Unexpected Surges

Posted on Tue May 22nd, 2018 @ 6:18pm by Jasper Offermans
Edited on on Tue May 22nd, 2018 @ 9:09pm

Mission: Mission 7 - Sabotage
Location: Engineering
Timeline: MD1 1400
1508 words - 3 OF Standard Post Measure

ON:

Jasper shook his head as he scanned a console outside of Engineering, "it's not here now." He muttered the words to no one in particular and then hun his tricorder on his tool belt. The PADD he had brought with him had been abandoned for a moment sitting on the floor near the corridor wall but beeped once again indicating an incoming message.

"It's where now?"

Offerman drew in a deep breath and picked up the PADD, "near the transporter room?"

Nothing was making sense to the former officer as he performed his new duties aboard the ship affectionately known as Rose. He was dressed much more casually for his job than he had in the past, no uniform, just a pair of blue jeans and a grey Henley. He tilted his head a minute puzzled for a moment before heading through the main entrance into engineering.

Deacon was feeling exhausted and punchy as he tried to track down the gremlins in engineering. As he looked from his work to see Jasper enter staring at a tricorder, his face much too grim. "Hold there Young-Oldman, conqueror of the gates of Azzarian Virtue," Deacon bellowed in an over dramatic voice.,"Before you continue your quest, through my holy of holies, this riddle you must answer me!" throwing a work tarp around himself like a toga he stroad towards him, "Three doors, you must choose, behind one torrents of fire, the next a band of blood-thirsty klingon warriors armed to their sharp pointed teeth, in the third a pride of lions that haven't eaten in years. Tell me, "He said striking a dramatic pose in front of him, "Tell me true, which is the safest room?" THen laughing he added, "It's either that Jasper-man, or you tell me what you are doing in My House for you look far too serious for a man so old and far too constipated for a man so young."

Jasper broke into a laugh, both for the ridiculous charade and for the words so spoken, "don't worry I come in piece." He reached for the PaDD neatly tucked away in a pocket of his pants and tried anding it to Deacon, "I'm trying to hunt down some energy surges. There was one just outside engineering and then another just now near the transporter room." He furrowed his brow, "are you doing anything that might cause erratic surges through the ship?"

'Trust me, I wish i had a surge of anything down here right now." Deacon complained as he studied the PaDD, "When did you get theses readings? Before of after Warp drive went tits up?"

"After," Jasper replied but I thought you had that part was fixed," Jasper said.

"That's just it, nothing's broken," Deacon scowled, "Our wonderful, low maintenance, automated system has decided to go all schizo on us. Been trying to figure out a way to go to warp without leaving pieces and parts across the quadrant." Shaking his head out of frustration he looked at Jasper, "How long ago was the last surge?"

He drew in a breath and continued, "let's see it was about five minutes ago. but just before I came in here I saw the same power surge just in the corridor outside the transporter room."

Grabbing his tricorder off the bench Deacon started looking more serious, "Did the surge originate inside the ships powergrid, or was it like a weapons discharge or transporter signature?

"Actually no," the human replied tilting his head, "seems to have started in the deflector array though right now it's working properly."

"I'm glad something is." Deacon grumbled then back to the problem at hand, "is there any pattern to the timing, or does it seem random?" knowing if it was random it could indicate someone was actively doing something to the Rose, as opposed to some automated fault.

"Completely random," Jasper replied with a sigh, "I have to assume that these surges are a glitch of some type seeing I have no evidence to the contrary."

"Ok, So deflector first, then a transporter room, then here." Deacon repeated trying to find a connection, three unrelated systems, three different parts of the ship. "Which transporter room was it?"

"Not exactly but you have the idea," Jasper managed with a slight chuckle, "the old one not in use, the one we, well is those of us that were trapped in the loop were in."

"That's the one on deck 7," Deacon said looking at the situation board and growled in disgust. "Well those power surges are something else internal sensors didn't pick up." he grumbled, adding three more sticky notes to the edge if the board, "They've been giving us tons of dead zones, false alarms this morning. Like some help tracing the surges down?"

"Sure," Jasper replied with a nod, "but so far I haven't detected any damage, only large amounts of energy being used for no apparent reason."

"At this point my man, major power bleeds are just as bad as leaking atmo at this point," Deacon said glancing up at the flickering lights, then looking back at Jasper added, "It's going to take a couple of hours before we can get the reaction chamber hot enough for A/M collisions. So let's get to work."

"I know," the operations man said with a grin, "why do you think I was chasing them down?" He chuckled as he began scanning the department again, "any chance there's a program in the central computer causing it?"

"It's possible," Deacon admitted, "Still getting a handle on all the automation on this boat. Don't know whether whoever designed it was bloody brilliant or 'Ludwig, the Mad.'" But Deacon's normal smile faded as he considered the problem, "Only way to prove to would be to correlate your power spikes with commands to the power distribution system."

"That can be done," Jasper said with a grin. He grabbed ahold of his PaDD and pressed on the devices screen. "looks here as if their not related time wise at least."

Deacon pinched his nose, “Of course. Why would it be easy?” he groaned, “Ok come with me, going have to search for ‘footprints in the sand’.” Deacon added wearily leading Jasper into a room just off the reactor core. Its walls were filled with row after row of tubes, in the center a large console the size of a pool table sat covered in half a dozen ‘flimsy’s’, “Welcome to engineering’s true holy of holies, our blueprint library and our somewhat quirky MSDT.”

Rolling up the dozen or so warp core diagrams, Deacon explained, “We have flimsies on all the updates Rosie’s been put through, old school but effective. And I couldn’t believe it when I saw this antique, Gen One Master Systems Display Table.” He added as he cranked an auxillary power dynamo, ”Pre-LCARS, outdated even before you went all Rip Van Winkle, but it’s the only things that will interact with that monstrosity.” Pointing his chin at an oversized data storage unit, “Stores a few thousand exabytes of information on all engineering systems, resets every two weeks so we have those power spike captured, somewhere in there.”

“Now the actual spike would have corrupted the data for at least fifty to a hundred nanoseconds after the event but we can study any micro damage that occurred after the event and find its epicenter.” The Rigelian said as he typed into an actual keyboard, “From there we can tell if it was caused by some internal fault, tripped breaker, short circuit, something outside the system, like EMP or if someone was messing with the EPS regulators.” Deacon split the display screen and pulling up the records of the engineering spike, just before the spike and 200 nanoseconds after. “All right, this would be before the auto repair systems would have kicked in, Jasper-man, I need you eyes to help me spot any semiconductor stress or temperature anomalies. Hope you find data mining sexy.”

"You kidding," Jasper said with a chuckle. He crouched down eagerly to view the COM screen, "I love the LCARS. He tilted his head as he continued to look at the screen, "we can run an algorithm to identify the corruptions."

"Alright Math-man, Do that voodoo that you do." Deacon replied giving Jasper full access to the terminal.

Jasper chuckled and sat down at the console and began entering codes until the screen shifted to solid black color with merely a curser to view on the screen. He then entered a series of commands until he was satisfied with the resoult before turning back towards the engineer, "it will take a bit, a lot of data to sort through."

"Ok, In the meantime, I have to go try in relight the M/A reaction chamber and get the warp core back online." Deacon replied, "Come and grab me if you find anything."

OFF:


Jasper Offerman
Operations
SS Mary Rose

Deacon Kane
Engineering Chief
SS Mary Rose

 

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