Lieutenant JG Cynndle Oin’sun walked into the auxiliary command centre for the starbase and looked around. He had worked here before when he was in ops and knew it fairly well but this was his first time walking in with a red uniform and he was a bit self-conscious about it. He was happy to be back on the command track after the Dawnbringer.

He approached the Officer of the watch and saluted. “Sir, Lieutenant JG Oin’sun reporting.”

The short Telleraite turned and looked up at him, “Good, just in time. I know you are new to this post but you have done it before from what I was told. I want you to work with Ensign tr’Khellian as he is new to the station.” He handed Cynndle a PADD, “Your orders. I believe the Ensign should be here any moment. Dismissed.”

Low and behold there was the swooshing sound of the door to the auxiliary command center opening and in strode a 6′ brick of a male, half humanoid half Vulcan maybe Romulan.  The Ensign was on the older end of the scale for his rank, appearing to be in his 30s.

tr’Khellian scanned the room, eyes locking onto the Officer of the Watch and approached with PADD offered, “Ensign S’Lone tr’Khellian reporting for new assignment.” S’Lone came to attention.

The Officer of the Watch glanced at the PADD, “Ensign did you enjoy your duty assignment as a Greeter?”

S’Lone, without missing a beat answered, “Yes Sir I did.  My 2 weeks gave me a great appreciation how vast Starbase Bravo truly is.” His ernest smile tremored with a slight grin.

The Officer of the Watch handed the PADD back to tr’Khellian and motioned to the nearby Lt JG, “Ensign may I introduce Lt. Oin’sun.”

tr’Khellian turned and gave a quick salute to the Lt.

The Officer of the Watch continued, “Lt would you take Ensign tr”Khellian with you to the main armaments hanger bay and show him the ropes while you both oversee shipments being offloaded? There is a large shipment of Quantum Torpedoes just waiting for 2 eager Deck Officers to process. Your shift starts in an hour.” The Officer of the Watch nodded toward the exit, then turned to the display facing him.

“Will do sir,” Cynndle said with a quick salute and turned to face Ensign tr”Khellian. He held out his hand, “Good to met you Ensign tr”Khellian. I am Cynndle Oin’sun. Shall we head down?”

“Sounds great,” S’Lone responded by shaking Oin’sun’s outstretched hand then turned to follow the LT out the door.

As they walked down the corridor towards the turbolift Cynndle looked over at S’Lone, “So how are you finding it so far? You had two weeks on Meet and Greet duty? How’d that go?”

S’Lone responded, “It’s a long way from my previous occupation.  I ran a transportation business.  Moving this and that from there and there. It was a bit more,” pausing briefly, “Exciting.”

“In regard to ‘Meet & Greet’ duty; it gave me a newfound sense of how vast and complex this Starbase is plus I met a bunch of folks that I will never see again.” S’Lone grinned, “An Ensign’s life is really like a cog in a big wheel.”

“What about yourself? Did you a draw duty before this one?”

“Well, this is my first assignment as Deck Officer on Bravo but I have been here since early this year with Operations which kept me really busy. I also did random shifts in engineering, security and medical for a while which helped me to get a better picture of what happens on the station.” They reached the turbo lift and entered “Sector Golf-One-Cyan, Deck 310, Pylon Alpha” Cynndle said and the lift began to rapidly move through the station. “Before I was here though I was on the USS Dawnbringer, a sabre, for two years as an ensign. Was a junior bridge officer there so did stuff like this when we rearmed and such.”

The lift slowed and stopped and opened onto one of the defence pylons. “The hanger should be just up here.” Cynndle said as they stepped off the lift.

S’Lone followed Cynndle into the Hangar. “Impressive,” he remarked.  The hangar was as wide as it was tall and was abuzz with activity. A group of Ordinance Officers were busy loading various armaments onto transportation carts and moving them out of the hangar. 

One of the Ordinance officers walked over to the newly arrived pair of Deck officers. “You two must be my extra set of hands,” he said looking at S’Lone and Cynndle.  “We are done with the 2nd shipment of Torps.  Your job is to inspect and verify each crate of two Quantum Torpedoes matches their manifest.” Handing Cynndle a PADD. “Any questions?”

It was well into their shift and the pair was making fast work of verifying manifests having decided to divide and conquer when S’Lone heard a very faint….

Beep.

He stopped moving and held his breath. S’Lone’s sensitive Romulan ears seeking the out-of-place sound.

Beep.

S’Lone’s ears picked up the faint sound coming from a nearby stack of Torpedo transportation crates. ‘That can’t be good,’ he thought.

Beep.

S’Lone walked over to the stack of torpedo crates and put his ear against the likely culprit.

BEEP.

“Um. Lt.  I think we have a problem.” S’Lone motioned to Cynndle with his free hand.

Beep. Beep.

“I don’t think the crate should be making that sound,”S’Lone whispered. “Why am I whispering?”

