Planet Hell - Power Problems - Part I
Posted on Sun Jun 28th, 2026 @ 7:31pm by Captain Robert Burke & Lieutenant Marques Hunt & Lieutenant JG Maël "Gideon" Beauregard & Lieutenant JG Gianna De Luca & Ensign Julia Vonner & Ensign Clementine "Clemmie" Vidamour & Ensign Shanice Winters
2,384 words; about a 12 minute read
Mission:
Fabulae Explorationis
Location: USS Hecate
Timeline: MD01
::ON::
The Away Team had been gone for a few hours, now beyond the edge of even the Hecate's long-range sensors. Burke sat in his center chair, reading over a Security Department report. The Hecate had come out of warp in the gulf between the stars, cruising at a steady rate in the deep black.
Burke glanced at the Duty Helm Officer, an Ensign Vonner. He was unfamiliar with her, but had heard only praise from Lieutenant Hunt, and was fairly eager to see how she would cope while the Department Head was away with the survey mission. Toggling the internal com, he raised Gideon's comm channel.
'Lieutenant, we've exited warp. You may proceed with your maintenance work.'
[Yes, sir. We'll mind her real gentle, Cap'n.]
Julia was too focused on bolstering her recall of the working the sensor controls to register Captain Burke's quiet regard. It was the only thorn in her confidence in piloting Hecate, which felt wieldier than the expectations set by the opinions on her class within Julia's field. Type 2s were too few and new for their maneuverability enhancements to significantly influence that narrative, still, she hadn't expected to wonder whether the changes were highly effective, if criticisms of the Type 1 were overblown, or perhaps both.
'Ensign, how are you finding the Hecate?' Burke asked curiously preferring to know at least something about his Bridge crew. The space ahead of them looked clear, both to his eyes and to the sensor telemetry being piped through to their consoles so he had little concern about distracting his helm officer slightly.
"Me, sir?" Julia acknowledged, the initial silence after Burke's question hinting that he was in fact addressing her.
'Yes you, Ensign,' Burke replied with a smile playing around his lips.
She turned her chair partly to face him, revealing her cheeks to be flushed from embarrassment with her oversight. "Sorry. I'm still adjusting to the controls. The designers have tried to make them more tactile and able to support muscle memory, but the cues are nonetheless different from what I'm accustomed to."
'Do you think that they've succeeded in the attempt - or do you think there are revisions that can be recommended to them?' Burke asked curiously. The Excelsior had been designed with next-generation technology, but nothing was infallible as the transwarp experiment had shown.
Julia brandished a smile. "The flight controls are fine. It's the additional sensor functionality that's challenging. But I think that's more acclimation on my part than anything," she explained of Hecate levying her with a greater share of the defunct navigator's than Santorini had.
The turbolift opened as Shanice Winters entered onto the bridge. At the moment, there was nothing in the diplomatic sense for her to be involved with. So, working on an article for those back home in Federation space was what she found herself currently up to. Going down to the planet with the away team, probably would have been a great idea. But she found it best to remain on the ship and stay out of the way for now. Looking at the view screen, observing the stars, she was curious to where the Hecate had relocated. "Captain Burke, so what currently is the Hecate getting into, Sir?"
'Maintenance,' Burke replied with a smile. 'While we wait for the Away Team to get back, we'll complete a maintenance cycle and scan a gaseous anomaly that has yet to be catalogued. Not much for the diplomatic detachment to do for now, but I imagine a short rest after encountering the Klingons is welcome?'
"Not much regarding diplomacy," Winters acknowledged. "But it leaves time for me to write several articles regarding what's happening out here to send back home."
'That's good - I'm sure Starfleet are clamouring to see how we're doing out here,' Burke replied with a satisfied smile. 'We're the great gamble after all - a return to exploration after duking it out with the Klingons and Romulans for so long.' He leaned in her direction, 'let me know when the next one is done so I can read it.'
"I definitely will send you the initial article. Just might have you autograph it."
[Secondary Deflector Control]
As far as romantic areas of the Hecate were concerned, Secondary Deflector Control was not to be counted as one. The room itself was no more than twelve meters by twelve meters with two consoles side-by-side to the fore of the space. About eight feet behind the pair was another console--larger and longer--accessible by three metal grated steps. Tertiary access panels were scattered on the bulkheads throughout but were mostly inactive or displaying the current status of the ship.
