What's the big idea?

Posted on Sun Mar 20th, 2022 @ 10:57am by Captain Taliserra Tigran & Lieutenant Commander Tyrus Acevedo & Lieutenant Dovenice Baka & Lieutenant Anthony Edwards Ph. D & Lieutenant Helena Wells & Lieutenant JG Summer Wyse & Ensign Brendon Watanabe & Petty Officer 1st Class Miranda Fry

Mission: The Silent Scream
Location: Deck 1- Observation lounge
Timeline: Directly following Convergence

ON:

In the Wolff's observation lounge Taliserra stood looking out of the large window at the blankness of the null space as she waited for the senior staff to arrive.

"Penny for your thoughts Captain." Miranda remarked while she finished setting up the room.

Taliserra turned slightly to look at her Yeoman. "What?"

"Sorry, Human expression, you looked very deep in thought." Miranda explained.

"I was, I certainly hope this idea that Lt Wells has works. I don't think we'll last much longer in here, especially if it fails, the crews morale will plummet." Taliserra told her, from the little HG had explained, it sounded very risky.

"I agree, you need to make sure we give this idea every possible chance of success." Miranda offered a reassuring smile then looked over towards the entrance as the doors opened.

A few moments after Lieutenant Edwards received the call to the meeting He arrived and grabbed himself a coffee taking it to the conference table he said good (Morning to Evening whichever happens to be appropriate.) Captain, Petty Officer Fry, how have you been?"

Only a couple of paces behind Anthony, Ensign Watanabe followed him into the observation lounge, having programmed the simulations of the idea his team had stumbled across; he was the best one to attempt to explain it to the senior staff.

HG wandered in, literally, almost walking into a support strut she was so intently looking at a PaDD in her hand and tapping with hard jabs periodically. She did not even look up, "Tea Oolong, dark."

Summer entered the lounge, noting the few arrivals ahead of her. She offered a polite smile before walking over to the replicator and ordering a fruit juice.

Representing engineering, Dovenice Baka silently entered after the counsellor and found an empty seat, hoping that she wasn't swiping someone's favourite chair. She folded her hands on her lap while mentally checking that she knew the names of everyone in the room. She hadn't interacted with most yet, but working the late shift kept her on a much different schedule from them.

HG put the PaDD down to get the tea and smiled at Anthony. "So boss, been keeping out of trouble? As for myself, I get to add commander and navigator of a Jem'hadar ship to the resume. Definitely an interesting experience."

"Yeah you know playing scientist. Commander and navigator isn't that the same position, seeing as it is a Jem Ha'dar vessel? You've missed out on a bunch of stuff but that's why I here." Anthony said with a smile to himself.

A dirty cola, chilled. That was Lieutenant Commander Acevedo's go to beverage. He had ordered one, and took his seat close to the Captain as was expected of a First Officer. He was no Lieutenant Commander Radak, but Ty was hopeful that the crew and Captain were taking to him. It was not his intention to replace the man he had taken over from, but rather to be himself in the role of First Officer.

Ty passed over a PaDD to Captain Tigran. "I compiled the logs from the Jem'Hadar vessel for you," he said to his Commanding Officer. "You may find something of interest in there, but to me it was mostly a frustrated Vorta, potentially questioning their faith by the end."

Taliserra took the Padd and glanced at it for a moment before setting it to one side; she'd read it later. "Lt Wells, will you elaborate on the idea you mentioned earlier."

Hg put the tea down and linked up the PaDD with the holographic display.
"We are in null space, named because nothing really exists here. It is a series of points in relation to each other. As such, the transition between normal space and null space is constantly shifting as the reference between points in null space shift due to the presence of this ship, the Jem'hadar ship and perhaps anything else that has been caught here. I think what happened to the Jem'hadar ship is they could not find their way out and eventually just ran out of supplies. Now as the idea I proposed to Captain Tigran and Commander Acevedo." She made a little nod toward the two senior officers.

"Is that something big enough to basically cause a stretch or tear can be made to happen and disrupt null space enough to temporarily allow an opening to normal space. From my calculations imploding a warp core will cause enough disruption to accomplish this task. Now for the not so great part. The wave that will cause." She shifted the display to showing surfers riding big waves in Hawaii on Earth. "We would have to ride the crest of the wave in order to escape." She showed one surfer missing the first crest and getting sucked backward into the following through. "Too slow and we miss the crest and get sucked further back into null space." She then shifted to one surfer not going quite fast enough and the wave crashed down, and all one saw was the surfboard squirt up into the air sans the surfer. "Too fast and we caught between the crest of energy hitting the barriers and reflecting back. It would take very precise timing but I estimate that we have a seventy two percent chance of making the proper ride. Now then one caveat. Advanced cultures have used something like this before in null space. It has been determined that they could sling ships quite far. How far we might end up, is not certain. Questions?"

