The USS Carlsbad has left Starbase 72 in its first official mission, a simple supply run to Starbase Bravo, pick up some crew and supplies and come back to Starbase 72 again. The USS Carlsbad has just stopped at Starbase Bravo and headed back to Starbase 72. Seems simple enough, but the galaxy has taught spacefarers since mankind first explored the stars that anything can happen in an instant.

The USS Carlsbad was cruising at a low speed of warp 3, due to heavy localized subspace distortions and interference in the region. Catersha was in her office, in the Engine room. She likes to watch the subtle thrum of the warp core. She always takes pride in her work and seeing her baby, the Carlsbad’s powerful warp reactor, thrumming with power. As she was watching the warp core having her morning coffee, the warp core started slowing down, both in its pulsing lights and the intensity of the humming. Chief Engineer Lieutenant Commander Catersha put her tall silver and black Starfleet coffee cup on her desk and tapped her master console. As she read the system readout, she relaxed as she saw that the Bridge had ordered to drop out of warp. Then she kept reading the status report, when she saw that the Bridge was requesting full power to sensors.

“Ensign Bradley, increase power to the sensor systems,” Chief Engineer Catersha said.

“Yes ma’am,” the Ensign replied, as he started tapping his console to redirect a secondary plasma relay to boost power to the sensors.

Catersha watched her master systems console and saw the energy boost to the ship’s main sensors. She reached for her coffee cup to take another sip, when suddenly, her status board started beeping alarms and red colored panels lit up, indicating serious problems. Before she could reach for her comm badge, the whole ship shook violently, tossing Catersha from her office to the base of the warp core. The red alert klaxons started blaring when many consoles blew out and seemed like every plasma relay in the Engine room blew out. Hot sparks and debris came raining down everywhere. Catersha struggled to get to her feet, as the ship was still jerking around and shaking violently.

“Status report!” Chief Engineer Catersha barked at her crew, seeing they are all tossed around like leaves in an angry wind.

“Warp engines are offline ma’am. Main power is down to 57%. Power to the shields is holding. Weapons are offline due to three plasma conduits that blew. Damage control teams have been dispatched,” Ensign Bradley reported from an auxiliary station.

Relays kept popping and sending showers of hot spark raining down on everyone and everything in the Engine room. Catersha ran to her master console and brought up a master status display. A schematic of the ship appeared and multiple areas were highlighted in red, indicating heavy damage. Some areas were yellow, meaning slight damage. Most of the ship was still in green, which meant it was still operational.

“Bridge to Engineering, status report?”

“I got repair teams on the warp drive and restoring main power. It is a mess down here sir. We should have full main power restored shortly.”

“Very well. Bridge out.”

“Listen up everyone!” Catersha yelled to her team. “The priorities are main power getting fully restored and the warp drive. Ensign Bradley, reroute the plasma flow and repair the blown out relays. Lieutenants Smith and Rodgers, focus on repairing the warp drive. Damage control team Alpha, focus on ship wide damage. Move it people.”

Catersha went to the master control system board and started a Level 3 ship-wide diagnostic. As the computer was doing the diagnostic, Catersha did a careful survey of her engine room. There was some debris from blown out relays and a plasma conduit and a computer console blew out, but no serious damage there. She was waiting for the diagnostic to get a full picture of damages. She watched her team work hard at fixing the ship. She noticed in her board that the weapons systems were back online.

Ensign Bradley shouted from under an engineering subsystem console. “Ma’am, I managed to get the weapons systems back online.”

Catersha felt a little surprised when she checked the weapons systems and confirmed it. She notified the bridge and started powering up the weapons from auxiliary power.

“Great job on the weapons Ensign. Now help with getting main power back online,” Catersha instructed.

As the master systems console beeped, signaling full power for the shields, Catersha’s hands flew across the control panel with practiced ease. Her eyes darted between the various display screens, monitoring the ship’s systems and power distribution.

“Diverting all available power to the shields,” the computer’s voice announced, its tone calm and detached.

However, Catersha knew that might not be enough. She quickly assessed the ship’s power grid, identifying secondary systems that could be temporarily sacrificed to bolster the shields. Her fingers danced across the console, manually rerouting power from non-essential systems and adding it to the shields.

