JP by Elli and Ral
Following the events of TBR#018
1507 words

“Da be doo, tada tum tam tam.” Lieutenant Reeza Ral hummed to herself as she finished removing a wall panel to expose the circuitry behind it. It was an easy way to gain access to the back of a wall computer as well as a power coupling behind that.

Reeza was light and thin even for a Trill, so wiggling her way inside the wall to reach deeper in the intertwined machinery wasn’t that much of a challenge. With her torso inside the wall, feet dangling an inch off the ground, she started to playfully swing them back and forth as she began to pull parts and electronics from the various systems. Throwing them behind her onto the floor as she continued to hum.

Elli looked curiously at the free hanging legs. One of the pant cuffs was caught at the knee, so she was able to deduce at least that the owner of the leg was a Trill, from the build, likely female. She had a few Trill Women in the department, but none of them on this particular shift, scheduled to any maintenance task pertaining to that juncture. She was about to speak when parts from within began to shed onto the floor, jangling, or thudding and accentuating the tune the woman had begun humming. She would pause her song just as she released one, as though she were picking fruit from a tree, but instead it was EPS conduit wiring and computer relay linkages and juncture redistributor hub parts.

“Excuse me…” Elli couldn’t help but interrupt. She wanted to sound indignant but she never had the presence to really put any oomph behind that sort of thing. “Who are you and what is it you think you are doing?”

There was a loud bump followed by out a very loud “Ouch!!” before the Trill began to move backward. Coming out from the wall Reeza Ral winced, rubbing the back of her head she turned to look at Elli. She smiled widely, cheerfully, despite the pain and waved at her.

“Oh hi there!! It’s me, Reeza. You saved me and my friend from the Romulans, remember?!” She asked cheerfully. “Sorry for the mess, don’t tell the Chief Engineer about it, I should be done soon. There’s something that’s consuming way too much power than normal here in engineering and I think it’s in there.” She said pointing to the wall where she had been in just moments ago.

Clearly the new girl hadn’t gotten properly introduced since picking her up from the prison she had narrowly escaped the misfortune of being reduced to space dust in. “I’m sorry. My fault. Everything was just really chaotic that particular day.” Elli opened her hands as if to clear a table. “Let’s start again? I’m Lt. Elli-Navine, Chief Engineer of the USS Potemkin.” She pointed to herself with her thumb and them in a generalized arc with her index finger. “This Potemkin. That you’re disassembling. Not a different Potemkin. Just to be clear. Because there’s more than a few out there in the multiverse. And this one is mine.”

With wide opened eyes, Reeza laughed nervously and cursed, before bringing a hand to her mouth to blush at the sudden foul language. “Oh freaking Ferengi stock market crash!” Still with her hand to her mouth, eyes staring right into Elli’s, her left leg began scooping up pieces of electronics and pulling them behind her with the soles of her shoes. Yes, for all intents and purposes, Reeza was trying to hide the things she pulled off from the wall behind her skinny legs.

“Erm, so yeah, damn. I am in trouble, aren’t I? Well, erm, hi there! I am Lt. Reeza Ral, apparently, for some unknown reason not even the Blessed Exchequer or the Celestial Auctioneers can explain, I am the new Chief Operations Officer of this same USS Potemkin.” Taking her hand from her mouth she used her thumb to point behind her to the wall panel. “That is because I was going over the ship’s power grid and I noticed a higher than normal power consumption from behind that panel. Sooo, you know, thought I’d poke around.” Reeza shrugged and smiled innocently. “Can I get at least a two minutes head start before you call security on me for taking apart your wall?!”

Elli sighed and shook her head at the mess. “Well, you’ve already disassembled it. You may as well put it back together when you’ve finished. I’ve heard the Captain plans to finalize a transfer order for you. Might as well start working now.”

Visibly relieved, Reeza giggled and wiped her forehead. “Phew, I really hate spending time in the brig. It’s sooo boring with nothing fun to do!” With a sigh and stretching her arms, she nodded to the wall. “So, wanna help out then Elli? I am sure something fried in there during the battle. Fairly certain there’s something fused back there drawing in more power than normal to compensate.”

The grazerite considered. She was between meetings and jobs and she did think that the best way to get to know anyone was really through some shared task. Normally she’d delegate a power flux juncture job to someone else, but it did seem like something that presented an opportunity. Suddenly Elli jolted back to the present, unsure for how long she had been deliberating, but fairly certain it was at least an uncomfortable few seconds of silence. “Sure, why not? I have a few minutes. What are we looking at? Fried coupling? Low level EPS back wash? Mag containment efficiency leak?”

Actually, Elli’s few seconds of deliberation have been rather clear on Reeza’s face as she has been fidgeting and playing with her thumbs waiting for said awkward silence to pass. Perking up she turned to pick what seemed to be two fused electronics parts and smiled. “From the smell and these little trinkets I found, my guess is fried coupling. Seems like someone threw a rave in there and forgot to call the fire brigade when it was done! Wanna jump in with me?!” The Trill excited approached the wall, looking like she was having a lot of fun digging into Elli’s engineering wall.

“Should I ask if you disabled the upstream flow before you dismantle the entire flow regulator fixture?” It seemed like a dumb question to ask an experienced officer, but Elli knew even the best officers sometimes forgot safety procedures. The latching fail-safe wouldn’t have allowed her to actually open a live plasma conduit anyway. That’s what fail-safes were for, after all.

Still smiling, Reeza’s left hand twitches a bit, a small visible burn mark on it as said hand carefully and not subtly at all moves behind Reeza’s back. “Why of course I disabled the upstorm thingy flow before dismantling the other flow thing. Cough Oh, I just remember I need to check to see if I got a really important message from my friends on that engineering console over there. Be right back in a second or two, or ten…” Reeza said and sidestepped slowly, her smile a bit nervous now, as she was way too anxious to get to the console and actually disable the upstream flow.

“I’ve got it.” Elli said as she keyed the regulator directly and diverted the flow. The fail safe locks signaled that the release option was now available.

“Oh, yay, thank you! By the way, you have a lovely Engineering bay! Does the ship usually get into life-threatening situations this often?” Reeza asks as she waits for Elli to do her thing before going back to the wall panel.

Curious what they would find, Elli moved back aside for Reeza to resume her deconstruction project. “I swear. It seems like every week we get into one scrape or another.”

“Have you ever, like, tried not to?! Though I am one to talk, it seems I get kidnapped at least every half-century for no reason at all.” Reeza sighed and jumped in the wall once more, pulling components and handing them back over to Elli. “Oh, here it is!! Found it, a power coupling fused and was discharging extra power into the wall back here. Sweet, so happy I didn’t dismantle your wall for nothing.”

Secretly Elli was relieved it wasn’t a bomb, or an alien plasma serpent, or a time distortion flux bubble or a sleeping line of hacked code or, or, or… It was just a simple explanation. “Fused power coupling. Let’s go pull a replacement out of the parts crib.” Elli motioned for Reeza to follow. “Then you can put that mess back together.”

Getting out of the wall, Reeza wiped her brow. “Sure!! Do you wanna help me put it back together so I can pretend to work while you do the heavy work? Oh… I said too much…” Reeza chuckled and followed Elli.

Elli shook her head, but smiled and clapped Reeza on the shoulder. “You’re on the crew now. That makes this your problem.”