From: Shawn _ (alamo_nate_at_yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Jul 18 2007 - 12:14:52 PDT
=Remodeling=
(cont'd from "Poopy Pants")
LOCATION: GATEWAY Station, Engineering Module
SCENE: Main Engineering
STARDATE: 2.70718.1214
Jake Crichton sat back, and rubbed his eyes. His neck and shoulders were sore from being hunched over terminals or wedged between bulkheads all morning. He’d been working on repairing a power-drain in the waste reclamation system- a crappy job in every sense of the word.
Worse yet, he wasn’t done. The nature of the power drain had worried Lt. Salor, so the Vulcan CEO had ordered a complete diagnostic of the station’s waste-processing facilities, which would probably take them the remainder of the day. Crichton couldn’t help but see it as an attempt on Salor’s part to keep Crichton out of his hair for the rest of the day. The Vulcan had been even colder than usual to Crichton since their somewhat tense exchange that morning.
So when Ensign Gonzalez, the other aCEO who usually worked the night shift, but for some reason had been on duty all morning as well (Crichton decided it was probably because Salor was going to make *him* work the night shift this evening) came in with a top-priority request from some high-ranking Federation official, Crichton jumped at the opportunity to take a break from fixing the plumbing.
“It won’t take a whole team,” Gonzalez said.
“That’s okay, I can handle it on my own,” Crichton said, hearing a few moans of protest from his team. “Sorry guys, but leadership has to have *some* perks.”
--------------------------------
SCENE: Bonviva-McInnis Quarters
Ambassador Xana Bonviva was in the midst of preparing herself for another string of meetings with confused dignitaries, terrified civilian leaders, and greedy businessmen (the closing of the wormhole had seemed to multiply all three of those groups exponentially, and Xana’s calendar was almost perpetually full of sit-downs with one of the three) when her door chirruped.
She moved through the living room and to the door. Standing on the other side was a young man, dressed in the uniform of a Starfleet cadet, and holding a PADD. He looked up from the PADD as she opened the door.
“You requested an Engineering consult?” he asked.
“I did,” she said. “I’m surprised you made it here so quickly. I honestly wasn’t expecting you for another week.”
“You lucked out,” the cadet smiled. “It was either I do this, or… well, never mind what else.”
“Well, come on in,” Xana said, stepping aside and allowing the cadet into the room. “I’m Ambassador Xana Bonviva.”
“I know,” the cadet said. “Jake Crichton.”
“A pleasure, cadet Crichton,” Xana smiled at him, offering her hand to shake. He took it, tilting his head as he looked at her, as though he recognized her from somewhere.
“I know you,” he said. “You were making that televised address, the day I got here.”
“You saw that?”
“Not really,” Crichton shrugged. “It was too loud for me to hear what you were saying, and to be honest I was too confused to really pay attention to what was on TV.”
“That’s understandable,” Xana nodded.
“If it helps, I’m sure you were very inspiring,” Crichton offered.
“I appreciate your vote of confidence, cadet.”
“So,” Crichton said, looking around. “What’s the problem?”
“Oh, no problem,” Xana said. “Not really. My… family has suddenly, rather unexpectedly, gotten bigger, and I’m going to need a larger living space.”
“Can’t you just request larger quarters?” Crichton asked.
“I’m already in some of the best quarters on the station,” Xana grinned. “Why would I want to leave?”
“Well, I’m afraid it isn’t quite that simple, Ambassador,” Crichton said. “I mean, you’d need the agreement of whoever’s in quarters next to yours…”
“No one,” Xana smiled. “They’re empty.”
“…but then you’d need approval from both Engineering and station security…”
“Done.”
Crichton blinked. “You can just do that?”
“Why not?” Xana asked. “Leadership has to have *some* perks, doesn’t it?”
Crichton smiled. “Good point.”
“How long will it take?”
“Well, seeing as how all the paperwork seems to already be in order,” Crichton said, making a few notes on the PADD before setting it aside. “I could be done before 1700 hours. Just need a low-yield, precision thermite detonator, figure out where to set the charges...”
“I’m sorry,” Xana interrupted suddenly. “You’re not planning to… blow up my quarters, are you?”
“No, so far you’ve been a pretty gracious host,” Crichton said. “Low-yield thermite will, basically, disintigrate the bulkhead, opening a passage through into the quarters beside yours. I’ll have to do a scan, make sure no major systems or power-conduits are running through the wall, but it should be alright. It’s going to give you quite a bit more space… are you sure the Captain is okay with this?”
“Let me worry about Captain Kane,” Xana smirked.
"Okay, you worry about the Captain," Crichton agreed amiably. "What
should I be worrying about after we open up the quarters?"
