"A Long Boring Night" Part 1.
By : Lieutenant (JG) Kaitlyn Brennan.

Kait wasn't sure what to do now. Lt. Cmdr. Hargen had gone silent. Perhaps she was building up to say something important to her. Kait couldn't take it anymore, so she broke the silence, "Is there something in particular you'd like me to do?"

She seemed to focus back in on her current situation as she said,

"Well, if you can handle engineering for the next couple of hours or so, I'll let you be."

Perfect, Kait thought. She was going to have her freedom and independence as an engineer. Plus, her chief hadn't got mad at her for taking liberties with the job.

Hargen continued, "It seems like you have everything under control. Good job, by the way." Kait was just thinking that things couldn't get much better about her first meeting with her chief, when she began to realize that Hargen wasn't even paying attention to the world around her, much less what she was saying. With a sigh, Hargen looked back then said, "I'll be back as soon as I can; I just have a personal matter to attend to."

An unnamed personal matter... It could only mean that the Chief Engineer was a respecter of privacy; something that couldn't have been said the same of her last chief. Nevertheless, what was better was that she would have Engineering to herself for quite some time. Kait could only do the best job possible while she was gone.

"Yes, sir, I can handle it," Kait said with the utmost confidence in herself. She could do more than just handle it, surely.

"Good, I knew you could." She smiled. "And perhaps when I return, we can get together and talk a bit. I would like to get to know you better, and we should determine just how well we work together."

Of course there would be a get-to-know-you, but for some reason, she didn't dread its impending nature nearly as much as she normally did. Somehow she got the feeling that her chief had no intentions of passing judgment upon her. If anything, Kait got the notion that it was her chief who dreaded talking about personal matters.

"I shall be on my way, then," Hargen said. "Thank you, Kaitlyn."

Kait stared at her chief as she walked out of Engineering. It was a small thing but it made a big difference to Kait. She had been referred to by her first name. It was a kind of familiarity that was not presumptuous, but rather kind and affectionate. Did this mean that they were on a first name basis now? Normally that wasn’t acceptable but it didn’t matter much anyway because she couldn’t even remember what Hargen’s first name was.

Kait decided to wait until Hargen entered the turbolift before checking the computer for that information; not that she thought it would be useful to do so. Kait couldn’t help but notice that just before Commander Hargen entered the turbolift she took a sideways glance at the warp core. She could see the longing look in her eyes, however brief it may have been; it revealed to her that she would be working with someone who probably shared the same kind of love for all the things that made starships go.

Kait wondered if Hargen stood in Engineering at times, hypnotized by the rhythmic beating of the warp engines. Or if she ever came down here at other shifts just on an impulse. Or if she ever found a computer more enjoyable than a person. These were all rather strange thoughts. And distracting, at that. Kait wasn’t quite sure what sparked her fascination but she liked it. It took away from the monotony of everyday life. Perhaps she should take the initiative to get to know her chief better, after all. It was a sort of switching of the tables.

"Lt. Brennan!" a voice interrupted her thoughts.

Kait whirled around and upon seeing who it was, she wanted nothing more than to duck down behind a computer console. Indecision caused her to remain where she was. It was her sister, Kara. How did she get on here? Kait knew that being close to Earth meant being within range of her sister but she would never have imagined that she would have encountered Kara still.

Kait stood in shock as she realized that it wasn’t her sister at all. It was someone quite different. It was a young female officer, in a gold Starfleet uniform, even. Kara always wore flashy civilian clothes. However, this officer here had dark curly hair like her sister. Kait had been so sure that she saw her sister that it was really spooky. What was even more peculiar was that she almost regretted the fact that it hadn’t been her sister.

Kait walked up to this new officer and asked, "Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Maybe. I’m Ensign Koscearny, an engineering officer here."

She looked lost and unsure of what to say so Kait interrupted, "And I’m Lt. Brennan, Assistant Chief here. You can report in with me for now. I’m glad you could make it since were in dire need of extra hands."

The Ensign stood up straighter and waited for her to say more. Koscearny smiled at her with enthusiasm. "Are you ready to do some work, Ensign?" Kait asked.

"Yes, sir!" she said right away.

"Good. I need you to suit up and do a space walk for this." The Ensign's spirits seemed to drop immediately at this. Continuing, unaffected by this response, she continued, "You will be doing a level four diagnostic on the navigational deflector array. Please, pay special attention to the magnetic interlocks and be sure to switch the magnetic servo relays from manual override to auto-lock. Do you have any problems with this?"

"No, sir," she said rather dejectedly.

Kait was tempted to take the job for her but decided that it would be better to expose her officers to all aspects of engineering, which were often more than just what was desired. Such experiences, however, sometimes proved useful. Also, it was a good excuse just to be a pain.

"Where are the suits?" she asked.

It seemed like a rather silly question to ask since she should’ve already known, but she answered straightly anyway. "Right beside the hatch on deck 11."

With that, Koscearny exited engineering and left the place with its sole group of six engineers again. Kait hoped that doing this wasn’t a mistake. She wasn’t here to make enemies. Nor friends, for that matter, so there was no need to worry, she told herself. Instead of lingering on these thoughts, she concentrated on making a check list of all the things that needed to be done for running a level four ship-wide diagnostic. She included all the assignments she had already
given first, then added on extra things as she thought of them. After including everything she could think of at the time, she decided to do several small jobs first before tackling the warp core, which would require at least five people. Kait tapped a few buttons on a nearby computer console to initiate a level three diagnostic on the force field emitters throughout the ship. Five minutes later she began a scan of the structural integrity field, then the inertial dampers. Then the replicators, the impulse drives, artificial gravity system, and so on.

