“No, this is not good. Daughter, please come here!”
“Yes father, I am coming to you.” QingTing looks up from a PADD, picks up a small toolbox, and briskly answers her father’s call.
“Give me the scanner. These chips are not in order. We must do better. Remember that.”
“Yes, father.”
Chief Engineer Jiansheng Wu had boarded the Solvang several days early with his family to get a headstart on his own inspection. His daughter, QingTing Wu joins him in main engineering, as they inspect the ship’s systems after the refit from a command vessel to an engineering vessel.
Wu had a section of the wall paneling open, exposing one of the power relays. “These control the flow of power to some of the ship sections. These will not be good for the new plans of the ship. No one would have noticed this until they tried to use the new laboratory.”
“Father, two people are here.”
“Lieutenant Commander Wu, I presume?” Captain O’va observed, as she and Lieutenant Commander Valerius had been making an early walkthrough of the ship.
Wu stood up, dusted off his jumpsuit, and greeted them, introducing himself and his daughter. As Wu and O’va exchanged greetings and pleasantries, Valerius seemed lost in thought.
While their presence itself was not an issue, one thing remained on his mind – how did Wu and his family board without the proximity alarms sending a notification to him? That was something that he had personally set up last week. If the new Chief Engineer was capable of doing that, what else was he capable of?
“No one was scheduled to board for another day. Yet your presence did not trigger any of the sensors…”
“You are correct. The sensors did not register any intruders, and thus did not trigger any alarms.”
“No…they did not…” Valerius noted, his eyes narrowing as he checked the sensor logs on his PADD.
“Your sensors have already been upgraded, with the warning threshold optimized. Long overdue.” Wu stated nonchalantly.
Both the Captain and Valerius looked at each other, taken aback, and nodded in approval. Wu had clearly impressed them both.
“QingTing, show the Captain the list you are writing.”
The young girl extended the PADD towards the Captain. She was no more than a teenager judging by her features, but her notes were so thorough and coherent that they were nearly indistinguishable from those of a professional.
The preliminary parts list was a curious mix of a wide variety of parts. Wu contnued his work with the isolinear chips as O’va was reading the list, partially aloud. She was thoroughly impressed with the sheer ingenuity and brilliance of it all. It was raw data at the moment, but as she read further into the list, she could start to see patterns and ideas forming.
“Shield generators from a prototype Nebula-class repurposed for localized containment fields…sensor arrays from a Challenger-class for enhanced bio-signature tracking…warp core intermix baffles from a Niagara-class reconfigured for energy dampening chambers…”
She returned the PADD to Qingting, and watched Wu as he rearranged isolinear chips with graceful dexterity.
“…this is far beyond what Starfleet expected of us for this mission. Some, if not most of these components are decades old, and the technology in a quite a few of them is experimental. Some of it was not even released for formal fleet-wide service.”
“Correct. That is why it will work.”
Valerius remained guarded, though not hostile — simply cautious. He had seen firsthand the direct result of experiments gone awry in his years in security. “Unfortunately I will require more of an explanation before we start integrating experimental or foreign technologies and systems with the ship. Those thought processes, while novel, could also pose greater risk than anticipated.”
“The prototypes were built for higher output by design – to handle unexpected stresses. Newer technology focuses on efficiency, not resilience. They are less elegant, but more adaptable. And they still exist in the surplus yard – their presence tells us that they work. If they did not, we would find them with burnt-out relays, or not at all. And yes, they are still in a surplus yard because no one thought to use all of the parts together – they only saw old, discarded parts they consider obsolete.”
“We will certainly have to discuss this further. Any salvage must be thoroughly screened prior to implementation” remarked Valerius. Wu is brilliant, but ship security always takes precedence. “Experimental parts are still just that, even if they are Starfleet in origin. We will have over 300 people on board soon.”
“Correct, that is the exact reason why I designed these upgrades. Many people to keep safe. “I have a list of parts on that PADD my daughter is holding. When finished, I will send you the list. The containment unit we are supposed to obtain – it is not good enough. I will use other parts from the surplus yard to improve it. One of the workers there – he owes me several favors.
Starfleet gave you a vault for hazardous materials. My design, a vault for dangerous materials. Different thing.”
“Very well. I look forward to your report. Carry on, Wu. Nice to meet you, Qingting.”
As the Captain and Lt. Cmdr. Valerius departed main engineering, their discussion continued.
“Bridge.”
“He is unorthodox. Incredibly brilliant. Exactly what we will need.”
O’va smirked. “I had a feeling you would say that. I could sense that you were impressed. He bypassed even your sensor alarms, Val. He bested a Romulan in subterfuge.”
She laughed, amused at the realization.
“And then he improved the sensors afterwards. I am as equally concerned as I am impressed.”
