Fly Boys and Engineers

Posted on Sun Jun 21st, 2020 @ 6:46am by Commander Mindo & Lieutenant JG Vecon Fick
Edited on on Tue Jul 7th, 2020 @ 1:41pm

Mission: Into the Wild
Location: Shuttle bay
Timeline: Current

A Mission Post by Ensign Vecon Fick & Lieutenant Mindo
Mission: Into The Wild
Location: Shuttle bay
Timeline: current
Sat Sep 9th, 2017 @ 10:43pm


Mindo entered the aft Shuttle bay with a spring in his step. He loved making house calls, as it got him away from the sterile environment that was Engineering and allowed for a change of scenery. He took almost all the house calls he could, and on a ship this big, there were many.

The young, petite Eloi-Feserian had been on the Pandora for only a few months, and while he hadn't made too many lasting connections, save the people he already knew from his assignment on the Tornado, he was getting the hang of serving on a ship literally the opposite size of his last ship. While the Tornado was rather compact, even claustrophobic at times, there was plenty of room on the Pandora. And plenty of room in this shuttle bay. It took him a few seconds to locate the malfunctioning craft, but he found it soon enough. Inside the open hatch, he found the flight control officer who had called him here.

"Did someone call for an Engineer?" said Mindo, his head well below the ceiling of the craft.

Ensign Vernon Fick turned the chair he was sitting in around and grinned broadly. "Hey there! Boy am I happy to see you! This shuttle is broken. I was supposed to do system checks on all of these, but this one stopped me in my tracks. I can get it running, but the controls are way off. It's like it wants to go the opposite direction almost. I'm Fick, by the way." He stuck out his hand for shaking, still grinning.

Mindo took his hand and gave it a small shake. "Hi Fick. I'm Mindo."

"Nice to meet you! So... do you have any idea what might be going on with this? I only know the smallest little bit of anything about engineering. I don't even know why this is happening. It doesn't make any sense to me. To be honest... I'm not really even sure what exactly is happening. All I know if that the controls are not right in this one..." He got up out of the seat staring at the shorter man. "You have really beautiful eyes..."

"Thanks," said Mindo. "You're the only officer on this ship who looks younger than me." He moved past the young man and sat in the pilot's seat. "Let's see what's going wrong. You said it's turning the opposite way? Is this in simulation? Because..." The craft lurched forward and shook for a second. Mindo eased it down. "Well, that answers my question. The calibrations are definitely off. How much do you know about configuring flight control panels?"

Fick shrugged. "Only a little bit. I mean, I get the theory, I just haven't had a whole lot of hands on experience. Everything at the Academy was simulation. I've sort of found that it's not quite the same in practice." He grinned and rubbed the back of his head. "But I'm more than willing to try and help in any way I can."

Mindo went to work on the panel. "Well, you got most of it right," he said. "But look here, the axis configuration is inverted. That's what's causing the problem. It's a common error. I've made the same mistake several times. You just have to keep in mind that the controls and the configuration look different." He finished typing in the configurations, then put it back to the main flight control screen. He stood up and hopped out of the chair.

"Want to take it for a test run?" he said with a grin. This was his favorite part of fixing shuttle crafts.

"Hell yeah I want to take it for a test run!" Fick grinned back. He loved to pilot things, although it occurred to him that Mindo might want to take the wheel to make sure everything was okay. "Do you want to fly it? Or should I?"

Mindo shrugged. "You're the pilot. I just fix things. Let's see how you fly."

"Awesome!" Fick rubbed his hands together like a Ferengi contemplating profit. He slipped back into the pilot's seat. "We should probably get some clearance." He chuckled and clicked his com badge. After a brief conversation over his com Fick grinned. "We are cleared for testing!" He headed the shuttle out of the shuttle bay and circled the Pandora. "Do we want to open it up and see what she can do?"

Mindo grinned. "Impress me."

Fick beamed and put both hands on the console. "Alright... hang on!" The shuttle shot out away from the ship at it's fastest impulse speed. Fick didn't want to take her to warp and get too far away from the Pandora, but he did want to show off a little. He rolled the craft, forcing it to go end over end, which in space isn't like a rollercoaster, but still fun. It was a simple enough move, but it did take some control on manual. When he was done he went into a corkscrew. Out of the corkscrew, which he took at a considerable speed, he pulled the shuttle to the right and slid it around like he was trying to drift, like you would in a car. The shuttle swung around the abscissa, facing the Pandora and then Fick shot off straight toward the ship. For a moment it seemed that he was going to just run full on into the Pandora, but at the last second he pulled up hard and zipped over the top of it and around to the other side, sliding around to face the Pandora again. "I've always been impressed with how maneuverable these little shuttles are..." He was grinning at Mindo. "What should we do now?"

The computer chirped and a voice said, "Pandora to shuttle, who is piloting that craft?"

Mindo sprang forward and hit the button before Fick could. "This is Lieutenant Mindo, I'm running a full exercise on this craft with Ensign Fick. The craft was damaged and we're making sure it's fixed. No cause for alarm."

The comm said, "I think your shuttlecraft works. Please return to the shuttlebay immediately."

"It's all fun 'til the man gets involved," said Mindo. "Show me your best landing, Ensign. Then let's grab something to eat."

Fick chuckled. "Yeah, they just want to destroy all the fun," he joked. "Food sounds great though!" He whipped the shuttlecraft around, zipped it around to the side of Pandora with the shuttlebay and made a nice, slow, leisurely landing back in the bay. "How was that? Or did you want a more exciting landing?" He grinned over at Mindo. "I think the controls are good now. Thank you!"

"It was a smooth ride all around," said Mindo. "Let's get to the Box. I'm buying."

End