Lady In Red

Posted on Thu May 4, 2017 @ 9:02pm by Captain Madelina Weisz & Master Chief Petty Officer Thomas Barnes

Mission: Avatar
Location: Operations Office
Timeline: MD 1 || 1330 Hours

Tom's first mission aboard the Triumphant did not disappoint. It had passion, intrigue, mystery, love and more. It was all that he could have hoped for when he took this assignment, and he definitely did not regret it.

That is probably why he found himself suddenly disappointed. He'd gotten used to the fast paced lifestyle so quickly, that dealing with the mundane daily operations caused him to daydream about the great beyond once again. He supposed he should be thankful that he wasn't stuck behind a transporter console like he had been for much of his career.

He grunted. He'd traded a transporter console for an endless amount of paperwork which included requisitions, transfers, consumption reports and more. Tom sighed. Oh, how he longed for an adventure...

The moment Tom sighed, the song Lady in Red began to play inside his office. His department was bustling with activity outside as his personnel went about their normal duties. The question was, though... which one of them had decided it was a good idea to mess with their Chief? It was no longer a secret to many on board the ship that he was seeing the Executive Officer.

Tom chuckled, surprised not just at the musical selection, but the mere fact that someone managed to override the security protocols in his office just to play the track. He liked a good practical joke, and he decided to give the poor sap his or her moment's due before trying to figure out what who'd done it.

"Lady in red!" he declared in chorus with the music. His door was open, so there was no way he could be doing this unnoticed.

As people walked by his open door, some had puzzled looks on their faces while others couldn't help but laugh at the antics of their department head. Aside from that, no one showed any signs of guilt or hung around long enough to spy on the man. In fact, as the song began to fade out, another began to play. Pink by Aerosmith with the volume increasing slightly.

As much as he enjoyed the musical selection, Tom knew this would only keep going until he put an end to it. The workplace was meant for the on-duty details, not so much on the practical jokes. "Computer, turn off music."

There was a pause in the music. "Unable to comply," came the emotionless tone of a female voice. With that, the music resumed where it had left off with a much larger increase in volume.

Tom frowned and set down the PADD he was holding. "Computer, disable the office speakers."

"Unable to comply," the computer responded just before it kicked things up a notch with a very fast paced and incredibly upbeat mariachi tune.

From inside the corridor, a couple people gathered at the open door to his office. A young woman cleared her throat, then spoke in hopes of gaining their Chief's attention. "Sir, there's an issue at one of the department consoles. The entire thing blacked out, and now the words "you have died of dysentery" are all that's on the screen."

"Dysentery?" Thomas mumbled, even though it would not be audible at the music's high volume. Tom followed her out of the office to see the console for himself. Sure enough, it was just as the woman said. "Run a trace on the console and these speakers. Let's find out who the prankster is."

The young woman settled down in front of a different console (as the other was currently frozen with the words on the screen) to run the requested trace. As she watched the scan progress, her brow furrowed. "Sir, it's not showing any signs of a prankster, and as far as I can tell, the speakers in your office as well as the console are... fine."

Tom had taken a position at the console next to the woman, doing some checking of his own. He'd gone a bit deeper into the ship's mainframe and had returned with the same result. Everything was as it should be. "Standby to disconnect Operations from the primary ODN shunt. We'll give it a few seconds and switch over to the secondary. That should take care of it."

"Standing by," the young woman said, preparing herself for any instructions that were to come her way. Being newly enlisted as she was meant she wasn't as used to the daily dealings of starship life, but thankfully, she was a very fast learner.

Tom moved to a different part of the room, instructing other crewmen to different locations therein as they prepared to remove the shunt. "We'll lose everything but the lights and life support," Tom announced to everyone. Those items were not controlled by the shunt and were operated from elsewhere, so there was little to worry about in that regard.

"Three..." Tom said, getting his hands around the shunt in the open maintenance locker. "Two... One!" With a loud heave, Tom twisted and pulled, disconnecting the room from the main computer.

The young woman and the others he called to help did their parts. It was instant that the obnoxious music blaring from the speakers in Tom's office finally stopped, leaving them all in total silence until she spoke. "Since it wasn't the work of a prankster, what do you think caused it, Chief?"

"I wish I knew," Tom replied, looking suspiciously around the room. "Let's get the secondary shunt online," he said, moving over to the other side of the room. "In the meantime, prime everything for safe mode."

"Yes, sir," the young woman stated. She and some of the others began the process of getting thing ready to run in safe mode. If this did happen to be the work of a prankster, they'd done a great job of covering their tracks. Still, though, she wasn't so sure that was the case.

Tom removed a panel where the secondary shunt lay in wait. It wouldn't take much but a heave to connect it and get it up and running. With a deep breath, he lifted it into place and locked down the clamps. He then tapped a couple commands into the small screen that lit up just above the shunt, instructing the secondary core to power up the stations in Operations. "Here we go..." he muttered.

Shortly after the secondary computer was brought online, a call from the Captain announcing a senior staff briefing came through.

The chief looked around, noting that all seemed to be normal. Of course, time would only tell how long that would last. "Ensign, you're in charge until I get back. Run a Level Three Diagnostic on the interfaces and on standard equipment. Find out what the hell is going on."

With that, he grabbed a spare PADD and left the room, bound for the conference room.