Lt. Commander Doz Finch - Big Yacht, Tiny Sounds
Doz Finch
((Captain's Yacht Docking Station, Deck 14, USS Gorkon))
Doz had roped Vylaa into helping her with the Azetbur’s engineering checks. They’d reviewed a porosity problem with a section of the hull, and had then followed Vylaa’s pet grahty, all elegance in its obsidian shade and flicked ears, into the yacht itself. Something was getting on its nerves beyond an access panel, and on creaking knees, the older engineer was readying to pull it off to find out exactly what it was.
Finch: Seemed impolite not to knock first. ::She laughed, wrinkles deepening.:: Right then! Gird your loins, Vylaa! I’ll pull it off.
zh’Tisav: What does my back… ::She shook her head. Clearly it was a human idiom that didn’t have an Andorian version.:: Okay, I’m ready.
Vylaa knelt low, and then…Doz pulled the thing off, face scrunched together expecting something dart out all buck-toothed and offended. But nothing did! So she opened an eyelid, and then her other one, and lowered the panel rather surprised.
zh’Tisav: That’s it?
Finch: That’s it.
She huffed.
zh’Tisav: But do you hear that?
Alorr: Mr-ow.
Doz looked at Alorr through bushy, tensed brows, nodding in agreement as well. It was an incessant whirring, a miniature flutter, a tiny susurration emanating from somewhere within it. The cogs of her old mind started turning, considering the mechanical explanations. A loose bracket or heat shield, perhaps, or worn bearings, except for the fact it was an equipment trunk and not a junction of conduits.
zh’Tisav: You hear it, right?
Alorr: Mrrrrr...
zh’Tisav: It’s like insect wings, really high pitched. Something’s off in there.
Finch: It is like insect wings, now that you mention it. But these things are sealed ever so tightly once they're shut, ::she tapped a seam,:: so it can’t be an actual insect in there, surely.
She peered into the crevice, white hair cushioning her skull from the various bits of equipment around it now, as she looked in and around the spaces between places.
zh’Tisav: Response
Finch: It's no good, love. We'll have to pull everything out onto the floor here and have a proper good look through it all.