I kept half an eye on the sensors of the ship as I went through the reports and logs from deltashift.
A dozen ships could be seen moving about, from small shuttles to one that looked like some sort of bulk freighter. We were currently visiting a trade station Neexlis thought may have some of the rarer materials we needed.
Specifically for the guidance system of photon torpedoes.
Personally, I thought this was the spot that had the highest risk of an ambush. Plenty of traffic to hide their approach in.
At least we wouldn't be docking, the away team would shuttle over to the station to see if they could find what we wanted. Hopefully we could get some or I may have to go with Torres' idea and start building older generation torpedoes.
Which honestly, we likely should anyway.
Nothing we encountered so far really rated modern photon torpedoes, other than the Caretaker's array.
Still a bit pissed at Tuvok for using our only tricobalt devices on that one. Antimatter would have been plenty. But I guess I couldn't blame them too much, we couldn't let anything as crazily advanced as fucking teleportation tech come into the hands of the Kazon.
Or maybe we could have, I doubt they would have been able to figure it out.
Nothing to do about it now.
The ships moved slowly back and forth, a pair of small shapes moved what looked like a massive container from the large ship and headed towards the station. As I watched, a shuttle left Voyager for the station.
Neelix, Harry Kim and Tuvok.
"Hey, Chief?"
I banished the reports from my visor, "Yes Hunt?"
She was looking back at me from her console, "Wanna have a look at this? I have... something strange."
Getting to my paws, I crossed over to peer over her shoulder at the readings, "...That has to be a sensor glitch," I said after a second, "I really doubt the captain's ready room is at sixteen hundred kelvin. You'd think she would have mentioned it."
"That's what I thought too," she said, "But diagnostics shows clear on it."
"Is the captain's ready room currently a raging inferno?"
She shook her head, "No, sir. I even asked Ensign Dormes to check."
He had the Ops station during Alpha shift if Kim was unavailable.
"And?"
"No raging inferno," she admitted again and sighed, "I just can't figure out why the temperature sensor thinks it is. Diagnostics says it's fine."
I nodded, sitting down, "Go through the diagnostics steps. Is it the issue with the sensor, the computer or the environment?"
She frowned, brushing her hair back, "...Diagnostics says the sensor is fine. The ready room is not actually on fire. Has to be in the computer."
"Then that's the next step," I said, "Run a diagnostic."
Hunt turned back to her screen and tapped through the LCARs interface. She frowned and then shook her head, "Everything shows green."
Interesting.
"And the sensor?"
"...Still shows hot," she said.
"Next course of action?" I asked her.
She frowned for several seconds before she shook her head, "I'm going up there, I need eyes on that sensor."
I nodded and got up, getting out of her way, "Sometimes the best way," I agreed, "Let me know what you find."
"Yes, chief, thanks," she agreed and moved to grab a toolbox and head out.
Hunt's a good engineer. She just has a tendency to trust the computer a bit too much and has some trouble sometimes in making leaps of logic.
"Computer," I said, "Run a diagnostic of the power system in the captain's ready room. Are there any anomalies?"
"Confirmed. One anomaly detected. Power drain detected."
Yep. Something was arcing a bit. The temperature sensor was usually mounted by one of the lighting panels. Bet there was a tiny spark just by it.
She'll get there.
I checked the external sensors once more. The shuttle was almost at the station.
No signs of Kazon vessels so far. Problem was that if they showed up here, we had no solid proof it was or wasn't someone on the Val Jean that was working with them. Somebody on the station could have called them in.
So in many ways, this was the worst time they could show up.
I moved back to my usual spot, climbing up to the upper level before settling down and going back to my reports.
There were times I regretted taking the chief engineer position. Even disregarding the entire 'thrown across the galaxy' bit, I spent a lot less time being claws on now than ever before.
But it was part of the job.
And this was really the last position where I got to do any of it.
Next step up from chief engineer was executive officer. That was something like ninety percent managing the crew and ten percent bridge duty.
Step after that was Captain and those two switched around a bit.
Neither of which involved being horns deep in mechanical stuff, tinkering.
But that's the price to pay if you want your own command.
And admiral? Forget it. Politics, resource allocation discussions. Meetings upon meetings. Usually station or planet bound.
So maybe being stuck out here wasn't the worst that could happen. What's worse however, is that I'm third in command.
Tuvok and Janeway better keep themselves alive, I don't want to be stuck doing their jobs for the next seventy years. I'll invent a hyperdrive out of pure self defense before I let that happen.
"Hunt to Zephyr."
"Zephyr here."
"I found the issue, sir. There was a power short close to the sensor, it was throwing the readings off. All fixed."
"Good work, Ensign."
