Cross-training

Posted on 12 Jan 2016 @ 11:49am by Ensign Elisha Cherno & Ensign Quinn Mackie

2,831 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Rude Awakening
Location: Main Engineering
Timeline: MD 8 || 1000 hours

Elisha entered Main Engineering, chewing her lower lip and studying a PaDD. She had been assigned to cross train here today and she was extremely nervous. It had been a long time since her engineering extension courses and she wasn't sure she remembered everything- which is why she was currently studying her notes. She didn't want to make a fool of herself.

On the other side of Engineering, Quinn slowly descended a ladder. He'd been performing maintenance on the starboard power transfer conduit when he'd received a call from the on-board Academy Supervisor that he'd have to work with one of the other cadets today to fill some missing Engineering credits. The supervisor hadn't indicated who, but as the Black Hawk only carried six cadets, it was easy for him to at least determine some options. He'd narrowed it down to the Andorian sh'Ross, an attractive and daring pilot or the Denoboluan Noriik, Quinn's over-eager, trigger-happy roommate.

He hoped it wasn't Noriik.

When he got off the ladder, he turned towards the entrance and saw neither of them there. Some would call it destiny. Others would call it karma.

Quinn would call it another notch in his losing streak.

Still, he would be chipper. He approached Elisha and greeted, "Good afternoon."

Elisha jumped slightly, then blinked. "Hi," she said, smiling nervously. "I guess we get to work together again."

He smiled. "Indeed. So, Lieutenant Hillberg set this up, but he really didn't give me any details. Is there anything in particular I need to show you today, or do I get to surprise you?"

"I'm really not sure," she replied. "I've been putting off cross-training in Engineering until last. It's my worst subject, so I hoped to get in more study time for it. I don't want to blow up the ship, after all." It was an attempt at a joke, but the nervous look on her face made it feel like she was actually afraid of it.

Quinn smiled widely, hoping it would be enough to put her at ease. "Let's start with something simple then. How do you feel about Jeffries Tubes?"

"I like them," she said. "I mean, you know, they're kind of fun. It always feels like I'm exploring someplace new. That must sound really weird. Hey, what can I say? I'm a geek through and through."

"Good!" he replied, hiding his nervousness about being in a cramped space once more with her. "We're going to start with basic EPS relay troubleshooting and bypassing. We'll move on after that." With a nod and a wave of his hand, he led her to a nearby Jeffries Tube access to take her two decks up and three sections over.

Elisha had understood exactly none of that, but she smiled and followed him anyway. "So, um," she said as they crawled into the tubes, "what is it we're doing again? In English this time, perhaps?"

Quinn began to climb the ladder. "Just about every module and component on this ship requires some form of power. The EPS relays deliver that power from the main shunts from the power generator. Think of them as circuit breakers. Whenever one goes down, only a small section of a ship or an office will lose power. There's also nothing an engineer despises more than a blown relay. That's why basic troubleshooting is even taught to every enlisted man and woman. Everyone's help is needed to keep them in good repair."

"Oh, I see," said Elisha as she followed Quinn. And truthfully, she did. Sort of. "So, we're just checking them, then?" she asked.

"Pretty much." Having arrived now on Deck 13, Quinn stepped off the ladder and opened the hatch to the starboard tube. "This way," he instructed, taking the lead down the tube.

Elisha followed nervously. "Just, you know, as long as I don't have a chance to mess anything up," she said. "I mean, you'll tell me, right? If I get it wrong?"

"Of course!" Quinn replied. He wouldn't want to let a fellow cadet down, even if it was one that he continued to interact with awkwardly.

Just a few moments later, they'd arrived at their destination, a small compartment under the Primary Support System Compartments. "Here we go," Quinn said, standing in the small compartment. "We'll start over here." He pulled off a hatch to reveal three EPS relays. Two were glowing, and the one at the bottom appeared to be offline. "What do you see here?" he asked her.

"Well, these two are working," answered Elisha. "This one isn't. For some reason. Do we get to figure out why?" she asked, almost hopefully.

"We do," Quinn said, pulling out his tricorder. "The first step is to eliminate the risk of electric shock. There's enough power running through these two relays to fry every synapse from your finger to your elbow, and I don't think Doctor Kij would enjoy fitting you with a replacement arm."

Quinn pointed to a small control panel. "We start by rerouting power to the secondaries. Enter in the sequence Blue-75, Green-140, Yellow-10, Yellow-10."

Elisha grinned. No, Doctor Kij would most definitely not appreciate replacing an arm or two. She entered in the sequence exactly as instructed. The two working relays brightened ever so slightly and the indicator lights next to the third turned from red to yellow. "Is that it?" she asked. "Does that mean it's safe? Or is there something else that needs to be done?"

