The Fix (Part 2 of 3)

Posted on 20 Dec 2013 @ 11:12am by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Captain Jonathan Holliday & Commander Scarlet Blake & Lieutenant Asahi Kita & Commander Norvi Stace & Command Master Chief Markum Quinn & Lieutenant JG Victoria Crawley & Lieutenant Commander Amynta Markos & Lieutenant Commander Dea Mialin & Lieutenant Ammar Fahad & Commander Allyndra illm Warraquim & Lieutenant Theron Rhodes & Lieutenant Jared Nicholas & Ensign Im'er Mor'an & Lieutenant Aria Rice & Chief Warrant Officer 2 Arthur Willis & Chief Warrant Officer 2 Riley Cameron

2,354 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 04 - Exodus
Location: USS Galileo - Main bridge, Various
Timeline: MD 08 - 0835 hrs

Previously, on The Fix (Part 1)...

"Helm set course for the shipyard - one quarter impulse maximum, engage when ready. Mr Quinn keep an eye on our engines - if they start to overheat I want them shut down, don't wait for the order."

"Aye-aye, Sir." responded the long time engineer and current CoB. "Engines operating within acceptable norms. I have battery bypass set up in case we need to shut the system off."

"One quarter impulse," Dea acknowledged the order as she carefully piloted Galileo towards their intended destination. "Everything is green so far on the Flight Control side."

"Steady as she goes Miss Mialin." John replied with a nod.

And Now, the Continuation...

[ON]

Galileo's main impulse engine sputtered to life and began to weakly glow red as its fusion reactors churned out the required energy for propulsion. With inputs from Mialin, the Nova Class slowly came about and started to make its way around the surrounding Borg cubes and to the far side of the planet.

Once obscured from sensors and the visual line of sight due to the planet's curve, a massive Le'kt orbital facility came into view on the main screen. Roughly twice the size of the largest Federation starbase, its unique construction geometry resembled a collection of square honeycombs, within each hexagonal segment housing; either a Borg vessel or what appeared to be the Le'kt's own starships. Some were large and others were small in size, but at first glance, an entire fleet appeared to be collected around the facility.

As soon as the large station came into view, Lt. Rhodes had tactical sensors collecting as much information without being too evasive or threatening.

The massive station was laid in a flat hexagon shape, with a tall spire extending up and down from the center. The many small hex spaces that made up the station contained ships either docked or in station keeping. A Galaxy Class starship could easily fit in one. Many of these had what appeared to be force shield bubble about the vessel. Sensors indicated atmosphere inside these shields.

Rhodes reported, "Sir, I can confirm 54 vessels on the Le'kt station. Many of these are in individual force shields."

"Picking up a slight power flux from the Starboard nacelle's main power conduit." stated Markum cooly. "I'm shutting down all power to the nacelle, just to be safe. It may just be a loose transponder, but I'm not taking any chances. Impulse drive is getting warm, but still within the acceptable parameters."

"Keep an eye on it Mr. Quinn. Anyone getting anything from those ships? They sure as hell don't look all Borg to me?" The XO called out, looking at the sensor feeds from his own console, confused as to the nature of some of the vessels he was seeing in front of him. Some appeared to be obviously Borg, but others appeared to come from an array of different species, each with different configurations, but each equally hard to make out amongst the mass of starships.

Amynta frowned as she looked at the signatures, bringing up the database. "Running scans, Sir. I'll see what we end up with. I think I can identify some 22nd Century ships here, but they look massively modified, Sir."

Stace followed the console readouts silently as her green eyes flicked about the screen in front of her. Relaying her own information over that of the tactical sensors, her right eyebrow arched as she snorted, shaking her head a little. "It looks remarkably similar to that of a beehive and the irony is not lost on me," she added, referring to the hexagonal design of the station as she maintained concentration on her scans. "Sir," she broke away, arching her neck to the left to gain the captain's attention. "Each hexagon is surrounded by an energy barrier of some kind, allowing an artificial atmosphere to exist inside." She continued to scan and then noted, "It's almost completely sterile, Captain. Fewer radiation spikes - or particles of any kind - than in the vacuum of space."

Asahi quirked his brow at the readings on his screen. "Ma'am, we can't take much more, the impulse reactor's given in." He paused, before adding a heavy suggestion. "We should proceed with caution."

