Next Steps

Posted on Fri Aug 29th, 2025 @ 7:48pm by Lieutenant Commander Steve Ryan

341 words; about a 2 minute read

Mission: Children of the Stars
Location: Personal Quarters

[Personal Quarters]

Deborah pinched the bridge of her nose, the PADD’s glow painting her face in pale blue light. A falsified log wasn’t impossible, half the engineering staff had been known to fudge maintenance entries when they were late for mess. But this wasn’t a lazy clerical slip. Someone had intentionally removed an active plasma phase regulator from inventory and used the Chief Engineer’s clearance to do it.

"Did they just forgot to change it?" she wondered "No, can't be" she said it out aloud while shaking her dark hair "we would have an extra piece in the inventory" she immediately shove off that idea.

Her lips thinned into a frown. “Cute trick. Real cute.”
She flicked through the system deeper, pulling up the regulator’s unique ID string. Each device had one, etched at manufacture, unchangeable, unforgeable. The problem was, that unique ID should be dormant, archived. Instead, the regulator was feeding steady telemetry into the Montana's systems like it had never been touched. No degradation, no decommission.

She cross-referenced against the ship’s power distribution logs. Junction D-23. The regulator was actively stabilizing plasma feeds during the last gravitic maneuver. Without it, half the starboard grid would’ve been fluctuating like a candle in the wind.

She muttered, “So either we’ve got ghosts doing maintenance… or someone’s ghost-writing our inventory...and I've never seen a ghost doing the job I'm supposed to do".

Deb pushed off the bunk and crossed to her tiny desk terminal.
"I gotta tell Steve, but, I don't have much on my hands, just a missing regulator" she frowned "I can already hear him asking me what is it?" she shook her head "won't work, need more info on this".

She started tapping her fingers on the desk, trying to think about her next moves.

"What would anybody do with a plasma regulator? that's the real question I need to work on now" she finally exclaimed.

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Ens. Deborah O'Donnel
Engineer, USS Montana

 

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