TALES

OF A

STARFLEET

ENGINEER

by

A. J. Trook

Chapter 9

Dear Mom and Dad,

Remember when you wished me luck in your last letter by saying 'break a leg'? You got your wish! Our pirate ship fell over on top of me – ouch! Busted up my leg pretty badly. I've been pretty sore all week, and this wheelchair is a pain, but tomorrow after Commander Slith clears me for full duty, it's a thing of the past.

You know, I always kind of avoided Slith. Let's face it – a two-meter tall reptile with a head like a T-Rex is not something that you naturally approach for a hug. And there is some truth to the rumors about his bedside manner. But overall, he's a good doctor, and I'd go to him again.

Yes, Mom. I will do everything in my power to avoid needing his skills. I missed out on the rest of the set construction, but I got a front-row seat for the performance on opening night. Everyone was great. And you haven't seen funny until you've seen our Vulcan XO singing the Major General song. I don't know if he even realized how funny he was, but he got a standing ovation (I was sitting in front of Commander Slith, so I refrained).

Next week it's back to work, and I'm looking forward to it. We've got some maintenance to perform on the deflector grid. Nothing spectacular, and no pirate ships to dodge.

Have I mentioned how much I enjoy starship life?

Your son,

Max

----- -----

Max finished inspecting the deflector screen power coils, checked his tools, and started back along the long Jeffries tube toward the engineering node and the turbolift. It had been a two-hour analysis of the system's output, but the results had been worth it. Running the deflectors through their paces, he'd been pleased to see that the shields were operating at peak efficiency. They weren't going to need to accelerate the next scheduled overhaul of the system after all.

Just then, his commbadge chirped. "Jones to Davis. How's it going?"

"Looks great, Commander. Everything checks out well above specs." Max rounded a bend in the tube and continued on along a twenty-meter long section. "Unless you want to run another diagnostic, we're basically done."

"I don't think that'll be necessary. Come on back and we'll do a quick debrief with bravo shift before calling it a day. Jones out."

Max reached the end of the tube and stopped short. There was a spider-web across the entrance. Two things immediately grabbed his attention. One - the strands were quite a bit thicker than any spiderwebs he'd ever seen before. And two - they hadn't been there when he'd come through on his way to the deflector array.

"Davis to Commander Jones. I've got a problem here. There's a huge spiderweb strung across the entrance to Jeffries tube 1543J. I can't get out."

"Jones here. A spiderweb? Just brush through it, lieutenant." The commander's tone had equal parts amusement and annoyance.

"I can't do that, sir. It's way bigger than a normal spiderweb. Something big is loose in the Jeffries tubes up here." Max remembered some of the conversations he'd overheard from the security officers in Ten-Forward. "Wasn't there some form of giant spider down on the surface of the planet we just received parts from? Could one of those have been beamed up with the cargo accidentally?"

There was a brief pause. "Could be, Davis. Seems I recall Commander Torah talking about an arachnid species indigenous to Omicron Theta III. Big things - adults had over a two-meter legspan. But don't worry - they're curious, but harmless. They only eat fruit, so unless you smell like a strawberry, you'll be okay. I'll send a security detachment up there to meet you anyway. If we've got a stowaway, we need to send it packing."

Max sighed. "Okay, I'll wait here. But please hurry - spiders creep me out, and that's little ones. Davis out."

Max looked around nervously. Something about Commander Jones' description of the Omicron Theta arachnids didn't seem quite right. Why would a spider that only ate fruit bother to spin webs? Was it a purely defensive measure, intended to keep interlopers from violating the spider's territory? Or was it in fact a hunting species after all? And were engineers on the menu?

Max dug a lasertorch from his tool pouch and started cutting one of the strands. He managed to work through the first strand, but then brushed the torch up against another strand, snaring it. He yanked on the torch for several moments, carefully avoiding skin contact with the web, but finally gave up. Instead, he pulled out several test leads and started systematically testing the strands. As he suspected, some were sticky while others were not. Using a pair of wirecutters, he started cutting the non-adhesive strands surrounding the torch. When it hung by a single strand, he re-ignited it and maneuvered it to burn through the final strand. With a grin, he used the torch to slice through the rest of the web, clearing a way for his departure.

His smile disappeared when he tried to return the torch to his tool pouch. The loose ends of the sticky strand had wrapped themselves around his fist, effectively sealing it to the torch. He shook it vigorously without success, but wisely refrained from attempting to pry his right hand loose with his left. Irritated, he continued to burn up the remaining pieces of the web to keep anyone else from becoming snagged.

It was the strangest thing. Normally when Max's hair stood up on his neck, he could attribute it to a specific event. A sound, or a motion detected in the corner of his eye. But this time, all he could determine was the very strong feeling that he was no longer alone. Then he noticed the smell. Something in dire need of a good cleaning was in his immediate vicinity.