Brendon spared a glance over to Anthony, exploding the Jem'Hadar ships warp core could make the hole they needed for their idea to work, he decided to wait until Hg's idea was fully discussed before mentioning theirs though.

Anthony noticed Brendons look and lifted a finger to indicate he had heard it too but would leave it until he had heard more before interrupting the discussion with the rest of the science teams discovery which he was quite proud of.

"You said the chances of this succeeding were less than ideal." Taliserra said after pondering Hg's presentation.

"As mentioned captain, there is a 25% chance that we will either get sucked back in, or that we will smash against the interface. Personally, not the best odds, but not the worst. I will try to do more simulations but that is what I have for right now."

"When you first explained this idea you stated a 68% chance of this plan failing," Taliserra remarked, the quite drastic change in their chances certainly caught her attention. "what has changed?"

"Yes captain. As indicated I was only working with doing calculations in my head with not as much information. I have since had a little time to input better information and rework some of the calculation. So a solid 75% if all goes as planned, the chance of tearing a hole in the fabric of null space."

Taliserra turned to her chief science officer. "Anthony, your thoughts?"

"Thank you, Captain, myself and the rest of our science team have been working on escaping this maze as well. Exploding a warp core was one of the scenarios discussed though seen to be too dangerous and as we had none to spare a very long slow trip back to the station. They, according to Ensign Watanabe, practically threw every idea at the problem. The only thing the team found that gave us a stable exit was a graviton beam. We couldn't make it open an opening large enough to allow the ship through but that may have been because the team could put the power into the simulation, but it is a much safer solution than exploding a warp core. The beam must be maintained to maintain the opening." Anthony said.

"The key problem we had," Brendon spoke up adding to his chief's explanation "was we needed a way to punch a hole big enough to begin with, we don't have enough power to do that ourselves but maybe that Jem'Hadar ship could."

"An interesting alternate idea." Taliserra glanced across to HG knowing the woman likely had an opinion on this new suggestion

"Perhaps a third scenario. That is interesting and certainly better than trying to surf an explosion." She did a bit more tapping. "So we need energy to do that. What perhaps we might be able to do is overload the Jem'hadar core, feed the energy, before said core explodes should have enough of an opening and stable for long enough for the Wolff to escape." She looked up. "The only thing is, someone is going to have to work on the Jem'hadar ship. However," again more taps. "It is possible that the Wolff could beam said person off before the core let go, the hole shut down. I would certainly volunteer but considering that this was a brilliant idea, I am sure others would as well. So Captain, do we draw lots or what?"

"Can our graviton emitters take that much power without overloading themselves?" Taliserra asked turning to Lt Baka.

Lieutenant Commander Acevedo looked to Lieutenant Baka for answers as well. He had his own beliefs and speculation as an engineer himself, but his background was more on the structural side of things. "Lieutenant?"

The engineer had been quietly taking notes and running calculations as plans were plotted and she looked up at being addressed directly. "Well," she finished one of the calculations in her head and scratched behind her ear. "The graviton emitters can take quite the beating before shorting out. There's not an absolute answer to that, rather a yes and a no. Most importantly, the maths says yes. Practically, we won't know until we try it."

"Can we try it beforehand, simulations aside," Ty offered. "I know we cannot exactly do it to the full extent, but if it is possible to test it out in practice, I would feel better about going full swing."

"I would not recommend that. We have limited resources and no way to renew them within the null zone. If we choose to go this route, we should give it 100% from the start. We can run repairs once we're in normal space again," Baka answered.

Practical side was a little further away from HG's experience, but she had to agree. with the Lieutenant. "I am going to say Lieutenant Baka's assessment is most likely correct. Null space will continually drain away energy and we can ill afford to waste anything."

Taliserra pondered for a few moments. "How long would it take to set everything up?"

Anthony looked quickly at Ensign Wantanabe then said "Captain the experimental suite is still set up. I mean it might need some tweaking for a larger test but it should still function properly."

HG looked between the two. She knew that both wanted to make sure things were going to go well, but she thought it her duty to again remind them there was a limited time and energy. "I would be all for that. However, captain, lieutenant, again let me remind you, the more energy we use, the faster it will get drained away. We are coming to the point of in for a penny, in for a pound."

