Bread Crumbs and Buffer Coils
Posted on Thu Jul 31st, 2025 @ 11:38pm by Ensign Garabed "Garo" Hakobyan & Petty Officer 2nd Class Zal Rixi & Ensign Kash th'Kaasniik
Edited on on Thu Jul 31st, 2025 @ 11:55pm
2,944 words; about a 15 minute read
Mission:
Side Plots
Location: Transporter Room 2, Deck 4
Timeline: On the Way to Barisa Prime
Ensign Garabed "Garo" Hakobyan was in the middle of a transporter diagnostic.
Transporter Room Two looked like the aftermath of one of his grandmother's weddings--everything taken apart, half the pieces set aside for 'later,' and only Garo left to keep the music going. He crouched by the emitter array, stylus in one hand, scanner in the other, a trail of parts snaking out behind him like a story with no ending yet invented.
He squinted at the harmonics reading, tilting his head as if it might confess something if he provided it with a better angle.
"Eighty-seven percent. Hmph. You would not pass my mother's kitchen inspection like that."
His mind drifted--easy enough, always when his hands were busy and the room was quiet enough to hear the low hum of the isolinear rods catching their breath.
Barisa Prime... sunny place, big sky... Maybe they have tomatoes that actually taste like tomatoes.
He flicked the scanner off and adjusted another coil.
He checked the flux regulator next, running the stylus along the grooves. One of his sisters used to do the same when braiding his hair as a boy. Always slow, careful, and humming some ridiculous tune. Garo found the same rhythm here, except the humming had been replaced by his own muttered observations.
You see, this is the part everyone ignores. The little alignment filaments here--they hold grudges. You treat them rough, the next thing you know, half your molecules show up on the floor, other half on the ceiling. Very inconvenient.
He let out a tiny snicker under his breath.
Garo sat back on his heels, wiping a trickle of sweat from his temple with the back of his wrist. The ship felt different since leaving the Typhon Expanse--lighter somehow, though maybe that was just his bones hoping for a sun stronger than the Astrea's corridor lighting.
New stars. New planets. New chances to embarrass myself at a diplomatic dinner. Bread shared is twice as warm, they say... let us see if that holds up among the Barisian big shots.
He bent forward again, coaxing a stubborn power conduit out of its mount.
"There you are... playing shy, like my cousin Aram when the bill comes."
Piece by piece, he laid the components around him in a loose circle, each on a small confession of a system that only really trusted him when it had no other choice.
And Garo, kneeling there with his tools and easy grin, knew he wouldn't have it any other way.
Kash breezily walked into Transporter Room 2, an engineering kit slung over his shoulder. "Whoa, you get started without me? What's going on in here?"
"Ah! Kash jan, you are here," Garo said without looking up, his voice as bright as a nightlight. He leaned over the exposed junction, tracing careful arcs with the stylus.
"You see, the diagnostic said 'check all subsystems,' but it did not say how enthusiastically to do it." He threw Kash a grin over one shoulder. "I chose... very."
He snapped the stylus against his palm, now satisfied, setting it aside on the edge of an open panel.
"Besides," he added, "if I waited, you might have suggested a better approach. Terrible risk."
"Oh, yeah. Running a diagnostic without tearing half of the transporter apart and lining the components up on the floor would have been a terrible way to do it."
Kash put his kit on the floor and bent down on one knee. "So is there a reason for all of this, or this your idea of buffer time?"
Garo shook his head. "Not my idea--Lieutenant Ral's," he grumbled. "She ordered a level two diagnostic on the transporters and to have it completed before we arrive on Barisa." He reached for a small calibration wedge, turning it in his fingers like a worry stone. He clicked it once against the deck plating, listening to the hollow note.
"Level two diagnostic," he repeated, his tone flat. He leaned forward again, slipping the wedge under the filament housing. "You know," he continued, softer now, "it is funny--everyone thinks the transporter is all about the big, flashy moment. The sparkle, the dematerialization. But this--" he gestured at the open guts, the tiny pins and the coils laid out like jewelry on a cloth, "this is where it lives. Where it decides if you get tot he other side in one piece or as a new kind of soup."
"I was about to ask you what you did to deserve that, but with the way the Expanse was messing with systems all over the ship, it's honestly not a bad idea. What can I do to help?" Kash asked.
"Ah, you see? This is why I keep you around," he said, his voice dropping into a more grounded warmth. "Not just for the heavy lifting, but because you do not look at me like I have grown a second head when I spread transporter guts across the floor."
He nudged aside a stray power coupling with his boot, careful even in the mess.
"Here--hold this filament steady while I check the alignment groove," he said, passing over a thin, delicate component that looked as if it might snap from a sharp exhale.
"Slow and steady, like my sister's sourdough starter," he added, but the line came softer now, more habit than performance.
"Your sister's what?" Kash asked. He stared at the filament a moment before finding a position on the floor where he would be more comfortable and then finally taking it from Garo.
