As Ashely floated at the caution marked threshold to the engineering compartment as always she was struck by just how cramped they were. The compartment was at least six meters across, four meters high, and ten meters deep which was large for a compartment on a warship, but it was absolutely packed. It was dominated by the polished steel alloy cylinder in the center which looked like a metallic insect wrapped in some cybernetic spider's web. There were pipes and conduits branching off every direction, most coated in the alternating yellow and black bars that meant "NO TOUCH!" The cylinder itself hada few strategically placed readouts and control panels, but mostly it was clear of obstruction so that the dozen engineers in the compartment could swarm over it like ants checking the actuating machinery and scanning the surface welds for microfractures.
The front of the compartment near the entrance was the 'hot' end. The "NO TOUCH" pipes that lead out of the central cylinder were banded every meter or so with a reflective red indicator tape that meant that this was the hottest that the circulating medium would be in the loop. The two hot pipes lead from the central cylinder to two even larger cylinders situated on either side of the compartment near the bulkheads. Like the smaller central cylinder the larger ones on the sides of the compartment were mostly clear of obstruction with only a few readouts and control panels on them. The back of the compartment was the 'cold' end. The "NO TOUCH" pipes at the cold end were banded with reflected blue indicator tape which meant that this was the coldest that the circulating medium in the cycle would be. Each of the flanking cylinders had very large cold pipes which lead to smaller sort of snail shaped devices. Coming out of the snail shaped devices the cold pipes were now much, much smaller and led out of the compartment through the bottom and top bulkheads. They returned back into the compartment about a meter away and led directly to the central cylinder again to begin the cycle anew.
Unlike the mostly clear surface of the cylinders and "NO TOUCH" pipes, literally every other surface in the compartment was festooned with readouts, control panels, and hand grips. So many hand grips, all indicated with the green and blue alternating stripes that meant "please grab here". When you could tear your eyes away from the brooding shape of the central cylinder, hovering, restrained by pipes and struts and conduit in the center of the compartment you could see that there were literally hundreds of hand grips placed throughout the compartment. They were attached to every strut and safe conduit and every square meter of bulkhead that wasn't already used. In fact there was no place in the entire compartment that was more than a meter from a hand hold. Of the dozen engineers in the room two were creeping their way over the central cylinder centimeter by centimeter with scanning tools looking for flaws that needed to be addressed. The remaining engineers were buzzing around the compartment like busy bees checking readouts, plugging tools into outlets, adjusting controls, and a thousand other things too subtle for Ashely to really understand. They floated through the compartment changing trajectory with a quick tap against a handhold or safe strut with a grace that spoke of long careers spent working in zero gee engineering compartments just like this.
As she floated at the threshold with her escort her eyes were again drawn to the brooding shape of the central cylinder. This wasn't the first time she'd been in the engineering compartment of a starship, in fact she'd been in at least thirty different ones in her career, everything from bulk freighters to sleek passenger ships, and yes, many different military craft like the 'Itinerant' here. If her impression of civilian fission plants was of mewling kittens wrapped in meters of cotton then she always had a creeping sense of malevolence from the military ones. It felt like the beast restrained in the center of the mechanical spider's web was full of barely restrained fury and hate, ready to destroy anything it could touch, if only it got the chance. And if her impression was overly emotional it wasn't incorrect. Military ships simply couldn't afford to waste mass and volume on failsafe fission designs. Civilian power plants at worst would 'brick' themselves if they went into catastrophic failure. And as bad as it would be to lose power in deep space, at least that would be the end of the immediate danger. Military power plants on the other hand could fail spectacularly spewing molten radioactive fuel over the entire compartment. Or any of a thousand different welds could fail and scalding or cryogenic circulating medium could shower anyone unlucky enough to be nearby. The Itinerant's design was an older one, part of the reason she was chosen for this project, she had a full helium loop instead of the more efficient molten salt loops of her soon to be replacements. So, at least you wouldn't need to worry about heavy metal poisoning from a leaky loop.
Ashley's escort, a young ensign 'W.T. Sanders', was speaking quietly into his mic letting her host know she was waiting. She could have just floated across the marked threshold, the main compartment hatch was still open because the ship was still docked after all, but that would have been a gross violation of procedure. She couldn't enter until the chief engineer granted her permission. They probably wouldn't toss her out on her ear if she violated that procedure, but she prided herself on her professionalism. She was here to do a job, and do it right.
