STF

Pre Sim - Meeting and greeting

Posted July 14, 2021, 7:36 p.m. by Ensign Caelian Weir (Engineering Officer) (Jason Wolfe)

Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Mazhari Allendor (Engineering Officer) in Pre Sim - Meeting and greeting

Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Mazhari Allendor (Engineering Officer) in Pre Sim - Meeting and greeting

Posted by Ensign Caelian Weir (Engineering Officer) in Pre Sim - Meeting and greeting
Posted by… suppressed (2) by the Post Ghost! 👻

[snip]

Mazi waved her hand as he rose. “No, please, sit. And it’s Mazi. Well, unless the Captain is around and it’s official, then LT works.” She settled into the vacant offered seat and watched him settle back down. I wanted to introduce myself since we’re on the same shift this rotation. I’ve seen the work you’ve done so far. Great job. A couple more of you and we may be able to kick half the lazy folks out of Engineering and run the ship ourselves.” She smiled and took a sip of her drink. At his comment about the view, she sighed. “I guess white noise for the eyes is appropriate. I never thought about it. We’re either at Warp, or we aren’t. I haven’t honestly paid attention either way in a long time except to make a mental note so when things go wrong, I know what I’m getting into.”

She glanced at the PaDD he had been looking at. “You settling in all right? Any issues with other engineers, or your shift or anything?” She wanted to be sure everyone on her shift was as close to ‘happy’ as she could make them because it make spending hours together a bit more bearable day in and day out.

Mazi
Engineer

Caelian smiled softly at the compliment. “Thank you, sir. That is, Ms. Mazi. The engineering team is a very capable lot of hard-working folks, and I do my best to keep up.”

“I guess it’s an occupational hazard, knowing whether we’re at warp or not.” He chuckled, nodding towards the viewport. “See, I tend to get rather—ah, ahem—ill when it comes to unobstructed heights. Space, for some reason, is the worst so I tend to avoid it whenever I can. Luckily for me, I can usually tell we’re at warp from the hum of the deck plates.”

He made a dismissive gesture and took another sip of his tea, considering her more pointed questions. “I think I’ve started to settle in well enough, despite my bunkmate’s best efforts. That’s a jest, ma’am. I can’t think of any major issues with the shift, no. And unless you can find a way to make the ODN conduits a little less bright in Jefferies Tube Thirty-Seven Alpha, I can’t complain about the work. Just a matter of getting used to the Ark Angel‘s layout and quirks, but I’ll get it.”

He smiled and leaned back in his chair. This wasn’t the first time he’d run into Mazhari, but at least this time he wasn’t embarassing himself. Or… was he? Ugh, I hope not, he grumbled silently. Especially since we’re going to be working together for a while.

“How do you like things aboard ship, ma’am?” Caelian watched her expression carefully over the lip of his cup as he took measured sip. “There any quirks I need to mind?”
—Caelian Weir, Engineer—

Mazi smiled. “Quirks… well…maybe just the bright lights in Jeffries Tube thirty seven Alpha,” she laughed lightly and relaxed. “Honestly, no I can’t think of anything. Though to be fair, I haven’t been here but a week or so longer than yourself. So haven’t gotten it all down, myself, yet.”

She liked that he had been engineering since he was young. “And as to bunkmates, sadly I don’t have the pull to help you there. But if you do have issues, let me know. I can certainly be persuasive with the Chief if I need to be.” She winked and laughed lightly as her antennae seemed to turn to pay more attention to him as if curious. “I’m the odd female so the next female to check on board that needs to share a room will be my bunk mate. Till then, I won’t lie. I am taking full advantage of the privacy.” She took a sip of her drink.

“So what kinds of things do you like to do when not being blinded while tube crawling? Tried any of the holo programs yet?” She was curious what various ship mates found entertaining and relaxing. Every now and then she discovered something incredible that she hadn’t considered before.

