Skulking in Shadows

Posted on Wed May 22nd, 2024 @ 1:38pm by Captain Malcom Llwyedd & Lieutenant Owen Woodhouse & Lieutenant Soto Gantt

1,510 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Mission 1: A Long Hard Road Ahead
Location: Main Engineering
Timeline: 24 August, 2396- 0230 Hours

[ON]
DS18 was a stricken animal, plagued by failures and bleeding energy from the conduits. The power grid, life support systems, and shielding flickered their throes across the Main Engineering's master control panel. Emergency lights flickered silently over the chaos in memory that another attack could happen.

"Plasma relays are starting to fail. Resistance in the plasma conduits is building in several sectors. Collapses in several hallways have crushed clusters of power cells," Gantt continued to read off the damage. He imagined the whole station looked like a corpse with veins, arteries, muscles, and organs laid out of the body, and their hands were pumping life into the heart. "Even if we had a whole team I'm not sure we could crawl to each of the problem areas. Where do you want to start, Lieutenant?"

Woodhouse took a deep breath. It was a big job and it wasn't going to be finished in a day, a week, or even a month. "We're in triage mode. Let's identify what areas of the station we are able to maintain with what we have now, and areas that we can bring online with minimal effort, and then areas that are beyond our current capacity and should be abandoned until other help arrives. If we can shut off power to the most severely damaged sections, it should help our overall stability. Thoughts?"

"It's a good plan. As it stands now, we can maintain basic life support, shielding in crippled living quarters, gravity, and very limited transporter service. Basically, we can keep the heart and lungs working. For now." Gantt rubbed the back of his neck. "Until the power from the docked vessels runs out. Internal scans aren't telling me where people are so I can't close bulkhead doors, which means I don't know which sectors I can shut down to save power."

"Can you bring them up for short periods? One section at a time, starting here in engineering and then working our way upward," Woodhouse thought carefully. "We can map out where people are, if anyone is stranded, and then send the details to the ops center and security teams to coordinate."

"Excellent idea, sir. Each sector will overlap with the next two, like singing in a round. Fixed timers but notifications if the power system begins to overload." Gantt ran the conduit stress calculations in his head. "Using this map of the station we can simply add or remove sectors from the schedule."

"It sounds like a plan," Woodhouse agreed.

---

As the internal sensor rotation plan came online, Woodhouse huddled around Gantt's control station to watch and learn. Almost immediately, the system overloaded and shut down the project.

"Did you see that power spike right before it went offline?" Woodhouse pointed out wearily. "That's more power than internal sensors should need."

"I saw it. Can't explain it." Gantt dug through screen after screen of subsystem displays. "Each system is within expected parameters--well, as expected within this situation. They're actually wildly erratic. But power generated, current flow, and output used are a match just by looking at subsystems." Gantt turned to Woodhouse. "Either I missed something in my scans or whatever caused that spike isn't part of the known system."

"Well, no one's perfect, but my bet is on something foreign," Woodhouse said as his eyes narrowed on the data still on screen. "Just like those Jellyfish weren't supposed to be on a Bajoran spacestation. Can you pinpoint a location? I think it's time for a field trip."

"Give me a bit." The reminder of those jellyfish circling a suddenly, shockingly young Harlan was like a shot of adrenaline. "There are so many menus and screens, and some are showing to systems that don't appear to be fully online yet. Or not anymore."

Gantt pointed to a partial map of the station. "The surge appears to be coming from this section, and two levels straight up. The problem is we can't get there because the corridors connecting it to this engineering section are gone."

That gave Woodhouse a brief chuckle. "I think Chief Harlan would tell us we don't need corridors where we're going." He posited, "Can you find us an intact Jefferies tube?"

Gantt's hand hesitated over the map, scanning faint gray lines. The console screen was not in good shape but he managed to find a path. "This will work by taking a couple of intersections. But this section here is close to a blown out exterior wall. Really close. Just in case you're very serious about this decision."

"I am," Owen replied as he crossed his arms. "Very serious. One way or another we need to find out what's interfering with the power distribution and I'm not inclined to redirect power away from the operating parts of the station just to power a transporter for us. I can go alone if I need to."

"No, sir, I'm going along," said Gantt quickly. He had meant to raise caution, not to back out. "There are debris fields, shield fluctuations, and even gravity anomalies. We'll need both of us. I only wanted to explain the possibilities to you, sir."

"Owen. Just call me Owen," the ops chief replied, waving off the possibilities Gantt brought up. "I'm pretty sure I'm on my second life already, so believe me when I tell you that I understand the risk." He crossed over to a workbench and snapped up a toolkit.

"Got it, Owen. I've used up more lives than most so I figure I can do what I need to do and the universe will decide," said Gantt. He was packing up his own favorite tools in a kit so battered it had almost been thrown out twice. And a phaser. "Ready when you are, Owen."

"See, now I feel like you're just using my name because I made a thing of it," Owen said lightly as they trudged off toward the tube junction access. He slung the toolkit across the body for security and then opened the hatch to the completely dark tunnel. "Oh, this should be fun," he muttered as he peered inside. "I'll go first. I have great vision in low light." He was already digging in the bag for a headlamp.

"No, we talk about you all the time. Owen this. Owen that. Always good." Gantt kept his words light, knowing the lieutenant had to know how Engineering and Operations often butted heads. "Truth is you have a worse job than Engineering because your umbrella covers everything on the ship, really. And managing us is hard because we don't tend to choose this job because we like being watched over."

Gantt flipped on his lamp, the beam catching the back of Owen and unusually dead space ahead, devoid of the heat of displays, the pulse of injectors, and the breath of relays.

Owen continued to climb, the silence was eerie and unsettling, the semi-stagnant air smelling faintly of ozone as they got closer. "You're a funny guy, Gantt," Owen said as he stepped aside into the junctionway that was not much larger than a closet. "This should be the place, right?" he asked as he pulled a tricorder out of his bag and started scanning a wall panel.

"This is the place. Now the fun part," said Gantt. He removed a couple of panels and scanned the interior for a foreign object but everything looked normal. The tricorder readings were all Bajoran. Regulation ID and frequency. He frowned and leaned in closer. Maybe he had missed something in the readings or identified the wrong source of the trouble.

"This can't be right," he muttered, mostly to himself. He dug past Owen to get deeper into the components, suddenly alive to the radiating heat and sweat trickling down his neck, dropping onto the floor like sand through an hourglass. A pile of pulled parts grew beside him. "What does this look like to you?" said Gantt, pointing to a large, gray shape.

Owen pursed his lips momentarily as he considered the object. "Power distribution node," he looked from the node to Gantt's expression.

"Yeah, except it isn't. Bajor stopped putting these in new construction six years ago because of design flaws. Plus, there's only current going out; the input circuits aren't live. That is a very well constructed fake," said Gantt.

"Only current going out?" Owen's brow creased. "Some kind of remote control or a backdoor into station systems," the options for such a device would be countless. "Let's get it back to engineering for analysis."

They worked in silence. Between the vastness around them and the base beneath them, decorated with debris and vessels both familiar and foreign, with no sign of the wormhole, their separation from Starfleet loomed larger and heavier.

Lieutenant Soto Gantt (NPC by Leed)
Assistant Chief Engineering Officer
USS Firebird NCC-88298


Lieutenant Owen Woodhouse
Chief Operations Officer
USS Firebird NCC-88298

 

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