Symptoms

Posted on Mon Aug 24, 2015 @ 7:55pm by Lieutenant Samantha Raylen & Lieutenant Commander Miguel Torres

1,337 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: All this has happened before...
Location: Engineering
Timeline: During and After 'Briefing'

LTJG Chris Halloway continued to pour over the readings from his gel packs. D9JA16 was now 5 milliseconds out of sync as well as D11JB12 and D13JB22 approaching 2.5 milliseconds out. He had double and triple checked the calibration equipment. The device LT Raylen had used turned out to have been calibrated during Victory's last base visit. Two other meters were in agreement on all gel packs. No systems were significantly affected yet, but one of the EPS conduits in the primary module was exhibiting flow fluctuations. Nothing was out of spec yet, but it was a larger variation than normal.

"Lieutenant Raylen, it appears you were right about the gel packs," Chris said. "I'll update Commander Torres when he comes back down. Any ideas? Suggestions?"

"Check the actual connections," Raylen answered after a moment. "Maybe something was damaged during installation, bent pins or damage to the neural links that wasn't noticed at first. It could be a case of gradual degradation due to the damage that we are only just now detecting."

"No," Chris replied. "They're physically undamaged. I verified that when I checked the calibration locally."

"That's odd.." Raylen said with a slightly scowl of annoyance. "All the diagnostics indicate there's nothing wrong but the calibration tests indicate something else.." she looked at the CEO then. "Any ideas?"

Having just arrived from the briefing Miguel was trying to catch up on what he had missed so far that morning. "Any ideas on what?" he asked.

Chris turned to his boss. "Sir, more gel packs are becoming out of sync when we run the timing check on the system, but there's no real effects from it so far." He handed LCDR Torres the padd he'd been using to record the data. "What do you think, sir?"

Miguel brought his hand up and covered his mouth as he were stroking a beard, of course his face was baby smooth. "Keep monitoring the effected pack for one, be ready to bypass them to the traditional backups if they fall below Starfleet standards." Miguel said as he continued to contemplate what could be going on. "Has anyone checked to see if there's any unusual radiation effecting them?"

Chris furrowed his brow in confusion. "No, sir. Normally this type of effect comes from physical damage or over-use. Is there a particular reason we need to be looking for radiation problems? Victory's sensors would have alerted us to a radiation leak."

"Just a hunch. All this started after our encounter with the Bethesda, some of the crew had been exposed to some unique radiation. Cross reference everything our sensors picked up from that ship, with everything in sickbay's logs. Look and see if there was anything no matter how small that could have effected the ship." Miguel said wondering if the infection of the crew had somehow passed on to the bio components of the ship.

"Are you going to contact the Captain or XO?" Sam asked Miguel.

"Yeah, hopefully I'm just being overly cautious about this." he said. "You two get started on the scans, and if it is some sort of radiation see if we can find some way to remove it." he added as he made his way out of main engineering.

After Torres departed, Sam said "Right now.. none of this is doing more than slowing systems down but.. if the issue continues to spread it could start to impact the ship's functionality. Maybe we should contact someone from medical and have the bio-neural gel packs tested for contagions.."

Chris nodded. "Sounds like a plan."

Suddenly, yellow portions of all the panels lit. "Yellow alert! Yellow alert! Set Condition Yellow throughout the ship. This is not a drill!"

"I guess that's going to have to wait, Lieutenant," Chris said. He moved to the main systems panel to observe the engineering department shift to its higher level of readiness.

"There's always something .. " Sam muttered. "I wonder what they're going to break now.. I should have taken that posting on that little Nova class science ship.. It gets old always being shot at by whatever.."

Chris smirked at Sam's comment. Perhaps later, Lieutenant. We've got a job to do right now, he thought. As the additional systems came online, he received reports and confirmed statuses, muttering out loud. "Fusion reactors one-charlie, two-bravo, and three-bravo all at hot stand-by. Primary module warp core approaching start-up temperature. Estimated initial M/AM injection time, plus five minutes."

So far the systems were showing no indication of abnormal operation. Chris decided that he had enough of a handle on Main Engineering, he dismissed his assistant. "Lieutenant, I've got it here for now. Start investigating the radiation that Commander Torres was talking about, please."

"We're picking up traces of radiation all over the ship, though the strongest readings are coming from one of the cargo bays.." she answered.

Chris continued to watch his auxilary systems. The transporter was being activated for some reason, a site-to-site transport. Hmm...

His thought was interrupted by the primary module systems remote watch. "Sir, the PM core is self sustaining."

"Very well," Chris replied, turning his attention back to the auxiliaries panel. There appeared to be a power use reduction in Sickbay. Some large load had gotten turned off. A few minutes later, the load returned, but this time in cargo bay 16. As was usual when standing this watch, Chris thought to himself, I wonder what's going on out there.

Suddenly an alarm sounded. Chris acknowledged it with a tap on the console and announced, "Cargo bay sixteen doors open. Force field is holding." A few moments later another alarm sounded. "Cargo bay sixteen field lost. Remote manual shutdown from the bridge." What the hell is going on out there? He recalled his date he had arranged with the attractive doctor. I hope Doc Nicole is alright.

Chris began scanning the cargo bay to figure out what was up down there. He noticed a comm badge signal still inside. Furrowing his brow, he identified the signal just as the field and life support were restored. Doc Nicole, you crazy lady. He smirked again. As long as you're alright, this is going to be an interesting evening.

Bringing himself back to the situation at hand, Chris asked, "Any information on the radiation yet?"

"It looks like levels are dissipating somewhat," Sam replied. "Diagnostics still show degradation in the bio-neural gel packs but it hasn't gotten worse.."

"Very well," Chris responded. "Does the radiation appear to be in pockets or general exposure?" he added, rubbing his chin.

"I'd have to say pockets," she answered. "If it was general exposure we'd see more wide-spread degradation vs specific systems which is what we have at the moment."

"Based on some activity from the systems in cargo bay sixteen, I think we may have jettisoned something. Are you seeing changes in radiation levels in areas away from the cargo bay?" Chris asked.

Sam didn't answer right away, "Actually it looks like the radiation source is completely gone. And I do show something was jettisoned.. ah we miss all the excitement down here.." she muttered.

Chris shook his head at Sam's comment. "We push for science and the Federation. Someone has to." Chris turned back to the panels. "Why don't you take a couple of the gel packs to sickbay and see if they can find anything. I'll inquire about standing down from yellow alert and oversee the transition."

With a nod, Sam replied "It's worth a try. I'm not sure how much the Doc can do towards repairing the damage to the gel-packs but it's better than trying to make due with degraded performance. We only have a few spares on-board so if there's anything that can be done to reverse what's happened then it's worth the attempt.."

Chris nodded. "Mr. Torres seemed eager to get the results. I don't want to disappoint him."

 

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