A Bump in the Road

Posted on Tue May 30th, 2017 @ 7:11pm by Lieutenant Commander Akira-Ri Sato & Lieutenant Jera'turak Ros & Lieutenant Kev Walker

762 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Transitions

Akira sighed as she finally made it back to her quarters. It had been a long day trying to get the Endeavour's security staff back up to form, but they were making good strides. In the few days since the ship had re-launched the entire ship had undergone several systems tests and trials, most which seemed to be going smoothly. The tactical systems would get a more in depth test when the Endeavour arrived at her destination, until then Akira was focusing on getting security in fighting form. Stepping into her quarters, Akira unzipped her uniform jacket and took a step towards the bedroom with the intent on taking a shower when the entire ship seemed to tilt forward and come to a complete stop. Her balance lost, the Japanese officer stumbled and slammed into the bulkhead. Bouncing off of the wall, she glanced out of the view port and noticed that the ship had indeed come to a complete stop. She waited for a moment for the captain to call for a status report, but when no such call came she tapped her commbadge. "This is Lieutenant Sato, I need a status report!"


Kev was sitting in engineering watching the master systems console. It felt good to had re ship out of dry dock and back out to running through the black of space, dancing among the stars and doing what the Intrepid class ships were built to do: fly through space at high warp. He was thinking of calling it a day and heading to his quarters for some sleep when a soft beeping alarm caught his attention.

"Hey lieutenant, I've got a fluctuation alarm on the warp field monitor," one of the petty officers called out.

"How far off is the field?" Kev asked. Seconds after he asked the world went mad. The ship heaved forward to a stop, throwing everyone in engineering forward and out of his chair along with everyone else. There were a few people on the upper level who were thrown off of the upper level to the main deck level. When the ship finally stabilized he picked himself up and groaned as he looked at the status report. "Someone get lieutenant Ros down here. We've got a problem," Kev said.


Jera had finished making her rounds and was looking forward to going to her quarters to finish settling in. She had managed to get her things in her quarters, now she had to put everything up. All that was left was a quick stop by engineering to make sure everything was running smoothly. She was almost to engineering when everything went to hell. Stumbling into engineering shortly after, Jera glared daggers as she made her way to the control console. Taking a look, she sighed and shook her head as she reached for the comm. "Engineering to bridge, we have a major problem down here."


Akira had made it to the bridge just in time to hear the chief engineer's voice come over the intercom. Looking around the bridge, she frowned as she noticed the absence of the captain. It wasn't like McKeon to not respond to a situation. Seeing no other choice, Akira stepped down to the command chair and hesitated before she sat down. "Sato here, what's the problem?" Akira asked. Closing the channel for a second, she nodded towards one of the bridge officers. "Someone needs to find the captain," she said as she waited for engineering to respond.


"The warp field coils have failed. Going by the readings I'm looking at, my guess is that the shipyard rebuilt the warp coils based on their original warp nacelle specifications instead of what was in our schematics. The coils and gravitational stabilizers couldn't continue to maintain the warp field. An automatic failsafe protocol shut down the warp engines before a problem could form," Jera said.


"What are our options?" Akira asked.


"I'll have to rebuild the internal components of the warp nacelles and recalibrate everything related to the warp field," Jera said.


"Can we do that?" Akira asked.


"We have all the spare parts and raw materials we need to fabricate more if we need to, but it'll take some time," Jera said.


"Get started. Do we still have impulse?" Akira asked.


"Confirmed," Jera answered after checking the readings.


"Helm, alter our course to the nearest solar system at full impulse," Akira ordered. With a sigh, she leaned back in the command chair and wondered if the Endeavour was simply fated to endure major situations such as this on a regular basis.

 

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