“Ephriam… They did it again. They friggin did it again!” the brash, annoyed and angry voice bellowed from outside his office and the Lieutenant could hear heavy breathing and grunting getting closer. He recognized the voice of one of his officers, Ensign Nisha Kedam. 

It was well known among his staff that they could be on a first-name basis while not in the presence of other departmental personnel or senior staff. A tradition that the young chief science officer carried with him from his days on the Enceladus. 

“Just who are they, Nisha? And what exactly did they do?” Ephriam looked up to the doorway to his open-concept office, connected to one of Hathaway's main science labs. Even with his height, he had to straighten himself up some to see over the ridiculous amount of PADDS he had piled up on his workspace, Nisha hadn't entered just yet. He had given many silent thank yous that the new Captain had yet to find his way down here, the state of the space was less than stellar. 

“Those damn engineers. They reset pallet five again due to their faulty original fix!” Nisha finally entered the space and looked especially peeved. “I spent fifteen hours recalibrating it to meet our needs and now I'm back to square one. Perhaps if we could stop being blown up for five minutes.." the rant continued for several more moments before Nisha paused to catch her breath. 

Ephriam rose from his desk and tried to look serious, an attempt that he succeded at - mostly. He briskly walked over to the replicator and leaned into it. “Two coffees... black… extra hot," the replicator made its familiar hum and the room had a brief accent of blue light before it revealed two steaming cups of hot coffee. Ephriam quickly gathered both and passed one off to Nisha as a gesture of peace before pointing to the small conference area to the right back side of the room. 

“Well.. I suppose the alternative would be to not let engineering fix any more faulty sensor pallets?” it was a rhetorical question, one that Ephriam did not expect an answer to. “It's their job, Nisha. And while, yes, it certainly is an inconvenience to us we need to try and keep positive.”

The ensign sipped her coffee a few times and remained silent. 

“Did you happen to make a backup of the parameters and configurations you had made to optimize the pallet prior?” Certainly, there were hundreds of programmed configurations in the database but true practical science officers would tell you that despite theory, there were always slight differences in reaction to hardware and software and its integration into vessel configurations. Many science departments out there would spend copious amounts of hours tuning each of their sensor pallets to have an optimum function. 

“No…” Nisha continued sipping her coffee and rolled her eyes. “I forgot.”

Ephriam chuckled playfully. “I think we've all been there Nisha. I remember a time when I spent three days tuning hardware on the Intrepid, only to have a colleague accidentally overwrite my changes. I too had not saved a backup version of my settings," he continued to chug back the lifeblood of his day. His department collectively drank way too much of the stuff. “Think of this as an opportunity to do an even better job this time around. Do remember to save a backup this time though.” 

“Screw off.” Nisha grinned - although the two had not had a long working relationship yet, they did closely develop an understanding and mutual respect. “Has anyone ever told you, your eternal positive attitude can be a pain in the ass?” 

“Oh. It's happened on occasion. Picture this though… imagine if you had turned that frustrated energy around and started working on your fix already, instead of bursting in here like a bull ready to charge down its prey.” Ephriam dared not to make eye contact as he took another sip of his coffee, “You could have been ten minutes into it already.” He shifted his eyes to meet hers and laughed. 

Nisha rolled her eyes again, “Yeah. And if I did that then I would not have gotten to have coffee with you, rant about how much I hate engineering and get a break for once.” She felt like throwing what was left of her coffee at him but she knew he had a point. “Fine. I'll get back to work and I'll do an even better job this time." She gulped what was left of her coffee and set it down on the table while she gave Ephriam a forced smile. 

“Just remember to save your wor…” He didn't get a chance to finish before she bolted out of his office just as quickly as she had entered. Ephriam was then faced with the harsh reality of seeing the state of the space, “I really need to get this cleaned up before Captain Romaes decides to pull a surprise inspection on me.” He was speaking to no one but himself now.