She heard the click of her escort switching back to her channel and he informed her that the chief would be over shortly. Despite that the powerplant and turbines were idling at minimum power, the compartment was still surprisingly noisy. It was manageable now, but once everything came up to cruising power she'd need the padded spacer skullcap with noise canceling mic and headset that she (and everyone else) wore to communicate. Outside of the engineering compartment (once the hatch was closed anyway) the noise canceling aspect wouldn't really be needed (and wasn't used by most) but with consoles, hand holds, and all sorts of other equipment attached to every surface hitting your head was a common occurance on a warship. (And that wasn't even taking into consideration what could happen during battle.) Without the padded cap half the crew would be out with a concussion inside of a week.
As she waited for the chief she slowly panned her head around getting good closeups of all the activity with the sensor packs attached to her cap. She'd just recently gotten a new version of the sensor packs which slimmed them down even more than they already were meaning that they no longer had the annoying tendency to tap on the polycarbonate of her pressure dome helmet when she needed to button up. The sensors were taking in all the information that her system needed to generate a real time 3D model of the environment. She'd need to get a peak around every nook and cranny in the compartment later to complete the scene, but she used her DBI to direct the motion sensors to track the movements of the engineers for now so that she could recreate the hustle and bustle later. The telemetry data updated in her AR goggles telling her that the real time motion tracking feature was active.
It took the chief a moderate amount of time to emerge from an airlock at the back of the engineering compartment and arrow himself towards her location. It wasn't too long, giving the impression of impoliteness towards her, and it wasn't too short, giving the impression that he dropped everything to come meet her. His name patch said "G. Sareen,'' and she knew from her brief that the 'G' was for Gopinad. His name combined with weathered South Asian features said that his family were relatively recent immigrants to the Eridanus Confederation. The populations of the various sovereignties of the confederation had primarily come from Southeast Asia and Northern Europe. There had been plenty of refugees over the previous century but they had primarily been East Asian and North American. The most recent refugee population was from the Shamba League which arrived over the last ten years, but they were mostly North African and West African ethnic groups. The chief's heavy, craggy Indian features said that he or his family had intentionally immigrated to the confederation from somewhere much further spinward, which was unusual.
The chief used a strut above the threshold which wasn't explicitly marked as a handhold to change his orientation and bring his feet into contact with the velcro on the 'floor' in a smooth movement that spoke of long practice. Ashley lightly pushed off the upper bulkhead to bring her own feet into contact with the velcro on the lower bulkhead causing her feet to lightly adhere to the 'floor' with the small velcro strips on her uniform boots. Her escort who didn't make use of the velcro simply sketched a quick salute to the chief which in the process spun him around so he could shoot off and get back to whatever duty her arrival had taken him from.
Ashley brought her right hand to her spacer cap in a professional but not overly precise salute and announced, "Lieutenant Carrows, requesting permission to enter the engineering compartment."
***
Gopi tried not to sigh or show any outward signs of annoyance. This wasn't the first time that someone from the Office of Public Affairs had done a ride along and word on the grape vine was that this particular ride along was the entire reason for the deployment and also the reason that the Office of Personnel hadn't poached any more of his engineering crew this time. Her professional but not overly stiff salute and her well used regulation uniform started to thaw his reservations about the situation. In the past he'd had to make the career limiting decision to bar access to the engineering compartment to officers that thought that rank meant that they could ignore regulations put in place to protect them. This Lieutenant at least was wearing a regulation pressure uniform, a mark twelve version a few revisions older than his own, but still in good repair. It had the required components; I/O ports at the collar, cuffs and belt, plus the standard medical ports on the shoulders. She had her gloves clipped to her elbows and her bubble dome locked in place behind her neck. Her padded cap appeared to be newer than the rest of the uniform, apparently to be compatible with the sensor packs she had attached to it, but it connected to the collar port and she was wearing it. Thank god, he wouldn't need to have that conversation again now.
