08-13-2024, 02:33 PM
The Away Team materialised within the Lord Franklin's Control Room, the largest space available that the transporters could lock on to. Tricorder readings would indicate that the air was breathable, but it was warm and stale, as if it hadn't been properly recycled in years. The occasional wheeze from the ventilation ducts indicated the reason; the life support system had never been intended to run for centuries, and was likely on its last legs.
Dim illumination was provided by a handful of still-functioning emergency lights, requiring those without decent night-vision to use flashlights to get a good look. The layout of the control room was indicative of her origins as a converted submarine; a helm station complete with control yoke and ancient dials indicating depth, heading, and speed; weapons and countermeasures stations that had been haphazardly repurposed as additional sensor readouts, and a sonar station that now seemed to function as the primary sensor station. All sensors except visual appeared to be offline. There was, perhaps surprisingly to 25th century sensibilities, no dedicated chair for the Captain. What there was, however, was a seemingly fully-functional periscope system, which if tested would display real-time readouts from the ship's visual sensors.
Access to the lower compartments was by a hatch at the back of the Control Room, which would prove surprisingly heavy given its relatively small size. The ladder descended through another compartment, past a hatch that had been left open, and ending two decks down. Students of history or engineering would remember that on most DY-series ships, the middle deck contained the Engine Room and docking and escape hatch; the lower deck contained crew berthing, cargo bay, and a maintenance tunnel to the reactor and engineering spaces.
Careful examination of the area around the hatch would reveal a brass placard had fallen from the bulkhead and was caught between it and the nearest bulkhead. The details were covered by dust, but brushing off the outer layer would reveal the following:
[HMCS Lord Franklin. Dreadnought-class SSBN. Launched 2040.]
The dates would put the Franklin's launch in the middle of Earth's Third World War, something that had not been mentioned in any of the history books. Knowledge of whether she had been converted and launched during hostilities or following them had been lost to history, unless the data still existed in the Franklin's primitive computer system.
Dim illumination was provided by a handful of still-functioning emergency lights, requiring those without decent night-vision to use flashlights to get a good look. The layout of the control room was indicative of her origins as a converted submarine; a helm station complete with control yoke and ancient dials indicating depth, heading, and speed; weapons and countermeasures stations that had been haphazardly repurposed as additional sensor readouts, and a sonar station that now seemed to function as the primary sensor station. All sensors except visual appeared to be offline. There was, perhaps surprisingly to 25th century sensibilities, no dedicated chair for the Captain. What there was, however, was a seemingly fully-functional periscope system, which if tested would display real-time readouts from the ship's visual sensors.
Access to the lower compartments was by a hatch at the back of the Control Room, which would prove surprisingly heavy given its relatively small size. The ladder descended through another compartment, past a hatch that had been left open, and ending two decks down. Students of history or engineering would remember that on most DY-series ships, the middle deck contained the Engine Room and docking and escape hatch; the lower deck contained crew berthing, cargo bay, and a maintenance tunnel to the reactor and engineering spaces.
Careful examination of the area around the hatch would reveal a brass placard had fallen from the bulkhead and was caught between it and the nearest bulkhead. The details were covered by dust, but brushing off the outer layer would reveal the following:
[HMCS Lord Franklin. Dreadnought-class SSBN. Launched 2040.]
The dates would put the Franklin's launch in the middle of Earth's Third World War, something that had not been mentioned in any of the history books. Knowledge of whether she had been converted and launched during hostilities or following them had been lost to history, unless the data still existed in the Franklin's primitive computer system.