Seeking Solutions
Posted on 16 Mar 2013 @ 6:24am by Lieutenant Lilou Zaren & Chief Warrant Officer 2 Arthur Willis & Petty Officer 1st Class James Watt & Petty Officer 3rd Class Kareel Gan
Edited on on 17 Mar 2013 @ 6:18pm
2,951 words; about a 15 minute read
Mission:
Episode 03 - Frontier
Location: USS Galileo: Deck 7, Engineering Lab
Timeline: MD04: 1200 hrs
Tags: engineering
[ON]
Lilou had left Thanis in charge of monitoring the consoles in Main Engineering with the strict instructions that if anything were to seem even slightly off, he was to report to her by commbadge immediately.
The trouble, she had discovered, was that even with the IDF and SIF bearing more weight, the Galileo simply didn't have the power to boost to make those re-routings worth it. And with the EPS reset and the plasma injectors reinforced... Her calculations still showed they'd be overtaken by a Warp 9 class in a matter of hours. Not nearly long enough to get them to safety. The warp core would overheat and incinerate them before they even reached the nearest weigh-station.
But then it had occurred to her, while she was working on the finishing touches for her prototype design of a psionic translation amplifier... Amplification. The trouble was a lack of power to fuel the nacelles without overloading the warp core. But if there were power from another source, a new source, in addition... there was possibility. She was running on green tea and apple slices, but she'd managed to build a remote base using her kinetic modules clamped around it as a power source rather than any internal power. And it worked. She threw screws at it and watched as the power level climbed.
Now she just had to explain to her department how exactly they were going to implement this onto a ship several hundred times the prototype's size while they were in motion. The lab looked as though an insane rat had been living in it for a year - not just her for a matter of hours. Variations on schematics were projected onto walls with notes and drawn in relay systems and the math to prove it could all work... theoretically.
Kareel peeked through first, holding a tray of several large containers of blue foamy liquid, with what looked like red whipped cream on top. It was the blended texture of several fruits she'd brought with her from the starbase. Zetkol was one of her favorite drinks. Sour and sweet and foamy and colorful. And when you mixed it with tasat, it glowed. Excellent. She set down her tray on the closest table to the door and plucked two containers, gesturing to Lilou with one. "Zetkol for you, and anyone else." There was five there, one for each. She smiled and crossed over to one of the desks with random PADDs piled onto it and propped herself up, crossing her legs.
Lilou cautiously lifted one of the unfamiliar 'zetkol' and sipped. It was a new experience of flavors, yet strangely appealing. She nodded once, with a half smile, and wished there was caffeine in it.
Willis entered, holding a very large, steaming mug of fresh smelling coffee...and one very large smile. "Afternooneveryone. Wowtodayhasbeenaverybusydaysofar. HiChief. Didyouknowthatyoucouldgetfreshbrewedcoffeeinthemesshall? Sureittasteslikethebacksideofaklingonlapdogbutitreallypacksapunch! YEEWOW!" he exclaimed pumping a fist into the air.
As the last of them arrived in the lab, Lilou rubbed her hands together. "All right. Ignore all this for the moment," she said, perching on the edge of the lab table. "How are we all coming along with the refits?"
Willis put his coffee mug down for a brief moment, then cleared his throat. "Well...we are workingas fastaswecan. It is a slowgoatthemoment, tryingtorecognize what couldgowrongifwerush."
Lilou hopped off her perch, collected his coffee, replaced it with a cup of the juice that Gan had brought, and returned to her table to sip at her borrowed beverage. He wasn't kidding. It was so strong, she could practically feel it scraping the inside of her skull.
"And, the Chief here has a small problem with rushing," Kareel said with a grin as he tumbled through his sentences like a freight train. "But we're getting it done. We should be good to go shortly."
"So we keep to the schedule, we get these refits done as soon as possible." Lilou looked at them all. "Because then the real work begins. Captain says she wants a faster ship. A sprinter. We're getting her safer and that's necessary, but when the bolts are tightened and the plasma injectors are reinforced, we're still going to have the same amount of power we're running off of now, just more economized." She leaned back and picked up one of the models she was working with. "Unless we find more power." She wiggled the tennis ball can sized cylinder in her hand. "No engine. No internal power source." She held it above her head and dropped it. In the time it took for the cylinder to fall from her hand to her knees, it was glowing brightly and responding to her hands on the remote. Up, down, left, right, circling up around their heads then coming in for a landing on the floor between them all. "I want to figure out how to use that tech, on this ship. Any takers?"
Willis chugged the juice, then almost gagged as he came to the realization that the juice did not, even slightly, taste like the battery acid Peers took from him. "Sorry. Hairball." Willis composed himself then readdressed the question. "Could we route it through the impulse engines?"
"It's good stuff, huh?" Gan smiled.