Turning slowly, he spotted a massive gray spider not three meters away. It was a slender, shiny creature, not like the hairy tarantulas he loathed back on Earth. Each leg was almost a meter long and as thick as his wrist. The abdomen was roughly the size of a basketball, and the head half that. It had eight white eyes in a rectangular pattern, and while they had no pupils, Max was fairly certain that all of them were focused on him.

He brought the lasertorch around slowly. The tool had a range of only a few centimeters, but it was the best thing he could think of, and since it was stuck to his hand anyway, it wasn't as though he was neglecting a more useful weapon. The spider watched this silently.

Max tapped his commbadge and whispered in a tone he hoped wouldn't agitate the giant arachnid. "Davis to security. Intruder alert, deck three. Jeffries tube 1543J to be exact."

"Security here. What are you talking about?" The security officer's voice barked out at him, causing him to wince. The spider drew back a bit, then relaxed again.

"I'm staring at a huge spider, probably one of those things you guys played with down on Omicron Theta III. I'd really like someone to beam it or me out of here."

"Sorry, Davis. Transporters are down for a diagnostic right now. Should be up in twenty minutes. We've got people on their way up to you anyway. I'll tell them to hurry. Security out."

Max sighed. Watching the spider, he slowly reached one hand into his pouch for his tricorder. Maybe he could scan the creature and see if an antidote would be needed should things go further awry than they already had.

When the tricorder began its scan, the spider leapt into motion. One long leg shot out, dragging a web strand from the abdomen spinnarettes and sticking it to the tricorder's case. With a jerk, the tricorder whipped out of Max's hands and into the grasp of the spider.

Max let out a yell and tumbled backward out of the tube. When he jumped to his feet, he dashed to the turbolift doors and slapped the controls summoning the lift. While he waited for the doors to open, he looked back into the Jeffries tube, only to see a vacant tunnel. The spider was gone.

The turbolift doors opened, and three armored security officers charged out, phasers clenched in padded fists. One of them grabbed Max and hurled him into the turbolift while the other two fanned out, scanning the engineering node for life forms. After scans came up negative, they relaxed visibly. The one that had shoved Max into the lift raised his visor and smiled. "Looks like we missed your little beasty. Are you all right?"

Max shook with a mix of relief, anger and adrenaline. "No, I'm not all right! I've just come nose-to-whatever with a spider big enough to eat my head. It stole my tricorder. And," Max shook his right fist in the security officer's face, "I'm stuck to this blasted lasertorch!"

The security officer tried unsuccessfully to hide a smile. "I meant are you injured?"

Max took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. "Only my pride, I guess."

The security officer nodded. "Well, take your wounded pride down to sick bay. I imagine Commander Slith has something to dissolve that webbing."

Max grimaced at the thought of the Gorn's bedside manner. "I might head down to the xenobiology lab instead."

-----

Twenty minutes later, Max stepped out of the xeno lab, wiggling his freshly-liberated fingers. A movement caught the corner of his eye, and he tensed before realizing that it was just a fellow crewman approaching. He stood still for several seconds, willing his heart back down into his chest, then sighed. Until that spider was captured and off the ship, he knew he was going to be a nervous wreck. Every time he walked past an air vent, he quickened his pace. Then he heard a sound from one of the vents and froze. Was it the spider? Should he check it out? He made a quick command decision.

Max arrived in Engineering at a dead run. He was fairly certain the scratching sound he'd heard in one of the vents was a loose filter, but he wasn't taking any chances.

Ensign Howard looked up at him with a bemused expression as he skidded to a halt in front of her. "Where's the fire, lieutenant?"

"There's a huge spider loose in the ventilation shaft. The thing has to be two meters across!" Max leaned against the warp core console, catching his breath. "I came eyeball to eyeball with it while working on the main deflectors."

Howard whistled, her face etched with concern. "Are you all right?"

Max nodded. "It didn't touch me. Just took my tricorder."

Howard paled, taking an involuntary step back. "Took your tricorder?"

Max nodded. "Yeah. It snatched the tricorder right out of my hands. I wasn't about to try and fetch it. I only hope it gets indigestion trying to eat it!"

Howard glanced nervously toward the back of Engineering. "Yeah. I suppose so." She took another step backward, then abruptly turned and started walking toward the doors. "I-I'll be inspecting the plasma injectors on the warp nacelle."

Max frowned as the doors slid shut behind Howard. What was wrong with her?

He turned, and came face to face with The Lieutenant. The older man was breathing heavily, and a drop of spit was creeping down from the corner of his mouth. "'Right out of your hands'?"

Max swallowed, suddenly understanding Howard's retreat. "Lieutenant, it was me or the tricorder! If I'd tried to recover it, I would've been spider kibble, and the tricorder would be gone anyway!"

