YE/D09 & 10 - Engineering

[Paul]

==

[Altairi Hydish]

== Engineering, Second Level ==

Pathyeager...

Surprisingly, Starfleet Command had saw fit to reassign him to a ship of her, albeit limited, caliber. He wasn't aware they were in the business of excusing treason.
He couldn't complain. Hectic as his career had become, anything beat going home and breaking the bad news to his parents. They'd devoted decades of service to Starfleet only to be rewarded with a spineless traitor of a son.

And once again he found himself staring at the warp core, tracking swirling blue clouds with the intensity that a toddler draws scribbles on a wall. Some people had black coffee, some had hot earl grey tea, but Altairi would dive headfirst into a nebula for the sight of matter meeting antimatter.

"The diagnostics just came through, sir. All systems green." 

"So I guess that's my cue?" He turned around, flashing a smile toward the woman stepping out of the lift and collecting the datapad she held in her hand.

"Ensign Elliot and our new middie should be down here soon-- if you want to wait a while longer."

He turned to take a final quick glance at the warp core, then set his eyes on the pair of doors that led into Engineering.

"Sounds like a plan."

[Ian Elliot]

>>Ready Room>>

Ian walked in with Midshipman Turner, chattering away about warp cores, as two young Engineering were apt to do. “Remind me to tell you about the cat that –an Earth cat, not a Caitian– that got into the turbolift shafts! Oh man, we were all eating cat food for the better part of a week!”

It was obvious that the Chief Engineer would be there; it was rare that a ship would take off without its Chief almost inside the warp core. “Mornin, Chief!” Ian said brightly. He then put his brows together and added, “If… if it is morning. Anyway. Reporting for duty, sir, Elliot and Turner. Turner and Elliot. Where do ya need us?”


==Tag Hydish! Sorry to keep you waiting a few days. ==

[Alexander Turner]

>>Ready Room>>

As Alexander and Ian walked and talked Alexander was again taking in the ship. This time paying more attention to the layout rather than the feel, to help with finding his way around moving forward.

"An earth Cat stuck on board a very curious story. I look forward to hearing it when we have the time."

As they entered engineering, Alexander got his first look at the warp core, the sight of which he already knew he would never tire of.

What a beauty!

Alexander shook himself back to the task at hand as Elliot introduced them.

"Lieutenant Hydish, it is an honor. I look forward to serving with you."

[Altairi Hydish]

Sure enough, by the time he'd stepped out of the lift, the bay doors had opened to reveal just the two people he was looking for. He jotted two updates into the datapad in his hand and sent it off with the petty officer who'd followed him down.

“Mornin, Chief!” Came a familiar voice. Altairi put on a smile and held out a hand for the man to shake. “If… if it is morning. Anyway. Reporting for duty, sir, Elliot and Turner. Turner and Elliot. Where do ya need us?”

"It's good to see you again, Mr. Elliot." And by good, he meant...

He didn't quite know how he felt, considering the last time he'd seen the man, they'd been accomplices in hijacking a starship. Altairi tried to hide his unease, but the hesitant blink that flashed across his eyes surely betrayed him.

"Mind getting a scope on those engines? "The Lieutenant looked around the room, then nodded his head toward an unoccupied station. "The folks up-top are going to want to test their limits soon."

"Midshipman," he pivoted toward Turner and held out his hand. "Welcome aboard. This your first starship?"

== Tags! So sorry about the wait ==

[Alexander Turner]

Alexander excepted the chiefs outstretched hand and shook it firmly. 

"Thank you sir. It is a pleasure to meet you. I am looking forward to working with you and learning all about this new starship."

"This is my first federation starship. I grew up on a passenger transport so have been living on starships most of my life."

Alexander looked around again taking it all in.

"So where should I start. I did notice a slight vibration in the deck plate on deck one near the bridge when I first boarded not sure what it was from, but I thought I should mention it."

Alexander took a step back from the chief so that they would still have their space, but could also still chat easily.

==Tag Chief I have know idea what I am doing so all help is welcome==

[GM-01]

==Mission Timeline==

Engineering had been busy during the trip so far; minor malfunctions and systems recalibrations to get the various components to work together had been the order of the day virtually every day. Veterans of the previous Yeager would remind the younger crew that it wasn't all bad, this ship had been designed this way and not just welded together, but after a while even they started to get worn down by the tedium.

The first truly spectacular failure occurred at the same time as the sensor ghost appeared for a second time on the Bridge. Engineering was functioning as a well oiled machine, or as well as it could on a ship where anything might break at a moment's notice. Then the lights went out.