Cynndle walked over and frowned, “No, no it should not.” He said as he looked up trying to find one of the ordinance officers who had seemingly all disappeared; no double taking their carts of torpedos to the various armouries, “Figures,” he muttered under his breath. As he did he pulled out his tricorder and began to scan the crate; his frown deepening.

“Well, someone is going to have hell to pay for this. It’s armed.” Cynndle said as he looked over at S’Lone, “Good catch, now let’s see about disarming this thing. You remember your ordinance training well?”

S’Lone responded, “Sure standard torpedoes in my Junior Year at the academy. Standard Torps are a far cry from Quantums. It’s been a few years since I opened the guts to a Quantum Torpedo. Maybe it was 2369ish when I ran a charter business out of Bajor.  These things don’t just activate on their own.” S’Lone could see the reaction in Cynndle’s face and decided to try to distract Cynndle from why a charter service would be mixed up with Quantum Torpedoes.  

“I’m 60 chronological but due to my Romulan bloodline, I’m 30 years old apparent. Heck, some Romulans live to 200.  But keep that between us.” S’Lone grined.

Turning back to the Torpedo crate, “One of us needs to scan for boobytraps or trigger devices while the other pulls down the crate and opens up the warhead access panel.”

Looking at S’Lone Cynndle nodded and he quickly tapped a new set of commands into his tricorder and a moment later it beeped. “Not reading any boobytraps or triggering devices. There appears to be some degradation within the bio-neural circuitry leading to the arming mechanism. Possibly a random error missed in quality control…” he said as he knelt down closer to the weapon. “Not seeing any signs of tampering either.” He exhaled and looked around. “I am calling this in CO here.”

Cynndle tapped his combadge, “Lieutenant Oin’sun to Lieutenant Commander Roderick, we have an emergency here. A quantum torpedo has armed itself, Alpha Pylon, main hanger.”

The coms were silent for what seemed like forever when a gruff voice came over then, “WHAT!? BLOODY HELL! On our way, we will be there in a couple of minutes. Is it stable?”

Cynndle eyed the torpedo, “Appears to be sir, shall we leave…” as he said it the beeping increased in frequency causing Cynndle to glance at the tricorder, “Shit, no, it isn’t. Antimatter containment is set to drop in 120 seconds, we don’t have a few minutes.” he said and glanced at S’Lone a worried expressing on his face.

“You need to disarm it then. Get in, remove the arming mechanism should shut it down. Good luck.” Roderick said over the comms.

“Best get to it then shall we? Do you see a toolkit so we can get into it?” Cynndle asked S’Lone.

Glancing around S’Lone spied a toolkit laying against the aft bulkhead. After sprinting over and back S’lone’s steady hands made short work accessing the cradle that contained the speck of antimatter that was the Torpedo’s primary source of ‘Boom’.

Cynndle anticipating S’Lone’s next request set a countdown timer on the tricorder. He knelt down beside S’Lone and began helping him to loosen the cradle.

00:00:90:00

Two self-sealing stembolts later the cradle popped loose into S’Lone’s steady hands. They were almost blistering to the touch. S’Lone looked at Cynndle, “I think it’s in a feedback loop.  It’s going critical.”

“We will have to beam it out of here. No other option.” Cynndle said.

00:00:12:58

S’Lone placed the cradle on the floor and tapped his combadge, =^=Computer. Emergency transport. Lock on to the failing antimatter containment cradle at my feet and beam into open space at least one kilometer away from any manned or unmaned objects. =^=

00:00:02:12

The computer processed the request and activated the transportation cycle.

00:00:00:03

Shirpazzzzzz’ went the transportation beam. The cradle disappeared.

00:00:00:00

Flash of light momentarily brightened the aft bulkhead view port.  S’Lone could have sworn the Starbase vibrated under his boots.  S’Lone turned to Cynndle. “Feel like filling out the reports and letting the Officer of the Watch know?”

Cynndle sighed and laughed, “Feels like the least we could do after that. Good job by the way with that. Sure you aren’t an ordinance officer?” 

Deflectingly S’Lone answered, “I’ve had some chartered transport deliveries go a sideways in my past. He grinned warmly. ”All that matters is that we caught it in time.”

Just then the door to the hanger bay opened and in rushed four ordinance officers including Lieutenant Commander Roderick. “Well, looks like you two sorted that after all,” he said visibly relaxing as he saw the dismantled torpedo. “Good job, both of you. You saved a lot of lives today. I will message you if I have any questions.” Turning to the two ensigns he was with he quickly instructed them to get everyone on their teams to the hanger bay and to conduct a full inspection of the entire shipment before both the Lieutenant he had accompanied him and Roderick began to examine the torpedo.

Cynndle looked S’Lone. “Back to Command then and report in I guess.”

S’Lone replied, “Sounds great.  Wanna grab a drink in the Cantina after our shift ends? First round is on me.”

Cynndle let out a laugh. “Yeah, definitely.” With that, they turned and headed towards command.