The Lieutenant turned a dark red. "At least then you would have died with honor!" He snatched Max off his feet by the front of his uniform and shook him like a rag-doll. His voice worked up to a fevered pitch. "Gosh-darn it, Davis! You never leave a man behind!!"

Dropping Max to the deck, The Lieutenant whirled, ran back to the tool room and plunged inside. Max heard a loud crash, followed by several colorful metaphors. Then The Lieutenant returned, armed with a rivet gun and a huge sledgehammer. "We're going back for it! Never Forget!!"

Max stared up at the crazed Tool Room Officer. "But Lieutenant, this is a security matter! Let them handle it!"

The Lieutenant shook his head. "No! This time it's personal!" Barreling past Max, The Lieutenant headed out, bent on his search and rescue mission.

Max stared at the door for several minutes in stunned silence, trying to count the old movie clichés The Lieutenant had just spouted. Giving up, he tapped his commbadge. "Davis to Security. Lieutenant . . ." He was surprised to realize he couldn't remember The Lieutenant's name. "Uh, the Tool Room Officer is running amok with a rivet gun and a hammer. I think he's going after the spider in the Jeffries tubes."

The security officer's voice carried a hint of annoyance. "Noted, Davis. We'll try not to kill him. Security out."

Max slumped against the console, trying hard to remember just why he'd left Utopia Planetia. Not a lot happened there. Back then it had been a boring place. But now boring sounded pretty good.

-----

The battle an hour later was hardly worthy of the name, and Max for one was happy because of it. The Expeditious had tracked down and captured a renegade Sularian destroyer that had been operating in Draxian space in violation of local treaties, and the Draxians had appealed to the Federation for assistance. The Sularian vessel had put up a fight, but her weapons were too weak to threaten the Starfleet cruiser, and her own shields had dropped after the Expeditious' first phaser volley. After that, Starfleet security teams had beamed in all over the ship and captured it in a manner of minutes.

Max had manned the engineering station on the battle bridge, a first for him. It hadn't amounted to much more than a chance to see the command element in action, but he'd found it fascinating to observe. But now the crisis was ended, and he headed back to main engineering.

He was almost there when his commbadge chirped. "Jones to Davis. Select a team to go to the Sularian destroyer for combat damage repair. We need to get it back under its own power so we can take it to Draxia."

Max nodded, then looked over his rosters. Scanning the list, he found seven exceptional officers and submitted a roster to Jones, who quickly approved it.

Did he want to go over there? Repairing the Sularian destroyer would be an engineering history lesson. Max grinned at the thought of trying to replicate items that were obsolete before replicators existed. What a mess that was going to be.

Then he thought about what it meant to remain on board the Expeditious. Those soulless arachnid eyes peered at him again from the darkness of his memories in the Jeffries tube. In all the excitement, he'd forgotten that Security was still trying to track the errant creature down.

He made a quick change to the roster, replacing Lambert with himself. No way he was staying on board while that thing was loose. Better to take his chances with the Sularians!

Max turned over the ship repair team coordination to Lambert, then gathered his team and headed for the tool room. Since The Lieutenant was still prowling through the Jeffries tubes in a desperate attempt to rescue his precious tricorder, Max found it easy to equip his team. "Grab whatever you think you'll need, ladies and gentlemen."

Baxley frowned. "But won't-"

Max smiled. "Nope."

Peterson opened her mouth. "But don't we have to-"

"Uh, uh. It's all taken care of." Max beamed.

Tox turned and looked at Max, a puzzled expression clouding his face. "But shouldn't we at least-"

"No!" Max laughed maniacally, then physically herded the engineers into the vacant tool room. "Believe me, it's open season on tools. Get what you need, and get your tails to transporter room two! Bwah-hah-hah!"

Overcoming their initial trepidation, the engineers were soon cooing over The Lieutenant's collection. Some expressed restrained outrage. "He never told me he had one of these! I could have shaved five hours off that last diagnostic!"

Max wandered to the back of the tool room, content to watch as The Lieutenant's tools were checked out in a haphazard flurry, with documentation scant and accountability suspect. He leaned against the bulkhead -

- and fell through a holographic wall onto his backside. Leaping to his feet, he walked around as only someone who just landed hard on their tailbone can do, muttering things that should have peeled the paint off the bulkheads, real or holographic. But as he marched in tight circles rubbing his backside, his pace slowed until finally he stood stock-still and let his mind process what he was seeing.

The walls were lined with satin hooks, precisely spaced. On each hook hung a chrome-plated tool. Overhead lighting combined with tiny floodlights liberally spread around the room made all the tools gleam in a dazzling display.

Max blinked several times, trying hard not to sing with the children's choir that was holding a major chord in his head. With a shaking hand, he reached out and gently took the nearest tool off its rack. He cradled it in the palm of his hand, balancing it and relishing the weight. He rolled it over and gaped at the inscription, then felt his mouth go dry.

