Sd 241601.27 Joint log: Away team: Lt Ros, Ens Walker, Cdt Valenar

Posted on Wed Jan 27th, 2016 @ 7:38pm by Lieutenant Jera'turak Ros & Lieutenant Kev Walker & Ensign Elanawen Valenar

1,586 words; about a 8 minute read

The soft hum of the transporter beam died away and left the away team standing in the middle of what was supposed to be an empty cargo bay. Instead, Jera and her team had been transported into a cargo bay full of numerous crates and shipping containers, many of them unmarked or marked in an alien script Jera didn't recognize. Instantly, Jera silently motioned for the two security ratings to secure the area before she turned and started checking their gear. "We might be in luck," she told the team in a soft voice. "We can leave the heavy gear here and come back for it once we've figured out where we need to move it to."

"If we had time, we could open one of these containers and stash the gear inside," Kev said as he shrugged his heavy supply pack off. A week worth of drinking water and food supplies was heavier than he remembered, but the one week long survival hike had been years ago during his first year at the academy. There was hardly a need for Starfleet officers to carry half a shuttle of gear on away missions, but there mission was a special case.

"I could take a look inside a few of the containers while you and Ensign Walker take a look at the engineering systems," Elanawen suggested. She would prefer that she be given the simple task of sitting with the gear until she was needed to navigate the ship towards Federation space and that be all she was required to do, but she knew better. She was going to have to do something to help out.

"Fine. Petty officer Gretel will stay here to help you. Everyone else is to join me," Jera ordered.

Kev nodded and checked the power reading and settings on his phaser rifle. He was far from an outstanding marksman, having barely passed the marksmanship course. But he could shoot and hit what he was aiming at. He had never thought much about marksmanship. He was an engineer, and it was his job to fix everything. Security was supposed to do the shooting. "Ready, chief," he said.

Jera nodded and waved at petty officer Hansel, who took point with his phaser rifle and tricorder both at the ready. She fell in behind with Walker covering the rear. It wasn't hard to navigate through the ship, but with the power offline there were no lights and it was somewhat intimidating to wander through the darkness of a ship nearly a century old and missing the majority of that time. Fortunately, they made it to engineering without any problem. After prying the doors open and sweeping the room, Jera had Hansel take station outside to keep watch while she and Walker set about checking the primary systems. After twenty minutes, Jera sighed.

"The ship has antimatter and deuterium, and it looks like everything was shut down and set into a deep standby mode. All we have to do is initiate the start up sequence and power up the warp drive slowly and we'll be in business," Jera said.

"The impulse systems are all appearing to be ok," Kev said. "The auxiliary relays for all drive systems are shot so we'll have to be careful not to overload the main lines. It'll take almost five days to bring the warp core up to standard operating levels, then it'll take about a day to calibrate the system and we'll be ready for warp."

"Wait, five days?" Jera said in a hollow tone.

"Yeah. These ships had to be brought online slowly or there could be a power overload or worse. This thing has been sitting in cold storage mode for almost a hundred years in deep space. There's a reserve energy tap feeding off of an emergency reactor and that's producing air and heat but the power reading on that states that it only kicks in when the internal sensors detect life signs."

"Wait, the Endeavour was supposed to knock all internal sensors off line with their attack," Jera said.

"I guess they missed the battery powered sensor grid. But it's no big deal yet. According to the log, the system came online when we first started materializing on board."

"How long until we have maneuverability?" Jera asked as she shrugged her gear onto the floor of engineering.

"So I guess I'm working on sub light drives then?" Kev asked. Without waiting for a reply he continued on. "I'll have to check everything. The batteries should still be good, if they are I can kick start the fusion reactor and power the impulse bank up. Basic power from the fusion reactor we can have online in thirty six hours. Full power and impulse twenty to forty eight hours after that. The docking and auxiliary thrusters should still be available. All they need is a steady power flow. So if the batteries work and there’s nothing wrong with the transfer cables, we can use the auxiliary thrusters right away. If not, then we'll have to wait until the fusion reactor comes on line."

"Alright. We need to move this ship away from those Ferengi before they figure out a way to board us," Jera said. "I'll get the engineering gear down here and send Valenar up to the bridge so she can get started on what she needs to work on."

"Already on the way with the gear," Hansel said, ducking his head inside the engineering compartment. Tapping his headset, he grinned. "Sub vocal comm system. I told Gretel and Valenar to go ahead and get the gear down here."

"Wonderful," Jera muttered as she pulled a tool set out of her pack. "Did you tell them to bring me a chicken sandwich and some coffee?"

"Chicken sandwich and coffee?" Elanawen asked as she ducked into the engineering room, dragging most of the engineering equipment behind her. With very little physical effort, she pulled the gear over to the center of the room and dropped the straps.

"No one mentioned ordering food, but I could really go for a cup of hot coffee and a plate of grilled ____," the violet haired cadet said.

Jera blinked at the scrawny young cadet, glanced towards the pile of equipment Valenar had brought in, and then back at the cadet herself. It has taken Walker half an hour to carry that gear to the transport room, and Valenar had just slid it over one hundred meters without breaking a sweat. "Ok, how did you just drag all of that stuff from the cargo bay when Walker here couldn't carry it down a corridor without stopping for breath?"

"My home world has a gravity rating one and a half times greater than Earth," Elanawen explained with a shrug. It wasn't widely known that her home planet was a heavy gravity planet, so she wasn't surprised that Ros didn't know.

"Well, at least you didn't say I was lazy," Kev said as he walked over and grabbed an entire tool set. With tools on hand, he took one look at the engineering padd containing the diagram and specifications for the sub light drives before he sighed and scurried off towards the maintenance hatch.

"So, what do you want me to do now?" Elanawen asked as Gretel finally arrived carrying the last of the gear. Hansel helped her carry the equipment and gear into the room before returning to his post at the door.

"I need you on the bridge seeing to it that the helm controls are going to work when we finally get the propulsion drives up and going," Jera said. "After that, once we have power to anything related to propulsion, I want you to start moving us away from those Ferengi and someplace safe."

"The nebula would be the best place to hide. Even with sensors parts of that nebula would difficult to navigate," Elanawen said.

"So either way we'd be flying blind into an uncharted nebula," Jera said, clearly not liking the idea. "Are you sure there's nothing else we can do?"

"Until you guys get the main drives online, there's nothing else we can do to slip away from those Ferengi. At least they'll be as blind as we are and we would have the advantage. I could fly us straight through the Nebula and they'd spend weeks searching for us," Elanawen said.

"Or just patrol the edge of the nebula and wait for us to emerge," Jera said. "But, it's a good idea. As soon as we get thrusters, start moving us towards the Nebula. I'll leave the navigation up to you for now. We'll get power to the impulse and warp drives while we hide and then figure out the rest."

"Sounds like a plan, boss," Kev said, sticking his head out of the service hatch. "By the way, we have docking thrusters. The batteries are good for about two days worth of minimal life support and basic maneuvering. By then we'll have the rest up and going and we'll change over to main power."

"Well, it looks like we all have work to do. Miss Valenar, if you don't mind I need you on the bridge moving us onto the nebula. I'm going to work on the warp drive," Jera said. Without waiting for replies from everyone, Jera picked up her gear and headed towards the warp drive service area. They all had a lot of work to do, and the clock was already running.

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