Lilou, the little Trill that could, tapped her nose and pointed to Willis, "Great minds." She leaned back again, grabbed a PADD and pulled up scale schematic on one of the walls, lowering the lights in the lab with a flick of her thumb. The schematics were a combination of notes and resketches of the ship's exterior, new EPS lines coiling in towards the impulse. "Yes. We've also got a few options here for power-pooling. Could work it into the wiring of the array, like it is now: kinetic energy is used and recycled into dilithium equivalencies directly in the array. Or the arrays are collection sources only, and they stream that power into a central conduit. There's pros and cons for both angles, so far as I can see. Considering we're wanting to use this extra power as a crank to the nacelles, we've got to be able to shut off the intake when the power levels get too high. Overflow into the warp core will translate into kaboom with these if we don't get a good system in place for release and power storage."
Willis made another sour face as he drank more of the....juice? More like warp plasma, he thought. "That's a good idea." Willis looked to Peers. I could set up a separate program that interconnects with the Primary MSD in Main Engineering. It would monitor the influx of kinetic energy and allow me to switch it off, or redirect the flow if the EPS lines get over loaded. Like, maybe to the batteries, or back out through the main deflector dish...like a sling shot or something. Either way, I'll need eight neurogel packs, minimum to run the network, and probably have to commandeer a few parts from nonessential consoles to build an adaptable program that the ship's computer core won't see as a virus."
"Kinetic energy," Gan repeated curiously. "That's Peers. I'm Gan." She waved. Wiggly fingers. Many hands. "Kinetic energy could potentially gain power through outside sources entirely," she thought aloud. "We could set up kinetic barrier generators along the ship's outer hull. With the power boost from the impulse array, it would be enough to get it online. We could then power it completely from the outside." She glanced down at the tiny prototype that Lilou was throwing things at. "We could take someone out to the hull. Fire directed energy blasts at it, charge it up. The problem would come in handling the excess power, we could integrate a siphon through the impulse engines," Gan said, resting her hands lotus-style on her knees. "The excess power would route through the shields, over the ship and out through plasma exhaust. Over 'n out." She made a wave with her hand.
"Routing it through the shields would add to our defenses during an attack scenario," Lilou mused. "That was the original intent of the prototypes anyway. As long as we maintained the power levels stably and didn't overload the shield arrays... How quick can you come up with a mockup of the network, Willis? I'd like to plug it into a few test algorithms and make sure this we're not overlooking a step with that before we implement a new network over the Primary MSD."
Willis rubbed his temples. His buzz from the ultra coffee was declining, and it was starting to be painful. "If I can have access to a few terminals, I can get it up and running in...twelve hours, maybe less."
"Hydrate," Lilou ordered, pointing to Willis' juice. "Check with Operations and see what consoles we can disassemble. If they give you trouble, send them to me. This is a priority for the Captain. And for the benefit of the crew at large. Can she handle the EPS on her own?" she asked, nodding to Gan with her eyes on the computer specialist.
Willis looked to Gan, then back to Peers. "Yes, ma'am. All I was doing was getting in her way . I did manage to download a faster program that should be able to keep up with most of the demands in power flux that our little project may cause."
"Good. Then that's the plan. We finish up the staying-power fix-ups we agreed on, then get going on the retrofit. I'm leaving these sketches in here. This is our new meditation space; you find yourself on shift with nothing to do, I encourage you to come in, stare at 'em, see if you can't see something I missed. If we're going to experiment with this girl in zero-grav, I want to cover as many bases as possible ahead of the curve."
Kareel nodded in understanding, her brain focused on their task behind her closed eyelids.
Suddenly, Petty Officer Watt appeared. For someone running unacceptably late, he did not seem to be in a rush. "Please excuse me," he offered as he wandered over and stood next to Lilou, peering over her shoulder. "What'd I miss? Everything...?"
"More power," Kareel summarized it rather succinctly, she thought.
Lilou tossed an ice chip at the little cylinder on the ground, then another, and another, and it began to glow and lift to hover in the midst of all of them. "Kinetic energy absorption as a means of expanding and supplementing our resources for higher warp speeds for short periods of time. Thoughts?"
Willis gave a nod towards Watt. "C'mon Watt. You always have good ideas...well, mostly anyway. That one with the recycler wasn't a good one, but..."
"If it did not work," Watt said, putting on an affected air, "it was because our materials were insufficient. I don't like turning a starship into a prototype testing facility. What do we need right now?"
Lilou bit her tongue on the fact that it wasn't the first time the Galileo had ever been used as a prototype testing facility and she seriously doubted it would be the last. "The tasks we've been working on, if completed, would get us to Warp 8.3. Captain wants us to be able to outrun Romulan pirates. That means 9 and higher. We need more power than the engine's capable of generating." She looked at him seriously. "We're sitting here talking about this to find a way of making the manipulation of our kinetic energy safer and more specific before we try any test implementations. If you have a better idea, I'd welcome it now as I would have before we set off from the starbase."
