In the Chief Engineer’s office, Aoife was drowning in PADDs, her red mane loose in a wild tangle of curls. The workspace mirrored her chaotic state, tools and schematics were scattered across the desk, and a half-empty mug of cold coffee balanced precariously on a stack of diagnostic reports. Her brows furrowed with frustration as she scowled at the flickering screen in front of her.

She slammed her fist against the desk and a stack of  PADDs jumped and clattered to the deck. “I dinae give a bloody damn if the Lexington requested them first or not! The Lexington is being held in reserve. We are not! We need those parts last week, not in  bloody month from now!”

“Ensign,” an annoyed voice responded, “Where is your Chief Engineer? You don’t have the authorization to make this order, and even if you did the answer is the same. I don’t have the parts to give you.”

Aoife clinched her fist, her Celtic features glowing red. “I don’t have a fu… There is no Chief Engineer.  I am the acting Chief until Starfleet decides to send us one!”

“Sorry Ensign I can’t h—”

He never finished his sentence as she slammed her palm down on the terminal severing the link leaving the office in tense silence.  After taking several centering breaths sh looked up with a strange officer standing in the open doorway.

“What do you want?” She snarled.

“This the Engineering Room, right?” The officer on the door spoke, his face contorted in confusion, probably because of Aoife’s response earlier, he somehow didn’t expect a very…frustrated response from an Ensign.

Aoife shot him a glance, her teeth gritted in frustration. He probably wasn’t expecting such a sharp response from an Ensign.

“If so, Name’s Trosin Alcraen, I was assigned here by the Captain as the Chief En-”

She glanced out of the office window at the pulsating thrum.  Of course this is engineering! They don’t put warp cores in sickbay! She thought exasperated.

Turning back to Trosin, she bit her lower lip, stifling a sarcastic comment that danced on the tip of her tongue. Respect for her superior officer usually came easily, but today her patience was wearing thin. She wasn’t ready to risk insubordination charges… yet. “It is,” she said simply.

Closing her eyes, she took several deep breaths, inhaling through her nose and exhaling through her mouth to calm her temper.

“Sorry, Lieutenant. My da’s temper got the best of me. It takes a lot for me to lose it, but when I do—” She shrugged, realizing she was over-explaining. “Welcome to the shit show. We’re perpetually understaffed, overworked, and the replacements are few and far between, and they don’t know their elbows from a self-sealing stembolt.”

She absently picked up her coffee, taking a big sip of the cold liquid. The moment it hit her tongue, her face twisted in disgust. Forcing herself to swallow, she quickly set the cup down on the desk with a dull clunk, instinctively stepping back from it as if it had burned her.

“I suppose you want the office now?” she muttered, her voice laced with restrained hope. Since Burkley had left the replacement chiefs never worked out and it just ended up being more work for her.

“You know, I could have you court-martialed for swearing in front of me.” Trosin’s cold, dark blue eyes were fixed on the Ensign’s gaze, as if he were peering directly through her soul. But there was a chuckle after two seconds of silence, and a small laugh followed. “Hah, I’m just joking, no, I’m not going to court you for just swearing.”

She just shrugged at the threat. “I wasn’t swearing at you, just… emphasizing what a three ring circus it is around here.”

Trosin looked back at the whole engineering room, which was quite a mess with crewmates running here and there.

“But after all,” He extended a hand with a gentle smile on his face, “I’m a Chief Engineer, so what mess do we need to clean up?”

Aoife glanced down picked up an empty PADD and downloaded the repair schedule and maintenence list.  With the available crew tasks were being automatically scheduled over a month to complete.  “Hope you are ready for 14 or more hour days.”

Trosin’s eyes widen at the list inside the PADD, there’s over more 50+ repair schedule and another 40+ maintenance schedule.                              ‘Man, are you THAT unemployed!?’           

A confused chief engineer yelled internally, he had never seen this level of chaos, even the “battle” encounter with the Lohalians during his assignment on the Tanjura didn’t go to this deep level of mess.

He gulped before asking. “W-What happened…?”

Aoife let out a long, tired sigh. “Do you want the long story or the short version?” She didn’t wait for a response. “During the Battle of Tyra, our coolant tanks ruptured, killing most of the engineering crew. When deck 5 exploded, we lost the captain and the last two surviving engineering officers, leaving only Chief Engineer Burkley. I was just a junior NCO when they gave me a battlefield commission…” She paused, swallowing hard as she realized she was trauma dumping. “In short, with the war ongoing, engineers are in short supply. We’ve been chronically understaffed, and those we do have, including myself, lack proper experience and education.”

Trosin was silent for a while; there’s a stab of understanding right in his heart and brain; he had experienced the same thing that Aoife had experienced, just that Trosin’s was just a little bit worse.

He looked back at the PADD in his hands before giving it back to the Ensign.

“Very well, if it’s 14 hours and more, 14 hours it is then,” He said with a snicker in his mouth.

She nodded, “There’s always more work to do on the Denver.”