Not just the lights, but the consoles as well. The emergency lighting flickered on, then went out.

The Engineering space was plunged into darkness, illuminated only by the glow of the warp core.

[Altairi Hydish]

== Going to skip ahead to the current timeline to get the mission rolling. Feel free to stick Turner in a Jefferies Tube for some repairs, or we can have him hanging around engineering ==

Mulling over Nahamcam's technical journals had turned out to be well worth the hours he'd spent. Difficult as it had been to interpret some of the Pakled's notes, she'd managed to leave behind a few tips for keeping Frankenstein's Daughter together. 

Power distribution hadn't been a particularly pleasant area of maintenance, even with the shipbuilder's notes. At the points where Pathfinder and Raider hulls met, he'd managed to pick up on some unencouraging dips in electroplasma transfer. Nahamcam had brushed over the inconsistencies, but Altairi wasn't particularly keen on doing the same. These levels had no place aboard the Tesla, the Aquila, nor the Philadelphia. As long as he was her chief engineer, they wouldn't have a place aboard the Yeager.

Dialing in a new round of reroutes, his fingers darted back and forth across the surface of the console, well-rehearsed movements he'd spend the last few days drilling into his head. Seconds after the console went dark, his fingers were still darting, keying buttons that no longer existed. 

That's not good. He took a long look around his departments, trying to make out faces lit only by the warp core's glow. He took a small hopeful breath when emergency power started to kick in, but the hope was short lived. Before he could exhale, the lights were out again.

"I need flashlights passed out now!" He called out toward the back of the room, watching a dim-lit figure get to work withdrawing kits from the equipment rack. "And let's get tricorders out! Get me a readout on your consoles, the EPS grid, and somebody keep an eye on warp core containment! Mister Johnson, request an update from our people outside Engineering. Let's see how the rest of the ship's doing."

[Hydish to Bridge, do you read? Power just got cut in Engineering. Emergencies are offline too. Is something going on up there?]

== Tags! ==
== GM: What are the tricorder scans yielding, and does Hydish's message get through to the bridge? ==

[Peter Jensen]

Peter's voice came through loud and clear:

[Jensen to Turner, West and Shadowhunt. Report to transporter room 1. Customs inspection, so be prepared to do a thorough sweep when we arrive. Please bring a sidearm but have it to stun. And bring any and all carryable equipment needed for a through search for contraband. I'll meet you there shortly], he finished.

[Alexander Turner]

Alexander exited the Jeffries tube a flashlight in hand. 

"Hey who turned out the lights? I was working in there."

He looked around and noted all of engineering had gone dark. 

I wonder what is going on?

"I have a flashlight if you need one chief."

As Alexander walked across engineering towards the chief he also noticed all the consoles were black. 

"What took out the lights and computers?"

[Jensen to Turner, West and Shadowhunt. Report to transporter room 1. Customs inspection, so be prepared to do a thorough sweep when we arrive. Please bring a sidearm but have it to stun. And bring any and all carryable equipment needed for a through search for contraband. I'll meet you there shortly]

"Chief looks like I need to go unless you need me more here?"

==Tag Chief==

[GM-01]

The communication went through just fine, as commbadges have their own power source and the communications systems elsewhere on the ship were in perfect working order.

Tricorder scans showed that no power was being supplied to any of the consoles. The warp core was stable, as was the EPS grid everywhere else on the ship.

Engineering simply did not have power.

[Altairi Hydish]

"I have a flashlight if you need one chief." Came the voice of the midshipman, a dim-lit Caitian figure stretching out of an access hatch. "What took out the lights and computers?"

"Don't know yet." The chief was quick to return his gaze to the PADD in his hands. New tricorder readings from his staff across the deck were coming in every few seconds. As quickly as he could read, file, and scroll, Altairi was falling far behind. "Power's cut to engineering, but everything looks okay across the rest of the ship. I'm going to have to send some folks into the Jefferies Tubes to check the junctions. If there's a leak somewhere down the line, the computers probably redirected power to minimize it."

Just before he could figure out where to send Turner, the midshipman's comm badge chirped. Jensen was summoning him for a customs inspection mission.

So there was another ship out there? Localized EMP? Surely that would have affected other subsystems. He didn't understand why anyone would target Engineering but leave the warp and impulse drives intact. Maybe a virus? Again, the readings he was picking up didn't seem consistent with any malicious intent. No, he'd have to assume his department had been hit by a coincidentally timed malfunction for the time being.