It was all diagnostics which she could do in a relatively short amount of time each, simply using the computer. She worked at it for a few hours. At least that’s what the ships chronometer said. In a way it seemed longer because of how uninteresting the work was, and yet it seemed shorter due to the monotony of it all, which gave no indication
of the amount of time passed. However, it did seem like she got a lot done, and she did get quite a few items on her checklist done.

After all the little tasks were done, she began to check up on everybody. She gathered all the information that the engineering staff had come up with, which involved carrying seven separate padds. While she went through them, she gave everyone else a break.

Kait set the padds down onto the center console. She held her own padd in the right hand and picked up each padd one at a time with her left hand, going through each one, and using her padd to go through the checklist she had made up. There was still a lot to be done. And from the looks of it, she would be working a double shift to get everything done. It was gamma shift now, and the full status report was due in the middle of the alpha shift. Kait was reminded of how much she hated deadlines now. Maybe she needed a break too, but Kait was determined to keep working until her nerves were so frayed that she had no other choice. That would be when she truly needed a break. And she hadn’t reached that point yet.

As she checked off certain items on her check list, she added some extra ones and gave priorities to some of them. The first thing she wanted to do when the crew came back was a complete diagnostic of the warp core. After this, then Kait uploaded all the information to the main computer core and ordered them by what she considered top priority systems to the less important systems. She left blanks for whatever tasks were not completed yet. Kait mused at how the person who wanted all this done so quickly, would have such boring reading material sooner than anyone would want.

"Computer, what time is it?"

With a trill, the computer responded, "The current time is 2100 hours."

Kait hated to do it, but she might have to interrupt Hargen. Engineering needed everyone they could get. There was simply too much work to do.

She sighed. Tapping her comm badge, Kait prompted, "Commander Hargen?"

"Yes? What is it?" Kait was happy to hear that the CEO's voice was not at all groggy. It was a good sign that she had not woken her up. "I’m really sorry to disturb you but were in desperate need of any help that we can get. Would you be willing to come down here?"

"Of course, I'll be right down," she responded, then promptly cut communications. Kait was worried about her chief. From her voice and the suddenness with which she cut communications, everything did not sound all right, but she could not give voice to her worries since her willingness to come back to work this late at night was a sign of complete stability.

The Engineering crew started to come back from their break. Some of them came back socializing and happy, others returned seeming more tired than they were before. Kait hated to tell them this. When everyone returned she made the announcement that "all engineering personnel will be required to work a double shift" The area was filled with talking at this, most of which were lamentations and complaints.

Instead of dispersing this discontent right away, she went back to where the padds were and erased the information on all of them. She carried the padds back to the unruly group.

"I have called the Chief Engineer to help us out," Kait said interrupting the noise. It was barely heard. Then she spoke more loudly, "The sooner we get this done, the sooner you guys can call it a day."

Engineering fell silent as everyone noticed the apparent annoyance in her voice. They should know the consequences of crossing her. "Now the first order of business is to survey the warp core." She paused.

"Ensign K’tel, you’ve already evaluated the plasma coils, thank you. Now I need you to take a look at the magnetic constrictors and the plasma coolant conduits . Ensign Delagi? You will be doing the evals for the dilithium crystals, which includes the dilithium crystal articulation frame, and then the trilithium waste containers. Please be thorough! And Ensign Adran. Umm, I need you to just check the anti-matter storage pods and matter-antimatter injectors ."

Kait paused for a few moments to look through her check list. "Lt. Porter, you will be responsible for running the diagnostics on the matter-antimatter reaction chamber, and antimatter converter assembly. The warp core ejection system and EPS system are your responsibility, Ensign Ladun."

As she named each assignment, she handed that person their padd and they responded by nodding and walking off to the appropriate place to complete their task at hand. Kait felt good giving out all these assignments. Not only did it bring Engineering back into order, but if everything went well, and these people didn’t run into problems, this status
report would be as good as done tomorrow. Things were getting underway well. Kait looked back at her check list. She frowned at the sight of so many other things that needed to be done. No matter how far she got, there was still a lot to be done. Besides the warp core, the other major things that needed to be done were evals on the computers systems, life support, holodecks, and transporters.

As Kait was reviewing the information she had on her padd, she realized that Ensign Koscearny had not returned.

"Computer, what is the location of Ensign Koscearny?"

"Deck 11," the computer responded immediately.

Something was wrong, she was sure. She had given Koscearny that assignment hours ago and she should’ve been done by now certainly it shouldn’t have taken nearly that long at all. Kait walked into a turbolift and requested, "Deck 11, navigational deflector."

The turbolift hummed in compliance as it drew her near to Koscearny’s location. Kait couldn’t help but feel guilty. She had seen the morose look on the Ensigns face after knowing that she would be doing a space walk. If anything happened to her--

The turbolift stopped and the doors opened. Kait rushed out and scanned the room. No sign of her, at first. Then Kait saw her. She was slumped down in a pile still wearing her uniform. When Kait got up close to the Ensign, Kait could see that Koscearny was convulsing. She was also pale as a ghost, her skin resembling more of a gray color.

"Brennan to Sickbay. Medical emergency. One to beam directly to Sickbay."