The sound of raucous singing made Raas sigh and drop his head back.

“…ck’s sake,” he muttered, glaring down the corridor toward the holding cells.

“Jacobs!” he yelled out as he headed that way. “Man the desk. Cell four field is out again. Can you call engineering and see where that engineer is?”

“Got it, boss,” Jacobs called back from the offices behind the desk, but Raas was already off toward the cells.

If cell four was out again, that meant that Bertram was out. Again. That made four times this week.

Fortunately Bertram was the base drunk, which meant that by the time Raas arrived, he’d managed to get as far as the opposite wall, and was now slumped against it, face mushed up against the cool metal, and he was snoring loudly.

“Come on then, sunshine,” Raas muttered, heaving the somewhat portly Bertram up and manhandling him back into the cell.

Jacobs to Engineering. The call rang out on the central station.

“Can someone please answer that?” Jaso said, not looking up from his work. The thought of being the Head of Power Grid Operations meant that subordinates would do menial work. Since the Vaadwaur invasion, recovery meant his already small department was stretched thin.

The console continued to beep.

Jaso growled and looked up, only to discover he was alone. The furrowed his brow, stood up, and walked to the station. Hopefully this would be quick: A PADD that wouldn’t connect to a dataport, or the lights in someone’s quarters wouldn’t turn on. That seemed to be a common problem currently.

Jaso slammed the button, “Erdian here, what can I help you with?”

We’re having power fluctuations in the Brig, it’s causing a bit of– He’s out again! No… grab him and put him in six- It’s causing a bit of chaos down here.

 “Understood, I’ll be there shortly,” Jaso tapped to close the channel, grabbed an engineering bag, and headed out the door.

A short turbolift ride and Jaso found himself at the brig. The doors slid open, that Jaso was met by a man running his direction.

Jaso quickly dropped his bag, bladed his body, spun around the charging man, placed him in a half-nelson hold, and slowly lowered him to the ground. “I would advise staying down,” he spoke in the man’s ear. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will.” A brig officer approached, and Jaso released the man to the officer.

“You the engineer?” The duty officer had the prisoner in cuffs with a few practised movements.

‘The engineer’ was a bit of an oversimplification. Jaso had gotten used to people not knowing or caring who he was, besides ‘there to help’. He nodded and shook the prisoner encounter from his mind. “I need to speak to the senior officer.”

He nodded down the corridor. “About time, we’re up against it in here. All the fields are down. Commander Tarras is down there, dealing with the worst ones.”

“You and everyone else in the station,” Jaso called over his shoulder as he walked down the corridor. After the Vaadwaur invasion, his department had been flooded with work orders regarding power fluctuations, 724 at last count. The orders ranged from partial power loss at Brew to sensor dead spots in Strategic Ops. And that was in addition to the regular work orders.

Striding through the mini scuffles, Jaso made his way to Tarras. “Commander,” Jaso nodded. “I’d ask what the problem is, but it’s apparent.” He readjusted his bag. “Where is your main power relay?”

Raas looked up. He had one prisoner in a headlock and another with an arm up his back as he shoved the two toward a cell. “Panel down there,” he nodded down the corridor, his usual soft voice replaced with harsher tones. “Cells down there are already cleared, so you’ll be okay.”

Jaso nodded and continued down the corridor. The flickering of lights randomly reminded him of his grandfather’s ghost stories. As he got older, Jaso realized they were retellings of old Occupation stories. Boogeymen to keep Resistance soldiers alert.

Reaching the main power relay, Jaso set his bag down. Opening up his tricorder, he accessed the relay. He frowned and nodded to no one in particular. The brig relay still used, or attempted to use, a power circuit Grid Operations had tagged as still fractured. Jaso watched the screen, “It’s making a solid effort, I’ll give it that.” He typed commands on the tricorder. “Let’s move you to the power node… 3681-Delta, Subset 94-Epsilon for now.” A few more commands into his tricorder. Now came the scary part…

“Commander!” Jaso called down the corridor. “It’ll be lights out for 5 seconds until the auxiliary power kicks in, then I’ll reset things.

“Yeah, hit it,” Raas called back, keeping a hard grip on the two prisoners he had hold of. He locked eyes with a third, who was, sensibly, sitting at the back of his cell, a hard look warning him not to move a muscle.

Jaso pressed the button to activate the circuit jump. The lights cut out, and the brig was thrown into darkness. The only light around Jaso was from his tricorder. He backed himself up against a wall, strained his senses to detect any danger, the seconds ticking off in his head.

Darkness. Complete and utter darkness. Raas didn’t bother squinting to try to make anything out. Instead, he grunted as idiot number one in the headlock tried to squirm and flexed his arm, warning him that his air could easily be cut off.

A clicking sound and the brig was bathed in an eerie red lighting. Jaso released his breath.

Idiot number three was now at the front of his cell, caught in the act of lifting a foot to step out of the cell. Raas raised an eyebrow, and he took a step back, sitting on the bench.

“Good call,” he rumbled, shoving idiot number two in the same cell. “Stay.”

Jaso watched the progress indicator on his tricorder: The relay acknowledging the reroute, the relay and circuit doing a digital handshake, and the circuit accepting the new relay node. About fifteen minutes from beginning to end. “That’ll do for now, until we can fix the fracture.” He entered the commands to execute the jump. “All right, Commander, one more time!”

“Sounds good!” Raas managed, squeezing one more time, then shoving idiot number one into a cell.

Lights out, silence… click, and the lighting came fully on. One prisoner, having been thrown into his cell, ran face-first into a forcefield. Jaso chuckled under his breath.

Raas stood in the middle of the cells, turning to check that all the fields had snapped back active. Then he checked cell four again. “Yeah, looking good here.”

Jaso nodded, “I had to temporarily reroute power to a different line. When we finish the main circuit repairs and start converting the station’s systems back to it, someone will come back and switch your relay. Repairs should take about 3 weeks, with all systems rerouted in 5.” He shouldered his bag, “There shouldn’t be any concerns in the meantime. The only other systems on the node are” Jaso checked his tricorder, “Downtime, and Stellar Cartography. The node is still only showing 23% stress, including the addition of the Brig.”

“Perfect.” Raas smiled. “Thank you for your assistance. At least they won’t be getting out again.” He winced as the drunk started singing again. “Now I just need to figure out some soundproofing.”