Making Bread
Bob Martens
"Try it again," Bob said as he pulled himself out from under a console. The engineer he was attempting to help at the moment tied together the power relays and watched as the console finally lit up, and stayed lit.
"Thank you sir," she said with relief. "I just needed the extra pair of hands for this job."
"No worries, it has been a long time since I was working like this. Hopefully I didn't make your job harder in the long run," patting her on the shoulder, Bob stood up and walked to the other side of the bridge to check on some diagnostics he was running on another of the dedicated connections to the main computer core.
"Looks like response time is back within parameters … whatever you did last time definitely fixed it."
"Thank you sir," she replied and went back to her duties. Bob smiled a little and then went back to his chair to take just one last sit in it. You would never know that the engineer had suffered a complete mental breakdown and almost ejected the warp core because she thought she had seen Borg climbing inside the tube.
So it was with most of the crew. Always a vice.
Standing up with only the hint of a grin on his face, he turned around and strode out of the bridge and headed to the corridor. Activity was everywhere on the ship, but here it was mainly quiet. It was nice to not be forced to take a turbolift to his quarters, an advantage for the size-deprived Defiant class vessels.
"Sir!" a young ensign sang out with a padd in his hand. "I have the report you've been asking for right here."
Bob took the PADD, gave it a cursory glance and nodded. "Thank you, anything else to report?"
"No sir, do you need me to do anything else?"
Bob thought. This ensign had been running around for him for the past twelve hours, gathering information about the readiness of the ship after Lt. Commander Davidson's ... disappearance.
"No. I think that will be it for a while. Get something to eat and some sleep and report to me in 12 hours."
The ensign turned, but then turned back and looked at Bob, who was reading over the report.
"Sir, do you mind if I ask a question?"
"Sure, what's on your mind?"
Hesitation gripped the young man. "What happened to Commander Davidson?"
Bob pondered the question for a moment, and then tried to carefully formulate his response. "The two of us were not going to see eye-to-eye on much of anything so he request an expedited transfer."
"Oh. Would you like a detailed recollection of the projects he had been personally working on?"
Bob smiled. "Why do I get the feeling that you were not the only one watching Commander Davidson?"
"I will get that for you first thing tomorrow. Sir."
With a nod, the ensign headed off. 'Maybe having a ship of misfits will do us some good. Paranoia has paid off so far.'
Turning back to the report at hand, Bob took count of the progress so far. He had only been onboard for two days, but already he felt like he had a decent grasp of where they were and where they were going.
'Outer hull should finally be completed today, with all structural work completed by the end of the week. Bio neural relays and gel packs were completed two days ago so we are full aware here … with defensive systems completed by the end of next week. Another week after that and we should be "sea worthy" and ready to launch,' Bob thought to himself. He put the padd down on his desk and ran his fingers through his hair.
The door chimed. "Come in," Bob said instinctively.
They opened with a hiss and there stood Colonel Chandler stood in the doorway. Bob let a grin come across his face.
"About time you get here, we have a lot to talk about."
The door closed as the outside world was shut out again.
Sincerely,
Bob Martens
http://bobmartens.net
@boblmartens