Gopi returned her salute and slapped a dosimeter module onto the medical port on her right shoulder. "Permission granted. I'm Lieutenant Commander Gopinad Sareen. I'm the Chief Engineer here on the 'Itty" and that's a dosimeter. You will not remove it until your deployment here on the 'Itinerant' is complete, and your uniform will stay with you at all times. You can take it off to shower, but it must remain within two meters of your position. Please take this seriously, you will catch some rads here, there is no doubt about that. Ideally it'll be no more than you would have gotten from cosmic rays riding on a shuttle for the same amount of time, but if something happens the medics will need to know what your total dose is."
Her serious but unworried nod spoke volumes, this wasn't her first time at this particular rodeo.
They were already behind schedule and only the fact that the captain was also running late gave him any breathing room, so Gopi wasn't in any mood to beat around the bush. "Alright, I already got a brief, but how about I get a look at your orders?"
The tall auburn haired Lieutenant produced the 'flimsy' sheet of her orders for his inspection. Most things were done electronically, messages sent through email or instant messages, but boarding orders were one thing that still held some ceremony and they were thin black plastic sheets imprinted with metallic lettering and holographic seal to ensure authenticity. Gopi held it up to the light to view the holographic seal and read the orders. They were pretty much what the grape vine had led him to believe they would be, including the very unusual line that read "full access up to and including top secret." He returned the orders to Carrows and motioned for her to follow him. "Come on lieutenant, let's go to my office and chat. Follow me, and make sure that your cap and hearing protection stay on at all times when you're in the engineering compartment."
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
***
Chief Sareen led her along the left bulkhead in the engineering bay to a hatch that opened into a claustrophobic office barely big enough for two people. After she closed the hatch behind her the noise of the machinery outside dropped to a whisper. Chairs on a warship were unnecessary except for securing yourself at battlestations and because of that the chief's office only had anchors on the bulkhead on either side of a small desk with a built-in terminal. The chief motioned for her to settle in as he did the same, bringing the velcro patch on his uniform into contact with the patch on the wall. He moved the mic out of the way and flipped up the ear protecting wings on the sides of his cap so that they could talk without using the comms. Ashley followed suit and waited for the chief to begin.
"Okay lieutenant, so help me understand your orders. I get that you're here to make a VR recruitment experience, someone else from public affairs was here a couple of months ago to do the same thing. What I don't understand is why that requires top secret access. You don't need to know the operating specs of the fission plant or the power parameters on the railguns to take video of the crew in heroic poses blathering cringy patriotic platitudes."
"No problem chief, I can explain, but I need to let you know that I'm already recording, I've been doing so since I stepped into the shuttle bay for the trip over. This is going to be an "inside baseball" end to end documentary type experience. We'll scrub anything personal or irrelevant from the records, but I'll be recording everything except maybe using the head. Though there'll probably be some of that if we can work it in tastefully." Chief Sareen didn't seem too enthusiastic about that revelation, but she powered ahead. "There's a recruitment shortfall going on right now. Everyone knows the Zaggies are on the way even if they haven't actually started deployments in our sector. It's only a matter of time before they come crashing in on us like they did to the Shamba League and the Azha Republic before them and the Keid Commune before that and so on. Maybe they go for the Reggies first, but sooner or later we're next." The chief nodded, this was common knowledge.
Ashley organized her thoughts and then continued, "The 'Itty' is going to be mothballed after this deployment. She's not exactly obsolete, but she's one of the last batch of ships we bought from the Casiopan Yards. Her specs are pretty much common knowledge since her class is for sale to anyone who can pay for it, as long as they aren't on the UN's 'shit list'." The tacturn Indian crossed his arms in thought and tilted his head as he listened.
"There's still a lot that's classified on this ship, she's got upgraded rail guns from our own Dalton Heavy Industries so their specs aren't common knowledge, but they're also from a model line that we aren't using on the new classes. You would know more than I do about what upgrades and modifications have been made to the powerplant, turbines, and drives which would all still be classified. But the fact is that the entire 'Wanderer' class of Light Cruisers is being phased out of our fleet because we have newer, better, home grown ships that are rolling off the lines right now. But what we don't have is enough crew to man them, especially engineers."
The chief was still paying close attention and motioned for her to continue.
"So, what we're targeting isn't the random citizen who can be convinced just by dynamic lighting and patriotic music. We're targeting the nerds and geeks and all the high school kids who are interested in what makes a starship tick, but can never get more than what's on the omnipedia. The crew here already has experience with being in a recruitment production and we have access to what is still actually, by galactic standards, a modern warship which the Admiralty has decided no longer needs to have any secrets. By the time I get back to the public affairs office and start finishing the editing even the operational secrecy will have expired. There's literally nothing on this ship that we can't show off if we want to."
