Replicating a Solution
Posted on 19 Mar 2026 @ 4:55pm by Lieutenant Commander Elias Harlan
1,404 words; about a 7 minute read
Mission:
Silent Inheritance
Timeline: Takes place before "Operational Morning."
It had taken half a day for the engineering teams to tag every affected power conduit snaking beneath Kestrel Reach on Lathira IV. That was the easy part.
The impossible came next.
Elias’s plan would either be hailed as sheer engineering genius—fleet commendations, personal awards, maybe even a footnote in the next Starfleet technical manual—or it would be remembered as the kind of lunatic-scale madness that only a sleep-deprived chief engineer could convince himself was feasible.
The core idea was brutally simple: use Cargo Bay 3’s main transporter pad—the largest on the ship—as an industrial matter reclamator. Dematerialize a tagged conduit segment, hold it in the pattern buffer, recycle the existing matter, inject the new non-resonant polymer insulation pattern from the engineering industrial replicator on Deck 17, supply any missing mass from the ship’s raw stock, then reverse the transport and rematerialize the replacement conduit in the exact same coordinates.
Any other engineer would have called it overkill. Standard procedure would have been simpler: replicate new sections en masse, beam up the old conduit, beam down the replacements, clean the pad, repeat. Tedious. Time-consuming. Safe. It would have taken days—probably a full week with the sheer volume of conduit involved.
Days with an “s” was simply too long.
Elias remembered his conversations with Captain Harrington aboard the Intrepid. The old man had encouraged brazen resourcefulness, off-the-books thinking, outright told him those were the engineers Starfleet needed. “The book is a guide,” Harrington had said once over raktajino, “not a straitjacket.” Elias had listened. Apparently too well.
The Arawyn had been different from what he’d expected. He’d only seen Captain Corbin a handful of times. Commander Batenburg was experienced, steady, never pushed beyond what was strictly necessary. No pressure from the top. No suffocating oversight. Just quiet expectation that the job would be done right.
When he filed updates on the tactical array rebuild, he made sure to list next targets and consistently exceed them by a small margin. The reports were meticulous, dry as duranium, probably the least exciting reading on the ship. But they were read. Every one. A few clarifying replies came back—nothing critical, just enough to confirm alignment. No blind judgment. No second-guessing.
It was that silent encouragement—the lack of micromanagement—that fed the idea this insane plan could work.
Timing would be everything. The operation demanded perfect synchronization, down to the millisecond. Automation from the ship’s computer was the only way to keep it from collapsing under its own weight.
Lieutenant Nathan Caldwell had surprised him. The young man—listed as a simple systems analyst—was far more than the job title implied. When they’d beamed down to assess the situation planetside and this crazy-genius idea had lodged itself in Elias’s brain, he’d made an offhand comment about needing a set of automation routines to keep everything flowing.
Caldwell had volunteered. “I can write something that’ll probably help.”
“Probably” turned out to be the understatement of the century.
What Nathan submitted was nothing short of the same level of controlled madness Elias had in his own head: a perfect, synchronous queue system that handled the entire process. It even included priority markers for medical replicators in the main sickbay complex—because it was critical the medical department remained exempt from the replicator restrictions imposed ship-wide during the operation. Crew lounges and mess halls on Decks 2 through 5 would be limited to food and drink only, but sickbay could continue functioning without interruption. The script slid medical requests into the queue between conduit jobs, fulfilled them, and resumed as if nothing had happened.
Twenty-second delays at worst. Brilliant.
After the transporter tagging was complete, Elias had sent the off-shift engineers back to quarters to get some real sleep. At 0400 hours—while the ship was still technically asleep—they would all report for duty. All two hundred of them.
The power draw this operation required would be immense. Every secondary fusion reactor would be brought online and pushed to full capacity. Diversions from the warp core would be routed through the primary power couplings in each nacelle transfer conduit. All non-essential, non-mission-critical power expenditures would be disallowed: no holodecks, no advanced recreational facilities, no full lighting on the nearly empty lower decks. Transporter activity would be restricted to a single personnel room.
The engineers finally slept—because at 0400, every one of them would be on duty.
Some teams would be planetside, tricorders in hand the instant each new conduit section materialized, scanning for defects. The rest stayed aboard, stationed at fusion reactors, replicator cores, and ready to form rapid damage-control parties the moment strain showed signs of turning into crisis.
The plan was simple: keep them mobile, keep them ready. If everything went perfectly, the job would take nearly eight hours. The ship would groan under the load, crew comfort would vanish, but it would only be for a short time.
The ship and crew would survive.
That was the mantra Elias carried into sleep.
When the alarm chimed at 0330, he didn’t linger. He rose, took a sonic shower, replicated three fresh uniforms—just in case—and headed out. The ship-wide notification had made sure no one was caught off guard. Preparation was the order of the day.
He ate a quick breakfast sandwich, replicated two thermoses of coffee plus his standard travel mug, and made his way to Main Engineering. It was 0350, but the compartment was already alive. The team had picked up his habits.
Elias scanned the room. “I hope everyone ate, or at least stashed field rations. As you can see, I came prepared.” He raised the thermoses.
A forest of mugs lifted in response—his earlier instructions followed to the letter.
“Good. Form up at your assigned stations and teams. It’s going to be a long, stressful shift—for the ship and for each other. But that’s why we’re here. Sometimes the galaxy needs a miracle, and Starfleet has to deliver. Stay safe. Don’t get hurt—Sickbay’s got enough on its plate. I’m dropping these in my office, then heading to Cargo Bay Three to kick this off.”
Murmurs of assent and nods rippled through the group. Elias stowed the thermoses, grabbed his travel mug, and left Engineering.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said as the massive bay doors parted. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
He stepped to the cargo transporter console.
“Harlan to Engineering—bring all dormant fusion reactors online.”
“Aye, sir,” came the crisp reply.
A few taps pulled up the ship’s power grid status.
“Computer, initiate ship-wide resource restriction program, Harlan Alpha.”
“Resource restriction program Harlan Alpha is now in effect. All non-mission-critical resource allocations are suspended.”
That was it. Any recreational plans for the day any of the crew had just evaporated.
Elias opened a channel to the surface. “Harlan to Alpha Team—you’re first up. In position?”
“Alpha Team in place and standing by, sir.”
He called up Nathan’s automated batch program. The screen filled with a long queue of pending jobs, one flashing icon waiting for EXECUTE.
Elias paused, staring at it.
“You know,” he said, half to himself, half joking, “I’m pretty sure I told myself yesterday to give the Captain a full brief and get final sign-off.”
A voice from the back: “You mean…you forgot?”
“I mean directly? Yeah. But I definitely buried it in one of those reports they actually read. If they haven’t said anything by now…”
Someone else shook their head. “Hope the Captain wasn’t counting on a big breakfast.”
“Yeoman’s problem now,” Elias replied dryly.
He exhaled. “Alright, everyone. Here we go. Going for broke.”
Fingers moved across the panel. He hit EXECUTE.
The batch job spun up.
A few crew members stared at the empty transporter pad, unsure if they were supposed to see something dramatic. Nothing appeared—so they waited, eyes on Elias, as the first conduit began processing.
Seconds stretched.
“Alpha Team to Harlan—first conduit section just materialized. Looks brand new. Scanning for spec compliance…”
A beat.
“…and it’s good. We have clean conduit, and the next section just dematerialized.”
A small cheer broke out.
“One down,” Elias said, a faint smile tugging at his mouth. “A few thousand to go.”
--
Lieutenant Commander Elias Harlan
Chief Engineer
USS Arawyn
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