"Sourdough," Garo replied, brow furrowed. He passed the stylus tip over groove, adding, "T'tkhmor. A base for making bread."
"Bread," Kash repeated, as glimmer of recognition and relief crossed Kash's face.
They both turned at the sound of the transporter doors opening, seeing the figure of Petty Officer Second Class Zal Rixi at the threshold with her toolkit in one hand. Her expression moving between surprise and horror--eyes sweeping over the scattered coils and half-gutted consoles as if she found herself witness to some unholy surgery.
Garo's lips curved into a slow, rueful smile.
"Rixi," he called, rising to his feet and tugging at his uniform. He spread his hands wide, fingers splayed in a silent offering. "Do not worry--no one died. Yet."
Kash watched Garo stand for the petty officer and straighten his uniform. With an amused smirk on his face, Kash gave her a nod. "I apologize. I'd stand and give you a formal greeting too, but I've been given this very crucial job here." With his free hand he gestured to the filament he was still carefully holding in place.
Rixi hovered a moment longer, toolkit hanging at her side like a forgotten appendage. Her gaze drifted over the room again--empty housings gaping open, screws and shims scattered among coils. She took a deep breath and picked her way through the clutter.
"Kash," she said, rolling her shoulder back. "Tell me where to start before I change my mind."
"Garo's in charge. I'm just holding this wire," he retorted cheekily. "This place was already a mess when I got here."
Rixi narrowed her eyes at Kash, then at garo, her lips pinching together like she'd bitten into a tart piece of fruit. She set her toolkit down with a muffled clunk, then crouched low, her fingers sliding over a splayed bundle of power conduits.
"Every time," she said, almost to herself. "Every time I think you can't surprise me, you do this."
She shook her head. "You know, some of us spend years trying to keep things tidy enough that we don't end up on the chief engineer's shit list," she continued, her voice rising in exasperation. "Meanwhile, you're in here throwing a party for the phase coils."
Garo's grin spread brightly. He knelt beside her, reaching across to nudge a tiny stabilizer ring closer to her side. "Ah, but look," he said. "Now you have a beautiful mess to make sense of. Luke a jigsaw puzzle. Or your dating history."
Rixi's eyebrows shot up so fast they might've tried to escape her face entirely. "My dating history is none of your business."
Garo sighed and raised an eyebrow. "That's fair. But since when did you care about keeping anything tidy?"
"I don't know if I should call a referee in or tell you two to get a room," Kash interjected. "But can we at least get the part done where I'm holding this wire? My arm is already starting to fall asleep."
She gave Kash a dry, almost pitying look. "Sorry, Kash." Reaching for the filament with deft fingers, she gracefully snatched it out of the Andorian's hands.
Garo watched the exchange with amusement. He leaned closer to Rixi, his voice dropping so only she could hear. "You know, if you treat that filament too gently, it starts to think it deserves special treatment. Same with certain bridge officers."
Rixi barked a sharp laugh, nearly dropping the piece. She caught it, glaring at him sideways. "You're impossible," she muttered.
"And yet," Garo replied, tapping a coil with one knuckle, "here you are. Sorting my chaos."
Rixi held the filament out for Kash to begin the realignment, simultaneously staring daggers at the Armenian transporter officer.
Garo smiled back innocently. "I'll be over here reassembling the housings."
"So, I'm doing this part now. Garo you trust me with this?" Kash asked as he picked out a phase modulator from his tool kit and rolled onto his back so that he could look up into the components of the Transporter console without straining his neck.
"So, Bridge officer. That was kind of pointed. Are we talking about someone in particular?" Kash asked, his head now inside the console.
Rixi and Garo stopped what they were doing and slowly met the other's gaze with expressions of incredulity.
"No one in particular," Rixi muttered, astonished the Andorian hadn't picked-up on their inference.
"Okay, sure. Whatever you say," Kash replied, though his tone was playful and suggested he didn't entirely believe her.
"We're going to need a new phase coupler, this one is burned out," Kash announced as he could be heard physically struggling with a component inside the terminal. "I dunno, Garo. Do you want to bump this up to a Level 1?"
Kash tossed out a warped piece of metal toward Garo then scooted out from inside the terminal. "There were some transports off of a moon while we were in the Expanse. Just one actually, before a plasma storm moved in. Good thing too. I've never seen that."
Garo caught the twisted coupler mid-air, the scorched metal still warm. He turned it over in his hand, inspecting it for any other damage.
"One transport, and this is what it leaves us," he murmured. "Either the storm left a fingerprint, or someone came aboard with very heavy boots."
Rixi stood now, brushing her knees, eyes narrowing at the exposed cavity in the console. "If that filament was close to burnout too, we're lucky no one ended up scrambled. Or fused to the deck."
She pulled a tricorder from her kit and began a slow scan of the surrounding systems. "No sign of overload signature in the power relay," Rixi said. "But the modulator's polarity was reversed--by just a hair."