"Hold on I'll go get that," Xana said. Indicating to the breakfast
bar that separated the kitchen from the living room she said as she
began to walk out, "Help yourself to a cookie."
Pivoting she turned back and said. "From the jar on the right. The
jar on the left has the dog and cat biscuits. Don't think you want
those."
Jake nodded as Xana pivoted and dove off into another room. Grabbing
a chocolate chip cookie from the jar, he munched on that. "Thank
you," he called out.
[[No problem,]] he heard her call back. More muttering to herself
than to him (but still loud enough for him to hear) the Ambassador,
[[By the Gods Gene what did you do with the plans?]]
Sticking her head out of the room she said, "My husband made up plans
for how to use the space and I can't seem to find them. Make yourself
comfortable. Have another cookie."
"Uh, ok," Jake replied as Xana ducked back into the office. Shrugging
his shoulder he wandered around the space. The Ambassador was right
–
leadership did have perks. She and the CNS had some pretty spiffy
digs, he thought to himself. He noticed, with interest, that along
the shelves of the wall that interspersed with pictures of (presumed)
family and friends were replicas of stations and ships. Well the
stations were easy to figure out – the GATEWAY – 1 and 2. The
ships
had their names inscribed on them: the USS AVALON, the USS SUTTNER,
and the EIDOLON.
Picking up the EIDOLON replica Jake studied it. It had been a beauty
of a ship but it had been destroyed in a massive battle with the Orion
Syndicate. Even though he had been in the Academy when that happened,
even word of the destruction of the EIDOLON had trickled down to the
cadets.
Jake looked at the pictures on the shelves and back to the EIDOLON
replica in his hands. McInnis. A Gene McInnis had been the
Commanding Officer of the EIDOLON. And there was a Gene McInnis now
on the GATEWAY STATION – 2 who was the CNS.
It didn't take a rocket scientist (which really all Engineers were) to
figure this out.
Whistling softly, Jake put down the replica of the EIDOLON and picked
up the last ship. Frowning at it he studied it from all angles and
realized two things were wrong. One, it had no name on the ship.
Two, he had *never* seen this class of ship before. He had thought
that all Intel or Secret ships had to be based on some previous class
of ship, but maybe…
"Found the plans," Xana called out as she walked back out. If she
noticed that he was holding a nameless ship in his hands, she said
nothing but held out a PADD. "This is what we were thinking of. But
neither one of us are engineers for a reason so please make changes if
you know we're going to destabilize the station with our ideas," she
grinned.
Shelving the mysterious ship, Jake took the new PADD. "Didn't realize
you were going for a new bathroom too," he murmured, as he looked over
the plans that McInnis put together. "Well I think we might need to
move that, just to make it easier for the piping." Thinking of the
issues with the waste-processing facilities he said, "Yeah, I'm
thinking moving the bathroom over to this other side," he said
pointing to an area on the schematics, "will make things easier."
"No problem," Xana replied.
"And the other two rooms? What are their purposes?" Jake asked,
trying to figure out the technical, as well as structural, needs of
those.
"Well one has to be a bedroom and it will need 2 beds," Xana said,
"with the necessary storage space for two people. The other room will
be…well I don't want to say "playroom" if only because I think the
young men in question would argue with me about that but that's the
point." Looking over at Jake she asked hopefully, "So it could be
done today?"
"I don't see why not," he said. "It's not that difficult. The
bathroom will be the biggest thing. After that it's easy. So where
is everyone else?"
"Gene took the boys and the dog to the holodeck and my in-laws took
our daughter to their temporary quarters. So all that's here is me
and the cat," Xana grinned.
“We should secure the cat,” Crichton said, looking around for it. “It’s not usually dangerous, but thermite has a unique smell that seems to attract most animals… and you *really* don’t want the cat rubbing up against the wall when the thermite goes off.”
“I can see why people don’t do this more often,” Xana said.
“So I guess I’ll get started,” Crichton said. “This will take awhile, so if you have somewhere else you need to be, we can reschedule…”
“No,” Xana said, “..go ahead and start. I do have somewhere to go, but Gene and the kids will be back soon.”
“Alright. It was nice to meet you, Ambassador. Thanks for the cookies.”
“Anytime, cadet,” Xana smiled, giving him a polite bow of her head.
Shawn
a.k.a.
Jacob Crichton, Cadet
Assistant Chief of Engineering
GATEWAY STATION, GS-2
And
Sarah Albertini-Bond serendipity77_at_gmail.com
Ambassador Xana Bonviva
Federation Ambassador
GATEWAY STATION - 2
---------------------------------
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