“Morning Commander,” came the greeting as the standup meeting of engineers broke up, repeated a dozen times over as engineers of various sorts, some not even from Atlantis, all filed past Nathan Kennedy and out of the room.

Atlantis was almost completely devoid of life by now, the crew scattered to the winds while repairs and refits were underway. The engineers had appropriated port Royal, the ship’s common space for all ranks, as a planning and administrative centre aboard ship while they worked. Holographic work tables glowed as three-dimensional representations of parts of the ship were looked over. Clear panels with work logs, updates, schematics, and various other metrics dotted the room with their own cluster of staff around each.

And in the middle of the room, only because they hadn’t had a chance to flee just yet, were Lieutenant Command Ra-tesh’mi Velan, Atlantis’ chief engineer, and Commander Jeremy Darling, the yarddog put in charge of overseeing Atlantis’ repairs. And unlikely the day before, both of them were smiling as Nathan approached, the last of the junior officers in his wake, off to bring misery to those under them.

“Morning Ra, morning Darling,” Nathan greeted, an offering of coffee brought with him from Brahms Station. “You both look far, far too happy. Win the Ferenginar Lottery?”

“Pah!” Darling countered, taking his offered coffee with a nod of the head. “No one ever wins that. I heard the taxes alone make winning the lottery an actual loss.”

“Besides, exchange a post-scarcity society for enough money to almost be post-scarcity? And do what, look pretty all day?” Ra stopped for just a moment, stroking his beard in thought, then shook it away. “No, something even better than winning some stupid capitalist luck contest.”

“Are you going to tell me, or am I going to have to strangle one of you as a warning to the other?” Nathan asked, handing Ra his ridiculously complex coffee order and setting the little carry tray down, causing the hologram of Atlantis, sans a warp nacelle, to flicker momentarily.

“We managed to shave two whole weeks off the repair estimate,” Ra answered. “Well, we didn’t; some petty officers did. Turns out the starboard power relay on deck eighteen doesn’t need to be removed.”

“I thought you said it was dead,” Nathan said. “‘Melt it down and remake’ levels of dead, I believe is the exact quote.”

“We thought it was dead because it wasn’t answering to diagnostic calls, wasn’t distributing plasma, and we couldn’t get near it because the entire area had vented to space. And it was low priority for in-person inspection since Atlantis arrived at the fleet yards.” Darling tapped at keys on the table between them, reminiscent of the pooltable in Engineering. Holo-Atlantis zoomed into the sections of the ship in question, the ship’s main structure in orange, power relays in blue, ODN lines in green. And the entire starboard power relay in question in purple. “PO Handley and Tanaka overnight decided to go take a look in person and discovered the relay was in perfect condition. Turns out only the computer feeds to that entire section had broken. The relay’s own logs showed it losing connection with the main computer, then losing plasma pressure when the shutdown occurred over Betazed, so closed all valves before it lost power.”

“And since we couldn’t tell it to open, or do any diagnostics for that matter, we thought it was dead.” Ra shrugged sheepishly. “Honestly, we shouldn’t have written it off until we could get a proper scan, but Command wanted a full assessment, so we had to make some assumptions.”

“I can think of one person we both know,” Nathan turned to Ra, tilting his head as he did, “who would have preferred this was discovered earlier, yes?”

“Would it help if I told you we wouldn’t have found out for another three or four weeks if enterprising petty officers hadn’t gone exploring on their own?” Ra’s smile deflected most ire thrown his way, but in this case it merely blunted Nathan’s, which evolved into the command officer’s patented look of ‘continue’. “PO Handley’s quarters are in the affected area. The two of them were in that section after their shift looking to salvage some personal belongings and apparently decided to check on the relay because –”

“They were in the area,” Darling interrupted, sounding unconvinced by the answer the POs had obviously decided to supply and stick to as their defence. “I don’t buy it myself. Why would they check on such critical infrastructure during a dubious salvage run?”

“Don’t look fortuitous lower deckers in the mouth,” Nathan answered. “It’s rude, and it makes them less likely to go exploring in the future.” Nathan’s gaze perused the hologram a moment more, then his eyes flicked over the entire room. Not too long ago it would have been alive and vibrant with the ship’s crew socialising with one another. Now it was alive with engineers and dockworkers needing a large base of operations to coordinate their work.

“Canopus departs for the Badlands in two days. And Nyx is arriving to take a number of junior officers and myself off on a training cruise with a spot of camping thrown in.” Nathan paused for a sip of his own coffee and to let what he had said sink in. “That puts you in charge of the boat, Ra.”

“Don’t go anywhere, don’t do anything you wouldn’t do and whatever I do, don’t lose the keys,” Ra answered immediately.

“Keys?” Darling asked, looking between the two Atlantis officers.

“I’ll let Ra answer that one,” Nathan said, turning on his heels, heading out of the Port Royal. “Going for a walk around the ship.”

“Still recommend you avoid deck fourteen,” Ra shouted after him. “We still haven’t found Stubby.”

“Lord Stubby, master of all he cleans,” Nathan said back to Ra, earning a bark of laughter. “I’ll stay out of his domain.”