Zel pulled a protein shake out of her tote, chugged it down in a few quick gulps, and crammed the empty container back inside. The Exeter’s replicators were still offline, along with weapons, warp drive, half the lights…

“Ah, that reminds me.” She opened her tote again and pulled out a headlamp identical to the one she was wearing. After a quick once over to confirm its functionality, she leaned against an undamaged bulkhead and twirled it idly around one finger. Still feeling fidgety, she began whistling a tune that echoed eerily in the dim shuttle bay of the USS Exeter. Second shift and those returning from lunch were only starting to make their way back aboard on the shuttle pods, one of which ought to be carrying her assistant-of-the-day.

Off in the distance, the door to one of the shuttle pods hissed open and Cadet William Davidson stepped through. Davidson blinked as his own headlamp flickered on automatically in the failing light, and after a few moments of adjustment he began walking up towards the business end of the Exeter’s bay. After a few moments of sweeping the light across crates, open toolkits and exposed wiring, he landed on Zel.

‘Another Trill? Just my luck, hopefully they won’t be as talkative as Kallen…’ Davidson stepped forward, his boots crunching on some smaller parts of debris that remained scattered across the landing.

“Excuse me, sir. I’m Cadet Davidson, assigned to help with some of the repair works. Would you happen to know where Lieutenant Zel is?”

“In fact, I do! Nice to meet you, cadet!” Zel gave Davidson a brief-yet-firm handshake. “You know, when I first learned that humans greet each other with handshakes, I thought they got that from the Trill! I suppose it’s not so unusual a gesture that it couldn’t develop on two different worlds. Anyway….”

She pointed to his headlamp. “You brought your own! Good job, you’re already earning points in my book.”

Zel stashed her spare back in her tote and motioned for him to follow her out of the shuttle bay. “So, how long ago did you arrive?” she asked, then added in a more gentle tone, “Did the Blackout affect your journey at all?”

“I got here at the beginning of last month. They transferred me from Earth to get some more hands on training. Can’t imagine this was exactly what they had in mind…” Davidson rubbed his elbow a little nervously as he followed Zel down one of the Exeter’s many corridors, lights still flickering as a lingering scar of the turmoil.

“I wasn’t precisely expecting what happened. We were holed up for a bit on a transit station when the Blackout hit. We were sitting ducks, but an attack never came. They got us back on a shuttle quickly after that.”

Eventually they reached their destination, one of the Exeter’s many substation rooms. Inside, a mound of cables hung out of an exposed panel, whilst various orphaned strands found their home on the floor, strewn about in a tangled mess. Davidson dabbed the sleeve of his uniform against the perspiration that was forming on his brow. Maybe they could fix the climate control from here?

“Well, I’m glad you missed the worst of it,” said Zel. She punctuated her statement by dropping her tote on a bundle of discarded wires. “Now, let me show you what we’ll be working on today.”

She gestured for him to follow her to the far wall, or what was left of it. The middle of it bore a ragged hole in the paneling that was nearly as tall as the room and three meters wide, with wires, coils, and tubing all jutting out along the edge. The center of the hole was nothing but the smooth metal of the inner hull. Zel ran one hand along the width of it.

“Any idea what happened here?” she asked.

Davidson stepped a little closer to the scar across the wall. He pulled out his tricorder and scanned the opening up and down before tucking it back away into his pocket.

“Judging by the pattern on the plating, and the way the conduits have melted back…maybe some sort of discharge? Something with the power routes caused it to overload when the blackout occurred?”

He crouched down next to a diagnostic console, also damaged and without power, and pulled out an external power supply to bring the console back to life.

“In any case, we should make sure that it’s safe to start pulling and replacing this cabling. I don’t want them calling my mother on duty to give her the bad news because I didn’t follow regulation health and safety procedures…”

Davidson looked up at Zel with a grin, pleading for approval. “Is my thinking here right, Lieutenant?”

Zel barked a laugh at the cadet’s grim joke. “You’re right about safety procedures, that’s for certain.”

She chuckled to herself as she pulled up a schematic on her PADD. “Lots of cadets come in trying to impress with their knowledge of warp field physics or isolinear processing, even though the first thing most Academy instructors want to hear about is whether or not they’re a danger to themselves or other students.”

Zel finished her work with a dramatic jab of her finger and passed the PADD to Davidson. “We’ll make a detour into the Jefferies tubes to make sure these power relays are still disconnected–and by ‘we’ I mean ‘you, while I hover over your shoulder’–but first!”

She turned to face the mangled wall once again. “You’re half right, although it was a trick question on my part, so maybe that counts as totally right? Yeah, sure!” She cleared her throat. “There was a massive discharge. From enemy fire. This was from a hull beach.”

Zel paused a moment to let that information settle before drawing Davidson’s eyes up to the readings on the tricorder that she was now holding up to the wall. “You’d never know it from the way the hull plating has already been repaired. The eye might see patterns in the way the seems are joined, but a scan will show it to be solid as the rest of the hull. Microfracture sweeps are part of daily maintenance.”

To emphasise the point, she reached out and swept her hand along the smooth metal again. “Have they already covered hull breach procedure in your training?”

Davidson raised himself up from his crouch and brushed his uniform off. “Yes, sir. Breach protocol and structural isolation procedures.” He winced slightly. “Although…my experience is more in theory than practice. My understanding is that you’re supposed to engage shields around the affected area for containment, a way of isolating the affected bulkheads.”

Davidson tapped a finger against his head contemplatively. “After that, you follow up with environmental stabilization. That’s the textbook version, anyways.” His hairs stood on end as he looked up and down the hole in the wall once more with a sullen expression. “I don’t suppose textbook and reality align so much do they Lieutenant.”

“Not always,” Zel admitted. “The shields and EV won’t hold indefinitely, and depending on how fierce the battle is, how long it goes on…”

She let herself become lost in the memory for a moment before shaking it off. She turned to Davidson with a slight smile on her face. “They did in this case, though. Non-essential personnel were evacuated, and the fail-safes remained functional until the ship made it back.”

“Now!” Zel made an ‘after you’ gesture towards the nearest Jefferies tube entrance. “Why don’t we go inspect those power relays so that we can get started on the cabling?”

Davidson leaned down into the Jeffries tube. As he clambered inside, the faint smell of ozone hit his nostrils, and the rattle and scratching of metal beneath his boots echoed throughout the environment. He could see what Zel meant now, about micro fractures and issues under the surface that may not be obvious to the naked eye. The surfaces inside the tube bore scorch marks, hasty patches, even a few forgotten tools lying here or there.

After a few minutes crawling, he found the power relay and began to scan it. After a few moments, a bright green gleamed up from the tricorder.

“The power is isolated now, Lieutenant.”

After crawling back out, he could see Zel busily working away at a terminal, cataloguing the different connection points for the power circuits. Lifting himself back to his feet, the young cadet looked around once more at the battle damage.

He’d read all the protocols, been in the simulators, watched the tutorials, but still, nothing could prepare him for the real thing.