Bruises,Turbolifts, & Plasma Junctions, Oh My!

[Taalix 0]

"Bruises, Dysfunctional Turbolifts, and Plasma Junctions…Oh My!"

Ensign Taalix Rokara's Duty/Personal Log

Stardate 0506.09

 

Taalix was having a really bad day. Granted, everyone on the station was having a really bad day, and some of them were a lot worse off than her. People were seriously wounded, cut off from the rest of the station, or, worst of all, dead or dying.

 

She tried to keep that in perspective as she rubbed her right temple. Apparently her head had decided to have a closer look at the edge of the panel she was currently working in, and the meeting did not exactly go well. The newly acquired pain was only the beginning of her physical problems. Her muscles ached, her arms still hurt from where she had slammed into a console, and she had experienced her fair share of bumps and bruises ever since this whole mess had began.

 

Morson, Vatric, and Taalix were assisting Engineering with crucial repairs, and from the looks of things, Lieutenant Zhu and his crew needed all the help they could get.

 

She knew that Morson would soon want the science department to begin looking at what was left of the exploded ship and start analyzing it, so she wanted to help out in engineering as much as she could before he gave the order. Simply put, Taalix could not afford to stop and rest right now, not when there was so much to be done and there were people still in danger.

 

She moved back to the panel so she could find the plasma junction she was looking for, wincing in pain as the rest of her body disagreed with her determination to continue. So far, the science department had managed to help eject excess plasma and avoid an overload in the reactor. But, before that, when the reactor had first went critical and the emergency shut down occurred, certain plasma junctions on Pylon 1 had been cut off from the power grid network. Now those 15 plasma junctions needed to be switched back on manually, and Zhu had asked her to work on getting them back online.

 

She had already managed to get two of those junctions to reconnect to the power grid. Both, one on Deck 36 near the emergency reactor shutdown control, and the other right outside of Main Engineering, had been fairly easy to get to. Getting to the junction she was currently working on had been a little more difficult. The turbolifts were having problems, and had only taken her 11 decks down. The other nine decks had involved clamoring through various Jeffries tubes to get down to Deck 57 and the third plasma junction. Needless to say, she had gotten quite a workout in the process, and she was certainly feeling the exhaustion sapping her strength.

 

Thinking of her previous work on the junctions made her smile. She enjoyed being a science officer, of course, but she also had a soft spot for engineering that had been with her since her days at the academy.

 

When she first began at Starfleet Academy, she had struggled a bit with focusing on her goals and her studies. Her personal struggles and thoughts had nagged at her constantly. Her computer systems and basic engineering classes had helped her focus her mind and clear her thoughts. It was like a strange form of meditation, with the routine work of setting up the systems and repairing subprocessors causing her to focus solely on that and ignore all her personal problems. Eventually, she took up regular forms of meditation and martial arts to help as well, but those two courses were really what had saved her from leaving Starfleet.

 

Taalix realized that the same was occurring now as well. Recent events had filled her mind with a lot of uncertainty and worry. Being able to do something simple like switching on plasma junctions was once again helping her clear her mind and focus on the job at hand.

 

Taalix managed to easily find the plasma junction. She stooped down and opened the engineering kit she had brought with her, located the tool she needed, and moved back to the panel. Within a few minutes, she had managed to switch it back on, and she quickly replaced the panel and put the kit back together.

 

She tapped her communicator. "Ensign Taalix to Lieutenant Zhu. I have managed to reconnect the plasma junctions on Decks 31, 37, and 51. I'm moving on to Deck 100."

 

"Acknowledged." Zhu replied.

 

Taalix stood up and grabbed her kit. She really hoped that the turbolifts were able to make it to all the decks now. Otherwise, she was going to have a long way to go to get to the next junction.