01-07-2026, 05:43 AM
Gath's hand were beginning to tingle from the energy field around the alien craft that the tractor beam was creating. It made it a little bit harder to move, but Gath had worked in such conditions before. He had never seen this specific kind of alloy before, but it wasn't overly complicated. Their technology was fairly primitive, though more effective than similar efforts he had seen in other cultures. The humans originally sent people into space with barely a couple of millimeters of metal hull between them and open space. This hull plating used the lead based composite that managed to block radiation from reaching the crew, which also would slow down and even stop some micrometeorites, but it also gave it weakness as well.
When Gath began trying to cut the plating with his axe, he was drawing on his knowledge of his father working with various metal alloys. His blades were high quality duranium and tritanium alloy with a very thin application of neutronium along the edge that was only the thickness of a single molecule. Hacking at the plating was too dangerous, as he might easily punch right through it. Instead, he used it to slice along the metal, scoring the surface. He then used his gloved hand to bend the metal in an attempt to cause it to fatigue, crack and break off. The cracks he saw along the edges of the ragged hole told him a great deal about how pliable or brittle the plating would be, even not knowing it's molecular composition and how it would look in the eyes of the engineers or scientists.
Gath understood how phasers worked and that A'kilees had used too wide of a beam. It was quite unpleasant if you did the same thing to a person. Although it was true that if you used a high enough setting and shot an object or person, they would seem to simply vanish in the glow of energy discharge, that's not what happened most of the time. Most of the time, a very narrow beam was used and a tiny pulse would punch a hole through them, more cleanly than a projectile at high speed would. It had to be a VERY narrow beam setting though. If you made it even as wide as most projectile weapons or if you hit the person with a pulse longer than a tiny fraction of a second, the heat vaporized that part of them. At the Academy, it was frowned upon to demonstrate what happened in such cases, but for Security, especially those who also went through the military training specialties, they made a point of demonstrating it. You never forgot that lesson. Most creatures contain a high percentage of liquid in their cellular structures. When most liquids are turned to gas, they can expand to more than 800 times their volume. As the vapor part of vaporizing means that not quite all of the liquid is turned to gas, this means that it happens so rapidly that not all of it has time to change state, but if you even allow for half that amount of conversion, what started as perhaps as little as a single cubic centimeter of flesh, was to suddenly expand to the volume of 400 cubic centimeters, that becomes the equivalent of taking something the size of the tip of a child's thumb and expanding it to the size of an adult fist. Thus, if you hit a humanoid target at center mass, given how many cubic centimeters you could be vaporizing, it pretty much turned them into a steam powered grenade that would scatter what remained of them in all directions for about a 15 meter radius, and that was if you were in atmosphere, on a planet surface and at about 1.0 standard gravity.
Gath had made the mistake of thinking that A'kilees was going to be using a cutting torch that he would regulate the cutting beam like he might if he were working on their own ship. He had not even considered that he would use a phaser to do the job. He was quite embarrassed by that, but they would have to read about that in his After Action Report...if he lived long enough to write one. Right now, they didn't have enough time to discuss how engineering was doing their job. He had to trust that they would adapt and adjust to the situation. A'kilees was alive and would hopefully stay that way, but there were other lives at stake inside this alien ship as well.
The CSO chastised them for the mistake and wanted them to stop. Gath glanced in her direction and simply stated over the comm, [I'm listening, but the clock is still ticking, so by all means continue to scan, Lieutenant Ra'an, but I'm continuing to enter this ship. The door of the airlock is too thick and has no power to move, so we're going around it. I'm resorting to mechanical means, if that's any consolation. I'm unsure as to what other tools Engineering brought with them, but Damage Control teams tend to employ small powered saws for some work, but such matters are not really my area of expertise. I will defer to them and you on suggestions of how Mister A'kilees should proceed.]
