Maintenance Matters Pt. 2
Posted on Sun Jan 18th, 2026 @ 5:52pm by Commander Rhupert Tyree & Lieutenant Commander Richard Dalziel
1,386 words; about a 7 minute read
Mission:
Avan's Colony
Location: Avan's Colony, Quatral Prime, Power Plant.
Timeline: Three hours after MM pt. 1
Casteel waved away the smell of superheated metals and plastic as he leaned back from a filtering junction. He'd spent the last few hours cleaning the colonies filtering system with the help of the Alec and Katrina from the Adelaide. While he worked, Bran had continued to puzzle through how to fix the main problem.
The trouble was they still didn’t know what that problem was. Weld had checked in, telling him that Amalien was in the dispensary now, getting purified oxygen treatments. Brian still had a feeling in his gut though. That hadn’t helped any of the others and people were getting sicker and sicker. He was coughing now more himself and his stomach had started giving him problems.
Trying to keep his mind off his own issues, Brian finished the last of the remote filters out toward the landing grid and began duck walking his way out of the long access space that ran back toward the main maintenance section. Things weren’t as cramped as they might be aboard a star ship, so he only had to go a fifty meters.
He DID have to stop two or three times to catch his breath and work through a dizzy spell. By the time he’d finished and creaked to his feet, he felt thirty years older than his twenty five years.
Maybe older.
Bryan replaced and secured the access panel, then walked back to the power plant section. The ambient temperature warmed as he neared what he considered the heart of the colony and he was glad for it after crawling in the much cooler areas of the colonies access sections.
Walking in he found the Adelaide’s engineer and waved as he slid onto a vacant stool near one of the work benches. “Hey ya Chief. How goes?
Alec (Richard) looked up from his work. "Hi, there's a minor variance in the reactor's magnetic containment field, but I can't find a cause for it." He replied. "I'm also detecting a build up of nitrogen in the system, but the computer isn't detecting anything.
Bryan coughed, rubbed at his eyes and walked over to look over Alec's shoulder. "Nitrogen? That's odd. That all gets filtered out when the plant breaks down the Hydrogen into base molecules then sieve it through. Any nitrogen remnants should filter out and if not, it should set off an alert if concentrations get too high..."
The colonies maintenance chief ordered a diagnostic into the computer and waited. "It's possible we have a bad sensor someplace, if your readings are right..."
"My right eye hasn't let me down before." Alec (Richard) said. "Its an optical implant. I lost my real one, and half my face, when a plasma conduit exploded. Luckily for me I was near some Fed medics, who fixed me up, and did a wonderful job."
Bryan frowned slightly and said, "Least the Feds did something right by you." Rapping his knuckles on the console, the maintenance chief continued, "Though I suppose it's unfair to remark about how they treated people by forcing them to give up their homes to the Cardassians when you consider what Eddington did to this place. Still and all, the Cardies got their own back when they teamed up with the Dominion. We're lucky they haven't decided to come back around again I suppose."
"Let's go and check those sensors." Alec (Richard) said grabbing his tool kit.
Coughing into his sleeve, Bryan closed up the access panel of the last broad-band sensor modules and made his way back to central Maintenance. All the sensors were functioning as they should. He was walking slower now, occasional stabbing pains in his stomach causing him to stop and crouch till the pain would subside.
His mind churned the problem and he went to his locker and dug around in the bottom, pulling out the home-made tricorder he'd cobbled together back in school. The penal planet he'd been born onto hadn't gone overboard in schooling of the children born there, pushing them into trades training. And that had suited Bryan, but it still rankled that once he'd turned eighteen, he'd been mustered off world, separated from his parents and left more or less on his own. He powered up the tricorder carefully and carried it back to the mainframe and had it run an independent evaluation of the information coming in, before the mainframe got a chance to analyze it.
"I don't believe it, if the sensors are functioning, why aren't they picking up the nitrogen?" Richard said aloud. "Perhaps the fault is in the program that process the sensor data."
Rubbing tiredly at his face, Bryan edged up onto a work counter and tried to make his mind work through it. "If it's not the sensors, it has to be the programming." He brought up the system diagnostics and shifted through the diagnostics. "Nothing flags up on a basic check. Sensor's are working so that takes through the majority of the next round. Could take a couple of days to fully dig through all of the computer. Running an independent check with this museum piece might tell us something at least..." Bryan hadn't messed with the tricorder since before he'd come to the colony. He plugged in a universal feed and powered up the Tricorder.
As soon as the two computers acknowledged one another, he ran a test on the tricorder and was told it needed upgrades to the operating system and file managers. He tried to ignore that, but the colonial computer system locked him out, insisting he run updates first to make sure no viruses were present in the newly detected computer.
Shrugging, he allowed it as he wiped at the sweat that was beading his brow and watched as his old tricorder received it's update.
"How long you been crewing aboard the Adelaide?," Bryan asked by way of conversation, then his tone went wistful. "Must be nice to see something of the galaxy."
"A few months, I've spent most of my working life, repairing space vessels." Alec (Richard) said.
"Still has to be nice. Freedom...," Bryan said, pausing to wipe at his brow and catch his breath. He adjusted the readings on his old tricorder and ran the checks. Then he compared them and shook his head. With the update, he was getting the same readouts as the station's computer. He reached down and pulled a crystal and checked again. "That crystal held the update," he said anger filling his voice. "Without the update, we're reading the increasing Nitrogen levels. With the update...nothing."
"Interesting, where did you get the update?" Alec (Richard) asked.
"These systems are all Cardassian," Bryan said, pulling the data crystal and eyeing it with suspicion. "Our backers acquired the updates we would need and this is that. The Maquis did mostly the same thing, only updated using stolen Carassian tech at the time. This is more modern but it's possible. I suppose the Maquis might have put in a virus of some sort..."
"Perhaps." Alec (Richard) said, thinking that it might be a Cardassian scheme, after all they are likely to have ulterior motive, that benefited them more than just some deuterium.
Bryan felt his head swim slightly and tried to shake it away. "The Cardassians are shaking us down so I don't know that it would be in their interests to sabotage us when they want their cut and can't work the planet yet themselves for a couple of decades."
Bryan coughed then and slid to one knee, trying to catch his breath.
Alec (Richard) helped Bryan to a chair. "You rest a moment, I'll look into things." He said examining the read outs.
Bryan wheezed. Then nodded. "Just need a moment...."
Then he slipped silently to the deck.
Alec (Richard) bent down to check on Bryan. The Chief Engineer tapped his comm. badge. =/\="Alec to Adelaide, medical emergency, Mr. Casteel has passed out."=/\=
Within seconds of voice analysis/confirmation, the computer aboard the Adelaide responded, "Confirmed. Stand by for transport."
END
A joint post by:
Bryan Casteel
Head of Maintenance
Avan's Colony
Written by Tyree
Alec Trevelyan (Richard Dalziel)
Chief Engineer
SS Adelaide
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