“When down in the mouth, remember Jonah. He came out all right.”

Thomas A. Edison (1877 – 1930)

 

All things considered, a “Jefferies Tube” presents a challenging workplace.

If a starship was considered as a great beast, with the various vital organs that were analogous to its beating heart (the warp – core), its agile brain (computer core), it’s keen eyes (sensor pallets) & it’s swift limbs (warp & impulse engines), then the intersecting branch work of the maintenance – crawlspaces and accessways colloquially called “Jefferies Tubes” were surely the veins and arteries of this leviathan creature that crisscrossed and carried the flow of its lifeblood to the outlier regions of its technological anatomy.

Like an artery or veinous – channel, they were small and constricting, forcing its occupants to crouch in some areas where possible, crabbed into various uncomfortable stress – positions as they delved into the viscera of the beast and tended to the pulse and rhythm of it’s vital being. In other places the only way to move from one point to another was to crawl on your hands and knees like a beast yourself.

Putting aside the wear and tear on hands and knees, barked shins, grazed elbows and lumpen – bruises to the head, the sometimes gloomy kingdom of service tunnels that threaded their way through the enlivened interior of a Starship presented an oppressive sense of encapsulation – so much so that even the most even – minded of travelers of these hidden byways could sometimes succumb to the suffocating panic brought on by the claustrophobia that presided those narrow halls.

The bane of the junior Engineering – officer or systems technician, whose lot was more of less always to delve these dreaded concourses between the bulkheads and interior walls, the Jefferies Tubes were seldom regarded as places that elicited profound feelings of joy and contentment.

Unless you were Anaxia Werann.

A consummate grease – monkey and infamous curmudgeon, the brilliant (yet bristling) Chief Engineer of the USS Vega was never more happy than when, with toolkit in hand, she was consigned to the winding labyrinth of the Jefferies – tube network, content to contort herself up and down it’s throughput like some monstrous game of snakes and ladders.

To her, the Jefferies Tubes represented not an ordeal, rather a vanishingly rare opportunity to escape the increasingly taxing and incessant interactions with her Engineering crew and get to commune directly with and have quality time amongst the very core of the beast itself.

Always a person to prefer the perfection of the machine over the messy and confounding logic of the biological, the irascible Bolian lived for the moments when she could escape the clamor of endless questions from her underlings, forget for a brief moment the endless escarpment of ‘paperwork’ awaiting her in her office abutting Main Engineering in the form of a giant’s – causeway of Datapads and just find time to ‘be’ with the ship.

To feel it’s tempo, feel its balance, sense it’s hurts and listen to the song it sang to her through the patterns of vibration, output and flow.

And so, she would have typically breathed a sigh of rapturous contentment to find herself isolated so, but today that exhalation was more akin to an exhortation as she was not alone in the cosseting – closeness of the tube – network. Rather, today she was accompanied by one of those self-same underlings in the pursuit of their current task and it had rather soured Anaxia’s almost legendarily – continual sour mood.

Specialist Riordan Doherty.

“Phase – inverter.” The bald-headed blue woman snapped impatiently as she peered into the confusion of Bio-Neural line-work and interfaces, her slim azure fingers snapping in unison to her immediate rear and grasping at thin air.

The cobalt stripes on her bifurcated – cranium creased in consternation and the Chief Engineer was forced to tear her attention away from her task and glared in the gloom at the unfortunate crewman that crouched, cramped and unhappy behind her.

“It’s the silver thing with the little blue light at one end and the tiny letters that say “Phase – Inverter” on it!” Lieutenant Commander Werann narrowed her blue eyes and spat caustically at Doherty, making the young man flinch despite himself. “Surely they taught you that much at Technical School, ‘Specialist’?”

The way she said that last didn’t make Riordan feel very special at all.

The unfortunate systems – specialist (3^rd class) mumbled and fumbled desperately in his tool – kit (which Anaxia noted with distain, was in a state of considerable disarray) and looked up apprehensively at his boss.

“It doesn’t appear to be there, Ma’am.” He confessed miserably.

Anaxia spent a good few moments training her formidably – impressive powers of glowering upon the unfortunate engineering – rating, giving Doherty ample time to bask in its eviscerating – glare, before sighing and levering herself around in the cramped space, so that she was lying on her back on raised elbows as she asked innocently.

“And where, with your considerable powers of prescience, do you think it may be currently manifesting itself, Specialist Doherty?” Her faux – sweet tone, dripping dangerous venom.

Doherty winced and tried to crane is own lanky neck to peer back down the Jefferies Tube which disappeared off into the glooming.

“I guess, maybe I left it back at Junction 57c when I was working on re-calibrating the EPS junction to the injectors there?”

Anaxia looked flatly at the simpering specialist and asked in a voice that dripped honey and the bee’s sting all at once. The one thing she could not abide was an Engineer that did not respect his own tools.

“You guess, or you know?” She asked with innocent, dangerous eyes that shone in the gloom.

“I must of, I mean… I did. I definitely did Ma’am! Sorry, Commander! Sorry Ma’am!!” Doherty blurted, a veritable picture of miserable apprehension.

A pause, then.