The console beeped again, indicating the power transfer was complete. Catersha’s eyes locked onto the shield strength display, watching as the numbers ticked upward, the shields growing stronger with each passing moment.

“Shields now at 187% capacity,” the computer reported, its voice steady.

Catersha’s gaze swept the engine room from her master systems console. A maintenance team was already starting to clean up the debris from the floor and systems were coming back online because main power had been restored a couple minutes prior to the power demand for shields. Cstersha then heard several “high-pitched whizzing’’ sounds, and felt the launch of several photon torpedoes.

Seconds later, explosion shockwaves hit and violently shook the ship from when the torpedoes hit the comet and detonated, destroying the comet. Suddenly, most of the systems were overloaded from the comet’s destruction and resulting shockwaves. Most of the ship’s plasma conduits blew, sending shrapnel and debris all over, much worse this time. Catersha and her engineering team were thrown around again. Catersha hit her shoulder hard on a wall she was tossed into. She cried out in pain, cursing in Klingon. She heard someone yell out in pain, a young female Ensign. Catersha struggled to her feet, as the ship kept rocking and bucking under her. As she got to her feet, she flew forward and got doubled over as she hit the master systems console, hitting her head on the console. She swore another Klingon oath and managed to regain her balance. She looked over towards one of the consoles and saw it had exploded and a young female Ensign laid on the floor nearby, badly burned. Ensign Bradley was kneeling next to her. Catersha hit her comm badge.

“Engineering to Sickbay! Medical emergency in Main Engineering. I got an officer down. She is badly burned from a console exploding into her.”

“Acknowledged Chief, med team on its way.”

Catersha looked at Bradley, with urgency in her eyes.

“Ensign, I need you to go to the master systems console and do a full damage report for me.” Ensign Bradley just looked frozen, starting at the young Ensign. Catersha raised her voice, getting his attention. “Ensign Bradley! Wake up! I need you, right now! I will stay here with your girlfriend, but right now I need you to do as I asked. Understood?!”

Ensign Bradley snapped out of whatever shock he was in, looked at Catersha and slowly nodded as what she told him sunk in. He slowly stood up and headed to the master console, tapping commands into the computer. The medical team arrived and quickly attended to the downed female Ensign. One medic quickly scanned Catersha, but she waved her off. Catersha stood up and walked to where Ensign Bradley was standing.

“What’s taking so….” She demanded to know why it was taking so long for a full damage report. She cursed again. She hit her comm badge.

“Engineering to Bridge. I got a mess down here. Main power is offline right now. Auxiliary power is holding at 65%. Impulse engines are sluggish. The warp reactor is badly damaged. Over a dozen plasma relays overloaded. We got a hull breach on deck 7. Life support is holding for now, but I can’t guarantee it will stay that way,” Chief Engineer Catersha reported.”

“Acknowledged Chief. Top priority is restoring main power,” replied Captain Skyrunner, “Bridge out.”

The medical team managed to carry away the badly injured Ensign and damage control teams Delta came into the engine room and started making repairs. Lieutenant Williams came in with them.

“Williams, what are you doing down here,” Catersha inquired, holding her left arm.

“Commander Lionel sent me down here to help.” He looked at the condition Catersha was in and could clearly see she was in a lot of pain. “With all due respect Chief, but you are in no condition to stay here. Suggest you go to Sickbay.”

Catersha gave him a stern look and was about to give him a piece of her mind, but just as she was about to open her mouth, Commander Lionel walked in and saw her.

“You look like crap Cat. Go to Sickbay,” Aramis said. She looked at him and was about to object, but he fired first. “That wasn’t a request, Chief.” He gave her a friendly smile. “Go get checked out please.”

Catersha, realizing she was outmaneuvered, simply nodded to Aramis. Looking at Williams, she gave her last order for now. “Take over Lieutenant Williams. Top priority is getting main power back on line.”

“Yes ma’am,” replied Williams, then walked to the master systems console for a full report.

Catersha walked out of the engine room, holding her left arm, clearly in a lot of pain. He was concerned about her, both as the Chief Engineer but also his girlfriend.