Conversations with the warp core
Posted on Thu Nov 13th, 2025 @ 1:50pm by Lieutenant JG Elen Rell & Lieutenant Commander Declan Malcom
1,853 words; about a 9 minute read
Mission:
Prologue
Location: Engineering, USS Guinevere
Timeline: 2389
The harmonic jitter was still there, like an itch behind the eyes. Not critical. Not yet. But enough to make Elen pause with the microspanner halfway to the isolinear coupler and squint at the waveform like it had insulted her. The variance had shifted again. Just outside baseline tolerance, then smugly back into spec like a child returning to their seat the second a teacher turned around. “You think you’re clever,” she muttered, pointing at the readout. “You’re not. You’re just inconsistent. And I hate when inconsistency things do not work right.”
She twisted to reach for the tricorder balanced on the relay behind her. It tipped. She caught it, kicked out a foot to stop the toolkit sliding, and knocked a coil spanner to the deck. She winced. “That wasn’t the important one,” she muttered, adjusting into a crouch, one leg stretched behind her like a tripod. “I think. Unless this is secretly a phase tap issue, in which case I do need that back. Sorry.”
The spanner rolled out of reach. She ignored it. The tricorder chirped, blinking steadily as if it had been trying to tell her all along. “Fine. Regulator five, phase variance holding at 0.0074,” she read aloud, tapping it with her knuckles. “Too high for idle load. Too low to be interesting. What are you even doing? Are you bored? Is this an existential plasma crisis?”
She set the tricorder flat on the conduit housing and popped the magnetic latch on the panel. Her fingerless gloves caught slightly on the panel for a split second as she reached in, fingertips feeling for the transfer junction. “You’re warm,” she murmured, frowning. “But not flow-warm. Field-warm. Which suggests a micro-drain, which means... oh.”
She froze, eyes widening slightly. “Of course. The routing recalibration from last week. That shifted the baseline taper, so your regulator profile’s technically fine, but the local field geometry’s changed and you’re sulking about it.” She paused. Looked at the warp core. “You could have said something sooner.”
She eased back out, legs folding awkwardly, one hip giving a protest. Settling on her heels, she brushed conductive gel off her sleeve with a grimace that suggested betrayal. “Wait,” she said suddenly, glancing at the EPS manifold display. “If that’s shifted, that explains the flicker in junction E-21... but then why was the upstream relay stable?” She moved quickly to the overhead interface, already tapping in a bypass. Fingers flew, field values adjusted, and she rerouted a minor power sink with a small, satisfied hum. The variance dipped. 0.0074. Then 0.0049. Then 0.0021.
Flatline.
“Ha,” she breathed. “Told you.” She stood, grinning to herself, wiping her hands on the front of her jacket. The flicker was gone. The spanner could stay under the conduit for now. She turned back toward the central console, already thinking two problems ahead.
Declan had entered sometime around Elen's solving of the variance problem, and while she was turning, grabbed the spanner easily enough from long practice. "Abandon your tools, and they won't work their best for you when you remember to grab them." He smiled slowly as the spanner was handed back over.
"Would you be Lieutenant Rell?" Declan asked in a slow, confident tone. "Was told to find you, something about the Chief being busy?"
"Yep, I'm Elen..sorry for the tools," she took the spanner and threw it up in the air, catching it with a deft hand. "She's been stuck between Senior Staff meetings and some training. Got to make sure the enlisted don't rebel against us officers..." she knelt by her toolkit...which was, if nothing else, certainly hers. Sure it was a standard issue Starfleet engineering kit. With stickers. And an ODN Decoupler with a green handle. And a crochet needle and half a fingerless glove in the works tucked into it. "But I used to cover the job and I'm acting Assistant Chief, so...hopefully I can help for now?"
"Lieutenant Commander Declan Malcom, Engineering Officer. On temporary loan here for the gate project while Pathfinder and Fleet Command figure out where they want me full time." He smiled briefly, and extended a calloused hand, plasma scars on the top of the knuckles.
"Ah..." she looked up at him, rocking a little on her feel as she crouched, with energy. She reached for the hand to shake, her own not as marked...she was good at getting the dermal regenerator going. Her eyes still went to the plasma scars. "Oh, nothing smarts quite like that...you can practically feel the nerve endings in your skin give up the ghost..." she grinned and used the grip to pull herself up.
He easily was able to act as a brace while Elen pulled herself up. "Oh, the plasma scarring? Happened years ago at the academy on my sophomore year cruise. Hurt like hades for a bit, the Doc's fixed it up as good as they could at the time. So while the Chief is occupied, how can I be of help around here?"