"Yeah I got a better idea," Watt said sarcastically, "tell the captain if she wants to travel at warp 9 to bang an admiral and get herself put on a Sovereign class. What the heck is she thinking?" he let out a huff and started looking at their work. "But this is what we have to work with. Let's see..."
Lilou stiffened, her spine straightening. "Excuse me?"
James looked up, blinking. "Ah, sorry, it was meant metaphorically."
"She's your captain," Lilou said, her voice dropping low out of righteous offense, "I don't care if you were being literal, metaphorical, or metaphysical. It is not for us to question what she asks of us. Only to figure out how to accomplish it. If you have a problem with that-"
Willis glared at Watt and shook his head. That was not what he expected to come out of Watt's mouth. "Watt, stuff it man. Talk about insubordination... you'll be up shit's creek if the CoB finds out you're bad mouthing the CO... and it won't be from me, because I'm no rat. Just chill out. We're all stressed out."
And there it was, Lilou thought. There was the whole problem. They still thought of her as an equal. The rank and position that Saalm had hung on her like an ornament meant nothing. Not to the other department heads. Not to her own department. Her jaw felt tight. Watt had openly disrespected Saalm. But now Willis had interrupted her. Called on Quinn as their ranking officer- and he probably didn't think anything of it. Why should he? She hadn't earned her position. She hadn't earned their respect. "Watt. My office, now." She looked between Willis and Gan. "You're dismissed until Beta. I'll be expecting a testable network by end of beta tomorrow and an update on the EPS upgrades by PADD by end of beta tonight." She plucked her prototype from the air before it could land on the floor again and strode past them all out of the lab.
Willis looked over to Gan with a confused, yet innocent look on his face. "What? What'd I say? If she wanted to make Watt's life miserable, she could tell Quinn. The old man deals with us noncoms if the Department Heads want to scare the shit out of someone."
Gan shrugged and smiled. "She's young, give her some time."
"Gentlemen," Watt said smoothly, nodding to them as he stepped away from their work and followed after Lilou. Once he arrived at the chief's office, he stood by the door, watching her. "I apologize for my outburst," he offered preemptively, his tone sincere but reserved. "It was uncalled for, of course."
"I don't need an apology. I need an explanation." She pointed to a - remarkably - empty chair. "Sit."
"Very well." He sat. "With all due respect, I've done a lot of impossible things in my years in Starfleet, but getting this ship to sustain warp 9 while running from Romulans with our current circumstances isn't impossible, it's insanely suicidal. We could spend our time working on real solutions, and they do exist, so why do we need this one? And I know, chief, I'm not the only one who thinks that..." he gave her a poignant look, "am I?"
Lilou stared at him. Real solutions. She could have spit at him she was so angry, but she held herself ramrod straight instead - every vibration of frustration resonating down through her muscles into her feet and into the ship. "You tell me," she said quietly. "Are you?"
"No, I don't think I am."
"You're under the impression that there are other people in this department who question our captain's ability to lead this ship?"
"I'm not in a position to know who believes what or what departments they are in. I'm not questioning the captain's authority, only this decision. Do you think this is our best option?"
"I think-" Lilou said, her voice clipped and quiet, "that our job is to find a way to make her orders possible. Not to question her. We are being given an opportunity here to exercise our ingenuity. To show what exactly is possible with a Nova. And as for your other question - no. I do not think it's impossible or suicidal. But if you lack faith in me, or in Captain Saalm, I suggest you let me know right now. The next few weeks will not be easy and they will require all of our skill, ability, and creativity. I don't have room for dead weight or second-guessing."
"Everything I have to offer is at your disposal," he replied, "whether I believe it possible or not to accomplish a task. There's a lot of thing you loose sleep over, I'm sure, but my dependability needn't be one of them."
The Trill watched him closely. What did he mean - lots of things she lost sleep over? What had he heard? Who was he talking to? "Are you capable of thinking objectively and actively on the task we have set for us?"
"Always, chief."
"Are we going to have a problem about Captain Saalm's leadership?"
"Not at all."
Lilou sighed softly from her nose. "Get to bed. Rest. Take care of yourself. And take a look through the spec propositions during gamma tonight. You have questions, you let me know."
Watt gave a nod. "Understood."
"Dismissed," she said, and managed to wait until he'd gone to sink into the chair he'd abandoned. How was she supposed to convince any of them she could command when she wasn't sure of it herself?
[OFF]
ENS Lilou Peers
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Galileo
Senior Chief Petty Officer Arthur Willis
Engineering Computer Specialist
USS Galileo
(pNPC Markum Quinn)
PO1 James "Striker" Watt
Engineering Officer
USS Galileo
played by Psylus Anon
PO3 Kareel Gan
Engineering Officer, SCE
USS Galileo
(pNPC Liyar)
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