== I didn't want to presume how effective the scoring and breaking off of sections of hull plating might be, as that needs to be determined by the GM. I know that I have employed the technique on actual military aircraft as part of ABDR (Aircraft Battle Damage Repair), which is why I mention it as what Gath is resorting to. Yes, oddly enough, I am actually trained in it and enjoyed calling my certification in it my "MacGyver Certificate" from the military. It was the most fun course I ever had the pleasure of being trained in. It was literally the equivalent of learning how to fix warp cores with duct tape. For the record, I did use those skills on real aircraft, not just in training. ==
When Gath began trying to cut the plating with his axe, he was drawing on his knowledge of his father working with various metal alloys. His blades were high quality duranium and tritanium alloy with a very thin application of neutronium along the edge that was only the thickness of a single molecule. Hacking at the plating was too dangerous, as he might easily punch right through it. Instead, he used it to slice along the metal, scoring the surface. He then used his gloved hand to bend the metal in an attempt to cause it to fatigue, crack and break off. The cracks he saw along the edges of the ragged hole told him a great deal about how pliable or brittle the plating would be, even not knowing it's molecular composition and how it would look in the eyes of the engineers or scientists.
Gath understood how phasers worked and that A'kilees had used too wide of a beam. It was quite unpleasant if you did the same thing to a person. Although it was true that if you used a high enough setting and shot an object or person, they would seem to simply vanish in the glow of energy discharge, that's not what happened most of the time. Most of the time, a very narrow beam was used and a tiny pulse would punch a hole through them, more cleanly than a projectile at high speed would. It had to be a VERY narrow beam setting though. If you made it even as wide as most projectile weapons or if you hit the person with a pulse longer than a tiny fraction of a second, the heat vaporized that part of them. At the Academy, it was frowned upon to demonstrate what happened in such cases, but for Security, especially those who also went through the military training specialties, they made a point of demonstrating it. You never forgot that lesson. Most creatures contain a high percentage of liquid in their cellular structures. When most liquids are turned to gas, they can expand to more than 800 times their volume. As the vapor part of vaporizing means that not quite all of the liquid is turned to gas, this means that it happens so rapidly that not all of it has time to change state, but if you even allow for half that amount of conversion, what started as perhaps as little as a single cubic centimeter of flesh, was to suddenly expand to the volume of 400 cubic centimeters, that becomes the equivalent of taking something the size of the tip of a child's thumb and expanding it to the size of an adult fist. Thus, if you hit a humanoid target at center mass, given how many cubic centimeters you could be vaporizing, it pretty much turned them into a steam powered grenade that would scatter what remained of them in all directions for about a 15 meter radius, and that was if you were in atmosphere, on a planet surface and at about 1.0 standard gravity.
Gath had made the mistake of thinking that A'kilees was going to be using a cutting torch that he would regulate the cutting beam like he might if he were working on their own ship. He had not even considered that he would use a phaser to do the job. He was quite embarrassed by that, but they would have to read about that in his After Action Report...if he lived long enough to write one. Right now, they didn't have enough time to discuss how engineering was doing their job. He had to trust that they would adapt and adjust to the situation. A'kilees was alive and would hopefully stay that way, but there were other lives at stake inside this alien ship as well.
The CSO chastised them for the mistake and wanted them to stop. Gath glanced in her direction and simply stated over the comm, [I'm listening, but the clock is still ticking, so by all means continue to scan, Lieutenant Ra'an, but I'm continuing to enter this ship. The door of the airlock is too thick and has no power to move, so we're going around it. I'm resorting to mechanical means, if that's any consolation. I'm unsure as to what other tools Engineering brought with them, but Damage Control teams tend to employ small powered saws for some work, but such matters are not really my area of expertise. I will defer to them and you on suggestions of how Mister A'kilees should proceed.]
== I didn't want to presume how effective the scoring and breaking off of sections of hull plating might be, as that needs to be determined by the GM. I know that I have employed the technique on actual military aircraft as part of ABDR (Aircraft Battle Damage Repair), which is why I mention it as what Gath is resorting to. Yes, oddly enough, I am actually trained in it and enjoyed calling my certification in it my "MacGyver Certificate" from the military. It was the most fun course I ever had the pleasure of being trained in. It was literally the equivalent of learning how to fix warp cores with duct tape. For the record, I did use those skills on real aircraft, not just in training. ==