Elen's eyes widened with surprise. Genuine surprise. Because it wasn't often someone popped down to help engineering out. Usually, engineers were put to help others. "Oh! Oh...I mean, there's always something, right? Warp core fields, coolant systems...just fixed the harmonics because honestly, we are still...dancing around bugs and such things. Not real life bugs, or tribbles, more...you know...Engineering life. A chip here, a loose coil there..."
Declan chuckled at the reminders. "Till someone makes up their mind what to do with me, why don't you just consider me an extra pair of experienced hands available to be allocated? I'm pretty Engineering versatile. Though I do specialize in warp field dynamics and general scavenging or repairs. I was given a lot of useless theory briefings on Borg tech prior to this."
"I mean, Borg tech is fascinating," Elen said with a smile before she shook her head. "Personal favourite though? You'll laugh...Orion interface panels. There's something so..." she moved her hands almost to pretend they were claws. "And also, their links through a ship? Epic scavenging adapting. But organically. Least favourite? Klingon. Seriously, you think out consoles blow up a lot? Once you manage to pry open a panel, you just need to sneeze into the system and something breaks or crawls out."
"Klingon ships are bad, Pakled are the worst I've come across. No sense, no flow. It's all a random jumble of borrowed tech, and all the bad painpoints multiplied. Oddest one, though is Vulcans. No originality. Just the same things over, and over, and over again."
"It works for them...it is only logical to never ever think outside the box," Elen said with a cheeky smile as she looked at him with interest. "Never gotten across a Pakled ship myself. Not had the chance. Oh! Have had some experiences with colony tech though...you know, patched together with hope, dreams and spit."
"Being from a colonial background, don't forget the ducttape. We always love ducttape." Declan commented wryly. "So, about that list, got anything I can work on?" He brought the conversation back to it's main point.
Elen tilted her head, eyes scanning him like she was doing inventory of isolinear chips before flicking toward the nearest wall console. "Right...Yes! The list..." She clapped her hands together once, as if resetting her thoughts. "Okay. I've got three different coolant sensors reading half a degree off, and I swear they're not faulty, they're just being petty. We've got one EPS tap with a tolerance drift that I'm hoping isn't a precursor to a full cascade, and if you like warp fields, I even got a junction profile that keeps realigning itself every time we blink. Like it knows....and does it on purpose because it doesn't believe in Engineers doing buffer time." She moved to the console with quick steps, calling up the queue and tapping through the top items. Her braid swung behind her, a few more strands coming loose. "Pick your poison. Or I'll throw you at the EPS tap and you can tell me if I'm imagining things again. No pressure..." she looked thoughtful for a moment before the grin that spread over her lips became downright cheeky. "And if you find a mystery component that is labelled in Bajoran, Klingon and 'what the heck'....congrats! You've found Junction 12!"
"I'll start with the EPS tap, that has the most danger of going boom. Got a PADD and a kit, or should I grab my own I brought with me? Warp field next. Wait, did you say Bajoran, Klingon, and something else? What in the world is it, and why in a critical area like that?" Declan asked in confusion, and intrigue.
"Chief Jalay and myself did a small...improvement project," Elen said with an easy smile, stretching her body a little to work out a stiff muscle in her back. "She has a lot of knowledge from her time before Starfleet and I've always liked non-Federation systems. Junction 12 operates at 23% above Starfleet standards. I also wrote up the spec...well, got the computer to write up the spec...so any Engineer can understand it rather than...you know..." she gestured to herself. "People who did it." She moved to grab him a spare kit, offering it over.
"I'll have to read that paper over closely." Declan commented as he accepted the kit and did a quick inventory.
"Where's the tap located? Actually, I can find it in the work request log. Would you relay my greetings to the Chief when you get a chance? Rather get to work and knock the rust off. Too many days in transit and waiting on that wormhole. I'll check that profile after." Declan returned the smile with one of his own, eager to get to work.
"Sure," Elen said with a grin. She was having Jalay over for tea after the shift anyway, so if she didn't cross paths with her on shift she'd see her after. She had insisted. Maybe even guilt-tripped the Bajoran a little to accept a set time and day. "Now, if you need anything...like, a tour, a recommended drinks list from the bar..you let me know. Oh! And actual engineering questions too..." she winked and picked up her toolkit.
"I'll keep that in mind. Recommendations on local drinks is always welcome, and I should definitely sample the onboard stocks. Thank for the info. I'll get started on that tap right away. Thank you for all the info." *Declan smiled at her as he pulled up the tap information and then made his way over to it, more than eager to get to work.*
Elen watched him go, a small smile on her lips before she chuckled at herself. And then looked at her toolkit with confusion. "Now what was I supposed to do..." she breathed into the air before she took it and headed off towards the warp core.
---
LCDR Declan Malcolm
Engineering-Officer-on-loan
Lt. JG Elen Rell
Acting Assistant Chief Engineer
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