Meeting the new engineer

Posted on Fri Oct 23rd, 2009 @ 12:45am by Walter Jones & Jan Valentine

924 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Session One - Jailhouse Rock
Location: Engine room
Timeline: Back Post (During Warp)

Jones climbed down the ladder into the lower engineering hold to meet the new Engineer, he thought he remembered that his name was Jan, he was hoping that this guy wasn't going to be some kind of murderer. Landing hard on the deck he called out, "Hey anyone down here?"

"Uh yeah, just a second." Jan said, crawling out from underneath a console. He shook some dust and dirt off and looked over at someone he hadn't seen before. "Jan Valentine, and you are?" he asked.

"Walter Jones, captain of this moving junk pile." Jones extended his hand. "Good work on keeping the old girl together coming out of orbit there, I know that she is a.." he thought for a moment to put it delicately. "challenge, considering her age and that she was in mothballs for a few years but I think she is a pretty well put together ship."

"Yeah well....truth is you can't really go wrong with a Groumal. Tough old ships, served on one a few years ago. I didn't get a chance to look over all the specs, is this a Klingon or a Bajoran version?" Jan said, wiping his hands clean with a rag.

"Bajoran, 2342 model, this is her first trip in a long time, so I'm sure there is always going to be some bugs that need to be worked out of things." Jones gave the man a quick look up and down. "Well, I'm going to cut to the chase, I'm in need of an engineer, I can do it but I'd be spending all my time down here instead of running the rest of the ship. You've kept her in warp this long." He smiled at him as he walked over to one of the control panels to look at the diagnostics.

"She's held together pretty well for being in storage for so long. We're gonna have to be gentle on the warp core until I can fix it up. I might have a few parts in my storage box...I'd be happy to install them in the core soon." Jan said, looking at a diagnostic that was flashing red. " 'specially a new plasma flow regulator, the one in there is seizing up pretty bad."

"Yeah, I had to crawl down into the core before we left and beat it once or twice. Sounds good though, when we get to 611, we'll take some time to tear her apart." Jones smiled at Valentine, it was obvious he knew his stuff. "So Lee told me that you had some trouble back on Flausten? Some kind of deal gone bad or something or nother? I've had my fair share of them too."

"Deal went very wrong...I'll be steering clear of any Cardies for a while, I imagine they've got quite a grudge against me now." Jan said, shutting a console off.

"Cap'n, that incident earlier, when we threw the ship into warp suddenly, it was almost too much for the containment fields to handle. I'd recommend slowing down instead of dropping immediately out of warp, otherwise there won't be much left for scavengers to pick through."

"Yeah, hopefully when we we get to SB611 we can get some repairs in." Jones smiled at the man then reached into his pocket for a data pad. "Well, seeing that you have some troubles and I need an engineer, how would you like a job here on the Warden? Keep my old girl running?"

"As long as the pay is decent, I'd be happy to stick around here. Oh, and if you agree, I'll make upgrades and "improvements" along the way." Jan said, looking around the dirty engineering section.

"Standard 10% cut of the net profits as well as room and board and a say in all the jobs we take, I want to make sure that my crew is well taken care of and that you are happy here." Jones kicked something across the room that looked of little consequence and waited for Jan's reply. He seemed like a pretty sharp guy and was definitely good with an engine.

"Well then, you have yourself an engineer. Thank you for the job." Jan said, extending his hand.

"Sounds good we'll go on a shopping trip to see if we can scavenge some parts for her." Walter took the mans hand and shook it. "I've got a few more rounds to make quarters are on deck 2 as well as the kitchen and rec area, get her locked down and then make yourself at home. Later we'll go over see about some upgrades. Any questions for me?"

"Just one, what what do you like to be called? Sir, captain.." jan said.

Jones stopped for a minute, he never considered it, "Don't call me late for dinner?" he laughed and thought again, "Don't call me sir, sounds to much like the Feds, Boss, Cap, Hey You, Walter, a lot of them are calling me Captain, has a nice ring to it, Lee practically salutes me every time she walks into a room which is cute, I'm pretty lenient."

"Alright then, Walter, I'd love to stay and chat, but that diagnostic panel behind you says that a major power coupling is about to fail. I need to go bypass it before it gives up entirely, so if you'll excuse me..." Jan said, grabbing a rusty toolkit.

"Sounds good, let me know if you need any thing." Jones nodded to Jan and headed back up, out of the engine room, leaving Jan to his work.

 

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