Mazi
Engineer

Caelian barked a nervous laugh, waved her offer away. “Mal? He’s harmless. Well, mostly. Harmless to me, anyhow. The ladies on the other hand…”

“If nothing else, he keeps me from being the Hermit of Engineering, working myself to death.” He chuckled again and took another sip of his tea. “He’s always been like that, Malcolm. We trained in the Academy together, even served aboard the Challenger together. This is the first time we’ve cohabitated—probably Mal’s way of keeping an eye on me—so it’s come with its own shares of growing pains. We’re not exactly like kind but we get along.”

Setting his cup down, Caleian leaned forward and cocked his head at the Andorian. “Engineering is pretty much my life, ma’am. When I’m not ‘crawling the tubes’ I’m running a few simulations or studying the latest engine models. Maybe one day I’ll try my hand at my own design. Mal’s been angling to get me to try one of his holonovels, but my time on the holodeck is mostly spent training . It sounds boring, I know. Maybe once I settle in, I’ll branch out. Try a few more hobbies.”

He made an inviting gesture, leaned back again. “What about you, ma’am?”
—Caelian Weir, Engineer—

“Well, first off, you don’t have to call me ma’am. It’s just Mazi. Or, perhaps, hey you if you prefer.” She smiled lightly and leaned back in her seat. “I’m glad you have a crew mate to pass time with. It’s important out here. And not working too hard is another thing. Don’t let engineering swallow you up.” She took another sip of her drink and sighed. She actually envied him his unlikely companion. “I don’t go for many holo novels, myself. I prefer a nice swim in the ocean. I’ve got the call of the birds without their distractive hovering, and a nice temp set in the water to be cold but not too cold. Warm but not too warm. If that makes sense.” She laughed lightly and scratched her head as the antennae shifted in her mirth.

“I would love to see some of the sims you run, sometime. I mean, if you ever want a second opinion or fresh eyes, I mean. I don’t mean I want to intrude if you are doing it for quiet time.” She wasn’t one to butt in on folks privacy. She knew she didn’t want anyone infringing on hers. But getting to know him more was kinda the point so she had to put the offer out there anyway.

Mazi
Eng

“I can barely stand to watch myself get knocked on my backside,” Caelian chuckled, knuckled his chin. “I’m not sure my pride can take someone else seeing it happen.”

He coughed away his embarrassment, tried to put on an encouraging smile. In the back of his mind he could hear Malcolm chiding him for hiding behind his work, about needing to reach out and connect with the crew. Mazhari was obviously trying to help him do that, much to her credit. Caelian had always understood the workings of things more than people. In its own way, engineering had been the safe and obvious career choice—personal reasons notwithstanding. A warp core could only react a given number of ways with a given number of variables; people were different, wildly unpredictable even in similar circumstances.

Perhaps, he admitted, he simply hadn’t discovered the right variables. Starfleet had always been about challenging the unknown, pushing the boundaries of mankind’s understanding of the universe. New technologies and new cultures pushed those frontier challenges daily, and yet—at least in Caelian’s experience—humans were fundamentally no more different than they were before they had discovered warp flight. The journey was about finding meaning and purpose within as much as the discovery without. That purpose had been one of the driving reasons that kept Caelian in Starfleet, always the need to understand the why of it all.

Could Mazhari, a fellow engineer, understand?

Caelian sighed inwardly, scooting forward in his chair. “The basic principle of my training simulation, however, is that all things are causal. In basic hand-to-hand training, we were taught how to defend ourselves, but we were never given to understand the why of its workings. After almost failing spectacularly, I had a bit of insight from watching some classmates tussle…”

Over the next hour, the young engineer went into detail about the workings of his simulation: a training regiment based on the understanding of combat based on an engineering perspective. Reaction, angles, force, and the interplay of the variables between them. It had been Caelian’s pet projects to understand the given strengths and weaknesses of a given so-called “style” in order to improve upon it, perhaps even unify it with others to create an all-around defense.

“While it might never pan out in the end,”he chuckled by way of conclusion, “it certainly does give one a thought-provoking workout.”
—Caelian Weir, Engineer—


Posts on USS Ark Angel

In topic

Posted since


© 1991-2024 STF. Terms of Service

Version 1.15.9