T'Nia and Stephen approached the door to the situation room. It slid open with a hiss. Stephen ushered T'Nia in first. Tony and Tom were already seated at the large, black-laquered table. Obviously, it was meant for many more than this. There were actually twelve overstuffed black leather chairs around it, each with its own small viewscreen in front. T'Nia sat down behind Tony. Kirk looked tired, but, as he surveyed his team, they all looked tired. With a loud slump, he dropped a PADD on the table and turned to Tom Kelly, his senior engineer. "Alright, Tommy. You said you have some new news for us." In recent days, Stephen discovered that Tom actually prefers the name Tommy. Since Stephen concluded they'd be serving together for awhile, it would be in his best interests to consciously take a more informal tone. He had been actively trying to refer to him as Tommy ever since.
"Yessir." Tom replied slowly. "Though I'm not sure I can do anything about it for the moment. I've got some guys scrounging through our boxes of supplies in the cargo bays now. Anyway, the cooling system they installed should have worked. According to the specs I was given, it should have been fine. It was pumping all the necessary coolant to keep the pre-fire system nice and chilly. There's something else wrong. It's the actual pre-fire system. It generated almost thirty percent more heat than the specs said it would. I haven't traced down the cause yet. What I can tell you is; we were lucky. Since the overheating came from the pre-fire system, that was building energy that hadn't been discharged yet. Instead of just overheating, the whole unit could have exploded. It would have taken a pretty fair chunk of our port superstructure with it, too."
"That could have ruined our day." Kirk said slowly. He wrinkled his brows, "So, what do you have your guys looking for?"
"Well, I'd like to rebuild the port cannon and try it again using, maybe, fifty percent power. I'd like to know what exactly is causing it to overheat like that."
"With everything else that's overheating on this ship, could this be another computer issue?"
"Na...not this time. The weapons systems are on their own system...part of the whole redundant control thing."
Kirk turned to Moreaux, "Was there some kind of program glitch in the firing program?"
Tony perked up. He had been quite bored with the engineering mumbo-jumbo and started daydreaming about his vacation to Risa six months ago. "Well, I looked at the trace logs. The program worked just fine. It looks like the problem is mechanical, not programmatical."
Tom nodded. "That's what I thought, too. That's why I was planning on using some spare parts to put it back together."
The words 'spare parts' struck something with Stephen. "Tommy, we don't have any 'spare parts.' Those parts your guys are sorting through are meant for other systems, aren't they?"
"Well, yeah." Kelly shrugged.
"Well, yeah...why don't you make sure those parts aren't needed for something more important first. We still have the starboard cannon we can play with, after all." Tom nodded slowly. In his zeal to get the cannons working properly, he had forgotten about the rest of the ship... probably because the number of complaints of failing systems had gone down. Kirk turned to Tony. "Tony, I want you working with Tom on this one. Step through the program line by line, if necessary, to help him figure out where the failpoint is."
"I can do that, Commander." Leiutenant Moreaux answered. "Now that the code I modified for the sensor mask is fixed, I've been looking for stuff to do, anyway."
"Dang, Tony," Kirk started. "I wish I had known that. The cargo bays are a mess." The group chuckled. Kirk stood up and grabbed the PADD he had tossed. "Alright, ladies and gentlemen. If there's nothing else..."
Suddenly, the room turned yellow with a change of lights. An alarm sounded through the ship. Over the shipwide speakers, Ensign Davies voice could be heard. "Yellow alert, yellow alert. Commander Kirk to the bridge immediately."
"Is this some kind of drill?" Tom asked, half-worriedly.
"Nope." Kirk replied quickly as he tapped his badge. "Kirk to bridge." He headed for the door.
His badge popped. "Bridge, Bristol here, Sir. Are you coming?" He sounded a little panicked.
"I'm on my way now, Leiutenant. What's wrong? Kirk's voice was calm. He was successfully hiding the fact he was a little nervous about this unscheduled alert.
"Commander, our sensors just picked up a vessel in close proximity!"
"I'm on my way!" With that, he, T'Nia and Tony ran out the door and to the left. Tom ran out and to the right.