"We could drift round this space until we run out of food and power without ever finding a natural exit, I think this represents our best chance to escape from here." Taliserra said after a few more moments of pondering. "Are there any objections, I'll note them in my log."

"No objections from me," Ty said though he was still running a few things through his head.

"Alright then," Taliserra said, flexing her fingers on the conference table. "HG, Lt Baka, coordinate with Ops to set up everything needed for the power transfer."

Baka affirmed with a small salute, gathering herself to return to Engineering as soon as the meeting ended.

"Anthony.... Brendon." Taliserra started taking a moment to recall the younger science officer's name. "Use that time to run more simulations, work out every variable possible."

Anthony looked at Brendon before he said anything. No, neither of them were psychic, but from working with each other and relying on Brendon and all of the Science department for their areas of expertise. As the department head, he came to know each well and rely on their knowledge about that area of science. After a nod, Anthony said, "Yes Captain we'll get right on it when this..." He was interrupted by the first officer.

"Wait," The First Officer said. "If we would like to do a practice test, but cannot because it would take too much out of the Wolff. Then, can we entertain the use of a shuttle or runabout?" inquired Ty. "It would be smaller scale, but a separate source of power. It could at least give us an indication on how things will go with the Wolff itself perhaps?"

Again Anthony thought about it and made a calculated guess. "I believe we could work on that quickly with an Engineer that wasn't needed for more important work in Engineering." He looked to Lt Baka for confirmation of if he had some spare crew to help engineer the set-up. "Or HG could probably do it if you can't spare anyone."

"For a simulation I should be fine." HG indicated. "I really think that Lieutenant Baka will need all her people to ensure we have a chance at this."

"A small scale trial run would be a good idea," Brendon said after hearing Ty's remark about the runabouts. "The simulations we ran were based on an approximation of what the 'wall' is. The real thing may act differently to those results, a runabout should have enough power to make a small hole to test the theory."

"I'm not sure a small scale test would be a wise idea either. The theory is that we need a massive amount of energy to break the barrier. A shuttle can generate a blast of energy - we could even equip it to direct the energy as we're intending with the ship... but when the shuttle isn't successful, I wouldn't want that to reflect that the ship will suffer the same fate," Baka said.

Taliserra pondered during the back and forth between the officers, fiddling with a Padd as they talked., it was boiling down to 'all or nothing' "Anthony, run your simulations, get us the most ideal solution possible, everyone else begin preparations. Dismissed.

Baka promptly made her exit, sorting the tasks ahead of her in order to begin the preparations and assigning duties as soon as she returned to Engineering.

"On it Captain." Anthony said as he and Brendon got ready to leave.

HG did not say anything but tossed a salute while still cradling the PaDD.

Summer had simply sat taking it all in. With everyone heading out she offered Tyrus a smile before she headed out herself.

Ty had stood from his seat and had begun to head out with the rest of the crew. He was not expecting to be held back; however, Taliserra clearly had something else in mind.

"Commander, wait a moment." Taliserra called to Ty.

'I don't suppose no is an option' he thought to himself and had watched as the others left. "Of course, Captain."

Taliserra waited until all the other officers had left before speaking. "I want you to prepare a message buoy, if we can't make a hole big enough for the Wolff maybe we can at least send a message out to Starfleet and warn them about this phenomena and our situation."

"Them and anyone else who may be as unfortunate as ourselves and those Jem'Hadar," replied Ty. "A prudent course of action, Captain. I'll begin working on it immediately. If we fail at escaping..." Ty let out a small sigh. He didn't want to think about it. "We will try to get the buoy through at the very least."

"Thank you Commander," Taliserra said with a small smile. "I'll format a report for command and send it you shortly."

As Ty left Taliserra sat back in her chair. "Well, I've either saved my crew or potentially condemmed them to wander this phenomena potentially forever." She remarked.

"We'll get out of here Captain." Miranda told her. "You'll get your crew home again."

"I hope so Miranda, I certainly hope so." Taliserra replied.

OFF:


Captain Taliserra Tigran
Commanding Officer

Lieutenant Commander Tyrus Acevedo
Executive Officer

Lieutenant Anthony Edwards Ph.D
Chief Science Officer

LT Dovenice Baka
Engineering Officer

Lt. HG Wells
Science Officer

LTjg Summer Wyse
Chief Counsellor

Ensign Brendon Watanabe
Stellar Cartographer
[npc]

Po1 Miranda Fry
Captain's yeoman
[npc]