Monday, November 30, 2009

[USS Charon] SD240911.30 - Joint Duty Log "Fireflies" Part III || Lieutenant Nathanial Doyle, Ensign Thomas Clipper

=/\= Deck A - Sensor Pod =/\=
 
Nathanial clicked his comm badge. "Lieutenant Doyle to the Captain" He waited a few seconds and was greeted with no reply. "The comm system must be having a frizt as well" he said to noone but himself. Nathanial turned to one of the cadets. "Tell Ensign Clipper that he is incharge until I get back, I am off to find the captain."
The cadet nodded his head and ran off to find Thomas.
 
Nathanial headed to the turbolift, it opened after a few seconds of waiting, entering he simply said "Deck 1".
The turbolift creaked as it rushed to its destination. The doors opened and he was confronted with the bridge. He headed over to the Ops station. "Ensign, I need to know where the captain is, can you locate her for me."
"Yes sir" the Ensign replied. Checking on his screen he replied "She is currently on deck 8, Stellar Cartography."
Nathanial turned and headed for the turbo lift, asking for Deck 8.
 
 
=/\= Deck B - Sensor Pod =/\=
 
Thomas yelled across Deck B "Crewman! Don't operate the Magazine lift by yourself, Specialist Brody will you give him a hand."
 
The ensign had always enjoyed managing a production line. He knew in his mind the overall project, however for it to be repeated 20 times he needed to assign tasks. 8 of the probes were now crowded around the boy magazine, the unloading almost complete with a few more with their panels removed with scientists recalibrating the probes to perform the function Lieutenant Doyle had concocted.
 
Cadet Tenal came up beside Thomas. "Ensign, the Lieutenant has gone to find the Captain and said you're in charge of things until he gets back." Thomas acknowledged "Oh good, I do enjoy a challenge, will you go give the petty officer a hand taking off those panels and recalibrating the isolinear chips." He pointed with one hand to who he was referring too as he handed off the Tricorder he had brought down.
 
The first probe that had been pulled out was being worked on by Chief Petty officer Lharrrh who was interfacing with it via a tricorder. "Ensign Clipper, I have disabled the homing beacon on this one too, what are these things going to do after they deploy the burst?" looking at the Chief he replied with a mischievous smile. "Well it was going to be nothing but you have just given me an idea..." 

 
=/\= Deck 8 =/\=
 
The doors opened to Deck 8. Two security officers blocked Nathanials path out of the turbolift.
"Sir, you must leave now, noone is allowed onto deck 8." one of the security officers instructed Nathanial.
"I need to see the captain, and I believe she is on deck 8." He replied.
 
"That is correct, but my orders are to let no one onto deck 8 sir."
 
"I need to see her now, your orders or not." he said while starting to walk out of the turbolift. The two security officers moved into position in front of Nathanial. He was about to attempt to push his way though when he noticed the Captain and her escort approaching the Turbolift.
 
 "What is this commotion?"  Shiarrael stepped out from behind a corner of the corridor as she made her way to the lift, her face covered in soot and her expression quite sour.  "Lieutenant, while you are chief of science you are not exempt from the rules of this ship."  Her tone was steady instead of angry but it held a pinch of annoyance in it "I hope this is important enough for you to disregard those rules."
 
"Captain, I need to speak to you about a way for us to detect the enemy ships"
 
Lifting her hand Shiarrael did a slash motion dismissing the security officers "explain" she said to Doyle.  Her annoyance quickly evaporated. 
 
"Well as you know, with sensors being almost nullified by the nebula, we need some way to detect the romulan fleet. As such we have come up with an idea. Basically, by dispersing a complex reaction based discharge that reacts with the Romulan emissions and with the Thoron particles found in the nebula, we can for a single burst of approximately fifteen to twenty seconds, light up the enemy fleet like a Christmas tree, so to speak."
 
Nathanial handed the Captain a PADD with an image of the nebula with a superimposed dodecahedron.

