Maintenance Matters

Posted on Sat Oct 25th, 2025 @ 1:42am by Commander Rhupert Tyree & Lieutenant Commander Richard Dalziel & Lieutenant Katya Davi
Edited on on Mon Oct 27th, 2025 @ 7:19pm

1,619 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: On the Trail
Location: Avan's Colony, Quatal Prime. Power plant
Timeline: After Avan's Colony Pt.2

Chief of Maintenance Bryan Casteel. of led the volunteers from the SS. Adelaide along through a pipe-lined, corridor, taking them to what he considered to be the heart of the colony.

The Power plant.

“The Cardassians used a Didinac twelve hundred hydrogen extractor, which did a fair, job converting Hydrogen from the atmosphere into energy,” Bryan said as he took a left turn. After ten meters they entered a core room and he gestured toward the holding tanks and their mechanics which formed the heart of the plant. The steps circled down and to the left, but there were occasional access catwalks for at different levels as they descended.

“Deuterium is the whole purpose of Processing Station Twenty Six, or Avon’s Colony,” Casteel continued to relate, “By product is water, which then gets filtered, giving us all the water we could ever possibly use, though that means a water shower anytime we want,” the colony’s chief of maintenance said with forced cheerfulness. “When the Maquis came in, they basically just got everything going again, cobbling everything together. Which was fine, but then they discovered the Restalt and found out it could make the process about seventy five percent more efficient. They put in the rail system and mine shaft. Were just making a go of extracting the ore when the Dominion hit.”

Reaching the floor of the plant, he looked around the space with some pride. Leaning a hip against a console, Bryan “Someone ran across the research and wanted to get this all up and running. Our…group had experience so in we came. Took until about a month ago to start refining the Restalt and trade for all of the gear necessary. Which wasn’t helped any by the Cardassians deciding they wanted a cut off the top.”

Casteel turned and brought up readouts on the overhead and said, “Everything normal except,” he tapped some red indicators in Cardassian script, “The filters are beyond their suggested service life, which,” he smiled wryly, “for Cardassian expendables, is saying something.”

“They put the Restalt refinery below the extraction plant and ran new lines,” Casteel stated. “The Restalt gets broken down and super-heated, fed through a carbon nanotube into a quantum sieve. The byproduct is used to filter the atmosphere, upping our efficiencies.”

Keying in a test mode, Bryan waited until the board blinked and showed the same readout as before.

Kat pulled out her tricorder and began to scan. She wanted to run an independent diagnosis in case something on the planet was interfering with the readouts--or if there was something malfunctioning in the diagnostic program. Both were possibilities if this thing had been cobbled together. The air in here was bad enough that she pulled out a scarf and tied it around her mouth and nose. Then she looked at the readings. "When did you last clean or replace the filters?"

Richard ran a careful (bionic) eye of the mechanism. "A very elegant system, considering it was cobbled together." He said. "If you could make more refined zeolites, that would increase efficiency." Looking around he asked "What do you do with the waste from refining the Restalt?"

"Not so cobbled together," Casteel said a bit defensively. "The plans were drawn up and a slug of it was built off world, then put together before being dissembled and transported in. We don't have industrial replicators that could do that kind of work. Nor a mining ship that could just land and build the whole thing from the drill pit and work floor up. They had the floor plans and detailed renderings. We had the use of an atmospheric tug for two days, working in Vac suits because there wasn't any point in repairing the dome infrastructure until it was all down."

Sighing, he rubbed idly at his shoulder, "Anyway. The tailings go into convenient lava tubes we may sweep them down to a live lava tube to be resolved back into the planet. Right now, I think the current tube is maybe half populated? I don't look too often except to make sure the tractor bots are shifting piles. Pulling up information on zeolites, Bryan said after a minute, "Uhhh. Not sure how we would refine zeolites without retooling our infrastructure."

"Back to the filters," Kat said, looking at the readings on her tricorder. "I think we can clean them and improve performance by 65%. They definitely need to be replaced, but this will do until you can order new ones."

