All things functionally impractical but not impossible

Posted on Mon Nov 24th, 2025 @ 11:10pm by Lieutenant Tork & Lieutenant Irynya & Crewman Ariadne Tolbert

Mission: Port of Call
Location: Main Shuttle bay
Timeline: Mission Day 2 at 1300

Lieutenant Tork found himself in the main (and only) shuttle bay on the Sojourner, a place he had visited a few days prior when he’d arrived after his… sabbatical… on the Kazon ship that he’d had the misfortune of staying on. His return, such that it was, to that particular compartment came on the heels of an idea that had been percolating in his head ever since he’d modified his quarters shower to be more… shower-like. Rather than having the ship sit around and present itself as an easy target while repairs, much needed though they may have been, usurped valuable travel time… what if Tork could use some creative engineering tactics that ‘theoretically’ worked to keep the ship on course and at warp the entire time he was ‘plugging the leaks’?

Having ‘liberated’ a PaDD from a workstation that wasn’t being used by anyone, Tork had brought up and was studying the damage reports, specifically the hull damage. Several swaths of the ship had been treated rather unkindly by… something… and Tork frowned as he read the rather pessimistic but probably not entirely wrong repair estimates. Much of the forecasting depended heavily on ‘commonly accepted repair practices’ that Starfleet engineers tended to rely on to make said estimates. Tork, however, had never agreed with the ‘book’ approach and seldom (if ever) paid them more then cursory attention while he ignored them and did what needed to be done in whatever way suited his fancy that day.

Today, his fancy had guided him to make the shuttle bay into a makeshift industrial replicator platform so that he could construct replacement plating for the ship and then use the ship’s transporter system, via a string of complicated and functionally impractical but not impossible theoretical calculations to then move said plates to where they were needed most. The trouble with all of that was, he couldn’t be in two places at once, so he needed to ‘commandeer’ personnel where he found them, or at the very least buy someone off so they wouldn’t report him to someone who might actually care about him doing what he was planning to do.

Although Ariadne Tolbert did remember seeing the Ferengi that had arrived with the rescue party after Subrek abducted seven of the ship's crew, she hadn't seen or heard a peep about him since. And so it was with some surprise that she peered down into the shuttle bay to find a Ferengi with her PADD standing in the middle of the Shuttle Bay. This part of her job was, usually, boring. They were moving at high speed. There were no outbound or incoming shuttles. She'd run all of the necessary diagnostics, walked the length of the bay, shifted to look over the Waverider in its own berth, and then returned to continue the post action report she'd been working on for Lieutenant Irynya.

The chirp of her commbadge filled the otherwise quiet control room. "Crewman Tolbert to Lieutenant Irynya, umm... Chief... you may want to come down to the shuttle bay."

The curious, though tinny voice of the Risian pilot was quick to reply. "Acknowledged Crewman. Is there something particular I need to see?"

Tolbert leaned over the controls a bit further as the Ferengi below moved deeper into the room. "I'm, umm... not sure yet..." she answered.

The hesitation on the other end of the line was notable and Tolbert chided herself inwardly. Maybe there wasn't anything, but she had a gut feeling she was going to need the Chief pilot all the same.

Finally, Irynya replied. "Ok. On my way."

Breathing a sigh of relief, Tolbert made her way to the stairs that connected her to the main shuttle bay and started down.

"Can I help you with something Mr..." she left the question hanging as she realized that she didn't even know the man's name.

"Tork," the Ferengi replied without looking up from the PaDD he was currently stabbing with his right index finger whilst frowning, "And I'm currently torn between two designs and I'm having a bit of an issue with settling on one. Do you know anything about the power distribution network in this bay? Where they terminate, where the last replicator feed system is? Are there any crawl-ways above the ceiling panels that could fit... oh... eight or nine replicator pattern projector matrices... perhaps eleven if there's room. That would be helpful."

If Tork noticed that Ariadne's entire posture was one of bewildered hesitation then she knew less about Ferengi body language than she had thought. Not that she'd met many Ferengi in her lifetime, but body language was, still, body language. "Replicators?" she asked, perplexed. "In the ceiling?"