That was, of course, the logical part of his brain talking: the newly graduated Midshipman Altairi Hydish who'd been raised on textbooks and busted replicator units. The Chief Engineer of the Yeager, who'd almost battled Tholians and a Crystaline Entity over Jaterran, who'd nearly exploded on a shuttle in the middle of the Gamma Quadrant, had acquired a tendency to assume the worst. He already felt sick about the thought that they could be under attack.

"Chief looks like I need to go unless you need me more here?"

Shoot. Turner.

Altairi looked back up from his PADD, trying to gauge the midshipman's face in the darkness, hoping he hadn't been able to pick up on his anxiety. "I'll make do. Pick up an inspection kit and a phaser from the locker, quickly. Commander Jensen won't want you keeping him waiting."

With a few seconds of silent deliberation, the chief's attention shifted elsewhere in the room. "Ears up, folks!" He saw the flashlights' beams wave a little more then come to a halt as the department snapped to attention. "EPS grid's in good working order everywhere else but here. I want to know why." He scanned over the assembled faces, shuffling through personnel files in his mind. Johnson and Barkley were out checking on the engines, so he was down a general systems engineer and an impulse tech. "Miss Kedus, you're with me. We'll be searching the conduits feeding into Engineering. Mister Vlokar, patch us in with your combadge. And pull up some schematics. We'll be needing directions.

"Mister Elliot, you have the bay. Keep an eye out for anything else that happens and report to me. Divvie up the department as you feel necessary. Let's see if we can at least restore emergency power."

>>Jefferies Tubes>>
== Tag Tag. ==

[Alexander Turner]

"I'll make do. Pick up an inspection kit and a phaser from the locker, quickly. Commander Jensen won't want you keeping him waiting." The chief replied.

"All right sir, I'll get going." Alexander replied using his flashlight to make his way to the locker. He quickly grabbed the inspection kit and phaser from the locker and then made his way to the exit.

"Good luck chief I'll be back as soon as I can go help."

>>Transporter Room 1>>

[Altairi Hydish]

== Just to check before I post, GM, but assuming there's some kind of blockage within the EPS grid feeding into engineering, would the Jefferies tubes' lights also be offline? ==

[GM-01]

==Assume Jeffries Tubes are dark in every direction until the next junction. The power outage is contained to this specific area of the ship.==

[Altairi Hydish]

== Jefferies Tubes ==

It wasn't long before the engineers had reached their destination, an access panel flanked on both sides by the tube's interior lighting strips. Altairi rubbed his eyes, adjusting to the bright light that had replaced the darkness seeping out of Engineering. He turned to find a newly illuminated Kedus doing the same. 

The chief's hand hovered just in front of the panel, feeling for warmth. It withdrew to his hip and unclipped the tricorder from his utility belt. That too began to hover over the panel. Ideally, the corridor's computer would have sealed off any plasma flow to the junction if it detected a leak, but he wasn't about to risk his face to find out.

"You know, this reminds me of that cricket back on the Tesla." He mused, waiting for the tricorder to make sense of his scans. 

"Cricket?"

He gave Kedus a look. "Oh. Earth insect. Chirp chirp?" 

"No clue."

"Remind me to write you a holoprogram." Altairi's eyes shifted back to the screen in front of him. "Looks like I've got a reading."

== GM: What do outward scans of the junction seem to reveal about the malfunction? Also, for the sake of moving forward, if its deemed safe to open, assume Altairi opens the panel and scams the systems inside ==

[GM-01]

The Junction was safe to enter, the tricorder indicating that the thermal shielding around the EPS conduits was still intact; every Engineer knew the horror stories the instructors told about people who neglected their thermal shielding, and an Artemis Engineer had been lost on the Callisto because of that very phenomenon.

The tricorder also showed a healthy supply of power from the distribution nodes dotted around engineering, it just wasn't flowing through the conduits that connected them directly to the engineering consoles and light fixtures. Those conduits were intact according to Hydish's scans, which meant they weren't the issue.

The tricorder beeped as it finally determined the problem; the emergency breakers, designed to prevent power surges or feedback along the conduits, had tripped. Resetting them would be a simple, if time-consuming task, as he would also need to determine what had caused them to trip in the first place.

[Altairi Hydish]

A click released the panel from its surrounding plating, then a clang signaled its collision with the floor.

Thermal shielding... Intact. No leak. So what in the worlds happened?