"Tried flushing them twice," Bryan replied, rubbing at his temple. "But I don't have a good recipe for cleaning all the particulates out. They are gunking up worse so they need it again...but I feel like I'm spinning my wheels with that while whatever the underlying problem is out there laughing at me."

"Well..." Kat thought for a moment. "Steam might work, but it could also damage the filters. Have you tried sound saves? I have something that would do the job. At least enough to make a difference, as I said. Let me get it." She checked to be sure she had all of her tools. "Be right back."

It didn't take her long to get her sonic scrubbers and her speakers. "Got 'em. If you can carefully remove the filters and put them in these heavy metal containers, I'll see what I can do."

While Bryan removed the filters, Kat set up the cleaning area and selected her list of late 20th century classic rock songs because they did the best job when filtered through the scrubbers.

Bemused, Bryan did as he was bid and helped Kat set up the cleaning station. "A sonic scrubber. That's innovative miss," he said appreciatively. "Is the music actually required or just a..." the maintenance chief trailed off, trying to think of the right words.

"It's because I like music," Kat replied. "And I like to dance." She grinned at him. "Plus, it doesn't hurt to add more sound, right?" She put on a pair of earphones to protect her hearing and turned up the tunes to help with the sonics, then activated the scrubbers and began to move while she worked.

"We can test on this batch, then move on from there," Bryan said as he decided he'd watched the scrubber long enough. Turning to the Adelaide's engineer, he said Mr. Trevelyan, any inspiration strike?"

"Do you have any pumice rock?" Alec (Richard) asked. "We could create filters from it, the filters won't be as good as carbon filters, but they'll make a good backup, until you can obtain more carbon filters." He added.

Scratching his head, Bryan brought up the architectural rendering on the console monitor and filtered in the geological survey that had initially been done. "Looks like some veins of it," the maintenance chief said finally. "We don't keep it on hand, if that's what you're asking Mr. Trevelyan. What did you have in mind?"

"I'm planning an alternate filtration system that won't make you so dependent on the Cardassians." Alec(Richard) said. "For now, we'll clean the carbon filters you, have, but I'd like to return sometime with machine, once I have the required recourses."

Bryan peered at the engineer and said, "No offense Mr. Trevelyan, but we did that and we're still in the puddle we're in. And we did it again. You're idea of using the pumice is unique. Why don't we explore that. Ms. Diaz's thoughts should help us get more life out of what's left of those filters. But the pumice." The maintenance chief brought up a fact sheet on the qualities of pumice and mused. Computer says the problem would likely be that that while the stone is porous, you'd need something to help grab particulates as they move through..."

"I agree." Alec(Richard) said. "I was thinking of it as a replacement system, for when you are up and running again."

While they talked, Kat continued working at a steady pace. She was determined to get everything done and then go after the people in the car that broke down and the missing miners.

Kat looked up. "Replacing the filters and giving the system a good tune-up is faster and cheaper than pulling everything out and replacing it with one based on pumice--especially with all the adapting you'll need to do just to make it work." She stood. She'd done as much as she could to clean the filters. "Besides, the cost would be prohibitive."

Then she turned to Bryan. "Okay. Let's put these back and see how they do."

"There are remote filters throughout, but if you want to work these back in I'll chase those down. Take a couple of hours which might also give you time to monitor the systems? Maybe you'll see something I haven't..."

The maintenance chief's voice had an optimistic tone, but he didn't feel very optimistic. They were still trying band aids and not getting to the source of the problem.

"Yeah. Put these in, bring me something else to clean, and I'll see if I can do some diagnostics. I'm not an engineer, like Alec, though. I fix things. He likes to play with power."

"What type of power systems are you using here, fusion or ion reactors?" Alec (Richard) asked.

"When you and I are done here, I still want to see if I can fix that lug car and find the miners," Kat said. The longer they waited, the lower their chances of survival would be.

END

Bryan Casteel
Chief of Maintenance
Avan's Colony
(Written by Rhupert Tyree)

Alec Travelyan
Engineer
S.S. Adelaide

Katrina Diaz (Katya Davi)
Maintenance and Repair
SS Adelaide

 

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