"That's just the first step. We need to look for the lever at the top of the access hatch. That will shift all systems running off these junctions to auxiliary power."

Elisha glanced at the top of the hatch and pointed to a lever. "This one here?" she asked, even though she knew it was the correct one. In fact, it was the only lever in evidence.

Quinn nodded. "You'll want to pull it in a nice, smooth and even motion." Quinn demonstrated the process using an invisible lever in his hand. "See?"

Elisha nodded and took hold of the lever. And of course, it wouldn't budge. "Is it supposed to be this difficult to pull?" she asked, putting some weight behind it. "Wait!" she added, stopping suddenly. "I'm going the wrong way, aren't I? No, no, that's right. It has to be. This end is open...."

He politely cleared his throat and pointed to a safety latch near the top of the lever. He gently, and nervously, placed his hand over hers to adjust her grip so she could squeeze the latch and release it.

"Oh!" said Elisha happily. Now she had no problem moving the latch. Once it snapped into its new position, she checked the indicator lights. They were now green. She grinned, happy with herself.

"Great!" Quinn congratulated, seeing the relays lose power. "Now, we know that the bottom relay was offline when we got here. So let's start with some basic troubleshooting. We're going to start with opening the assembly, which we do like this." He reached over and grabbed the blue-tinted metallic casing on the right side and lightly tapped it. A small access panel opened along with a small light so that they could see inside. "See anything unusual?" he asked.

Elisha studied everything carefully, trying to recall the diagrams from her PaDD. She chewed her lower lip and scrunched up her brow, but nothing was looking even remotely familiar. "Um..." she stalled. "I... I don't know what I'm looking at," she finally confessed.

Quinn nodded, completely understanding. "We need to first determine if the relay itself is overloaded or fried. By looking here," he pointed at a series of clear circuits. "If these were blackened, then we could say that this relay was fried. Instead, it looks like it's been tripped. So, we just need to reset the energy flow."

"Oh, that should be easy enough," she said. "I mean, it's basically just flipping a switch, right? Or do we have to work out why it was tripped?"

"The why is always helpful." Quinn opened his tricorder and depressed a button both on the tool and the relay to sync them together. "This will give us a readout of everything that was connected to the relay at the time it went offline. You can see here the overage on the output, which is just slightly more than the relay can handle, which is also why it didn't blow." Quinn showed her the readouts as he quickly read them. "Looks like someone plugged in a phase inducer to give it a quick charge upstairs. The computer should have rerouted power, but looks like it didn't move fast enough."

He shut off the tricorder. "So, it looks like we get to reset and move on."

"Awesome," said Elisha. "How do we reset it?"

"Easy," he said. "There's a black reset button here that you hold for three seconds to reset the relay." Quinn showed her the button just under the lid of the relay's open access port.

Elisha grinned and pressed the button. It was harder to press than she'd thought and keeping it pressed in was harder than she'd thought, but soon, all the lights were flashing and there was a faint beeping sound. "That looks like a reset to me," she said, releasing the button. "Now what?"

Quinn closed the access panel. "Pull the lever back and we'll see if we're good."

Elisha did as instructed, but actually had no idea how to tell if everything had worked the way it was supposed to. "Is that right?" she asked. "Did it work?"

"We'll use the same sequence as before," Quinn said, pressing the four commands. A heartbeat later, the three relays surged back to life, filling the cramped space with the sound of pulsing energy. "Congratulations," he said with a smile. "You just repaired an EPS relay."

Elisha gave him a wide grin. "I can't believe I actually did it!" she said. "No sparks or anything! And nobody's burned or otherwise maimed!"

Quinn chuckled. "Doctor Kij certainly would be proud. And I'm happy to report you performed well today," he said with a tone saturated with mock authority. It was really just in jest, not intending to be offensive. At least, he hoped he wasn't.

Elisha didn't take offense in the least. In fact, she gave him another grin- or maybe it was the same one from before. "Thanks," she said. "I wish the teachers at the academy taught like you. I learned more from you in five minutes that I did in three years of classes."

"That's why I prefer hands-on," Quinn replied. "Never did much care for books myself." Smiling, he added, "I'm glad I could help."

"Are there any more of them to check?" she asked. Now that she understood what they were doing, she was keen to keep going.

"There's another junction a few meters from here," Quinn replied. "Another relay cluster that was reported having some difficulty. Want to check it out?"

"Definitely," said Elisha eagerly. "Which way?"