"Not the entire replicator, just the projectors for it. The floor of the bay would be converted into the actual replicator platform. I just need to work out the details of how I can configure it. If the ceiling doesn't have the room, I could always rig up cross-modal replicator banks. They're a little less efficient than I prefer, but that could work..." the Ferengi continued to almost talk to himself while stabbing at the PaDD.

"Umm... Has... uh..." she looked around, craning her neck to peer at the shuttle bay doors as if she might make the Chief appear out of nothing. "I haven't heard of any plans for a change like this. Should I be looking for something from Lieutenant Irynya...? Or Commander Cross?"

"Who?" Tork asked in a puzzled manner, "I haven't even worked out how I'm going to do it yet, far too early to be coordinating with anyone else about it. And asking permission really isn't how you get things done, in my experience. You just do the thing and then nod while people complain about it while not actually paying them any attention because what you did worked and they're all alive to complain in the first place. At least... that's how I've done it so far. And Rule of Acquisition number 217 agrees with me on that point, so I have that going for me."

"Rule of Acquisition number 217?" Tolbert asked, as much because she was now entirely lost about what Tork was suggesting as she was clear on what the Rules of Acquisition had to do with any of it.

"Rule 217, 'You can’t free a fish from water,'" Tork explained to the confused crewman, "I believe its similar to the hew-mon phrase 'If it isn't busted, do not fuss with it'... or something to that effect. It wasn't as catchy as Rule 217, so I might not have it completely right."

Blinking, Tolbert opened her mouth to say... something... anything... but nothing emerged. She was just about ready to flee to the shuttle bay control room again, citing things she needed to work on when the pneumatic whoosh of the shuttle bay's corridor side door announced the arrival of a newcomer. Tolbert whirled, breathing a sigh as the familiar figure of Irynya entered the space.

Iry surveyed the two assembled, not missing the clear relief on Ariadne's face. Equal to that was the intensive focus that Tork was giving to his PADD. "Lieutenant Tork," Iry said, raising her brows in a question, "have we mishandled something with your shuttle?"

"Hmm?" Tork muttered before looking up to see a new yet somewhat familiar face, "Shuttle? Why would I care about a shuttle? I'm trying to figure out how to convert this place into an industrial replicator so we can patch the hull without us having to drop out of warp and sit around in unfriendly territory like morons. I was just asking the nice female over there about the ceiling, and whether there was room to fit replicator projection matrices in there or if I'd have to mount them to two opposing walls and run a cross feed and lose a little efficiency in the process. I'm not a fan of it, if I'm being honest, but if I can't get the equipment where I want it, it's better than the alternative of not being able to generate the plating sheets we'd need to do the patch work quickly so we can stop wasting power on emergency force fields and use it for more important things... like life support, and the ship not imploding if the force fields fail because of a power drain issue."

Tork paused and gave Irynya an appraising look, "Do you know the layout of this bay any better? Any thoughts that might help me get it converted and get repairs started?"

Irynya wasn't entirely unfamiliar with the degree to which Tork's creativity could result in benefit. His door sealing device had, after all, been key to their successful escape from Subrek's minions and, ultimately, the ship. She also hadn't heard a peep from Sheldon, who was now the Acting Chief until a new one could be assigned, about anything like what Tork had just described. She considered, for a moment, if she should clear this with him first, but in the end decided that the discussion of the possibilities couldn't hurt. If Tork did come up with a plausible option they could always get ahold of Sheldon for approval.

"An industrial replicator..." she said thoughtfully. "That's an interesting concept. I don't know the layout exactly, but we can pull the schematics in the control room." Not waiting to see if Tork was following she pivoted to head toward the metal stairs that led up to the next level. She nodded to Tolbert, giving the woman an encouraging look that she hoped suggested she would take over from here and then climbed the stairs. "Assuming something could be done how would you handle the shuttles themselves?" she asked over her shoulder.

