712: Bricks

by Rada Dengar
81220.2350
Concurrent With Hearing the Unspoken

-=Main Engineering; USS Serendipity=-

It was hard for any member of her crew to see the Sera in the state she was in but especially an Engineer. Most devoted Engineers seeing this much damage would have cried at all of the hard work they’d done in upkeep being so rapidly undone. Most lazy Engineers would have cried at all of the work they’d have to do now. Rada however could only stare in disbelief; he had no idea that a ship could get so damaged when he wasn’t on board.

He’d been informed that in his absence a Commander Briggs had sent Salvek on a yacht trip and taken over his command, then taken over in Engineering and given command to a pregnant Trill. Rada thought he sounded like a very interesting man indeed.

Rada’s first thought at coming onboard was of course to seek out Kellyn and to make sure she was settling into the Sera’s sickbay but he had concluded that him standing around looking at her was somewhat less likely to ensure her healthy recovery than if he were in Engineering trying to make sure that the ship didn’t blow up as soon as the Romulans looked at them.

They’d actually turned out to be in much better shape than Rada had thought; it had been initially a relief to find the shields were at least at three quarter power and they had some weapons, but then Rada had been brought to near panic when he learnt that they had Warp drive and so might actually end up having to test them in combat soon.

They looked much worse from the outside which gave Rada hope that the Romulans would underestimate their current condition, opt to save power by keeping their shields down and weapons off line and to try to destroy them by throwing small Terran oranges; perhaps he was being optimistic but he thought they could survive that.

So Rada had to be briefed on the state of his department. Typically this meant going to his Assistant Chief Engineer but he had never chosen one. Not choosing one had been a very difficult decision but in the end made sense. On one hand not choosing someone meant potentially devastating consequences. The ship could be under attack, consoles could be exploding everywhere, the Captain would be screaming for the shields up and Commander Reece could be screaming some off key version of a twenty first century Terran musical compilation over the intra-ship communication channels trying to calm the crew down which would lead to calls from every department for the speaker systems to be cut off. Rada wouldn’t be able to do anything because he’d have been knocked unconscious by a falling brick which he could only assume someone would have replicated especially to drop on him.

With no clear chain of command there would be anarchy in the Engineering department with all of the most senior engineers fighting to take control and all of the most junior engineers trying to take control too on the grounds that the senior officers actions were unfit for officers and that they were therefore the most senior officers fit to take control. If it were security officers fighting then there would be a few fatal shots of a phaser from the most skilful among them and order would be quickly restored, overall no real disturbance would occur.

But Engineers were thinkers not fighters, they all know the risk of firing conventional weapons near the warp core and assuming, as Rada did assume, that none of them wanted to destroy the ship then they’d have to find another way. With the many poor scores in combat training that he’d seen it could take forever if they were to fight bare handed. Instead they’d have to fight the Engineering way; by building non-conventional weapons including months of planning, building applications, sending designs out for independent confirmation and finally requesting the replicator time for constructions.

Of course there’s always one history enthusiast in every department who would point out some minor detail about how historically people fought for power in a better way and Engineers being sticklers for efficiency would have to start all over again to include the better ideas. The process of preparing to fight could take years and it might seem that Rada could simply wake up and restore order after a few hours, but an entire department of Engineers would never agree simply to give up a project they’d already started drawing up plans for and another brick would be dropped on his head, they’d drop bricks indefinitely if they had to.

Given enough time the department would descend into a primitive violent warrior culture where the replicator was the only law. The only problem was that they’d never be given enough time because at the start of this entire thing they were under attack and with no Engineers working on anything except drawing up blue prints the ship would be destroyed within minutes. If Rada did wake up he’d probably be dead.

The only thing worse was what would happen if he chose an assistant. He’d have to choose someone smart and if they were smart enough then they’d realise that people didn’t feel safe with Rada in charge meaning that they’d have to start killing people, namely him, to take over and make people feel once again secure in their jobs. They’d take over and would be left to make this decision themselves, either not choosing an assistant leading to the exact same consequences as if Rada had not chosen one or choosing one themself.

The problem is that these Assistant Chief Engineers would feel that to get ahead they would need to emulate their boss which would mean doing as they had; killing the Chief Engineer. This would lead to a repetitive chain of killings until finally someone decided perhaps it would not be in their best interest to have an assistant. So essentially choosing an assistant would have the same effect as not choosing one except for a killing spree in the middle.

This of course left the duties of the Assistant Chief Engineer to go to whoever was willing to take them, without any of the glory associated with the actual title or any of the rights to take control if needed, it was harsh thankless work which just meant a lot of effort and a lot more responsibility but no benefit. It often meant bossing people around without any of the authority to do it which led to a rapid accumulation of enemies. It was possibly the worst role on the entire ship and what’s more you had to volunteer for it.

There was only one person in the entire department who would even consider something so absolutely, positively, completely crazy.

"Jamie," Rada said as he stepped on the Turbolift, the crewman was already prepared with PADD in hand.

"Welcome back," Jamie Halliday said, with a wide energetic smile in a complete contrast to the dark rings under his eyes. He handed the PADD to Rada and patted him on the back, as he leant over he noticed something.

"Have you been promoted or did you just mess up getting dressed this morning?" he asked with no trace of sarcasm.

"Yes, I have," Rada admitted. Trying to change the subject he started "How have…" before Jamie cut in.

"Congratulations!" Halliday replied, clapping his hands together. "I’ll bet you absolutely can’t believe it."

"I’m still getting used to it," Rada answered and before he could say anymore Jamie continued.

"Of course it will take some time. It does for everyone." Halliday said, feeling it necessary to add "Generally not as long as it does for you but it takes everyone time nonetheless." It looked like he was done and Rada began to look through the PADD.

"Oh, by the way," Halliday announced, "Your girlfriend came in before looking for you."

"Wren?" Rada asked worried about why she’d be here, looking up from the PADD "Did she say anything?"

"That she did," Halliday answered. "She said not to mention that she’d been here because she didn’t want to worry you."

Rada studied his face intently for a few seconds before Jamie seemed to realise. "Oh right."

Rada smiled to himself and Halliday noticed him doing it. "What are you smiling about?" Jamie asked.

"Oh, nothing," said Rada, looking up and surveying the room "It’s just good to be back."

Lt. Commander Rada Dengar
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012