Better Days

Posted on Wed Jun 22nd, 2022 @ 3:18am by Lieutenant Skot Ryder

Mission: 00 -Life on the Line
Location: Phaser Array No. 2
Timeline: Current

Skot had spent the last several hours, ever since his abrupt wake up call in the middle of the night, with his head berried in the stations second phaser array, this one requiring less work than the other two. He was fighting lack of sleep, a steadily increasing caffeine withdrawal, and an overall frustration for whoever designed this floating wreck they call a station and a desire to go back in time and slap them around a bit.

"Lieutenant Ryder?" Chief Perez called out as she entered the the room. The sudden out of nowhere calling out of his name caused Skot to slam his head against the bulkhead of the conduit he was working in. "God.." he stopped himself from completing the swear as he climbed out of the conduit while nursing his now throbbing head, to add to his list of complaints for the ever growing day. "What can I do for you Chief?" he asked as he sat down and reviewed the PADD with the antiquated schematics for the phaser array. "Team three reports that they've got shield generator two up and running. They're moving to generator four." She handed him a second PADD going into greater detail.

Skot sighed as he read the report, "Great now we can at least put a shield around OPS if we need to." Perez could see the frustrated look on Skot's face and was starting to worry, "Is everything alright sir?" she asked in a concerned voice. Skot looked at the Chief before responding, "Honestly no. I'm running on MAYBE two hours of sleep, I haven't had a cup of coffee since 0600 YESTERDAY. There's a Tzenkethi fleet on it's way here and we have no way of defending ourselves once they get here." He stood and made his way back to the conduit he was working in, "We have one, ONE, working phaser array and hardly any shields. To top everything off, the defenses of the station are so antiquated that James T. Kirk would think they were state of the art!"

Skot and Perez spent the next thirty minutes working on getting the array up and working, mostly failing in their attempts. "Just a few microns more," Skot said out loud to himself as he made one final adjustment. "Alright power it up," he called out to Chief Perez. She slowly brought the power levels up with readings looking great until...There was a loud bang from conduit where Skot has his upper body, "AHHHHH!!!!" he screamed. Perez ran over and drug him out of the hole in the wall. She helped him up and to sit on some nearby cargo containers as she ran for a near by med kit. Skot held his right arm close to his body as the Chief scanned him with the medical tricorder, "This is pretty bad boss, I've got to get you to sickbay." Skot's eyes lit up with a fiery look of utter disdain at the words that had just come out of the Chief's mouth. "Absolutely not!" He all but screamed. "Just give me something for the pain and let me get back to work." Perez looked him in the eye with a mother's gaze, "Boss it's bad. Bad enough that I can't treat it here. So you can either stop your whining and let me help you to sickbay or I can call the Doc down here and can tell you the exact same thing." Skot met her gaze with one of his own tossing his choices around in his head, "Fine. Help me to sickbay." He all but spat the words.