"Power level looks okay for the other junctions..." He found Kedus looking over his shoulder, making sense of the numbers flooding the tricorder's display.
"But nothing's flowing in..."

Beep Beep. A new set of data caught the engineers' attention: a signal coming in from the emergency breakers indicating they'd been tripped. The computers had found something, alright. But if nothing in the grid was leaking, what could that something have been?

"We should head up to the next junction," Kedus advised.

"Right." Altairi shifted away from the panel, taking a moment to upload the tricorder's scans to his PADD. 

The engineers holstered their equipment and proceeded down the rest of the tube. Altairi couldn't help the slight sigh of relief that escaped his lips. It was nice having something other than the beam of a flashlight illuminating the way forward.

"So what kinds of bugs do you folks have back home?" His voice rose above the shuffling of clothing and the electronic hum that otherwise followed them.

"You mean Trill?"

"You're from there, right?"

"Yeah. Just haven't been in a while." Kedus went silent and took a seat. They'd just made it to the next junction.

Altairi popped open the panel. "Not sure if it's even home any more?" he asked, gauging the familiar look on his colleague's face.

"Something like that." She dotted a set of commands into the junction's interface. "What's home to you?"

He went silent. The monitor in front of them flickered, inviting a string of LCARS code to populate its windows. Arranged into folders by their timecodes, they were compiled reports from the section's internal sensors leading up to the moment the breakers activated. If there was an answer to their problem, it'd hopefully be somewhere in there. The only tricky part would be tracking it down. 

"Let's get a simulation set up. Start twenty minutes leading up to the outage. Time factor 5."

The windows disappeared into the darkness that overtook the monitor, now replaced by a new series of pixels lighting up in the shape of the section's EPS grid. Hues of blue and red began to fill the space between the lines, fluctuating as current passed through the simulated conduits, each shift accompanied by a readout on the side of the screen.

== GM: Did the ship's internal sensors pick up any obvious anomalies prior to the shutoff? ==

[GM-01]

The computer did not detect any anomalies; everything seemed to be working perfectly. Visual inspection of the breakers, when Hydish arrived, would also show they were in perfect working order.

It was starting to look like another one of the "hiccups" the ship had suffered in the last few weeks, a drawback of its unorthodox design and construction.

[Jennifer Braggins]

[Bridge to Hydish. Once you've got your glitch locked down, I want you to start prepping the engines for a full-power sprint. Bring the Slipstream online as well.]

[Altairi Hydish]

Nothing.

As the last seconds of the simulation rolled by, the near-silence of the corridor was broken by a relieved sigh. Kedus settled against the wall. The anticipation of the previous few minutes had made its way back down the corridor.

Altairi sat in silence, arms still crossed, back still straight. Relief had briefly flashed across his eyes and had just as quickly been replaced with disdain.

Damn you, Nahamcam... But it wasn't the ship's eccentric designer that had earned his ire-- it was Starfleet. They'd condemned him to a misshapen, ill-tempered, glorified escape pod they called a starship, punishment for having a conscience.

Punishment for mutiny.

"Chief, what now?"

Altairi bit his tongue, waiting for his anger to settle. Better to stew in awkward silence than say something he'd regret. Inhale... Exhale... After the third round, he'd opened his mouth to give out new orders, but the words that followed wouldn't be his.

[Bridge to Hydish. Once you've got your glitch locked down, I want you to start prepping the engines for a full-power sprint. Bring the Slipstream online as well.]

He answered by instinct: a quick "On it, Captain." Then he turned to Kedus, offering a small smile to cool the air. "Let's rearm the breakers and head back down, uhh..." His finger twitched on the way back to his comm badge. Kedus hadn't said a word, but she was still looking at him like he was crazy. 

"Mister Vlokar, you should have power flowing into Engineering any minute now. Let's open scopes on all critical systems. Prep the engines for max impulse and run through pre-jump checks on the slipstream drive. And recall our people to the bay. We'll be there in a few minutes."

>> Engineering >>

== GM: So I don't overstep, is power successfully restored to Engineering? ==

[GM-01]

With the breakers reset, power returned to the consoles in Engineering. The automatic diagnostic cycle that would trigger in the event of an unexpected shutdown would take five minutes to complete. When it was completed, some settings had reset to their default settings, but no major errors were found.

[Altairi Hydish]

A familiar, busy atmosphere had accompanied the lights' return to Engineering. As Altairi pried open the maintenance hatch leading in, he found every console in sight already manned, and just about his entire department scattered around the room.

