The Missing Tricorder

Posted on 19 Feb 2026 @ 2:30pm by Lieutenant JG Ryan Collingway
Edited on on 19 Feb 2026 @ 2:38pm

566 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Silent Inheritance
Location: Deck 10

///Engineering////

Ryan wasn't immune to the feeling of anticipation in Engineering, of finally completing a very difficult job. The skeleton crew had good and bad days, mostly good ones though. They had managed to keep things together. There was a general sense of missing comradery that would be more than welcome back. Even if they were stuck on double shifts for the foreseeable future, seeing his fellow engineers again on a regular basis would be a significant improvement. He was looking forward to this being over like everyone else.

For now though, he was going through the jobs for the day. Some moved faster than others. The one on deck ten would be fast, mostly because he would tick off a box to pass it back to whoever was replacing the EPS coupling itself, which had become a deathtrap. They would also replace the terminal with no issues. It wouldn't be safe to attempt to do so on his own. He glanced at the terminal quickly, just to confirm there wasn't anything else going on with it, then forwarded the damage request onwards.

As he was about to leave and go to the next job, a sudden thought occurred to him. Where was the tricorder?

They specifically had a section in Engineering for damaged equipment to be turned in. Someone would later inspect the damaged items, see if anything could be salvaged, or dispose of it in the waste processor, the contents which would later recycled in the replicator. He had looked at the section this morning.

He hadn't even seen any tricorder.

Ryan studied the damage more closely. The burn mark clearly indicated a tricorder overload. He was no stranger to a destroyed tricorder. Collectively the engineering team had gone through fifteen of them since his time here. But even a tricorder on overload would leave fragments. Those were missing.

He checked the log of the person who submitted the report, to see who he had to nag about it. Nathan Caldwell. "Right. The Golden Lieutenant," Ryan said, but his voice was missing the usual sarcastic bite. Instead he was frowning.

He wasn't part of what 90% of the engineers were doing, but he was still part of the team. He heard plenty of stories and chatter from what was going on there. And he definitely remembered the story about Lieutenant Caldwell being rocketed from one deck to another, due to a tricorder sweep hitting the couplings.

So he had caused an accident with the tricorder and the EPS couplings, then did the exact same thing again immediately after recovering from sickbay? That made even less sense. From what he knew about the Lieutenant, he didn't seem to be dumb. He wouldn't make a mistake like this.

Ryan thought about it. He didn't want to go to Commander Harlan about this. At least, not yet. After their last conversation, he didn't want to approach him with wild accusations and annoy him somehow even more than he already had.

No, he would handle it like any other broken thing on this ship-watch for patterns, test theories. It could be nothing. Probably it was.

But engineers didn't work on the 'probably not an issue' system. They checked and double-checked until they were satisfied.

For now, though, he made a mental note of it and then moved onto the next job.

Lieutenant (JG) Ryan Collingway
Engineering Officer
USS Arawyn

 

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