The Officers

Chapter 2 - Darn readers

~~~ What the hell is going on?

Even as the engineer was keeping a very close eye on reactor two the bridge was dealing with the alarms. The captain looked at the communications officer, "Pass a message we're remaining at condition 3 until further notice. Inform them there is an engineering emergency which is the cause of the alarms."

She turned to the engineering officer, "Report."

He glanced at his screens before turning to her and replying, "The first reactor had a malfunction which required us to SCRAM it. To ensure it was shut down we did a manual shut down also. The CHENG, Chief Engineer, has brought reactor two online and is ensuring it's not going to have the same problem. He wants the N-space engines brought back online but slowly. If there is a similar problem, he wants to be able to shut down before anything happens. His recommendation is to start with 5% power to the engines and add 5% every five minutes until we have a problem or reach where we had been."

She nodded at all the right points, "You heard the man, bring us to 5% power and check every five minutes with him before bumping the power as recommended." Her eyes glanced at her console and watched the readings slowly climb to the 5% recommended. It was low speed, but they were moving again, "Comm inform the dry dock of the problems and send them an info dump of everything we have. That's across the board for every system. Every time the engines increase power send another dump." They were already streaming data, but it would ensure the space dock had the most current data.

"Yes Ma'am. Sending initial dump now." He sent the information and ensured the communication links were stable and functioning. They were sending diagnostic information, but this was everything including the minor faults. If there was a question about some information being important it was being sent. It was also being dumped to a drone in case something happened after the last data dump. He didn't expect it, but it was policy.

Before the next increase of power to the engines the engineering officer on the bridge checked with the CHENG. He looked at the captain before looking at navigation, "Slowly increase power to 10%. Do 1% every ten seconds." He turned back to his boards.

Down in engineering the first reactor was being torn apart to try and find the fault. The CHENG wanted to go and help but he needed to remain at his station. Ensuring reactor two wasn't having problems was his current job. As power to the ship and the engines was slowly being increased his eyes traveled over the indicators and as of now reactor two was looking stable. The pony reactor was working well and wasn't showing any indications of problems. It was an older known model and was considered one of the best emergency types on the market. The thing could take a bullet and shrug it off.

One of the tech reps working on the first reactor called to get his attention, "Sir, I think we've found the problem. It looks like one of the room temp superconductor coils had a manufacturing defect. We found a micro crack in the outer housing. Do you wish to examine it?"

He scowled at what appeared to be the problem. By now the super conductor rings were well established and almost never had a problem, "I do. Down in a minute." He looked at one of the senior enlisted, "Pull a new conductor ring from supplies and get it up here stat. Before it goes in we are going to ensure it isn't having a problem." He called for someone to take over before he left his post.

Once he made it to the first reactor he took the viewers from the tech rep and carefully examined the crack. It couldn't be seen by normal vision and required magnification. He was frowning since the casings were incredibly durable and to have a crack was almost shocking. The last time he'd seen one was at the end of the wars when production quality slipped. In that case they'd had to eject the reactor core to save the ship. From what he was seeing it had been a close call for this ship. They'd managed to catch it before needing to do that. If they'd had to it would add several months to the commissioning since a new core would have to be manufactured.