Home sweet home.

He turned around. Kedus had just climbed out and was now standing at attention, waiting for orders. She still looked concerned, but at least he hadn't totally compromised his authority.

You slipped up. It doesn't matter.

You froze in front of a subordinate. You know better.

"Go help Vlokar with the engines. I'll take a look at the slipstream drive."

After a quick circle across the deck, he found Laate with the relevant monitors already pulled up. Starfleet could say what it wanted about the Philadelphia's former crew, but it couldn't raise many complaints about their professionalism. 

When he was mulling through Nahamcam's journals, the subject of the Yeager's slipstream drive had come up a few times. Theoretically its operation would be close enough to the Philly's, having been lifted directly from a Pathfinder, but he had no records of flight testing to base that assumption off of. The same benamite shortage that had clipped his previous assignment's wings had awarded this particular drive an experimental status. Whether or not it and its associated subroutines were adequately calibrated for the Yeager's spaceframe, he'd find out in the next hour.

Damn you, Nahamcam.

The first hurdle on a slipstream voyage was to break the quantum barrier, which meant the ship's deflector had to be both operational and have an adequate supply of energy to reroute. He could see Laate already checking for those conditions. 

The next hurdle was staying in slipstream, a concern that had been the ire of the Corps of Engineers following Voyager's return. Fail to keep up with the quantum field's phase variance, and... He wasn't exactly looking forward to appearing inside a planet.

Starfleet sensors and computing had come a long way since the early days of slipstream, but it didn't hurt to be cautious, especially with the Yeager's systems already proving to be erratic. The last thing he wanted was to put his trust in any particular, fallable computer. 

"I'm going to need as many units as we can running the phase variance computations. We'll go by majority rule, but I want to be notified of any discrepancies." He waited for a quick acknowledgement from Laate, then took a few steps back to tap his comm badge.

[Hydish to Commander Qi, we're getting ready to spool up the Slipstream Drive. If you or your people can offer any data or processing time to keep our calculations in line, we'd appreciate it.]

== GM: What's the status of the engines and the slipstream drive? And what am I going to have to hit with a hyperspanner to keep them working? ==

[GM-Braggins]

Though it was difficult to believe, both systems seemed fully functional. Once the drive was calibrated, which would only take another minute or so, they would be ready to go.

==5 Minutes later==

The Yeager's first Slipstream journey appeared to have been a success. At least, if it wasn't, the afterlife looked very much like the Yeager's engine room.

The soft beeping of the Slipstream computer entering its cooldown and self-diagnostic phase seemed to indicate they were, in fact, alive.

[Ian Elliot]

Ian wasn’t sure how he liked working on a starship so far. That is, a working starship. There was so much going on, and he wanted his hand in everything, and there were too many people. He felt rattled. Then, main power to Engineering crapped out, and he found himself unable to pinpoint what he wanted to do. When power did return, he felt himself take a true, deep breath, and found himself surprised that it came out shaky.

As he started to pick up the pieces of his confidence, the idea and implementation of using a Slipstream Drive was being bandied about. As his hands moved slower and slower across the console he was stationed at, Ian realized that he was out of his element. Slipstream theory was out of his league, let alone practical implementation.

Wanting to study it more than take part in it, Ian made himself take a half-step back from his computer and observe. His head was spinning, trying to follow the energy through the main deflector, into the focused quantum field, and past the quantum barrier. But this was something he needed to sit with and study for hours, not watch happen in a matter of seconds. He wanted to watch it happen again and again, and then run his own experiments, his own variations on the idea in order to understand how it worked and how he could tweak it. The numbers of the phase variance bounced around him, and he couldn’t figure their pattern.

And then it was over. Though he had taken no part in it, Ian felt a sense of exhilaration, of adrenaline, and for the first time in quite a while, knew he wasn’t the smartest person in the room, and that excited him.

[Altairi Hydish]

As an object approaches the speed of light, its perception of time begins to diverge from that of a motionless observer. As that object goes faster, and faster, and surpasses the universal constant, what it considers mere minutes become centuries in the eyes of the observer.

Starfleet officers rarely had to worry about that, of course. Going to warp didn't propel you to the speed of light, exactly. The beauty of a stable warp field was that you got to avoid the pesky issue of relativity. A spacer could hop across the alpha quadrant and come home in time for Christmas. Quantum slipstream wasn't much different, simply being a more efficient application of the principle.