As Galileo approached the orbital facility, its damaged and overworked impulse engine finally broke down. The deuterium fusion reaction inside of the reactor was too much for the bruised driver coil assembly to handle, and the ship began to lose attitude control. It listed lazily to port, presenting a nightmare for the flight controller and also putting it on a slow collision course with the structure.

"Ma'am," Mor'an called from her station, "We are experiencing a power failure due to an overheating of the impulse drives."

"Get the impulse reactor offline! Bring thrusters online and stabilise our course!"

The Commander could see what would happen very shortly if they didn't regain control of the situation - ploughing into one of those force fields, or worse, the superstructure of the shipyards themselves presented a very real end to the tiny Nova class starship.

"Impulse offline," Dea responded even as she sent the command to shut the engines down immediately. "Operating on thrusters," she fought the ship so they could stabilize their course as quickly as possible.

Lt. Rhodes had an idea and made a few calculations. He spoke out without turning around, "Sir, I've determined that if the engines cannot be reestablished, there is the option of inverting the polarity on the tractor beam and provide a way to slow our decent, or more likely vector the ship away from the station and avoid a collision."

Quinn was scanning the MSD intently, looking..."Oh, dammit. Matter/antimatter chamber is shutdown, switching to battery back-up. Ops! Sir, if you can power down everything but critical systems, it would give the helm a little more thruster control and we could increase steerage to flight control, and the tractor beam...I'd recommend bringing it online."

Not waiting time on words, Mor'an quickly rerouted the power as Quinn requested. "The power has been rerouted and the tractor beam is online," she called to Quinn.

While Galileo's crew had been busy attempting to manage their depleted power resources to bring a tractor beam online, the Le'kt aboard the orbital complex had been silently observing the dangerous situation. Like any close maneuvering in space, collisions were often disastrous and resulted in loss of life. Before the Nova Class' crew could get their systems properly configured, a pair of bright amber energy beams materialized then extended towards Galileo, clasping her by each side of her saucer section before slowly stabilizing the craft.

"We're being pulled in," Scarlet called lightly across the bridge, shaking her head with a small smile. "The tractor beam is coming from their station." Just as well.

The alien tractor beam delicately rolled Galileo onto its ventral axis, then proceeded to pull it ever so gently into one of the vacant honeycomb docking ports. The ship passed through the facility's atmospheric force fields and was slowly turned around to put it in perfect docking position, after which the tractor beams released it and a smooth set of large mechanical arms deployed then reached out to grab on to the hull and secure it in place. The Le'kt's version of a docking port extended from the main complex and attached itself to Galileo's starboard docking hatch, creating an airtight seal.

Dea looked up from her station suddenly once again. "We've achieved soft dock with the station." At the moment she honestly didn't know how to interpret what had just happened. Double checking her readings once again.

"Set Condition Blue throughout the ship," Lirha replied, watching as the bridge's alert lighting began to steadily pulse with cyan strobes after hearing her audible command. She, too, was intrigued at the process, but by this point in the mission, there was very little which could surprise her.

Lt. Rhodes turned to face the Captain, "Sir, I just thought you might want to know. Those beams that moved us here are very powerful. Sensor readings indicated that they could easily crush the hull, without a doubt."

"No doubt they could..." Lirha muttered to herself. Any energy beam capable of docking an object as massive as a Borg cube would no doubt be able to handle a tiny Nova Class with ease, and from what she had seen of the Le'kt technology so far, it was far more advanced than anything the Federation currently employed.

"Well, I suppose it is time to greet our visitors," the captain said after turning to face her XO. "Will you do the honors and assemble several teams of engineers with security escorts and greet our guests at the airlock?" she instructed.

"Yes ma'am" John replied, picking himself up from the XO's chair, grabbing a PADD from the storage unit below the command console.

=^=Holliday to Engineering - I'm transferring crew assignments to the MSD - all necessary crew members, gear up and report to the airlock immediately.=^=

Closing the channel John turned to the tactical station, and Lieutenant Rhodes, knowing that Security would have to be tight during this rather unorthodox repair and reload procedure. How exactly these aliens were going to replicate Starfleet technology, from the most simple of gel packs to a whole nacelle was still beyond him.

