A Worthy Successor

Posted on Sat Apr 30th, 2011 @ 5:21am by Vice Admiral Quinn Androski

Mission: Episode 2.2 - "Resistance"
Location: Executive Officer's Office, USS Orlando
Timeline: Mission Day 01, 1130

ON [[Corridor, USS Orlando, MD-01, 1130 hours]]

With engineering effectively squared away, Zekk left to wander around a bit. He had gotten to know this ship very well and was glad that Admiral Androski had asked him to stay aboard as the chief engineer. He had yet, however, to really meet the XO, something that he was about to change.

He headed toward the XO's office, stopping outside the door and pressing the chime button.

[[Executive Officer's Office, USS Orlando]]

Tobias paused slightly in reviewing the information on his display and looked toward the door. Ordinarily, he would have remained on the bridge for a majority of the alpha shift, but things had been proceeding rather smoothly since their departure from Earth. So much so, in fact, that the admiral had been confident enough to allow Tobias the opportunity to attend to a few of the post-launch details that required his attention. It was also possible that the admiral wanted to take advantage of the fact that they were actually out amongst the stars again by supervising the first shift himself.

"Enter," he called, turning his attention to the display long enough to finish the last few lines as the door hissed open.

Zekk stepped through, looking around the office.

"Sir," Zekk said, nodding to his XO. "We haven't had a chance to talk really, and I wanted to bring you the latest engineering report."

"Thank you, lieutenant," Tobias replied, deactivating the desktop terminal and motioning for the younger man to take a seat, "I'm afraid these last few days have been rather hectic for us all. Now that we are under way, people will be able to start developing their own routines."

"Luckily, most of my engineering staff has been with the ship since they laid the first bulkhead," Zekk said. "And most of their routines involve tweaking with systems or chasing pretty young ensigns."

"It would sound like you and your team have been keeping yourselves pretty busy, then," Tobias observed with a small smile, "Then again, I can imagine you had your hands full with trying to get a brand new starship finished ahead of schedule."

"Its given a us a chance to really dig into her," Zekk smiled. "Thanks to several ideas from my staff we manage to put all that power to good use...so far we haven't blown ourselves up."

Tobias nodded to affirm the younger man's rather blunt assessment. "Being able to develop unique solutions to problems is quite a useful skill out here, especially when we can find ourselves quite some distance from the nearest starbase or repair facility," he said, "It is good to know that things seem to be well in hand from an engineering standpoint."

Zekk quirked an eyebrow at that comment. "Well lets not get too ahead of ourselves, I think that she'll hold together pretty well but we haven't had a chance to really test that theory."

"Judging by what I have seen and heard thus far, I have no doubt that this vessel will exceed our expectations," Tobias said with a wry smile, "I have a feeling she will prove to be a most worthy successor to her namesake."

"I've read about the other Orlando," Zekk nodded. "I always liked those Excelsior class ships...endless ways to upgrade them."

"After ninety years, the Orlando had certainly seen her share of refits and upgrades," Tobias agreed, thinking back to some of the difficulties they had encountered with the most previous refit of that vessel, "as I recall, they had some trouble integrating the new bio-neural circuitry, among other things. We almost considered scrapping the upgrade and just running everything on the old ODN system."

"Truth be told, I am pretty new to the engineering field," Zekk said. "I still have a lot to learn about it; the advantage I have here is that we pretty much figured out a lot of this new Orlando's flaws as we went along...hopefully we have them all fixed now. Except the damn holodecks, always with those damn holodecks."

The El-Aurian raised an eyebrow at the conviction with which the engineer had chosen to condemn the holodecks. It was true that most holodeck systems operated independently from the rest of the ship's systems and the two weren't often compatible with one another. "Have there been issues with the holodecks," Tobias asked, knowing that the question might be taken as an understatement.

Zekk resisted the urge to laugh out loud. There were ALWAYS issues with the holodecks, he didn't care what anyone said. They had a few minor problems on the Orlando in drydock, although nothing that they hadn't managed to iron out. Of course watching Alistair (NPC) get chased around by a fanatical grandfather clock was rather humorous.

"There are always issues with them sir," Zekk said. "Luckily I think we fixed all the major ones."

"I'm glad to hear it," Tobias replied, leaning back slightly in his chair and surveying the younger man seated across from him for a moment, "If there is nothing else..."

"No sir, nothing right now," Zekk said, standing up. "I need to get back to engineering right away, I don't want to leave the kiddies along too long. They may throw a party or something."

OFF:

A JP by:

Commander Tobias Naros
Executive Officer
USS Orlando

And....

Lieutenant Zekk Alana
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Orlando