Running On Fumes

Posted on Sat Jul 20th, 2024 @ 10:52pm by Captain Bethsabée Leroux & Lieutenant Andre Rhodes

Mission: Remnant
Location: Main Engineering
Timeline: Day 400
1301 words - 2.6 OF Standard Post Measure

Andre's routine surprisingly required few changes since his promotion to Chief Engineer. He'd always made a habit of doing regular rounds among the engineering teams, checking in and making sure he knew exactly what was going on with the inner workings of the ship. It just turned out now that he had to occasionally recite that information to the senior officers on the ship. But this morning started out just that way, making his rounds as night shift rotated out and day shift rotated in.

However, as he made his way to the fuel monitoring control station, he noticed both of the Petty Officers who monitored the various status displays for both shifts staring at one monitor and quietly conversing in contemplation.

"Setytler. Renson. Everything alright?" Andre asked as he approached. It was Petty Officer Steytler who spoke up first.

"Sir, I don't know how we missed this but I think there's been a leak in the deuterium fuel lines. Not sure if it was the result of damage or something else, but it's been there for a while. Possibly somewhere not accessible either." She said with no small amount of concern in her voice.

"I'm afraid I have to concur, sir. The only other explanation is someone is somehow slowly syphoning off deuterium when we're not looking. And I think that leak has grown as well. I've already sent a damage control team to inspect every centimeter of line." Petty Officer Renson said, shaking his head in disbelief.

"And it's any wonder why we haven't had a fire yet. Okay, good call out." Andre replied, but both Petty Officers looked like he'd just missed the point. He hesitated, looking between them.

"This isn't about a potential fire hazard, is it?" Andre asked.

"Sir, the reason I think the leak has grown as of late is that our deuterium use has been slowly increasing over norms. Now while it's acceptable to see an error margin of..." Renson started but Andre held up a hand.

"How much do we have?" Andre asked.

"About 100 days. Plus or minus a week right now depending on the severity of the leak." Steytler said. Andre felt his blood go as cold as the missing deuterium before he snapped into action.

The damage control team soon had more help as the entire system from tank to warp core were being fully inspected. The sensors were also being run through diagnostics. For the moment, Andre only left it that there was a possible plasma fire hazard, which was true. But he wasn't about to start another fire with news of the fuel status.

The next step was calling the Captain down to report in the bad news. He waited for her outside the access hatch into Main Engineering.

Beth walked through the ship and looked around confused at why she had been summoned to engineering again after her morning rounds. She had spent the early part of the morning trying to keep her breakfast down whilst still trying to hide her pregnancy. It was not that she did not want to tell the crew it was just that she was not sure how they were going to react and she wanted to let Michael know.

“Hello, Lieutenant. You wanted to speak to me?” She asked as she noticed him walking towards her.

"Captain." Andre straightened as he spoke, not quite coming to attention but something like it. An old habit from his brief stint as a MACO.

"Captain, I'm going to cut straight to it. We've been leaking deuterium for some time, how that didn't start a fire, I don't know. I'll know more when we find the leak." Andre explained, "And to cut the story short - the leak and our standard usage combined has put us dangerously low on deuterium. Best estimate, we have 100 days before we're depleted."

Beth looked around the compartment and sighed rubbing her eyes. No one else had noticed the conversation so that left them a few moments to figure it out and she indicated the corner of engineering to have a more private conversation. “Well, don’t you go straight for the jugular Lieutenant?” Beth said.

"When it comes to this, can't afford to beat around the bush, Captain." Andre replied with a sigh, following the Captain over, "Once damage control is done, I can do a full inspection. There's a slim chance that maybe the readings are faulty, but at this point, we need to assume it's accurate. Deuterium has to be kept in conditions that mean we can't open the tanks and drop a stick in them."

Which was putting it mildly, since the starship fuel both had to be stored at extremely low temperatures using cryogenic storage tanks AND it was easy to ignite and start a plasma fire with. It made petroleum and hydrogen look absolutely inert in comparison.

“Neither of us believes in slim chances, Andre.” Beth said sadly. She did not believe that it was a fault reading and nor did he or he would have just found a way to get the fault reader fixed or something. He was the chief engineer for a reason now instead of Benjamin despite her wanting him to stay in that position, Jamesson’s mental health came first. “Who else knows right now?”

"Just the two that spotted it in fuel control. I asked them to keep it down low until we figure things out." Andre replied. "I know better than to start a panic when things like this come up."

Well, that was a relief that the cat was not out of the bag and there would be time to logically look a the situation and put things into place to give them enough time to find a solution. "So the first step is to fix the problem causing the leak?" She confirmed.

"Correct. We'll see what the problem is and fix it or we're just going to make it worse. Safety hazard too, that stuff'll burn like a plasma fire." Andre replied.

"Second? Manage what we have?" She asked leaning against the console to get a better view of the information he was bringing up.

"Also correct. It's basically powering everything one way or the other. We can ration it to a degree but it's used in just about everything."

"Third is to find a source?" Beth confirmed going through the plan she had in her head to line up. It was simple and how she hoped things were going to go but as with every basic plan things got added on.

Andre nodded again, "That we do. But it's going to be hard. That's not something we're remotely prepared to refine on ship. Even back home, that was logistically demanding, even for the Vulcans. It's not an easy thing to get."

"Well, we have gotten this far on luck alone sometimes so I will have to keep the hope that we can find it and that it's pure enough that it won't need as much refining." The woman hoped. What they needed was to find something pure but she would leave that to the people who knew better. They had heard nothing about anywhere nearby like a refinery or anything. "I will give you a couple of hours to sort out here and then we can sort out things with everyone else supporting. This is not just an Engineering issue but a whole ship situation."

"Agreed, Captain. We'll get this leak patched first. I'll run diagnostics on the sensors measuring our supplies too, just in case there's a slim chance they're misreporting." Andre replied, "If there's nothing else, I'll get to work."

"Nothing else." The woman confirmed giving him a quick nod before she made her won exit to leave him to his own space.