Scientific Footnotes

Posted on Wed Oct 23rd, 2024 @ 1:47pm by Captain Malcom Llwyedd & Lieutenant Gale Deekros & Lieutenant Hank Solomon

1,550 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Interlude 1 Gamma Quadrant
Location: USS Firebird, Deck 1, Captain's Ready Room

[ON]

Hank was patiently waiting in front of the CO's ready room. His PADD at hand and the urge to let the captain know about the findings him and Lt. Deekros uncovered on the wormhole displacement. He checked his clock and noticed he was ahead of time, that's why the rocks specialist was not there yet.

"...But make sure that Lieutenant Francis keeps me updated on the installation of the replacement shield emittters. That new grouping should improve our defenses by seven percent," Malcom said as he and Kipp stepped off the turbolift.

Kipp made a note on a PADD. "I'll contact Lieutenant Francis right away, sir," Kipp said and moved to his console. He smiled at Lieutenant Solomon.

Malcom also noticed his new Chief Science Officer hovering around his ready room door.

"Good morning, Lieutenant Solomon, please, follow me inside," Malcom said.

"Good morning, Sir" Hank turned towards the lift and towards the sound of Captain Llweyd's voice. "I was waiting for my colleague. We were due to meet here in a couple of seconds but I guess he'll knock on the door if he doesn't find me here" he smiled politely following then the commanding officer inside his office.

The lift opened almost as soon as it closed, and Gale stepped out, an annoyed scowl on his spotted face, his shoulders rising and falling quickly. It seemed like he had a bit of a sprint getting here. "I swear, that lift knows I'm coming and I have a meeting to get to and it dashes off when I'm just far enough away not to get to it," he explained, the annoyance giving way to sheepishness, as he catches up to Malcom and Hank. "My apologies, sir, for not being here sooner."

Malcom laughed. "Seeing as I didn't know the two of you were coming, you can't be late," Malcom said and made his way over to the replicator. "Can I get either of you something to drink?" He asked and punched in the code for mango green tea.

Gale laughed as he shook his head. "That's very kind of you, sir, but I think I must have been hit by some sort of temporal energy wave at some point in my career that makes me feel like I'm constantly five minutes behind." The Trill pauses, then broke into a warm smile. "Red leaf tea would be wonderful, thank you. Something both invigorating and calming."

Hank nodded, he was ina hurry to let the captain know about what they found and didn't have time to send a formal request to the CO to obtain a meeting. But things were developing pretty fast and he was eager to get things rolling.

"I'll take an orange flavored tea" he accepted Malcom's offer and immediately got down to business "Me and Lt. Deekros analyzed the crime scene and the samples of the rocks. We discovered that there should have probably been a couple of very powerful EM generators positioned in strategic places of the asteroid field close to the wormhole." he breathed and offered the CO the PADD he was holding. On the PADD the full report of their findings was stored, as well as a few images and rendering of what had probably happened in there.

"We traced back to the location of one of the generators. In this asteroid here" he pointed to it on the PADD screen.

"Mr. Deekros, a real rock specialist I would say, analyzed the composition and looked for anomalies" he glanced at the colleague giving him space to intervene.

"To make a very long story - one which we documented quite well in our full report - short," Gale began, indicating a video file showing this scientific revelation taking place, "the EM radiation ionized the surrounding rock where it was attached, leaving a distinct afterimage under short wave UV light. Lt. Solomon was then able to match the image against our databases, showing the generators were Dominion technology."

"Dominion?" Malcom asked in a soft voice. For a moment his mind went back to the battle of Suylea. He remembered the sound of the Firebird taking damage from the Jem'Hadar attacks. He shook his head to clear the memory and leaned forward.

"What can you tell me about the technology they used? Do we know anything about how it works?" He asked.

Gale recognized the look in the Captain's eyes. He'd seen it far too much in the distant gazes, held breath, and clenched hands in too many shipmates. He couldn't help but feel sympathy for the man.

The Trill nodded to Hank, letting his superior take the lead in explaining their theories to the captain.

"Well" Hank started wetting his lips while he tried to select carefully the words trying to be both precise and easy to understand "The underlying technology in itself is quite easy to understand. Basically, they used an EM generator to shift the resonating frequency of the wormhole. If it's simple saying it, it's not exactly that simple doing it."

He raised his left hand and clenched it into a round fist.

"Consider this to be the wormhole" he said raising his right hand with the pointer pointing straight to the roof.

"And this is the EM generator". Once he was sure to have the attention of the captain he continued.

"The level of electromagnetic field we need to displace in order to interfere with the wormhole needs to be strong. And it needs to be stronger the more we distance the EM generator from our target" and telling so he put some distance between his left and right hand, simulating the distance between the wormhole and the EM generator.
"To interfere with our wormhole, the EM generator should have been enormous. Or, as we consider it more probable, they used more than one, perfectly timed and synchronized, to act as a complex system against the wormhole."

He lowered his hands again

"What we couldn't understand, and I guess we would never be able to unless we find one of these generators, is to which frequency they displaced the wormhole" he concluded.

Malcom nodded as Lieutenant Solomon finished up. "I think you've shed a lot of light on this situation. From what I've read from the reports filed by the science department, the temporal displacement moved the wormhole in time. But the EM generators are also at work by keeping the wormhole from opening and closing. What I think is that they used the EM generators to first seal the wormhole here and then they used the temporal effect to shift the wormhole in time. I believe the scientific away team has also been shifted, along with the temporal generators. Great work, both of you. Now that we know about the how I want to know if there is something we can do to reverse what has been done."

Gale inclined his head towards Hank. "One of the angles I'm pursuing is a far more aggressive analysis of the asteroid samples, to see if the effects of the ionization can indicate the EM generator frequency." He sighed, knuckles running against the spots framing his bearded face. "It is, admittingly, a long shot. But any long shot that can reopen the wormhole and bring our people home, with at least a chance of success, seems worth pursuing - but only until a better solution presents itself."

Gale was a proud geologist, but he would be more than happy to abandon his rocks if Hank or any other member of the science team stumbled upon a breakthrough.

“We could ask the Dominion” Hank intervened with what seemed like a joke but he was almost serious. He thought that only the Dominion itself could actually unveil the exact shift they operated to the wormhole. Any other shift, even slightly off frequency, would cause a different result.

“We can better analyze sensor data but we need to be extremely precise in the frequency used to shift the hole. So, to be extremely precise, we need one of those generators” he concluded.

Malcom nodded. He was still a little shaken by the mention of the Dominion. He'd hoped to never have to deal with them again.

"Alright, keep working on the data. I'm guessing that the only place we can get one of those generators is on the Coalition carrier. I'll talk with Lieutenant Smith and see if Intel can do anything," he said.

"I vaguely remember a human saying about getting blood from a stone -that getting the right frequency out of our stones might be equally unlikely. If that is the case, " Gale said, tilting his head towards the captain, "I hope Intel has a quicker and surer solution."

Hank smiled at Gale's comment but agreed with him. Intel would probably play a bigger role than their study on this matter.

"Let's get back to work then," he told his colleague before leaving.

[OFF]

Captain Malcom Llwyedd
Commanding Officer
USS Firebird NCC-88298

Lieutenant Hank Solomon
Chief Science Officer
USS Firebird NCC-88298

Lieutenant Gale Deekros
Science Officer
USS Firebird NCC-88298

 

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