Quinn dutifully lead her to the junction in question, though this one was in where a horizontal Jefferies Tube met a vertical ladder. There was barely enough room for the two of them to stand, much less place the hatch cover that Quinn removed from the wall. This time, there were five relays. Four were active, but the top one was not. "Want to try this one without help first?"

Elisha nodded. "The sequence is Blue-75, Green-140, Yellow-10, Yellow-10, right?" she asked just to be sure.

The engineering cadet nodded in reply.

"Okay," said Elisha with a deep breath. She put in the sequence and pulled the lever at the top of the hatch. Once all the lights turned to green, she opened the relay in question. "Okay, so, this means it's fried, right?" she asked, pointing to the clear circuits, most of which were blackened.

"What?" Quinn asked, taking a step closer to peer inside the relay she was working with. He hadn't thought this relay would have been fried, considering what he'd heard was hooked up to it. "It's definitely fried. Hmm..." Quinn looked around for an equipment locker which he hoped would contain a spare relay. He didn't see one. "Just... just a minute..." he said, picking a tube. "Stay here. I'll be right back."

"All right," said Elisha, settling herself onto the floor to wait. She was determined to not touch a thing; she didn't want to mess anything up, so no matter what happened, she was going to sit right here and not touch anything until Quinn got back.

It had taken Quinn a few minutes to locate an equipment locker and a spare relay. The first locker he'd actually found was oddly bare. He took a moment to report it to the quartermaster, as well as the locker from which he'd removed the new relay from. Finally, he emerged from a tube to find Elisha on the floor. "Here we go. I wasn't gone that long, was I?"

Elisha, who had started counting rivets in the walls, shook her head. "Not really," she said. "I just didn't want to mess anything up, so I sat out of arm's reach."

Quinn chuckled. "Well, this part's pretty easy too." He held out a hand to help her up, but not before he set the new relay on the floor.

Though she was perfectly able to get off the floor herself, she accepted the hand up. She never turned down help when it was freely offered. "We get to replace it?" she asked.

"Yep. Grab that end there." Quinn indicated towards the blue casing as he closed that cover. "Usually this takes two hands, but if you hold that end, I'll show you how to twist the release. There's a trick to it."

Eagerly, Elisha took hold where he indicated. "Okay," she said once she had a firm grip.

"You have to give it a little more than a quarter turn," Quinn said, rotating the relay slowly, "until you feel a click or a little give." He stopped, feeling the release. "See?"

Elisha nodded, having felt the slight change. "Now what?" she asked.

"Lift your side first," Quinn instructed. "It'll pop right out, but my end will have to slide out."

Elisha lifted and sure enough, her end of the relay popped right out. She nearly fell over backwards, but managed to keep herself upright and maintain her hold on the relay. "I didn't expect it to be that easy," she explained sheepishly.

Quinn merely smiled as he lifted his end out of the hatch. He kneeled down and set the relay on the ground and picked up the fresh one. "This one, we just do the exact opposite. Care to give it a go?"

"B-b-by myself?" Elisha stammered, suddenly nervous.

"You can do it," Quinn said, bearing a confident smile. He gently extended the relay to her.

"Okay," said Elisha slowly. She took the relay and began inserting it into the void left by the old one, then quickly turned it around. "No, this way," she muttered. She carefully slid the end closer to Quinn into place and then gently pressed the other end. It snapped slightly and she blinked, surprised. "Did I do it?" she breathed. "I did. Did I?" she asked Quinn.

"There's only one way to find out," Quinn said, grabbing the lever and pushing it back into place. Gesturing to the control panel, he asked, "The power up sequence, please?"

"It- it's not going to blow up the ship if it's wrong, is it?" she asked nervously as she started inputting the sequence.

"Of course not," Quinn said, biting his lip to keep from saying It'll be a pretty fireworks show though. That comment would have been sarcastic, but he could tell it would have been very much uncalled for and would have ruined all she accomplished today.

Elisha hesitated a fraction of a second before hitting the last button. There was a slight buzzing sound and all the lights turned red. She blinked. "I did it," she said, disbelieving. "I really did it!"

"You're a natural," Quinn said with a smile, watching the relays spring to life and hearing the familiar hums of power being distributed through the junction again.

"I can't wait to tell dad," she said, grinning widely. "He'll be so proud!"

Quinn reached over and closed the hatch. "That's actually going to do it for today. I'll let Lieutenant Hillberg know how quickly you pulled this off." At that moment, he leaned over to pick up the discarded relay. He'd have to check that into the Engineering Workshop for recycling.

Elisha grinned, quite clearly very proud of herself. "I really did learn a lot from you," she said, following him back down the Jeffries Tubes. "Thanks. You're a good teacher."

He returned her smile. "Glad I could help."

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