A Scientific Selection

Posted on Tue May 28th, 2019 @ 7:53am by Captain Taliserra Tigran & Lieutenant Commander Radak & Lieutenant Anthony Edwards Ph. D & Lieutenant Helena Wells

2,316 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: The science of stars
Location: USS Wolff - Captain's ready room
Timeline: 6th March 2395 1500hrs

ON:

In her ready room Taliserra slowly paced the room, PADD in hand, going over the final reports of the transfer of a group of now freed prisoners of war to the Kurai homeworld which the Wolff was orbiting. Now, all that was left, was for security to sweep the ship for anyone trying to hide away just as they had done with the Yatal prisoners and then to decide what the ship was going to do next, for that she had some ideas.

=/\= Tigran to Edwards =/\=

=/\= Edwards to Tigran, receiving Captain. =/\=

=/\= Will you come to the ready room and bring a couple of your team leaders with you. =/\=

=/\= On my way, Captain. I’ll be there in a few minutes. I just have to set the computer to observe the latest experiments and I’ll be on my way. =/\= As he finished speaking to Captain Tigran be called the others, =/\= Lieutenant Kamijou, Ensign Watanabe and HG meet me in the Captain's Ready Room as soon as you can. Urgently lock down your experiments and meet me there. =/\=

=^=Indeed, Chief,=^= HG replied, keeping it very formal as the captain might be listening in. She really did not have much going other than her usual fight with the computer over handling multi time and spatial calculations. The wrist device was working successfully and though she thought to just walk through the door and appear, she thought better of it and instead put the calculations away and headed toward the ready room.

Touma was a bit surprised to be called to the ready room. Right in the middle of holding back Mikotos hair while she 'vandalised' their toilet. =/\=I'll be there as soon as I can, Captain. Might be a few minutes. I'm on 'hold back the pregnant girl's hair while she examines the plumbing facilities' duty,=/\= His comm line cut off with the sound of a 'oof' from where Mikoto had most likely elbowed him.

=/\=Yes sir, Lieutenant. On my way,=/\= came Watanabe's eager reply. The stellar cartographer had just started the computer compiling the various astrometric data from the ship's past long range scans, so, the break was welcome and his work would be waiting when he returned. Besides, it was a summons to the captain's ready room, how often did that happen?

He checked the data was compiling then rose from his station and headed for the ready room with a spring in his step.

HG had beaten him probably by a few minutes already having rung the call button earlier.

As soon as Anthony finished locking down the computer and washing up he got on his way to the Bridge. Exactly five minutes after the comms ended he arrived at the Ready Room and pressing the call button. “Ah, good to see you weren’t too busy, HG.”

=== Ready Room ===

Hearing the chime Taliserra looked up knowing it would be one, if not all, of the crew she'd called. "Come in," she called out.

As the door opened to Taliserra’s voice, Anthony let HG go first.

HG smiled and said, "Thank you, Sir."

It was an old tradition, but it is still polite to let females go through a door first. As he followed HG, Anthony said, “Hello, Captain. The others should be here soon, however Kamijou will be here when he can be.”

"Good afternoon, Anthony, Miss Wells." Taliserra motioned to the nearby seats. There weren't going to be enough seats, so it was going to be first come first served.

Watanabe strode in after the others and greeted his CO with a crisp nod and a smile. "Captain," he said, as he shifted over to let others get a seat. He'd stand, figured it was only fair, this being the first time in the ready room.

Touma finally arrived. He looked a little stressed out. "Sorry about all that, Captain," he said. "She has one hell of a grip on her, but now she's finally finished inspecting the ship's plumbing and has her fish fingers and custard... yeah, don't ask... she's happy and I'm here," he added with a small smile.

“I’m not surprised Mikoto has a tight grip or a handy elbow when she needs it. She is the Chief Security Officer.” Anthony would never directly tell her, of course, but pregnant or otherwise he would kill for Mikoto and in his career there were few he would say that for, directly or otherwise.

"I'm glad she is doing well, Touma. Now then," Taliserra said, sitting herself down. "I've called you in as we have some decisions to make and I want your input. Command hasn't sent us any orders yet, so I've decided we will go back to doing some exploring, maybe explore some of the things we had to fly past to get here in time."

HG had taken a seat and nodded to the others they entered. When the captain more or less called the meeting to order she turned her attention that way. So far the device had worked and she and Anthony had managed to make some general observations. Nothing that was recorded, just more to test the device. It had seemed that even some of the more 'sensitive' crew had noted anything or at least reacted, but then again the two of them had not stayed around them too long either.

Anthony listened carefully as the Captain brought the meeting to order and added, “Well, there were a number of planets that are aren’t on the charts and many other anomalies that we could investigate until Command gives us something official to do."

"There is a problem though, with the relief supplies we gave to the Kurai we have enough stores for about a month before we need to resupply. I doubt we can explore anywhere near the amount of interesting scientific targets as you would like or to the level you would like in that time." She paused a moment to sip her tea. "So you need to decide what we should focus our efforts on."

"Exploring sounds like fun," Touma added. "We are out here to find new stuff right? Maybe we could get some planetary surveys done?" he suggested.

"Long range sensors picked up a dark nebula that might be worth checking out," Wantanabe suggested. "But if supplies are low, it might be a bit far to visit and do any long term study."

“I think our best chance of long term study, Captain, is a star system that isn’t far away. It is a system I nicknamed Goldilocks on the way to our mission, due to the fact that it has one planet way too hot all year around which makes it a class L planet. One class Q that is too cold for part of the year and a third that is just right. A beautiful class M,” Anthony said.

