Routine Maintenance
Posted on Mon Sep 8th, 2014 @ 9:18pm by Lieutenant JG Allison Price
Mission:
Vagrants, Vagabonds, and Thieves
Location: Port Turbolift, USS Jackal
The Defiant-class starship was not a large ship. It did not have many bells and whistles. It had the bare minimum of amenities, just enough for the crew to get by when on a mission. It was a warship, but to keep it so compact, there could only be so many redundancies. One such lack of redundancy was the turbolifts. The ship only had two turbolift shafts, one on either side of the ship right between the aft and middle thirds of the ship. There were other ways to travel throughout the ship's four decks, but those other methods involved ladders. When one of these two turbolifts were down, it created a significant obstruction to movement throughout the ship.
That was exactly what Allison Price was dealing with at the moment. The port turbolift was malfunctioning. Specifically the complaint was that "it stopped funny." That really wasn't a helpful description to the engineer, but she worked with what she had.
Toolkit in hand, she stepped into the cramped space. The turbolift itself was small. There was only standing room for four or five people, if they got in close. On a larger starship, you could easily get twice that many or more in one turbolift. In some of the larger ones on the station, you could fit dozens. But like everything else in the Jackal, this was small and condensed.
Allie laid her toolkit on the floor and took out her tricorder. She started by doing a general scan, looking for any abnormalities or obstructions in the shaft. That scan didn't turn up anything useful. "Alright, talk to me girl. What's wrong?" She asked the computer to take her from Deck 2 to Deck 4. Start up was smooth, but the stop was rather sudden. It felt like it wanted to catch, and not brake smoothly. That helped her troubleshooting somewhat. At least she had someplace to start.
Price dropped to her knees and took out a tool from her kit. Carefully, she removed an access panel. With a scanner linked to her tricorder, she started a more in depth investigation. This new focused scan was a bit more telling. The problem was with the brake clutches. They were releasing fine on take off, but they closed too quickly on slowdown. That was causing the lift to reach a must faster stop. The inertial dampers compensated somewhat, but the stop was so sudden, it still rocked the car.
The ensign knew how to fix it. The scan suggested that it was less a hardware issue, but was instead an electrical glitch. The sensor was triggering the brake clutch to grab too hard and too fast. That meant that she only needed to replace the faulty sensor, and not the whole brake assembly.
She reached into her kit and pulled out a tool to access the sensor. Allie needed to switch off the current one, and replace it with the one in her kit. She activated her spanner and started loosing fasteners. As she reached deeper into the panel near the sensor, the electrical connection arced, sending a charge through the air, into her spanner, and up her arm. It was a low current, but the shock made her drop the tool and jump. "Son of..." Allie bit her tongue and slammed her in hand into the wall of the turbolift. As she regained her composure, she looked up at the roof of the car. "What was that for? Do I not take care of you? I'm not sure I deserved that."
Fortunately the shock was not life threatening, and as she shook off the brief disorientation, she had to get back to work. The turbolift was not the only item on her agenda for the day. A quick test of her spanner confirmed that it was still functioning, but before she used it again she used a separate tool to disable the electrical connection, a task that she admittedly should have done first.
With the sensor now isolated, she went back to work removing it. This time the process went far more smoothly. She grabbed the spare out of her kit and put it back into place. Another tool was used to calibrate the sensor to the correct settings. Allie released the lock on the circuit and replaced the panel.
"Alright, girl. Let's see if you're feeling any better. Deck 2." Allie braced herself on the turbolift sides as it accelerated the short distance up from Deck 4. The takeoff was again smooth, but this time the lift stopped normally, without the sudden lurch. Ensign Price let out a sigh of relief. "That wasn't so bad. Next time, we can do with out the shocking." She patted the turbolift wall, just to let it know that she had no hard feelings. After gathering and replacing her tools, she exited the turbolift for her next task of routine maintenance, faulty sensor in hand.
Ensign Allie Price
Chief Engineer
USS Jackal