Kash scratched his head. "Could have been anything. I was tracking and fixing downed systems all over the ship for the few days we were in the Expanse. Nothing made sense - replicators serving up amorphous goo, sonic showers operating at almost-deafening frequencies, and don't get me started on the deflector array or shields."
"Well," he said finally, slipping the coupler into a cloth pouch, "that's either a casualty of the storm... or we might be looking at substandard parts."
He stood, hands on his hips now, surveying the mess. The room looked like it had just hosted a very technologically-centered exorcism.
"I don't like ghosts in my hardware," he muttered.
"You don't believe in ghosts," Rixi replied, not looking up.
"Exactly," Garo said, squinting at the cloth-covered coupler like it owed him money. "Ghosts, no. But this?" He pointed at the part. "This looks like the time my uncle tried to fix the samovar with dental floss. Whole neighbourhood smelled like burnt mint tea for a week."
He sighed through his nose. "What do you think, Kash?"
Rixi stood and turned in the Andorian's direction. "Yeah, do you really think the damage to that coupling could have been caused entirely by the Expanse?"
"We should check the logs for the last transport," Kash suggested. "The only way I see something in the Expanse doing this is if it got fried while it was in use. Meaning, whoever we beamed in or out was pretty lucky. But no, I can't think of anything that could that while it was just sitting here. Not without burning a hole through the hull plating on its way in."
Rixi bent down with her tricorder and scanned the coupler once more, a look of intense focus crossing her face, as though she were going to extract blood from it. "Kash is right. Someone touched this."
Garo's expression shifted from bemused to solemn, like a dark cloud had suddenly taken him over. He carefully removed the cloth cover and ran a finger along the coupler. "How can you be certain, Rixi?"
She took her eyes off the tricorder readout and tilted her head as if to say, I know what I'm doing, you dolt.. "No overload in the relay, reversed polarity..."
"Could be a calibration error," Garo offered, sounding slightly dismissive.
Rixi's mouth was a thin line now. "This isn't the result of a calibration error. It wasn't done in a way that would have thrown a fault through the transporter system. But it is just enough to make the next transport dangerous."
The Armenian transporter officer pursed his lips and swung around the transporter console, tapping at the controls. "Now that's strange," he muttered. "Kash, come look at this."
Kash let out a quiet groan as he got up off of the floor and onto his feet. He dusted off his uniform pants and looked himself over as he approached Garo. "What is it, what do you got?"
He pointed to a specific log that flashed on the console and squinted his eyes at the youthful-looking Andorian. "Tell me my eyes aren't deceiving me, Kash--is that a missing transporter log?"
Kash took a deep breath, as he examined the logs. He didn't realize he had been holding that breath until he went to speak. "I could probably hack into that, but maybe it's time we call security in," he replied, finally letting go of that breath he had taken.
Rixi crossed the transporter room like a wolf catching scent, her boots making just enough noise to be pointed about it. She leaned over Kash's shoulder, gently elbowing him aside.
"That's not a log entry," she said flatly. "That's a breadcrumb. Someone got clever and wiped their footprints but left a mark behind."
Garo made a low sound in his throat. He wasn't smiling anymore. "Lieutenant Ral will need a full report," he said, as if assembling the bones of it in his head. "Diagnostic findings, coupler condition, polarity irregularities, and this little vanishing act." His fingers hovered over the console hesitantly.
"And we'll need the records for the transports that did go through," Rixi added. "Passenger ID, biosignature, time of transport. Anything we can dig up now."
"That's easy enough, but I still think Security is going to want to be involved," Kash said. "But Ral would probably rather be the one to make the call."
"This is not Expanse weather," Garo murmured.
Rixi leaned back, arms folding across her chest. "So who sneaks aboard in the middle of plasma turbulence and then deletes the proof?"
"That's just it," Garo replied, pursing his lips. "Maybe they didn't sneak aboard. Maybe they were already here." He sighed heavily, adding, "We should go ask Ral for a cup of tea. And by tea, I mean trouble."
He bent to scoop up his kit, then clapped Kash lightly on the back. "Come. We go bring suspicion wrapped in a maybe to the one who outranks us. We'll let Rixi finish here."
"Rixi, you okay with this?" Kash asked sheepishly.
Garo grinned at Kash. "This one, she finds joy in suffering. Like my uncle's third wife--used to knit in the dark, just so she could complain louder." Turning to Rixi, he added, "Thanks for volunteering to put the transporter back together."
Shaking her head, Rixi didn't even look up from the nest of cables. "Thanks for the mess, boys."
He waved a hand without turning. "You are welcome. It is good luck to fix what men leave broken."
And with that, the two engineers disappeared down the corridor--leaving behind the smell of carbon, a half-gutted transporter, and one very competent young woman muttering about fragile egos and cursing in her native tongue.
Ensign Kash th'Kaasniik
Operations Officer
USS Astrea
Ensign Garabed "Garo" Hakobyan
Transporter Specialist
USS Astrea
Petty Officer 2nd Class Zal Rixi
Engineering Technician
USS Astrea
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