After Shock!

Posted on Tue Jan 22nd, 2013 @ 1:45pm by Captain Elsie Halliwell & Lieutenant Jimmy Cooper & Lieutenant JG Marcus Augusta PHD & Captain T'mpest Michaels

803 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Sowing the Seeds
Location: USS Ranger, Bridge
Timeline: Mission Day 4, 1730 hours

---

On the Ranger

"Captain," Lieutenant Barker, currently filling in for Science with the absence of Lieutenant Cooper, said, "I've been looking at the data we've been collecting before and after the explosion of the Dubai - and I have determined that the variance between space and subspace wasn't there before the explosion - it's possible, however, that there was a smaller rift, undetectable from the position we were, which widened as the explosion happened."

Elsie remained silent as she listened, furrowing her brow as he spoke. "What could cause that?" she asked, genuinely concerned.

"A minor rift could make a warp bubble hang and rip, then going into warp could tear the ship apart. However, though I'm no engineer, I know that every single safety system on the warp nacelles are designed to avoid this at all costs, rapidly disabling all propulsion if necessary. However, all this is only valid if there was a rift in the first place, which I cannot verify. I'm hoping the away team could shed some light on what happened."

"Sitting around and waiting for other people to do our job is not in my nature, Lieutenant," Elsie replied, rather tersely. "But you are right. We need more information before we can grasp the situation with more clarity. As soon as they have restored partial power to the section, upload it's database. We can go from there."

"I'll try to come up with some theories before that, but they will be theories unless we get more information, Captain."

"Very well," Elsie replied dismissively as she rose to her feet and walked over to the Ops terminal, practically dismissing the replacement covering crewman Blake had secured with a wave of her hand. She looked at the readout and then contacted the away team.

"Ranger to Away Team. What's your status?"

"We just arrived and are beginning our search now," T'mpest said.

"Good," Elsie replied, her eyes flicking about the console as she checked the sensors. "I want you to work on restoring power to the section as quick as you can. We can then start work on this side of things."

There was the briefest of hesitations before T'mpest replied. "Aye, ma'am."

"I only need a console active, Commander. I can work with that."

It took about ten minutes before her own console started to indicate that she could proceed with accessing any data from the Dubai. She tapped feverishly on the display, something that appeared a little foreign to the crewmembers who remained on the bridge, and got to work. "We have managed to establish a telemetry link, Commander. Report should you yourself discover anything significant."

T'mpest sat for a moment after the connection closed. She hoped the Captain would run a scan on the data before she uploaded it. If the crew of the Dubai was paranoid enough to blow up their own ship, there was no telling what they would put in the computer, fearing someone would try to access the data.

A moment later she contacted the Ranger again. "Michaels to Halliwell. I suggest you run a careful scan of all data from the Dubai. There's a chance it will be contaminated by a virus."

"Noted, Commander," Elsie replied, her attention not wavering from her job. "I'll contain the file and rip it apart before I allow it into Ranger's systems. Good call."

Now speaking aloud into the bridge's silence, her gaze continued to remain fixed on her display as she worked. "I can only access a fragment of the data core memory from this terminal." She looked again at her readout and added, "Too much of the ship was destroyed." A few more input commands and she'd found it. "Ah-ha! It's not much and it's deeply corrupted but I think I can pull off an image of their memory backup. It might be useless and pertain to Captain Jenner's dietary requirements but it's all we're getting."

She downloaded the image and saved it in one of Ranger's sub-systems, isolating it from the mainframe.

"Lieutenant Barker," Elsie called out across the bridge, "run every one of Commander Michaels' virus programs we have on file and then transfer this database down to astrometrics and wait for me there. We'll see if we can at least pull off some semblance of a star-chart or recent sensor logs. We can try and match it with our own." She then turned to Augusta. "I'll need you to determine from our external sensors what happened here."

Marc was already working on the problem but he alreaddy had a theory in mind, a fairly bleak one.

"Of course, Captain." Barker swiped around his console, then stood up.

OFF:

 

RSS Feed