"Realistically, I can only convert up to half the bay. You can just squeeze them all on the side I'm not using," Tork responded as he approached the nearest console to where he'd entered and brought up the schematics he needed. Some manner of curse left the Ferengi's lips as he looked over the information being displayed, though the computer couldn't translate it for some reason, so it ended up sounding like disjointed sounds to anyone who wasn't a native speaker of Ferengi.

"Looks like I'm going to have to go with the less efficient method. At least the power distribution grid runs where I need it to, and someone had the good sense to route the replicator feed system through this part of the ship too. I'm almost shocked someone from the design team actually had two brain cells they could rub together long enough to do something halfway right. And since I'd only need to replicate one type of material from it, I can scrap the phase discriminators from the design, maybe even have it materialize the plating on its side so there won't be as much pattern loss..." Tork rambled on to himself as his eyes shifted from the schematics to the PaDD he'd 'borrowed' and made adjustments to the schematics he had been throwing together throughout his visit to the shuttle bay.

"It's going to be a bit messy, but it'll work... and that's really that matters at this point," the Ferengi seemed to come to a decision about it before turning to Irynya, "If your people can move the shuttles toward the door of the bay, I can have the floor panels ripped up and the replicators fabricated in about three or four hours, unless you have some folks who can help me bolt everything to the walls as I finish rigging up the projection matrices. Oh, and I'll probably just go ahead and use my shuttle for the parts I don't have stashed away in my quarters, so you don't need to move that one."

Up to this point Irynya had been happy to entertain the hypothetical, but when it came to stripping a shuttle for parts she held the line. "There's a reasonable chance that Commander Cross can get you the materials you need. I'd prefer you not take the shuttle apart. And, Lieutenant Parsons can get you the people." She had stopped her ascent and returned to stand next to Tork, peering over his shoulder at the schematics and making about half as much sense of them as she would have liked.

She gave him a sardonic look as she continued. "Besides that while I am happy to move the shuttles for you, my people are a small team and... you know... kinda busy also flying the ship." Pausing, the Risian considered the options, tugging her cheek between her teeth as she thought. "Ok," she finally continued. "Let's start with Lieutenant Parsons and Commander Cross. I'm not sure if either are on duty, but if they aren't I'll ask them to come here directly. Does that work?"

"Don't really need materials," Tork said as he looked up from his schematics, "Most of the parts I need are already in my crates that I removed from the shuttle's pattern buffer yesterday. The shuttle itself will make up the majority of the bulk matter it will take to replicate hull plating, because if I don't use it, unless the ship has a store of fresh foods, no one's going to be able to eat much of anything for the next few weeks until we get to where ever it is we're supposedly going. But if you'd rather eat emergency rations from storage, I can leave the shuttle as is. I don't mind a bit of bland food now and then, it only keeps me alive so I can tinker another day. Doesn't have to taste good to do that."

The Ferengi looked back down at his borrowed PaDD, "But bodies I will need, so I don't mind you asking folks for some of those, since you know these people better than I do."

Brow furrowing in thought, Iry considered the Ferengi's reasoning. She was loathe to lose a shuttle--even one in need of repair. But it was apparent she was going to need to let her team known to keep an eye on what, if anything, Tork might be accessing in the shuttle bay going forward. She hadn't even been aware he had been back to his shuttle since they had returned from the Korda-Lisrit. Had she not already known that Tork couldn't possibly have been the culprit she might have suspected him as the architect of the Bingo game she and Noah had stumbled into. They still didn't know who had attempted the original replication of Romuan Ale on one of the shuttles.

"Ok," she finally conceded. "I'm sure we'd all rather not have to worry about food than make sure the shuttle gets back for repairs." She considered a moment longer and then reached up to tap her commbadge.

Tork chuckled at her statement, "Figured that'd be a convincing enough argument. No one likes emergency rations, not even the people who invented them."

"Irynya to Cross," she spoke into the air. "Do you have a moment to look at something with Tork and I in the shuttle bay?"

To be continued...

A Post by;

Lieutenant Irynya
Chief Flight Control Officer

Lieutenant Tork
Engineering Type, Freelance