The chief mulled this over for a moment and then asked, "And why does that make this a better opportunity for recruiting engineers?"
"Well chief, simply put, most kids out of highschool who are so inclined head into one of the civilian engineering schools and then go on to work in one of the civilian sectors. The pay is a whole lot better and there's always openings in the orbital settlements for maintenance crews, or in the engineering bays of civilian ships. But the theory here is that what really motivates high school kids to choose to go down a career path is the 'cool factor' of the job at the end. They can see what maintenance crews on the orbitals do with their own eyes, and there's plenty of documentary experiences out there for working a civilian ship. But for the military all they get is the holo dramas or gamified experiences which are complete fiction, and trust me these kids know it's fake. And the navy in particular only releases the most high level redacted recruitment experiences because everything's classified. There's nothing for these smart and motivated kids to sink their teeth into to experience the cool factor of the technology packed into a modern warship. We're not going to blow smoke up their asses here, we're going to give them the real, nerdy, geeky, coolness of all this multi-million-credit high technology. And they're going to eat it up."
The chief carefully considered her pitch for a long moment. Frankly most people wrestled with the ethics of recruitment experiences aimed at high school kids. Ashely did so herself at first. Ultimately she decided that in order to fill the ranks for the mutual defense of the nation it had to be done. The realities of the modern military meant that extensive training was needed even for infantry positions and so that training had to start either before or just after a potential recruit finished high school. So, with few exceptions, if they were going to join the military the decision to work towards that needed to happen before they finished high school. At the very least in this case, there was not going to be mood lighting, dramatic music, dynamic poses, or patriotic platitudes. She was going to make a real, in depth experience that showed the realities of working on a warship. There was not going to be any sugar coating on this, and for the right people it was going to be amazing.
Finally the chief seemed to come to his conclusion and he simply nodded once for emphasis and said, "Okay, I'm on board lieutenant. What do you need from me and my engineers?"
Ashely relaxed her spine a fraction of a millimeter releasing some tension that she hadn't really realized was there. It was always best if the crew got behind the production and if the chief was on board then it was almost certain that the rest of the crew would be too. "Thanks, chief. Basically I'm going to just ask questions and follow folks through their normal work routines. This is not the first time I've been in an engineering compartment, I know my way around. And I usually already know the answers to the questions I'm asking, but the answers are for the benefit of the viewers. So I will be asking leading questions to get the pieces I need to craft a narrative experience. Normally that would be high level stuff, but for this experience I'm planning on getting down into the nitty gritty of what it takes to operate a warship on a simple recon patrol."
"Okay, then let's get you assigned a bunk and I'll start setting up a rotation to get you time with everyone. I suppose you can start with me if you like so I can give my people some time to get ready. How does tomorrow at oh-seven-hundred hours sound? Ship's time of course. We still need to get things ready to get under way tomorrow but we'll be pushing off at oh-eight-hundred hours so you can have some time with me before then and you can get footage of the hustle and bustle of bringing the powerplant up to cruising levels."
That was far more than Ashely had hoped for so soon. "Thank you chief! That will be great. I think that things will turn out well."
Chief Sareen authorised a bunk for her in one of the female officer's berths and forwarded the information to her inbox.
Just before she made ready to leave, she remembered that she had one more thing to mention. "Oh, chief, one more thing. You should have already seen it in on my orders, but according to regulation 'A-134b' I need to inform you verbally that I have a Direct Brain Interface. As per regulations it's output only. Input is from the AR goggles only. I use it to manage the VR capture equipment mounted on my cap. Also as per regulations there's a physical interlink here," she pointed at a small plastic cap behind her left ear. "If somehow my interface gets hacked, which given that it's output only should never happen, get a fingernail under the edge here and pull it out. It will physically disconnect the interface."
"Thanks for letting me know lieutenant. Shipman Michaels has one as well, so I'm familiar with the process."
With that final bit of housekeeping out of the way Ashely gave the chief engineer a smart salute and returned her mic and earflaps to their active positions and left the chief's office to get her things stored.