Gideon stood with one hand braced against the edge of the port-side console. The light here was harder and much brighter than the bridge--not uncommon for areas requiring engineers to perform detailed work. On the starboard side of the room was a neat, enormous coil of exposed ODN fiber that glowed slightly in the bright lighting.
"Yes, sir," Gideon said, his Gulf Coast drawl just barely there. "We'll mind her real gentle, Cap'n."
He tapped the channel closed and turned to the seven crewmembers standing behind him, rolling his shoulders and flexing his fingers. It was good habit to stretch before any heavy work and replacing the power distribution network was no simple task.
"Alright," he said, his voice easy and steady. "We've got ourselves three and a half kilometers of brand-new ODN line. I reckon we can do this without breakin' anything, yeah?"
There was a ripple of quiet chuckles through the half-dozen engineers and techs in the compartment.
Ensign Clemmie Vidamour was already at the primary junction board, her uniform jacket off and neatly folded over a railing. Her sleeves were rolled back and her brown ringlets tied into an updoo. A stylus was tucked behind her right ear as she peered beyond the junction board.
"Phase One staging is complete," she said, her English accent heavy. "EPS taps isolated to segments fourteen through twenty-two. Secondary relays are carrying the load."
Gideon nodded, stepping in beside her. The display lit his face in shifting colours: amber for the primary EPS trunks, blue for the auxiliary feeds, and green for the ODN pathways which branched-out like little river deltas.
"Good," he said. "Let's keep her balanced. Last thing I want is life support gettin' the shakes 'cause we got too ambitious."
One of the younger techs--Petty Officer Hagstrom, if Gideon remembered right--adjusted his toolbelt. "Sir, how long are we taking each segment offline?
"Forty-five minutes," Gideon said. "Hour, if we get bogged down somewhere. We go deck by deck--non-critical first, then we ease our way toward anything that talks directly to the core."
Clemmie finally looked up, adding, "We have three rotations, Mister Hagstrom."
"That we do," Gideon said, measuring power output through the junction. "Alpha shift'll handle tear-out and prep. Beta runs installation and calibration. Gamma comes in behind 'em to test, verify, and fix whatever the first two missed."
She glanced sidelong at Gideon. "Which they will."
Gideon smiled faintly. "It's why we love 'em."
He pointed to the display while a few of the lesser experienced engineers craned their necks to see.
"Primary targets are the distribution nodes tied to the secondary deflector and long-range sensors. These lines?" He tapped one. "Older'n bad habits. They choke when we push power through 'em."
An engineer whom Gideon didn't know raised a hand. "What about shield harmonics? We'll lose fine control during the switch-out."
"Yeah, a little," Gideon admitted. "We're routing through auxiliary processors while we work. Lieutenant Jones has got a good system rigged where we shouldn't feel anything more than a two-point lag--which is nothin' that'll get us in trouble sittin' still."
There was a slight uncomfortable silence among everybody at the thought that Hecate might be a sitting duck.
"Let's aim to keep it that way."
Tools came up and panels hissed open as they began their work.
Gideon stepped back, giving them space, eyes moving from workspace to workspace. He sighed and considered how much easier this would have been to perform at a starbase. Unfortunately, they had been forced to press on but as the Captain had said: No time like the present.
Three days of this. Three days of peeling her back and replacing her piece by piece.
"Beauregard to Jones. We're starting with segment fourteen-kappa."
'Jones is currently indisposed,' came a gruff voice. 'We'll power down segment fourteen-kappa, reroute the systems through the beta back-up for now.' Sardanto Eloth, the Assistant Chief sighed, the Trill itchy with the new arrangements Starfleet had brought into force over the last few years. The bluff sixty-year-old had been used to doing this kind of maintenance for years, and like many engineers, struggled with a change to his routine built over decades. 'Just ... don't break anything, okay?'
Gideon snorted softly and leaned one shoulder against the junction console, holding an isolinear chip up to the light.
"Well now, Mister Eloth, that's a mighty unfair thing to ask of an engineer."
He reached over and popped the isolinear chip into a different slot, effectively rerouting the power through a nearby junction.
"If nothin' ever breaks, how're we supposed to prove we fixed it?"
Turning to the nearby group of technicians and engineers, Gideon winked.
He rested his palm against the bulkhead and watched as the work began in earnest.
"Nice and easy, now."