"With the deflector dish is practically offline, and even if we could get it fully operational, there isn't enough power currently to run enough of a sustained burst for it to be effective. As such the idea, which we have called 'Firefly' will be the solution. As you can see on the PADD, we base a dispersal pattern in a shape of a truncated icosahedron, now even though this pattern would be totally unusable in terms of vertices's it does turn out to be the natural choice for the reaction field construction." He said with a smile of pride on his face.
"I currently have my men working on modifying the twenty probes we will need for this to work."
 
Accepting the PADD Shiarrael immediately winced when the cold metal touched the burned flesh of her palms- a small trickle of green blood pooled on the edges of the device as she perused the information.  "Excellent work Lieutenant, how long will it take for you to implement this?"
 
"Four hours, three hours tops, I can get all 20 ready and in position, but any sooner and I can't guarantee it will work as intended.' Nathanial responded.
 
"Get started right away."  She handed the PADD back to him, drops of blood dripping onto the carpeting from it.  Although she was in a great deal of pain she restrained herself to momentary winces "now return to your post- it is dangerous here."
 
Nathanial saluted, and said "Deck A"  As the turbolift doors closed, he grabbed the lower left corner of his shirt and wiped the PADD down of the Captains blood. Her blood... it was a grim reminder that they were in a dangerous situation with deathly consequences...
 
 
=/\= Deck B - Sensor Pod =/\=
 
Thomas saw an idle Crewman, Specialist Brody to be exact, calling him over he placed a tricorder and PADD in his hands. "Crewman can you add this protocol to the probes, it's a late addition." The specialist nodded in the affirmative as he left to carry out the duty. Looking back at the control station he had written the protocol on he thought about how low the chances would be it would work.
 
If after the burst the probes detected one of those signatures it would drive itself toward that vessel and detonate its remaining fuel reserves, it was no Quantum torpedo but for the effort involved it would was a free addition, possibly the heat and light show might just break its way through to be detected by the Charon.
 
Nathanial exited the tubrolift to find an empty Deck A. He tapped his comm badge "Nathanial to Thomas, where are you?"
 
"Deck B Sir in the Probe Magazine." Thomas replied
"Roger that, on my way up to Deck B now." Nathanial got back in the turbolift and headed to deck B.
What confronted him seemed more a mechanics workshop, rather than a delicate sensor array; he located Thomas working on one of the pods.
 
"Ensign, report."
 
Looking over to the Lieutenant, Thomas handed the Isolinear Phase inverter he had been using to the Crewman who he was working beside him before addressing Nathanial. "As you can see sir was have taken the probes out of the magazine so we can work on them." he looked out over the set up he had fabricated, genuinely happy with his work.
Thomas continued. "The modifications are going well; the Probes are accepting the alterations as expected. Once the physical tuning and navigation protocols are done all that will be left to do is set the timers for the burst and the launch."
 
As he was talking he grabbed the PADD that was sitting on the probe next to him he offered it to Nathanial. A live list of alterations that were being applied to each of the Probes, as well showing all the modifications required.
 
Nathanial reviewed the PADD, Thomas had done a good job, and he was proud.
"Good work Ensign, I see you have calculated the total time it will take, five hours." He paused deciding how best to say the next sentence, in the end he figured he would just say it.
"I need it done in three."
 
"Well Sir, at least that's the first time frame I've received today that can be met without altering the space/time continuum, I'll do what needs to be done to make it happen." Thomas said with a broad grin. Sure it was bad news but a negative disposition nor complaining never fixed work that had to be done. However the grin came as Thomas finally realized why one of the instructors at academy kept insisting when you give an ETA on work you first double it and then double it again.
 
 
 
[To Be continued...]
 
 
Lieutenant Nathanial Doyle
Chief Science Officer
USS Charon
 
&
 
Ensign Thomas Clipper
Assistant Science Officer
USS Charon