So The Warp Core Is Offline

Posted on Sat May 19th, 2018 @ 2:51am by Executive Officer Valiyi Uhin & Captain Rueben Gregnol & Dodian Carli & Jasper Offermans & Dixoho Saa (*)
Edited on on Sat May 26th, 2018 @ 10:12am

Mission: Mission 7 - Sabotage
Location: Deck 3 - Ward Room
Timeline: MD 01 10:00
2462 words - 4.9 OF Standard Post Measure

Reuben stared at the people that he had assembled in the Ward Room eating the only meal any of them had gotten since the chaos had begun. They were surrounded by data on paper and PaDDs but nothing was making sense. The Core had just stopped working and they were dead in the water with limit powers from the reserves.

“So, tell me again what exactly happened with the core… Why is it offline?” Reuben asked. As a former Executive Officer on a high-tech state of the art ship, he knew Core’s just didn’t go offline without any warning.

Deacon felt all eyes in the room fall to him. He if he wasn't so mad at himself he would have laughed, nobody ever noticed an engineer until something broke. "For right now it looks like a mechanical fault. Something tripped the port nacelle into a maintenance cycle, causing the plasma to vent. The loss of power to the port field coils in combination with the vented plasma caused the catastrophic collapse of the warp field." Deacon signed knowing he had to own this one, "If I didn't SCRAM the core we would have cooked the starboard field coils, possibly even lost the whole starboard nacelle in the process." The Rigelian narrowed his eyes, balling his fists slightly, "I must have missed something when we buttoned up everything in Azzia. Safeties should have prevented the maintenance cycle from ever kicking at warp."

"I signed the safeties off on our final walk around. If you missed something so did I." Reuben reminded softly. He didn't think this was a simple mechanical thought at all. Something was very wrong with the ship, had been for the last two weeks since they had left Azzia.

"Could this have anything to do with the temporal anomaly we traveled though," Jasper asked. He drew in a puzzled breath and added, "any chance it damaged systems?"

In her experience, Valiyi was used to mishaps on a starship as old as this one. As everyone else was seated, deeply ingrained in their efforts, she was slowly pacing back and forth, brow furrowed as she thought. "If that was the case, then one would think the Azzians were aware of it, and if not them then whoever has. We cannot have been the very first outsider ship they have run into."

"Anderson did a fine job getting us out of the anomaly. He was textbook. Nothing could have been damaged. I looked over everything." Dixoho pipped up cooly from where she had been sat. She had spent hours since she had woken going over the navigation details of there leaving Azzians annoyed that she hadn't been the one to do it.

"I wasn't implying he didn't," Jasper said a bit too defensively. He shook his head slightly, "it just seemed a rational explanation."

Micheal sat across from Dixoho, listening silently to the exchange going on. He found it bothersome that there was an issue with the ship. Unfortunately, he was truly only half-listening, as his mind was focused on the shapeshifter that had assisted in the torture of both him and Dixoho. The fact that it had escaped bothered him. He doubted that it would be the last time that they would hear from that creature. Of course, if it ever did expose itself, he would take great pleasure in killing it, slowly and deliberately.

"That there wasn't any damage doesn't mean the anomaly didn't wreak any havoc on our systems," Lhaes pointed out, "I mean what do we know about the anomaly we went through? And just how old is this ship again? Who's to say that our dated systems are resilient to any alien influence?"

Dodian listened intently to the others around her, she'd stood near the back of the room as far away from the 'buzz' of the room as possible. Lots of people in the same place being loud and annoyed reminded her too much of her past and she tried to avoid such things but unfortunately the Captain had seen fit to make her the go to person in regards to science related issues so she was somewhat forced into participation.

They all made valid points but in truth they were all just speculative. The Azzian anomaly had not been acting strangely, not to her knowledge anyway and she had been studying it for 6 months and up until the point they left it. Maybe that little flicker of code meant something but this wasn't the place to air it... she was an unknown to the rest of the crew and they'd probably think she was the nutty scientist with crazy ideas.

