SD 241602.04 Away Team Joint Log: CEO, EO, OPS/SCI, NPCs

Posted on Fri Feb 5th, 2016 @ 8:03am by Lieutenant Jera'turak Ros & Lieutenant Kev Walker & Ensign Elanawen Valenar

1,081 words; about a 5 minute read

The Bridge of the Carolina was deserted, much like the rest of the ship. As Elanawen and Petty Officer Gretel stepped onto the bridge, a series of lights automatically activated, throwing a harsh dim light around the area. Elanawen stepped over to the Operations/Helm/Tactical station, situated in the front of the bridge between the command chair and the view screen and set her gear down before she sat down. Pulling a Padd out of her pack, she activated it and followed the instructions to activate the console. Much to her surprise, the console came to life. Tapping her comm. badge, Elanawen hailed Lieutenant Ros after studying the readouts.

"Valenar to Ros. I've arrived at the bridge. There's minimal power to critical systems. We have basic power, all I need to move the ship is for power to be supplied to the thrusters or impulse engines."

Jera was hanging upside down trying to get the warp core to activate. For some reason, these older cores needed to be manually activated, along with everything else. It wasn't that she minded, but for someone raised and trained in handling everything with modern aspects, it was getting to be a nuisance. It didn't help that she was learning how to do everything as she went along either. "Flip this bank of switches, pull that lever, press this button, pull that lever, no, slam that lever until it reaches the point where you have to kick it to get it into place. Who in the hell designs a freaking star ship with switches?" Jera muttered out loud as she finally pulled the final safety lockout into place. A series of power lines started to glow, indicating that the warp core was preparing to power up. "Walker, how's that fusion reactor coming?"

Kev was scratching his head, literally scratching his head, trying to figure out how to get the fusion reactor to spin up. There was power running to the ignition circuitry, there wasn't anything blocking the reactor coils, there wasn't a red alert indicator, he had followed everything to the letter. Yet the damned reactor wouldn't even spin over. "I'd have better luck with a hundred year old Ford," he muttered. Tapping his commbadge, he sighed. "Anyone know how to kick start a ninety eight year old fusion reactor?"

"Kick it, that seems to work for half the crap on this bucket," Jera said as she dropped down from the warp core frame work. "If that doesn't work, then I don't know."

Kev shook his head and relented. He took a step back and kicked the control console. When nothing happened, he kicked it twice more, hard enough that something inside the console rattled. A bank of lights came on and the low humming pitch of a fusion reactor starting up filled the room. Checking the readouts, Kev nodded. Everything looked normal. Climbing out of the fusion control room and back into main engineering, he shook his head. "How'd you know that would work?" he asked.

"Because it works for everything else on this ship," Jera answered as she took over the main engineering station. The fusion reactor was spinning up, the warp core was powering up, all they needed was to move the ship to a safe location and wait for the power systems to fully activate. Which would only take a minimum of two days. "Ros to Valenar, you said you needed power supplied to the thrusters?"

"That's correct, Ma'am," Elanawen replied. "I'm showing that main power is coming online, but the transfer lines have all been shut down. I think that's a standard procedure for these old ships."

"Sounds about normal," Jera snarled. "Cut the power and the system won't work. Less chance of something going wrong. Why don't we use that setup on modern ships?"

"Because we use automation and more advanced systems?" Kev answered with a slightly sarcastic tone.

"That was a rhetorical question," Jera growled. "All right. Walker, since you're so good at kicking things, why don't you look into the power supply problem. I'll take a look at the energy management controls and make sure there's enough to fire the thrusters."

"Why do I get to go kick something else? I had to kick a fusion reactor into working," Kev said. He thought about what he had just said for a moment before he blinked. "I just kicked a hundred year old fusion reactor control panel in order to get it to work!"

"Congratulations. You literally kick started a fusion bomb and didn't blow us up," Jera growled. "Now go kick the transfer power controls and make it work."

"Um, Lieutenant? Ma'am, can we try not to kick everything in engineering? Some of those systems are easy to come out of alignment and when they do it can be . . . Catastrophic," Elanawen said, reminding the two engineers that they were talking over an open comm. line.

"Good luck trying to tell her anything," Kev said as he ducked into the power control room.

Jera gave an aggravated growl and threw an engineering tool towards the hatchway Walker had ducked into. It bounced off of the bulkhead next to the open hatchway and clattered to the deck. "Traitor!" she said, shaking her fist.

Kev chuckled as he checked the control panel in the power control room. Everything looked normal, but that didn't mean anything. Tracing the power feed for the thrusters, he flipped the two control switches attached to the power lines and hoped it was the right one. "Valenar. You should have thrusters now," he said.

Elanawen nodded silently and, using the reference manual as a guide, she powered up the thrusters and fired them. Much to her surprise, they actually fired. Since she had to maneuver manually, she had to fire the thrusters individually in order to move the Carolina. It was more difficult than she had originally thought, but after several minutes of trial and error, she was able to start moving the Carolina towards the nebula.

"Valenar to Ros. We're underway. According to my readouts, we'll cross the threshold of the nebula in one minute, thirty seconds," Elanawen reported over the open comm. line.

"Keep us on heading for two minutes after we enter the nebula, then alter course. I'm on my way to the bridge," Jera said. Turning towards Walker, she nodded. "Walker, take over down here. I'll be on the bridge," she said before she started off on her way towards the bridge.

RSS Feed