And still, it felt like the Yeager had been carried off beyond the speed of light, and that Altairi had been left behind on the other side of the relativistic equation. Five minutes for the ship felt like an eternity in his mind. The microfluctuations in its quantum field stretched out till the sine waves on the console in front of him became lines. Little beeps jumping out from around the room similarly stretched into infinitely long hums, then fell off into silence. The Warp Core, once a dance of swirling blue clouds, froze as if waiting for applause.

Then the blue-tinted stillness began to expand, each change in hue suddenly stretched out into a line. Altairi watched in awe as he was suddenly back aboard a little ferry due for Earth, looking out the viewport as all of the universe seemed to stretch out into one magnificent display, back when space used to be beautiful.

And then the expanse collapsed in on itself, withdrawing back into the swirl of the core. Engineering materialized around him. With a thundering whoosh echoing through the bulkheads, sound returned to the room, clicks and beeps pinging at his ears. The console in front of him, once glowing red, faded to yellow, then green.

"Cooldown's initiating. I'll have the diagnostic results available to you in a few minutes, sir."

"Thanks." He sent a nod Laate's way, then turned around to survey the rest of the room.

Not bad, Nahamcam. Not bad at all.

"Ladies and gentlemen... Our first slipstream jump." Altairi mused to himself. As much as he wanted to sit down and throw a department party, he knew there was a mountain of work to be done first. Braggins wouldn't order the Yeager to slipstream for nothing. So either they were running away from danger, or running toward it. Judging by the lack of alarms ringing throughout the ship, he was inclined to believe the latter.

[Bridge to Engineering; Altairi, I need you to disguise or mask our energy signature. It doesn't have to be perfect, just make us look like anything but a Federation starship.]

Knew it.

His eyes found Zirhut and Barkley on the other side of the room, beckoned the engineers over, then tapped Laate on the shoulder. While he waited, Altairi took the opportunity to draw the PADD from his belt, jotting down a set of commands.

Once he had his propulsion techs in attendance, the chief lifted his head. “Alright. New orders from the Captain. We’re to make sure this ship isn’t throwing out telltale Federation energy signatures, so that means adjustments to our warp and impulse coils.” He paused, gauging the engineers’ faces and writing down a few more commands. “I’m uploading the specs of a civilian survey ship. I should be a quick adjustment, but I don’t want any of you taking unnecessary risks. Keep your comm badges patched into mine. Let me know if anything comes up.”

He holstered the PADD, then looked around again, waiting for questions.

“Alright, dismissed.”

Once they were gone, Altairi turned around, taking a seat at the console Laate had left behind. The adrenaline of the past few minutes made its final pass through his body and was carried off on the waves of an exhale. Then he got to work, minimizing and opening windows, clearing diagnostics to make room for a rendering of the Yeager in her entirety. Reconfiguring her energy signatures would be a good start, but it couldn’t hurt to sell the illusion on any onlooker’s radar.

He brought up a command line wired into the ship's complement of probes. If he did his math right, a net of holograms and subtle EM interference would be enough to soften her Starfleet edges and paint over the shapes of her weapons systems.

As his finger hovered over the launch button, he took a moment to wonder: Who exactly are we trying to hide from?

== GM: How effective are the adjustments to the Yeager's appearance on sensors? ==

[Alexander Turner]

>>Transporter Rooms>>

Alexander returned to Main Engineering happy to see that the power was back. He wondered curiously what had caused the outage, but he would look that up or ask someone later. For now it appeared the ship had just exited a quantum slip stream jump. Alexander was fascinated and also a little sad he had missed it, but he was also sure it wouldn't be their last.

Looking around Alexander spotted the Chief engineer.

"Sir Midshipman Turner reporting back from my away mission. Where do you need me?"

Alexander was excited to get back to work and it showed.

==Tag Chief==

[GM-01]

As far as Hydish could tell, the Yeager was a very generic-looking starship. The disguise would fool long-range sensors, and likely passive short-range scans. An active scan, on the other hand, would burn right through the disguise unless Hydish started taking systems offline to reduce the ship's energy emissions.

Unfortunately the three biggest draws on the ship's power supply were Life Support, Engines, and Sensors; all three of which were currently in use.

[Jennifer Braggins]

[Braggins to Hydish, report to Transporter Room One with your engineering kit immediately.]

[Peter Jensen]

Peter's voice came through the comm system:

[Jensen to Science and Engineering. I need cargo bay one cleared and made suitable for the maintenence of a hundred active cryo pods. Feel free to stack if needed, just no playing Jenga if it can be avoided]

[Altairi Hydish]

Still not quite there..