"Well seeing hundred of ships in all shapes and sizes go through it... I don't see how. Azzian's have studied it from the information we received for years and years. I don't think they would let ships in if something timey whimey was going on with it that was affecting ships." Dixoho said dismissively as she looked around at them all. Sure the ship was old but so were other ships, not one of them seemed to even consider any other option. "None of you have considered another option." She finally said.

"What about a computer glitch," Jasper questioned trying to change the subject slightly, "could there be something in the LCARS that needs to be fixed?"

"That's a distinct possibility," Deacon chimed in, "Just after coming out of warp we had a 'Containment Failure' alarm in the starboard nacelle pylon, but it was a false alarm. The weird thing was the physical switch in the nacelle pod wasn't even tripped. Jeassaho volunteered to check the control board to sort what happened, but I haven't had a chance to catch up with her yet to see what she found."

Valiyi gave a small nod of agreement. "A good suggestion, and probably best to follow up on that Mr. Kane, regardless of if that was a culprit or not."

Dixoho tutted and shook her head at them. "No... the other option I am thinking about is someone has done it on pupose. Someone has sabotaged us." She muttered taking a sip of the water bottle she had on the table next to her.

Hearing Dixoho mention sabotage, Micheal snapped out of his mental drift. He quickly picked up his PADD and began to check the security systems. "If Dixoho is correct, Captain, perhaps I should go through the personnel list, see who came on at Azzia, and possibly who left us."

"We've had several guests on board when we were in orbit of Azzia," Lhaes pointed out, "and none were cleared by security insofar I recall."

"Since we're talking about possible intruders, I suppose I should mention the DC Locker," Deacon added, "When we were responding to the false Pylon breach, I found the hatch ajar. The access panel was popped and it looked like someone ran a bypass on it," Deacon shook his head knowing how the next line would sound, "When I went back to take a look the bypass leads were gone, I half convinced myself I was seeing things."

While they were debating their 'visitors,' Valiyi's brow furrowed. "... What if there was someone or something else in the old transporter?" She looked to Jasper. "I'm sure this has been asked of you before, but would you remember if anyone else was beamed with you?"

"You mean other than the crew?" Jasper questioned as he drew in a deep breath, "no way a person could have but...." His voice trailed off as his face went pale, "if that is the case we have more than just a downed warp core to fear and it would have begun feeding already.

"Can I say something?" Dodian asked raising her hand and moving forwards a little. "In relation to Chief Kane's 'seeing things' comment I could swear just after we dropped out of warp I saw some coding flash on my science console. I did hit my head pretty hard so naturally I assumed it was just my eyes playing tricks on me... but if someone's in the computer systems too?" she half asked hoping she was wrong.

"So someone onboard is causing sabotage," Dixoho said leading the thoughts back to what she had said earlier in the meeting. "Come on your telling me none of your crew has thought odd stuff going on since we left Azzia?" She wondered thinking to her department having thought that since then.

Jasper furrowed his brow and shook his head, "I was referring to something that couldn't care less about computers."He pressed his lips together as he pondered things, "is there a chance that when the ship was boarded by the Azzians that they did something then?"

"They weren't given free reign and that guest we have onboard would have told us. No way she would have brought a kid onboard and risked her." Reuben didn't have much time for the woman but he was sure she wouldn't do anything to hurt them or the kid.

"Who brought a kid on board?" Lhaes asked, "and why haven't I seen her or her child in sickbay? Surely new arrivals need checking before they can go anywhere on the ship?" It was one of the first things he did upon coming aboard, reporting in for a physical.

Reuben raised an eyebrow as he turned to look at Lhaes. Really? It wasn't the time or the place to discuss something like that when the ship was dead in the water so to speak. "You are not the only Doctor." The man reminded softly. "I know Caden is Starfleet trained too as is Leiddem who fixed her up when she came onboard as a guest.... but not the time or place."

