. Nobody elses.
Not even the orders given by the cantankerous Chief Engineer to traipse the hull of the Bonestell had toppled her drive - because as she had recounted to the Admiral and Commander - she had developed from it an appreciation for spacewalking. A bittersweet memory, from a vessel she had grown very attached to during that time.
Gnaxac/zh’Tisav: Response
Finch: Give me one more minute and I’ll be over there with you. I thought I’d replicate twenty circuits to start with, nothing overzealous.
Gnaxac/zh’Tisav: Response
Finch: Are there any computer technicians available? Any here, now? ::she stood on the tips of her toes to examine Main Engineering better. The odd engineer and crewman was scattered about busied with work::
Gnaxac/zh’Tisav: Response
Finch: Oh go on, Ensign. Have a go at getting in there. I’ll hold one leg and Lieutenant Gnaxac can hold the other, and we’ll push you in, then pull you out. Go on. Go on. ::she winked, and then walked away from the replicator with a container full of new clean circuits::
Gnaxac/zh’Tisav: Response
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