HG just listened. She remembered looking briefly at the specs of the system Anthony referred to. Astrometrics was something she knew, but did not delve into much. Her focus had always been to figure out the building blocks of the universe, how it all worked, not the results of it. "Indeed, I remember that one. One planet in particular had a rather eccentric orbit and indications of life signs. I would find that odd that life would not normally develop there unless either the planet had a more stable orbit and had been involved in a catastrophe. The same might be for the bit too hot planet, unless the star had a different output at one time. Instead, I would pin my guess that we are looking at some sort of panspermia. That is, life being carried from the Goldilocks world to the others. It might be intriguing to take a look the genetics of the three worlds as well as analyze the behaviour of the star."

“Well, there is snow on Venus, admittedly it is based on methane rather than water. However, your statement of panspermia could well be possible and they thrived on the M class planet were they didn’t on either Q or L class planets. That, of course, would be part of the investigations. That is the main reason for science, is to answer the age old question of why?” Anthony said.

HG shrugged. "Asteroid impacts is probably the highest chance. There have been rocks found on Earth from Mars and vice versa. It looks like a little mystery to solve on how things went in this system," HG replied. "Is there anything else we know about the planets that might be interesting to investigate?"

Watanabe spoke up, "It's definitely an interesting system, but we can't sell its star short either," he said. "I'd have to check the sensor logs again to be sure, but I believe we detected that star was in a highly active stage of its development on our initial scans." He looked to Lieutenant Edwards and HG to confirm. "That is going to make things interesting, especially on that Class L closest to the star."

“Very good, Ensign Watanabe. I would expect a Stellar Cartographer to be interested in studying the system's sun, and early observation of it will protect the teams that get sent to the surface of those planets too. If we investigate them.” Anthony was happy, he wasn’t ready to put himself out and speak up in front of a ship’s captain for almost a year out of the Academy so to see Watanabe be this forward was pleasing.

HG nodded her head slightly up and down. "It might be interesting to see if the star might be in the cepheid variable class. Considering the systems, we can probably rule out class two as those tend to be metal poor and with life and planets along with spectral indications, that it is not the case here."

"Thank you, Sir," Watanabe said to Edwards and positively beamed. Encouraged, he continued, "I'd agree it's probably not class two, as for it being cepheid variable class, it would definitely help with the mission if it is. Cepheid variables expansions and contractions are predictable and are usually observable at at a distance by monitoring its luminosity. I can reach out by subspace to some of our long range observatories for the luminosity data to confirm the theory, and if it is a cepheid variable, that data should give us what we need to create a model for predicting the star's expansion and contraction while we're in system."

Taliserra tapped the PADD in her hand against the table to bring everyone's attention from sciencey talk back to her. "It seems you all have your minds set on this 'Goldilocks' system. Who am I to stand in the way of science? How long will it take us to get there?"

“Three days at warp three, half that at warp six,” Anthony said. “I’m sure Lieutenant Voss will enjoy the time to let his engines rest.”

"Good." She put the PADD down and picked up her tea. "You're all dismissed."

HG nodded and go up. As she turned and left more than likely no one noticed the Cheshire cat grin she had on. She headed off the bridge and ducked into spot by the bulkhead and pushed her sleeve up activating the device on her wrist. The door opened to the bridge and she ducked back in literally passing through another person.

Watanabe nods, "Yes, sir," he said crisply before turning and heading out of the ready room with the rest.

"Lt Edwards," Taliserra said to Anthony before he could stand up. "Give the systems coordinates to Commander Radak and have him set a course at warp 6."

Anthony continued to get up as the captain spoke, expecting it to be only a statement about passing on the information or she would have told him to stay when she dismissed the rest of his crew. "Certainly, Captain. I will pass it onto him and Helm for them to work it out, Ma'am."

=======Bridge=====

Exiting the the Captain's Ready room, Anthony turned and made his way to the science station and sent to coordinates to the command chair and helm station and said, "Commander Radak, Captain Tigran wants to set warp six to the star system. I just sent the information to Helm for them to work out a route."

Radek turned in the Captain's chair and nodded to Edwards. "Helm, you heard him. Warp six. How was the meeting?" The Vulcan asked.

“Well, we worked out where we would spend our time till resupply for starters which is a good start and decided that we should be there in a day and a half,” Anthony said.

"Excellent... I am pleased that there was an agreement on where to go next. Research? Exploration? Discovery?" Radak asked. He was still turned in the Captain's chair to face Edwards. He almost seemed excited.

“Well, Commander Radek, exploration often leads to one or both of the others, Sir, so at the moment I can only guarantee exploration. However, when we get there who knows what we will discover,” Anthony said with a smile.

Radak snorted. It sort of sounded like he might be amused. "Is there anything we need to prepare before our arrival?" he asked, turning back around, his eyes on the viewscreen.

“Not that I know of. I expect we will be standing off away to start with and likely use some of our science probes. I will ask the captain to choose which class, as we didn’t get that far with discussion,” Anthony said with a smile.

Radak nodded curtly. "Very well."


OFF:

Captain Taliserra Tigran
Commanding Officer

Lieutenant Commander Radak
Executive Officer

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

Lieutenant JG Touma Kamijou
Science Officer

Ensign Brendon Watanabe
Stellar Cartographer

HG Wells
Civilian Scientist

 

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