"As senior I'm supposed to know who's on board," Lhaes murmured, "at any rate...what's more important, could she have done this?"

"They've been on the crew manifest that we can all access for two weeks." Was all the Captain said as he turned back to the rest of the senior team, he didn't have time for Lheas there and then.

Valiyi's gaze was transfixed on Jasper. As one of the Ishimura's crew, he would know best what had occurred during that mysterious period of time, just before the ship had originally disappeared. Her brow furrowed in concern upon realization that the others were more concerned about more recent events. "... Let us say that either we've been sabatoged," she began, eyes still remaining on the operations officer, "Or there may be something else in the works. What should our course of action be?"

"Well from an engineering point of view, we need to relight the matter/antimatter chamber, so we can at least get main power backup" Deacon replied.

"How..." The Captain started before being cut off.

"From a medical point we can screen everyone under the pretence of there being a threat of some viral outbreak and we want to make sure everyone's inoculated. We can then tag everyone with a decaying probe of some kind so that after a while the trace is gone. With the screening, we can also see if everyone who is on this ship, actually checked in before we left Azzia. After all as you just said, anyone checked in should be on the manifest, right?" Lhaes shrugged. "It'll take all medical personnel to pull this off though."

Reuben raised an eyebrow and looked at the man clearly confused by what he was suggesting but before he could say anything Dixoho piped up, her red hair matching her attitude then. "The ship is dead in the water and you're going on about decaying probes... one of our crewmates is sabotaging us." She said shaking her head.

"Saa..." Gregnol admonished before he looked at everyone. "She's right our priorities aren't in creating probes that we don't have resources for. Everyone on board is accounted for unless you have someone in medical unaccounted for everyone has checked in and the computer has confirmed." He said thinking back to the computer actually being on point when it came to life signs onboard. It was the one thing she did well after the incident with the crew stuck in the transporter, she had known before them."I really wouldn't throw the word viral outbreak around either." The man winced realising now why Saa had reacted so badly thinking back to the virus that had nearly wiped most of the crew out. "This isn't the first incident now is it? We had that break-in, in the Grotto..." He reminded looking at Security. They had shrugged it off as someone getting greedy but maybe there was more to it than they thought.

Micheal looked over at Reuben and reported. "After a thorough investigation, I have not found any clue as to who the culprit, or culprits, are. However, I can report that nothing appears to have been taken either. If I were to venture a guess, I'd think that someone was either testing us or playing with us. Either way, we have to figure out what the hell is going on, Sir."

The Captain found it odd that they couldn't find anything at all. "Well, at least nothing was taken." The man nodded, he couldn't help but agree that they needed to figure out what was going on with the ship, to say the least. Someone wasn't right and they needed to get to the bottom of it urgently.

"Nothing that we're aware of yet," the Romulan muttered, "if it's something small or insignificant to us it won't be obvious straight away."

Micheal looked over at the the doctor with steel in his eyes at the challenge. "No, Doctor. When I say that nothing was taken, then I mean, nothing was taken. Every item in the grotto has been accounted for." It disturbed him that his work and his word had been questioned. Looking back at Reuben, he added. "In light of the break in, I have taken the initiative to alter the way entrance into the grotto is attained. Once the meeting has ended, i will give you that information, Sir." Micheal felt that it was up to Reuben who all would know the required information.

OFF::

Dixoho Saa
Chief Navigator
SS Mary Rose
(PNPC Gregnol)

Reuben Gregnol
Captain
S.S. Mary Rose

Micheal Robertson
Chief Armory Officer/Bounty Hunter
SS Mary Rose/Shuttle Alexandria

Lhaes Sommers
Senior Medic
SS Mary Rose

Dodian Carli
Science Chief
SS Mary Rose

Jasper Offerman
Operations
SS Mary Rose

Deacon Kane
Chief Engineer
SS Mary Rose

Valiyi Uhin
First Mate
SS Mary Rose