Captain, we broke the ship

Posted on Tue Oct 16th, 2018 @ 7:47am by Captain Taliserra Tigran & Ensign Debbie Larson & Lieutenant JG Jasad Yuvek & Lieutenant Anthony Edwards Ph. D & Ensign Mark Cross
Edited on on Sat Nov 3rd, 2018 @ 5:32am

1,823 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Negotiations and Apothecaries
Location: Various
Timeline: 18th feb 2395

ON:

On the bridge Taliserra sat in the centre chair, bored out of her mind, she'd already spent a lot of time in the ready room but wanted to spend the the rest on the bridge itself. There was still another day to go on their trip out of federation space and into Yatal and Kurai territory.

Getting up to stretch her legs a little she walked over to Anthony. "Sorry for having to speed past all these potentially interesting science phenomena Anthony."

"I'm logging them Commander, we can come back and investigate on our way back to base after the mission or if not us another ship on another mission. That is the point of important missions like this. Anthony replied. He like the friendliness of the bridge when Commander Tigran used the crew first name.

"Luckily a lot of this has already been catalogued." They were still in a relatively well explored section of federation space. "It will get more interesting once we cross the border."

"True very true soon after which I expect we will be going at a much slower speed, it would only be right seeing as we are invited guests." Anthony said with an easy smile.

"Hopefully." Taliserra said, she had no clue how things would go though.

"Ma'am, permission to head down to Main Engineering." Lt. Jasad Yuvek requested from his seat. "I'm detecting a variance in propulsion, it isn't causing any iminent problems, but I'd feel better if I brought the issue to Engineering and tried to figure out what was happening." He said.

"Go ahead Lieutenant, keep me informed." Taliserra replied.

"Aye, ma'am" Lieutenant Yuvek turned over Helm to Ens. Bracca and made his way down to Main Engineering.

=== Engineering ===

Down in engineering things weren't so quiet the constant high warp was starting to have an effect on the ships engines and the crew were scurrying around checking systems.

"Cross," Debbie called out from waist deep in a panel. "Can you get me a couple of R-12 relays and another hyper spanner"

"One second, let me just..." Mark frequently cursed shipbuilders. There would always be space to carry out the work that was needed, but it was often a really tight fit. "There we go."

Rummaging around in his kit, where the meticulous organisation soon went to the wall in high-pressure situations, he found the required things and passed them through inside the panel.

"Relays and spanner on your left!" he called in.

"Thanks." Debbie reached out without looking and after a couple of attempts landed her hand on the bundle of parts and in a flash had the relays switched out and the panel back to full working order.

Lt. Yuvek walked through the sliding doors into Main Engineer. He immediately began to search for one of the senior Engineers. His primary concern was because he had noticed a decrease in the antimatter input valve and energy release controls. Ordinarily, such a decrease would not have been cause for concern; however, when it dropped to 3.2%, he knew that something was causing this problem, he just had not clue what.

After giving her hands a wipe Debbie looked up to see the tall form of Lt Yuvek walking in. "What brings you to our neck of the woods Lieutenant?" She asked.

"This," He said as he handed her the padd in his hand with a display of the decrease in power output he noticed. "I'm losing power to engines that cannot be explained by typical spacial friction in this region of space." He said matter-of-factly.

Debbie took the Padd and had a read through. "hhhmm our sensors down here should have picked up a drop like that long before it got this low." She had a second read through then turned to one side. "Cross, come take a look at this will you."

"How much are we talking, 2-3%?" Mark, already in earshot, came over and took the PADD from Debbie's hands, perusing it with interest. Being a human male, and therefore genetically limited when it came to multi-tasking, he did so in silence for a few moments. Propulsion had been his big "area of interest" in the Academy, so this was the kind of thing that kept him awake at night.

"With the experiments that the Chief and Ms Wells were working on, I'm not surprised the drop in efficiency might not have got our attention, it still leaves us within normal operating parameters. Still a concern though..."

Mark scratched his head for a second. This was potentially an exercise in troubleshooting a problem before it even became one. "Alright Debbie, I hope I'm wrong but this could be the warning signs of something. Something big. I'm talking conduits, injectors, full health check."

"It's within tolerance but we should check it out." Debbie said. "Will you check the antimatter injectors, I'll take the matter injectors.

"On it" Mark moved across the deck and collected up his kit, throwing it into the case well enough that he could get it closed quickly enough. The injectors were below the chamber, so no ladders for him to contend with just yet.

She turned to Jasad "Thank you Lieutenant. We will get this checked out."

Lt. Yuvek did not like leaving without some kind of explanation for what was going on. Especially if it meant he would be flying practically blind. However, pressing for further explanations would not be of any use at this time. The Cardassian decided to wait.

"Very well, I'll await your report." He responded and turned to leave.

