“Whoop,” the green-skinned Orion engineer said from his awkward position, half hanging from one of the Jeffries Tubes. “Careful, now, Munchkin.”
Utopia Planitia shipyards had a large community of exocomps working for Starfleet helping to build, repair, refurbish, and update their fleet. This one was young, as exocomps went, and was incredibly helpful to Mourad as he tooled around another Akira-class ship that he was on the build team for. The third for them, fifth for Mourad.
They had found they worked together quite well, and so Munchkin, a third generation exocomp, which didn’t mean that much overall except that like many of their generation they actually found having vocal modulators useful and that they hadn’t been built for that long, generally tagged along with the Orion on whatever project he was assigned to. They had even replicated a gold-tone coating to match Mourad’s uniform color.
The exocomp shot a quick burst of thruster and hovered in air long enough to help Mourad steady himself. “You are the one that should be careful.”
The engineer laughed, returning to rebraiding some of the bio-neural cabling in the open tube. “It’d be easier if they hadn’t turned on the grav yet.”
“True.” The exocomp zipped over to do a small spot-weld on a section that their scanners suggested.
“Heeeeeeeyyyyyy, Big Mo!” the voice of one of Mourad’s teammates, Lieutenant Braccas, echoed down the main hall. Mourad stuck his head back out of the Jeffries Tube. “There you are! I wanted to be the first to congratulate you.”
“Eh?” Mourad ran a hand through his dark green-brown hair, then clipped the access panel shut and pushed himself out of the tube, casually flipping in midair to land mostly gracefully on his feet. “Ship isn’t done yet. Almost. Maybe a week, then she’ll be ready for shakedown.” This ship, the Forger, was the fifth Akira class Mourad had helped build– the first being the original Akira itself. It was also the first that he was on the command build team for.
Braccas shook his head. “Not that. You’re going ship-side, brother!”
Mourad dropped the spanner he was holding. “Wait… what?”
“Ship-side. Specifically, this ship. Just got pushed out on the band a few minutes ago– you, Paulaner, and Vorkas all getting Chief of Engineering slots and a shiny new pip.” Braccas grinned. “Moving up in the world.”
Mourad blinked. He had been ship-side before, but since the most recent assignment to the shipyards, he had figured he would be spending the rest of his career here. Not that he minded. Chief of Engineering though? And a promotion. “That’s great!”
“I’ll let you finish up whatever you’re doing here, brotherman, meet you at Drapers for celebratory drinks in an hour?”
“Sounds good.” Mourad bent down to grab the spanner he dropped.
After Braccas had left, Munchkin rolled out from where they had been finishing the spot weld. “What does ship-side mean, Lieutenant Mourad?”
Mourad leaned against the wall casually, looking around the junction to make sure there was nothing else he needed to finish. “It means working as an engineer on one of these ships.”
“Like you are now?”
Mourad frowned. “No, ‘kin. After they’ve left dock.”
Munchkin let out a soft beep. “I see. So you will be leaving Utopia Planitia?”
“Seems that way.”
“On this ship?”
“Seems so, yep.” Mourad gave the exocomp a wry look. “I’ll miss my favorite co-worker, that’s for sure.”
“I could help.”
Mourad frowned.
“I could help.” Munchkin repeated. “We both have been all over this ship, putting it together. I would be good to be ship-side, help build, help fix.”
“Not arguing that. But Starfleet is a bit gun-shy about assigning exocomps on ships. Really, any civilians anymore, after the last few big conflicts. Hard enough for folks with family to pull strings for it.”
“I could be Starfleet.” Munchkin replied with determination. “Not civilian.”
Mourad laughed. “Not sure they are accepting exocomps into the Academy. Plus that’s a few years. But I appreciate the thought.”
Munchkin let out another beep, one Mourad recognized as sad. “I understand.”
The former pirate cocked his head, considering. “You know, I really need to think about how to deal with the sensor issue.”
“What issue? We can correct it.”
“Oh, nothing big. Just a sensor shadow on deck five, near the deuterium tank. Really only a problem for silicon based life forms. Carbon based show up just fine. And it’s not a big shadow, maybe a half meter cubed.” He shrugged. “Nothing that’s critical to be dealt with before shakedown is done. I’ll worry about it once I’m Chief of Engineering.”
“We could fix it, I am sure,” Munchkin beeped excitedly. “It would be quite simple.”
“Ah, don’t worry about it, ‘kin. Better to let it alone until then.” Mourad pushed away from the wall, grabbing his toolbox. “Well, I need to get going. Got to meet the boys for drinks. Have a good night, Munchkin.”
“You as well, Lieutenant Mourad.” The exocomp watched as the Orion sauntered down the hall, whistling a jaunty tune.
Munchkin rolled down the corridor towards the lifts. Mourad likely did not want to disappoint his carbon-based friends by being late for drinks, which left Munchkin to inspect the sensor shadow on their own. They made their way to the tanks on deck five, and spent an hour or so carefully cataloging all the different sensor sweeps. The shadow that Mourad had mentioned wasn’t difficult to find, if one was looking for it and knew it was there. But if not, it was easy to miss. Definitely a repair job that needed to be done, and the information on it shared with the other Akira class vessels.
Munchkin rolled into the spot that was blind to the sensors to inspect what might be causing it, scanning. They noticed that it was just comfortably sized that they could settle into it and be entirely off the sensors, which tickled the young exocomp’s sense of amusement. They rolled into and out of the spot multiple times, watching themself disappear and reappear on the sensors.
Then suddenly.
“Oh.”
Munchkin suddenly let out a long series of beeps and boops that sounded almost like laughter. Almost.
* * *
Two days after the USS Forger had left Utopia Planitia on its maiden voyage after shakedown, a small, golden-painted boxy exocomp rolled out of the deuterium tankage compartment on Deck 5, down the corridor to the turbolift, and then down another set of corridors into Main Engineering.
Lieutenant Commander Mourad grinned. “Well now, looks like we have a stowaway.”
Lieutenant Yissral, the Assistant Chief Engineer, looked startled. “I’ll call the Captain.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Mourad waved her off. “I’ll handle it.”
It was handled. Don’t ask how.