[Zirhut to Hydish. Modifications to the port nacelle are finished.]

[Laate here. Starboard nacelle’s ready too.]

[Barkley to Chief. Impulse is good to go.]

Altairi began to fiddle with the display, projections of the Yeager rendering one after the other. He wouldn't be winning any medals for his disguise work, but hopefully it would keep prying eyes from prying too eagerly. 

A whoosh sounded in the direction of the bay's entrance, followed by a voice.

"Sir Midshipman Turner reporting back from my away mission. Where do you need me?"

It took the chief a moment to turn around and acknowledge Turner. A final burst of keypresses dotted his console. "Right, uh-"

The intercom awoke and clamped its hand around Altairi's mouth. 

[Jensen to Science and Engineering. I need cargo bay one cleared and made suitable for the maintenence of a hundred active cryo pods. Feel free to stack if needed, just no playing Jenga if it can be avoided]

Just as he was about to stand up and start giving out assignments, another order from above came in through his comm badge. Altairi let out a sigh and bit his lip.

[Braggins to Hydish, report to Transporter Room One with your engineering kit immediately.]

He took a moment to process that, then another to wait for more orders. Once satisfied with the silence, he faced Turner. "I'm putting you in charge of clearing the cargo bay. Bring Johnson and Thar with you. If you have any concerns, bring them to Lieutenant Elliot first, then me."

Altairi briefly locked eyes with the midshipman, and couldn't help thinking about his first Chief Engineer-- that grumpy Caitian who'd sent him aboard the Tesla's wreck. He hadn't been ready for that experience. He only hoped Turner was ready for this one.

Command isn't so hard, is it? He had to stop himself from rolling his eyes.

[Hydish to Braggins,] he tapped his comm badge. [On my way.] And with a final survey of the department, Altairi set out for an equipment rack, then for the door.

== Tag. Sorry about the delay ==

>> Transporter Room >>

[Peter Jensen]

Peter's voice came through the speakers of the intercom:

[Jensen to Engineering. A question: Could we pull a DS9-stunt to get the Franklin back on the right side of the border? I mean reduce its mass, so the tractor beam doesn't pull it into a trillion pieces?]

[Ian Elliot]

They used the Slipstream. It was exhilarating. And then it was back to work, as if this was a part of everyday life, and not something extraordinary.

[Bridge to Engineering,] The Captain’s voice came over, [Altairi, I need you to disguise or mask our energy signature. It doesn't have to be perfect, just make us look like anything but a Federation starship.]

Ian grinned, this was something he could really get into. Unfortunately, he wasn’t chosen for the job, and so had to bite back any remarks he thought were helpful. These people knew what they were doing, he reminded himself, and hadn’t just been picked up from the junkyard. There were plenty of other things for the other engineers to do, including making sure the ship’s systems weren’t over-stressed by the tricks they were pulling. And keeping ships together is what I do! He thought confidently.

[Jensen to Science and Engineering. I need Cargo Bay One cleared and made suitable for the maintenance of a hundred active cryo pods. Feel free to stack if needed, just no playing Jenga if it can be avoided.]

The reference to an old Earth game made Ian laugh, perhaps beginning him to the attention of his CO, who was just called away.

“I'm putting you in charge of clearing the cargo bay.” He told an ensign, much to the disappointment of Ian. Everyone else seemed to be doing something, and he was just making sure the ship was still flying?

“Bring Johnson and Thar with you. If you have any concerns, bring them to Lieutenant Elliot first, then me.”

To who?! Oh shit, have I been made a Junior Lieutenant, and I frickin forgot?! Holy crap. Right. Uh. He looked up quickly and tried to give what he hoped was a reassuring smile to the Chief. There was being forgetful, and then there was forgetting what rank you were! He spent a solid moment wondering if the Chief had misspoken, missing entirely that the man had left.

[Jensen to Engineering. A question: Could we pull a DS9-stunt to get the Franklin back on the right side of the border? I mean reduce its mass, so the tractor beam doesn't pull it into a trillion pieces?]

“Why not just modify the tractor beam?” Ian wondered out loud, purposely not pressing the button to reply to the Bridge. He looked around at the engineers that were left, and added: “Easiest way to do that would be on the ship itself, I would think.” He waited for someone to either agree, disagree, or have another idea.