“WELL, GET YOUR ASS BACK TO 57c and GET IT SPECIALIST !!!” Anaxia roared, her fury echoing and reverberating back down the narrow passageway as Doherty near scrambled out of his own skin in his haste to scramble away and retrieve his tool.

Anaxia looked at the specialist with a withering look and when she turned back to her task there was a faint smile on her pale blue lips.

Alone at last.

As she rummaged in her own trusty toolkit and withdrew her own Phase – Inverter from it’s rightful place, the Bolian Chief – Engineer hummed happily to herself. Some lessons were best learned the hard way when the point was hammered firmly home. Somehow she didn’t think that Specialist Doherty would be leaving any tools behind for the foreseeable future. Who knows? One day the kid might even make a competent engineer.

As Anaxia saw it, that duty to mould her engineers into intuitive and competent operators fell squarely on her shoulders. Where they were going, through the Bajoran Wormhole and out into the unforgiving space of the Gamma Quadrant beyond, there were scarce few re-supply depots and her people would have to learn to be both independent and inventive in thought and deed, if they were to tend to the needs of a vessel as complex and rarified as the Lamarr for five long, lonely years.

Five years.

For some this kind of protracted deep – space mission was too much to bear. For those who couldn’t countenance such an extended separation from those they loved, there were other (as equally important) duties to execute within the Federation’s borders. For the other (usually the young and fantastically naive in her experience) the prospect of adventure that such a mission represented was a gateway to excitement and intrigue.

This was far from Anaxia’s first ‘Long-Haul’ Mission.

Anaxia grunted at that thought as she reversed the EPS polarity at a conductor junction one step back on the circuit and confirmed it was isolated from the flow modulator pump assembly she was swapping out, for her – her own motivations were far simpler and bore a tang of regret.

She had made a complete mess of her marriage to her Co – Wife, Ganeri and Husband Jolof. People were far messier and infinitely less predictable than machines and Anaxia – so deft at working with one, proved to be utterly talentless when it came to maintaining the other.

The fault lay squarely with herself (of course), that much was painfully apparent during the breakdown of their relationship and though she would miss their daughter with a pain that was almost indescribable – Anaxia had to admit that Triennia would do better with her other mother that with she and it was sensible that she removed herself from the equation.

The Gamma Quadrant seemed far enough to fit the bill in that respect.

Frowning at this unwanted train of thought that always seemed to worm its way unbidden back into her thoughts, Anaxia sensed movement behind her and was glad that she could indulge in a little more hard – schooling for Specialist Doherty, as a distraction to banish her demons of guilt.

“Hypo spanner, 3 Torque.” She snapped, holding out an impatient hand as she considered what sequence of bolt – removal was probably best to extricate the pump from its housing, given the confines of the Jefferies Tube.

There was the sound of tools rummaging from  behind her and she felt the cold heft of the tool as it was laid in her palm, She hefted it and frowned. She peered down at it.

“I said “Hand me a 3 – Torque”, for crying out loud, Specialist!!!” Anaxia growled. “A 3 – TORQUE!!!”

“If I remember my Engineering handbook, I believe that the regulation stipulates that that task shouldn’t be attempted with anything over a 2-Torque Hypo spanner?”  A voice spoke from behind her.

It took a moment for Anaxia to register that the voice that had spoken did not belong to the bumbling, stumbling Specialist Doherty. This voice was not that of a youth, it had a more careworn inflection, sounded more English than Irish and carried a knowing air of amusement to it that annoyed her even more that Riordan’s voice did.

Cramped in the confines of the narrow workspace she peered suspiciously over her shoulder to locate the source of this new voice.

There, behind her in the tube, was a human male.

Certainly far older than Doherty, his greying hair and lined – face that was currently creased with a faint smile confirmed that much. He was clad in the maroon – shouldered uniform of a command officer and Anaxia didn’t really need to see his rank pips nor be a Security Investigations Officer to deduce the identity of this particular interloper.

The new Commanding Officer of the USS Vega, here, in her tube.

Although she was mildly impressed that a man of his age was game enough to take to his hands and knees to brave the distances through the tube network to join her here.

“The manual says a lot of things, Captain Williams.” The Chief Engineer replied flatly as she handed the tool back to her new CO, not letting a trace of emotion show. “What the manual fails to account for is the sheer amount of pressure and wear that is exercised by operating what is effectively a fish – pump for a trillion – litre giant aquarium in the centre of a starship. All those Whales and Porpoises have to take a shit, just like any other being, and it’s not mere a case of holding seawater, a viable ocean – biome has to be artificially maintained and these pumps are essential to that filtration return process.”

The Chief Engineer gently banged the outer casing of the pump with the tool.

“A trillion liters of seawater and dolphin – poop comes through here, hyper-condensed with a factor of pounds per square inch that would make your eyes water, right before that water punched them out through the back of your skull.”

She looked flatly at Trevenan (who continued to smile at her diatribe) and held out the Hypo spanner to him once more.

“You want those bolts tighter than a Ferengi’s pocketbook.” Lieutenant Commander Anaxia Werann said pointedly and waved the unwanted Hypo spanner back at the CO in a manner that brokered no negotiation. It may very well be the Captain’s ship, but down here between decks – it was she that ruled.

“3 – Torque please.”