"Mr Rhodes - assign security details to our engineering teams as necessary - all non-essential personnel are to be confined to quarters and all access terminals restricted to levels 4 and above. Also I want the computer core locked down tighter than a Ferengi's latinum vault - understood?"

"Understood, Sir." Rhodes replied sharply.

Quinn monitored the ships status from the MSD. "Skipper? You want me to stay put and watch over the MSD?"

The captain looked over her shoulder back towards the bridge's Engineering Master Systems Display where the COB was currently situated. "Yes, I would like to keep an eye on our repair progress from here on the bridge."

Willis heard the order from the XO and locked down his station and removed the data rod, then turned and walked for his designated assignment.

Sighing, Asahi locked down and removed himself from the station, hand going to the commbadge as he scanned over the assignments. =^="Hope you're ready for another knock of brains together, Cameron."=^=

Ammar gathered with the staff of his department, all of whom looked tired and far from at their peak. "I know it's been hectic and stressful, but please, let's get Galileo patched up and out of this hellish area of space." He looked around, and nodded before continuing. "You all know your assignments. I'll monitor things from here."

Lt. Rhodes faced the tactical console. All weapons systems were already shut down. Shield emitters were disengaged and sensors were deactivated. Theron felt that they were now in the protective custody of the Le'kt. An uneasy feeling at that. Rhodes tapped his Comm, =^= Lt. Rice, Mr. Mormont, meet me in the Security office in 2 minutes. =^=

Lt. Rhodes then stood, gave a nod to the Captain, and headed to the turbo lift.

Aria rolled her eyes where she was, giving a quick smile to Mormont before heading to the Security office.

Cameron stuck his head out of a Jeffries tube as he heard the order to report to the airlock. Sliding back out into the corridor, he grabbed a hold of the panel cover and threw it back over the plasma vents, before pulling his equipment bag over his shoulder and making a sprint for the airlock.


Portside Airlock

As the airlock doors parted, several Lek't were waiting for the Galileo crew, each carrying an identical yet small silver case in their right hands. After a moment's delay one of the group stepped forward and spoke on behalf of the group.

"We have been assigned to aid in the repair of your vessel. We require access to your vessel specifications and primary systems."

Asahi was a mite confused as to why there were so few tools amongst them. However, he nodded, waiting for the first two teams to escort the first groups of aliens away, before turning towards the final grouping. "Let's go then, hull's this way."

Mormont and Galepsie followed behind this group of engineers.

A triad of three Le'kt stepped forward as one, all of them apparently underwhelmed by the filth that surrounded them, as they followed the hairy, stinking flesh pile towards the hull.

Another group of three Le'kt walked through the Port Airlock. They had indicated that they were to repair the Impulse engines, and were lead away by Willis and Talbot. Lt. Rhodes motioned for Stark to follow him as they would be monitoring that repair group.

A third team of three Le'kt stepped aboard the Galileo, "We are here to complete repairs on the port warp nacelle. Please lead the way." Fahad and Rothgra lead this team, which was followed by Lt. Rice and Sgt. Wyatt.

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

CAPT Lirha Saalm
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo

CMDR Jonathan Holliday
Executive Officer
USS Galileo

Lt. Jr Grade Asahi Kita
Engineering Officer
USS Galileo

Lt. Cmdr. Scarlet Blake
Chief Counsellor/2XO
USS Galileo

Lt. JG Victoria Crawley
Psychologist
USS Galileo

Master Chief Petty Officer Markum Quinn
Chief of the Boat
USS Galileo

Lt. Theron Rhodes
Chief Security/Tactical Officer
USS Galileo

LT Dea Mialin
Chief Flight Control Officer
USS Galileo

Lt. Allyndra illm Warraquim
Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo

LT Aria Rice
Security/Tactical Officer
USS Galileo

LT Amynta Markos
Chief Intelligence Officer
USS Galileo

LTJG Jared Nicholas
Linguist
USS Galileo

LTJG Ammar Fahad
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Galileo

ENS Im'er Mor'an
Operations Officer
USS Galileo

WO Riley Cameron
Engineering Officer
USS Galileo
[PNPC - Holliday]

SCPO Arthur Willis
Computer Systems Specialist
USS Galileo
[PNPC - Quinn]

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