==Tags to Engineering!==

[Alexander Turner]

Well there was no rest for the wicked, Turner had only just showed up back in main engineering and once again he was already on his way back out the door.

"Johnson, That, you are with me let's get down to cargo bay one and get it cleaned out."

>>Cargo Bay One>>

[Peter Jensen]

Peter's voice came through with some urgency, in the same sense that water is slightly wet:

[Jensen to Engineering. I'm going to need you to power up the Slipstream Drive ASAP, Captain's orders. Your priority is that, and the Cargo Bay pod storage. Shut down what you need to. If necessary, evacuate decks and concentrate people on other decks to save on life support.]

[Ian Elliot]

==This post made with support of special NPC Science Lt. JG Theo Suttcliffe==


A Science Officer came running, and then skidding, into Engineering. “I’m here!” he said breathlessly, “I’m here!”

They all stared at him. Ian was the one to speak up, his expression of confusion matching his tone. “Um… nobody asked for you?” It was only after he had spoken did he realize that sounded rude, and especially since he was talking to someone a rank above him.

“Don’t you dare turn off life support!”

“What? Hey, Jensen said we could!”

“That is not what he said!”

The two young men bickered as they worked together, and no one in Engineering could quite tell if they were friends, mortal enemies, or a couple. But together they sent out evacuation alerts to decks three through seven, parts of deck two, deck four, they cut power entirely to the section the holodecks were on deck seven, and even took the replicators off line for good measure. They presumably had the power they needed to reroute to the slipstream drive - at least for a half a minute, they thought.

“And what, twenty-nine seconds is going to be long enough?” Suttcliffe shot out at the Engineer.

“Twenty-nine point five-seven, thank you!” Elliot snapped.

“Oh yeah, that’s a lot.”

“It is! And if you knew anything about Engineering, you’d know that!”

“Oh, just run the power to the main deflector already!”

“What do you think I’m doing?!”


==Tag GM: Are the wonder boys able to reroute enough power to the main deflector to create a quantum field?==

[GM-01]

The power to generate the quantum field was available, but the system displayed several error messages;

The field was not properly calibrated.
The engines were still too hot.
The Benamite crystals were at risk of fracturing.
They were too close to the gravity well of the planet.
No co-ordinates had been set.

Any one of these errors, unless overridden, would be enough to prevent the use of the Slipstream Drive.

[Ian Elliot]

It took longer than Ian wanted it to (or perhaps that was just the seconds feeling like minutes), but there was something that resembled a Go Status regarding the slipstream drive. Science Officer Suttcliffe would disagree, of course, but Ian didn’t really care about his non-Engineering opinions.

“Okay,” Sutcliffe started, “We’ve got a few problems here.”

“ ‘We’?”

“The engines are still not cooled down, Elliot.”

“I know that, Science Boy.”

“My name is Suttcliffe.”

“I know what your name is. You’re wasting my time.”

“It’s literally one less syllable. Plus, the Benamite crystals are about to fracture.”

“They’re not fractured yet, there’s no need to worry about it.”

“We’re way too close to the planet.”

“That’s the planet’s problem.”

“We don’t even have coordinates yet.”

“We’ll get coordinates when the Bridge gives us coordinates!!”

The two young men locked eyes, glaring at each other. Ian was able to maintain eye contact while his fingers still pressed buttons and danced over his console, while Theo’s hands were still, resting at the edges of his console as to not accidentally touch anything.

“I have an idea.” Ian said suddenly, breaking eye contact, and the moment. He looked down at his console and brought up a different window, one that looked like a maze puzzle. “Hey Jamie!” He yelled. “If we re-route the air flow and vent the excess heat from the engines inside the ship instead of into space, how cooked are we?”

A female Lieutenant came up to look at his console, her unhappy yet resigned expression telling Ian all he needed to know. “It could work,” she admitted. “But we’d be as ‘cooked’ as a Thanksgiving deep-fried turkey.”

“That old Earth holiday?” Theo asked, laughing. “With the giant hats and disregard for gluttony?”


==Tag GM: Gobble gobble? Would it work?==

[GM-01]

Technically, yes. Venting the excess heat through unused parts of the ships and through emergency escape hatches would drastically reduce the time required to cool the engines, though it would cause severe heat damage to those areas.

It did not, however, account for the maintenance the engines were meant to receive after every use of the Slipstream Drive.

To continue to use old-Earth analogies, they would be using the automobile's heater to cool an overheating engine on a hot summer's day, while embarking on a long-distance journey, with the check engine light on.