Engineering the Whistler

The Antares fleet is one of the United Terran Republic's finest fleets, aside from the Battle Hymn fleet. within this fleet, a small group of friends try to hold ties while serving their duty aboard separate fleets, while battle the adversities of war, and the troubles of running a fleet.
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Kai
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Engineering the Whistler

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It was a noisy place, the engineering mainspace aboard the Uranus-class frigate Whistler, but at least, being a new ship, it was pretty clean. Sure, there was dust here and there, and sure, grease got everywhere around certain parts that needed to be lubricated in order to move around, but, compared to the older ship classes, this one was a pristine example of what the important bits that make a ship tick are supposed to look like. All the while, bits and pieces of equipment could be seen doing various things, often making quite a bit of noise. Lights flashed, screens displayed, and mechanical devices moved around, providing a visual and audial cacophony not dissimilar from a large group of toddlers playing with pots and pans as well as their usual electronic toys.

Amidst it all, other forms moved. Burgundy or grey, these forms were humanoid, and somewhat wrinkled often with spots of grease, or other compounds, smeared about, these Monkey-like creatures were of course the Engineers. Mostly running around and checking stations manually, they moved with an almost acrobatic grace as they navigated the cramped spaces of the mainspace, or climbed into maintenance shafts, or made their way toward the exit to travel to another task. In the middle of it all, like a conductor, was a small, brown-haired girl, named Marissa Templeton. Marissa, however, was known to everyone else as Missy, and Missy, despite being in charge of engineering, was not content to sit around and let her subordinates do all the work.

Possibly dirtier than the rest, with her Burgundy jumpsuit peeled down to her waist, exposing the black counterpressure suit that fighting in space necessitated. Half of her face was obscured by the pair of goggles she wore, and the other half with soot, which also covered her hands and forearms, the sleeves of her counterpressure suit rolled back to keep it from getting dirty with whatever the Chief Petty Officer had been doing previously.

"Rivers! Hart! I need you two to head to the nose turrets and check the control cables. We've got reports that they're responding sluggishly to commands!" she called out, and two of the engineers nodded rather than responding over the din, grabbing tool kits and heading out. Missy smirked, glad to be seeing her subordinates doing what they needed to, as quickly as they needed to. However, that smirk was short lived, as she caught sight of a blinking read light from the corner of her vision, something going wrong, again.

It was beyond the engineer why the Captain chose to run everything at full power for so long, considering that the ship had checked out fine from the shipyards, and Missy herself had gone over every inch of the vessel with her best teams upon its delivery, but apparently, a simple simulation was not enough to appease their captain for training. rather, he seemed intent on making the ship explode, and was depending on Missy and her crew to make sure that his wishes did not come true.

Swiftly, the engineer made her way to the problem area, and found that one of the main valves had begun plugging up, and it needed to be bypassed or else they would lose efficiency in the main generator. "Dammit, it's running too hot and the lubricant is starting to char, that crap's getting stuck here now..." she muttered, manually closing the valve and then rushing to open the set of bypass valves that allowed the unit to function in case of a problem. Then, she cut off the section with the main valve by manually closing some other valves. So damn many valves. Missy thought, pulling a magnetic wrench from her tool belt and beginning removal of the pipe. Hot gasses vented out, and charred pieces of lubricant instantly dried into a black, chalky powder as the hit the 'cool' air in the Mainspace, giving the Templeton girl another dusting of soot, before she could dump the valve on the floor, and get to scraping it out.

"This is what I get for coming back buzzed, I guess..." she muttered to herself, disgruntled by the whole situation. "This is worse than combat, aside from the whole people dying part."
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