Hit the Lights

Posted on Tue Apr 3rd, 2018 @ 10:14pm by Captain Elijah Michaels & Commander Cor Cordale & Lieutenant Commander Ziyal Tajor & Lieutenant Hel Samedi & Lieutenant Valeria Mordin & Ensign Courtney Baxter

Mission: Of Machines and Men
Location: Main Engineering

The emergency lights flickered as the Engineers were attempting to restore the power on the Victory. The attempts at tapping into the grid had failed and the ship was dead in the water. It was all hands on deck on this one.

"Try it now." Elijah said as the Captain tapped into the relays, the Skipper had rolled his sleeves up and got stuck in. "I've bypassed the secondary relay, load it up."

"If this doesn't work we're sunk." Hel muttered, spitting her hands and rubbing them together. She flipped the switch and the lights flickered on, for only the briefest of moments. A pop, a crackle, a small shower of sparks and they flickered back off again. She heaved a sigh, shoulders slumping a bit. "Alright, once again, from the top. Let's analyze the situation, go through it one step at a time, figure out where we're running into stumbling blocks and try to find a way around them.

"We're still here and in one piece. That means we didn't lose containment. We're breathing, which means we have at least some measure of life support. I'm not reading a loss of pressure with my tricorder, so either we haven't sprung a leak or emergency force field generators are up. I'm erring on the side of the former." She listed the steps one by one. "We've got back up power, which means the back up generators are functional. Back up power is minimal, which means that only the most basic of distribution nodes are still functional."

"We lost power because of feedback piggy-backing up our phaser stream. The brief moment between the feedback leaving the surface and disabling our ship, it read like an energy signature. This could mean several things, but Occam's Razor suggests this overloaded all the power distribution nodes, fried them. After all, they're designed to handle power going one way, not the other." Hel paced back and forth as she monologued, using the 'rubber duck' principle - if you have a problem you don't understand, explain it like you would to a rubber duck - as simple as possible and in layman's terms. Going back to the basics often revealed the root of the issue, allowing for solutions to be found.

"So, if the warp core didn't breach - and it didn't because we're not a cloud of atoms - and the core itself wasn't shut off - and it hasn't because energy feedback signals don't work that way - then we're still generating power at a nominal level, and bypassing relays one by one just means we're shunting way too much power through relays and bypasses woefully unequipped to handle that much power and frying them the moment we try to power up." Hel stopped, looking at the assembled in the shade of emergency power. "Sound about right?"

Elijah nodded as he got up to his feet. "It makes sense to me." The Captain then examined Engineering. "We can't operate on back ups, especially if we are to find a solution to the planetary shield, but we also can't keep bypassing systems individually."

Ensign Baxter slid down the ladder opposite the group. "Sir, Ma'am." The slender blonde said as she approached the meeting. "Ensign Sindax has the Bridge until you return. I figured my skills were better suited here and helping find a solution."

"A proper assessment if ever there was one." Valeria called up as she entered Engineering proper. "And I'm of the same volition. An extra pair of hands. As for options and suggestions, right now the relays are still cooked from our encounter with a Class One society. Can we run any form of non-plasma coolant through the relay ports? Bring down their temperature and possibly invoke the Meissner effect, to potentially conduct electrical power-flow more efficiently?" the rabbitess offered, then looked puzzled for a moment, "It was Meissner, yes? Expulsion of magnetic fields when brought to superconductive states? I know who discovered it on Ts'usu, but that's not very helpful now." she said with a smirk.

"I think so, yeah. But I'm not sure we need Meissner today. I'm thinking we can solve this simpler." Hel mused. "Way I see it all we need is replacement filters, distributors and relays, and we're fresh out, right?" Hel mused. "We need the industrial replicator for those. Way I figure we have two choices, either find another source, or find a way to power the IR."

With that she turned to Valeria. "Can you brain out how we can run power to the IR outside of the normal conduits? It can function on just electrical power. Maybe we run that through corridor floor plating, at least temporarily until we have enough distributors and relays to get normal power back on, step by step? Far as I recall the floor plating is electrically insulated from the bulkheads to prevent crew electrocuting themselves if part of the ship becomes charged. If we can turn that around on its head, we can lead basic electrical power to the IR."

Valeria thought, looking around the Engineering Bay as she did. "Using floor panels undercoating as a conductor. Possible." she took a moment to look around again. "Dedicated powerline. Direct feed from the nearest functioning EPS node to the Industrial Replicator." she offered. She was more in 'suggestion' mode than 'socialize' mode.

"Set up a photonic conversion array in the IR power node, and subject it to low-intensity phaser fire." she offered again, though this had the tell tale sound of a question mark near the end. That one, she wasn't so confident in. "Though, the floor underplating would work. Just be careful about the heat index, you may damage the components or establish a circuit with the exposed floor panel."

A nod from the pale engineeress. "Photonic converters would work, but generates more heat than flat-out running power through floor plating. I still think that's our best option. Incidental additional damage to the ship is acceptable, considering the circumstances. As long as we don't break the IR we should be fine. Opinions?" she looked around at those assembled.

Ziyal stepped into Engineering, and handed the Captain a PADD. "We've managed to launch the runabouts and they've pulled us up into a stable orbit. I'm having a shuttle remain in orbit above the structure that we found. They are recording and rebroadcasting everything so that we can see what happened while we were gone and watch the live feed. Their taking passive scans of the surface as well so we can see if our attack changed anything. I put signal repeaters down in the corridors as I came here, so we can get the live information from the Runabouts to here until the ship is up and running again."

"Thank you Commander." Elijah said with a nod to Ziyal as he accepted the PADD and skimmed through its contents. "Just do whatever you need to do to get us power." Elijah said as he returned to Hel. "Focus on getting propulsion, sensors and tactical systems up and running then work from there." With a glance at the assembled Officers and Crew. "Make no mistake ladies and gentlemen we gambled and we failed, but we learn from this and we shift our efforts to learning from our errors."

"Take whoever you need from whichever departments you require and see to it Lieutenant." The Captain said to Hel.

"On it. We have a plan, that's step one. Now to give you your ship back." Hel mused.

"Valeria and Ensign Baxter, you are now part of our repair efforts." He said to the two Ops officers.

The rabbitess gave a nod to confirm the order.

"Aye Sir." Baxter commented.

"Jordan I want a response team standing by in case we have a gap in the planetary shield."

"Johnston, James, Vo'kir, Branson, you're on picket duty. Grab EVA boots, they're electrically insulated, stand at either ends of corridors 13/5A and 13/7A and prevent anyone from going in. Baxter, emergency closet, over there. Thick cabling. We need four ends of cable, five meters long each, rated seven hundred amps. Mordin, you're with me, we need to bypass the primary coupling without frying anything, it's a delicate task. Let's go, folks! Time's a-passing!" Hel called out, clapping her hands twice, heading over towards the primary coupling and setting about removing the outside panel.

Valeria gave a nod, grateful she possessed something of a steady hand. "I'm not a qualified surgeon, but I have a steady hand. Where do we operate?" she asked the pale humanoid as she followed her about.