Snap-On. The fiend had Snap-On tools and was hoarding them. Max's hand closed over the sonic wrench in a white-knuckled grip. He poked his head through the holographic wall and smiled sweetly at the other engineers. He was mildly disappointed that no one had missed him, but as they were all in an engineer's version of a feeding frenzy, he forgave them. "Oh, gu-uys. Check this out! Snap-Ons!"

The silence of the next three seconds had the density of deutronium armor. Then Max barely kept from being trampled as they charged into The Lieutenant's inner sanctum. Within a minute, every hook was empty and Max was alone. He smiled to himself and hummed as he strolled back out into the main tool room. Sometimes life was just too good to be true.

The tiny camera in the corner of the ceiling tracked him until he passed through the holographic wall, then shut off, its motion detectors satisfied.

-----

Five minutes later, Max and his team materialized on the transporter pads of the Sularian ship, and were immediately greeted by two security officers in full armor. "Right this way, lieutenant."

Max followed the hulking security officer down a cramped passageway. His nostrils burned and his eyes watered. "Whew! What's burning?"

"Sir?"

"That smell! Ugh!" Max wrinkled his nose. "You guys burning the dead or something?"

The security officer shrugged. "It smelled like this when we first arrived."

Max pulled the collar of his uniform over his nose. Baxley chuckled. "I don't think your cootie filter is going to help here, lieutenant."

"Oh, shut up."

Max sighed. Baxley was right. The stench was just as bad, with his own pit odor added in.

He entered engineering and laughed out loud. The warp core was being held together with a hodgepodge of patches and struts. He actually had to duck under a series of temporary support rods to get to the main warp core controls. Tox followed him to the console. "Sir, how long have they been running this way?"

Max reached up and dragged his finger across the nearest support strut, then displayed the ball of crud to the ensign. "I'd say it's been a while."

He studied the archaic controls, wishing for all the world he could read Sularian. Finally he gave up and looked at the rest of his team. "Hey. Any of you read Sularianese?"

Amy stepped forward. "I took a class in the Academy. I could give it a shot."

Max stepped aside and made room for Amy. She studied the controls for a moment, then reached over and pointed to a large button. "I believe this should run a diagnostic."

Max nodded, and Amy pressed the button. A low whooping went off, and a Sularian voice started shouting Sularian in an ominous echoey Sularian manner. Max tried to decipher the readouts, but other than a number of ancient analog dials slowly shifting to the left, nothing was happening.

Then two security officers charged into engineering, looking very agitated. "Our prisoners say you've activated the self-destruct!"

Max glared at Amy, whose fingers were flying across the console. Finally the whooping stopped, the dials shifted back to the right, and the computer shut up. She blushed as she finished locking down the reactor. "Sorry."

Max sighed. "Let's study harder next time we're taking Sularian 101, shall we?"

Looking around, Max noted with satisfaction that his team was already fixing everything in sight. The damage looked primarily superficial, and the Expeditious' engineers were knocking it out.

He stepped away, headed further back into the tiny engine room. The ship was a collection of oddities, with a lot of newer Ferengi technology cobbled together with the antique Sularian hardware. Their engineer wasn't much for aesthetics, but he was a heck of an improviser. How he had kept this old girl running was beyond Max's ability to fathom.

Amy let out a shout, and Max returned to her side. "I've got it, Max. This is the main engineering console. All other controls are slaved through this one. From the looks of it, she's in pretty good shape except for the damage she sustained from our volley. But she took some damage to the left warp core's coolant tanks. We can patch it easily enough, but we'll need to replace the coolant plasma."

Max nodded. "Not a problem." He tapped his commbadge. "Lieutenant Davis to Commander Jones."

"Jones here. Go ahead, Mr. Davis."

"Sir, most of the repairs over here are complete and we're ready to start up the engines, but we're going to need some coolant plasma from the Expeditious' warp core."

"No problem, Davis. I'll transport some over shortly. Give me 10 minutes. Jones out."

Max looked around at the various Ferengi patches made to the original systems. "Yikes! Hey Baxley! Check this out!"

Baxley looked up from the scan he was running. "What's up, lieutenant?"

"You see this?" Max pointed to a set of leads running from the phase inhibiter to the antimatter injectors. "They actually run their antimatter through a phase streamer. How they kept from blowing themselves to kingdom come is beyond me."

His commbadge chirped. "Jones to Davis. The coolant plasma is on its way down to the transporter room. Good luck with the restart."

"Thank you, sir. Davis out."

Max continued to look around, wondering what other bizarre maintenance

practices he would uncover during this highly educational stroll through the dark side of the history of warp theory.

Well at least there weren't any giant alien spiders scurrying through the air vents.

Although it certainly smelled like it.