MD02 - 17 hours later
[Deck 5]
By the middle of the second day, the work had found a satisfying, if tiring, rhythm. The urgency to complete it was still there, but it no longer felt rushed, and was instead moving with the steadiness Gideon had hoped. The Hecate was being opened a little at a time, her skin peeled back inside of forgotten access ways and maintenance corridors only engineers and ops technicians would ever see.
Panels were stacked against bulkheads and bundles of retired ODN fiber were haphazardly stacked in coils, resembling the shed skins of anacondas. New conduits were set into place, their white-and-blue colouring more vivid than the plain white of the old.
Gideon had not slept more than three hours since the upgrades began. He sat crouched in a crawlspace on Deck Five, one shoulder pressing firmly against the curving bulkhead while a diagnostic scanner rested precariously on one knee. The compartment itself was barely large enough two people to work comfortably, which meant four individuals were squished together like sardines and forced to develop a work system on the fly.
This section of Deck Five was warmer than most of the ship, owing to its proximity to the primary tactical systems. Even within the maintenance crawlspace behind Main Phaser Fire Control, the bulkheads held some very faint residual heat. It wasn't enough to discomfort anyone--especially not here. Though, anyone working in this area might take notice.
A few meters ahead of him, Petty Officer 2nd Class Clayton Lasker was wrestling with an access panel that seemed stubbornly determined to remain exactly where had been installed.
"Sir," Lasker announced after several increasingly creative attempts to remove it, "I think this panel might be sentient."
Gideon kept his eyes on the diagnostics screen, scrolling through the fluctuating power levels.
"Well," he replied, unconcerned, "if it starts askin' for voting rights, then let us know."
The engineer beside him chuckled as she snaked another line of ODN fibre over her prone body to the operations technician working just beyond her head.
Lasker tugged harder, grunting with exertion. Suddenly, the panel surrendered and the Petty Officer found himself nearly slamming his face into the opposite wall from his own momentum.
"You alright over there?" Gideon said, finally looking up.
"Yes, sir. I think so."
The other team members were grinning and snickering as they continued their own work.
Moments like that had become increasingly valuable as the upgrade progressed. Fatigue had worn away a good deal of the formality found between officers and non-coms. Even the sometimes tepid relationship between Juno's engineering team and Gideon's operations people were beginning to find signs of warmth. Some career-officers might frown at seeing that kind of amiability between the ranks, but Gideon knew just how important it was to finish the job. And, if they could complete it with some laughter--and not fists--then so be it.
The diagnostic display resting against Gideon's knee showed another successful transition. Segment after segment of aging ODN architecture had been removed and replaced. The improvements were already measurable. Sensor response times had improved and power losses were already showing a marked decrease across all systems. Several longstanding bottlenecks had also seemingly disappeared.
Gideon's combadge chirped.
[Deck Five team, this is Main Engineering.]
It was Sardanto. The older Trill sounded as if somebody had pissed him off by altering the maintenance schedules.
"Go ahead."
[We're ready for the next transfer whenever you are.]
Gideon glanced toward the engineer working beside the exposed junction.
"Y'all good over there?"
The young woman nodded.
"Ready."
"Copy that," Gideon replied, carefully shifting himself so he was now on his knees instead of crouched. "Proceed."
A few seconds later, the compartment lights dimmed faintly as power rerouted through auxiliary pathways. The average crewmember who wasn't an engineer or a technician wouldn't have batted any eye. Anyone with a technical background would notice.
Gideon found himself holding his breath despite not meaning to do so. He picked up the diagnostic display and studied the data shooting its way across the power distribution graph.
"Now that is gorgeous."
[To be Continued ...]
::OFF::
Captain Robert Burke
Commanding Officer
USS Hecate
Lieutenant Marques Hunt
Chief Flight Control & Second Officer
USS Hecate
Lieutenant (JG) Maël "Gideon" Beauregard
Chief Operations Officer
USS Hecate
Ensign Julia Vonner
Flight Control Officer
USS Hecate
Ensign Shanice Winters
Chief Diplomatic Officer
USS Hecate
[PNPC Lt Marques Hunt]
Ensign Clementine "Clemmie" Vidamour
Assistant Chief Operations Officer
USS Hecate
[PNPC Lt JG Maël "Gideon" Beauregard]
Lieutenant Sardanto Eloth
Assistant Chief Engineering Officer
USS Hecate
[NPC Captain Robert Burke]
RSS Feed