Mark waited for the Lieutenant to leave before turning to his colleague. "Did you get the feeling he was expecting some instant gratification from coming down here, or is that just me?"

"Maybe." Debbie paused at the bottom of a ladder to the upper level. "Some people don't understand it's not as simple as pushing buttons down here." With that she started to climb up.

"If only...oh, beginner's luck!" The first injector Mark came to had failed. He checked the next, which was working harder to compensate, as they always did. The failsafe had kicked in perfectly. "Got an injector to swap out down here. Think we might have the source."

"An injector failure?" Debbie called down from the upper level. "That shouldn't be happening, the whole warp assembly is practically new, are the other two working?"

"The others are compensating..." Mark moved along the line. "Running a little harder than they normally would after the modifications but nothing they can't handle. How's it looking up there?"

"MRI's look fine, check the intermix ratio and core pressure." Debbie said as she closed up a maintenance hatch.

"Core pressure is..." Mark went silent for a few moments as he cross-checked his findings, then checked one more time. "Steadily rising? That doesn't make any sense..."

Sliding down the ladder Debbie checked a console on the other side of the core. "nearly 80,0000 KP's? Temperature is climbing too. One of the coolant valves must be jammed, if this keeps up we're going to blow something

As if on cue from from the upper level of engineering there was a bang and a scream, followed by a cry of "Plasma fire!!"

Debbie glanced up to the upper level and saw other engineers scurrying around trying to seal off the conduit and stop the fire. She looked around the core at Cross. "Cut reactant levels 50%, we need to slow down before something else pops."

"Affirmative..." Mark moved a few short steps to the nearest console to make the adjustments, which took a matter of seconds. "Rock paper scissors for who answers the Bridge call?" he gave Debbie the slightest of smirks

"Get it done." Debbie told him not taking her eyes off the console. "I need to keep an eye on this, everyone else is trying to get the fire under control."

=== Bridge ===

Lt. Jasad had arrived back on the Bridge and relieved Ens. Bracca from the Helm console. Once he had settled back into his station he continued to have a odd feeling just picking at the back of his mind. He did not believe in coincidences not on a vessel as advanced as this. There had to be something that was causing the loss in performance. The fact that the vessels own Engineering crew did not have an immediate answer infuriated him.

He was preparing to contact Engineering again when he noticed a sudden indicator on his console. The vessel was activating emergency dampners without prior authorization, the ship's computer was programmed to do so only in situations where the warp field was quickly destablizing and. . .

"Ma'am! We're dropping speed. . .!" Lt. Jasad said as he tried to compensate for the sudden deceleration across the ship's structure. Such a sudden drop in warp could cause the entire warp bubble to destabilize and rip the ship to shreds.

"I'm not sure what happening," He said, wanting to toss in and neither does Engineering, but he bit his tongue and focused on keeping the ship moving.

Taliserra tapped her chairs arm panel. =/\= Bridge to engineering, we're losing speed, what is happening? =/\=

Mark didn't hesitate as his hand flew to his comm badge. =/\= Ensign Cross here, Bridge. We've got rising core pressure, temperature, and a plasma fire. We're having to throttle back before we have a full scale coolant leak. =/\=

"Helm, take us down to warp 4." Taliserred ordered, hopefully that would be enough and wouldn't impact there arrival time too much.

The young Cardassian's fingers were furiously racing across the console trying to compensate for the sudden shift of countless factors.

"I'm sorry ma'am, the best I can do is 3.6, I don't want to risk straining the warp integrity field anymore with a coolant leak going on below." He said over his shoulder. "Even then, I'm still pushing it." He added.

=/\= Have you found the source Ensign? and can you fix it? =/\=

=/\= I think we need to reverse the experiment that's being worked on. The excess anti-matter's improved efficiency, but it's causing problems elsewhere. =/\= Mark deliberately tried to simplify it for those less mechanically inclined.

=/\= If we can address that, and our coolant problem, we should be able to at least keep it stable until we can power down and make permanent repairs =/\=

=/\= Estimate on how long before we can return to high warp? =/\= Taliserra asked.

=/\= Maximum two hours, hopefully less. =/\= Mark replied honestly. Checking and clearing a coolant system wasn't the toughest of jobs, often it'd go through in an hour, but he built in some extra time for any unexpected hiccups.

=/\= Keep me informed, bridge out. =/\= Taliserra sighed, they couldn't afford too many delays and she hoped this would be the only one.

OFF:


Commander Taliserra Tigran
Commanding Officer

Ensign Mark Cross
Engineer

Ensign Debbie Larson [Npc Taliserra]
Engineer

Lt(jg) Anthony Edwards (Ph.D)
Chief Science Officer

Lt(jg) Jasad Yuvek
Chief Helmsman

 

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