It is a Bear of a Day

Posted on Fri Jan 24, 2020 @ 5:00am by Lieutenant JG Camille Lévesque PhD & Lieutenant JG Ardal King

1,089 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Nibiru
Location: Science Lab (Backpost)
Timeline: Before departing DQ8

Ardal had already been to the on ship barber. He started his day there. The barber had a brush attached to a vacuum. It was like magic. He had already been in his lab for two hours already. There was a clicking noise as he walked around his geology lab. He was working a more efficient compression rate. Dilithium compression rate for the crystals. He had his face in a microscope. "Spectacular." That clicking noise continued as he brought it up on a main viewer. "Computer, calculate new energy production from this new compression algorithm." He looked at the compression rate. "Oh my stars and garters. King to Levesque." He looked at the screen. "Run the simulation 10,000 times."

Camille had been working in her office nearby. She’d heard that her Assistant Chief was on board, but hadn’t made the time to see him yet. He was reaching out to her proactively, which was nice. Still at her desk, she looked away from her work to address him over comms. “Lévesque here. What is it, Monsieur King?”

Ardal answered, "I have been working on a new form of compression technique for dilithium. I have had good results, I would like you to come review my data before I pass it on to engineering." The joy of being a scientists, they have a tendency to forget to check in with their department heads, and go right back to their experiments. He even had a tendency to forget to do those important things like eat and sleep, just the lab all the time.

"I'm on my way to you now," Camille answered before closing the channel. She'd read his file and knew his history, though she'd never met someone of his species before. She knew he would prove fascinating. She locked her station and left her office to the lab where Ardal was working. "Monsieur King. Camille Lévesque. Enchantée."

Ardal looked up from the microscope, "Enchantee is Fench." He thought for a moment, "Language from Earh. Primary central Europe. Secondary, parts of Canada, parts of Africa, and in the Americas a place called Louisiana. Mmm. Cajun food." Then he spoke as if he learned the words from a book without a pronunciation guide, "Jamapelle Roi le Ours. Wait, that isn't right. Nevermind." He motioned to the computer so she could see the compression rate and power output.

She smiled warmly at her colleague. "The attempt is appreciated." She moved over to the computer screen to see his results. "This looks promising. What caused this spike here?" she said, pointing to one bit of outlier data where the pressure increased far beyond what would be normally expected.

Ardal checked the recording of data, "We had an environmental control issue. It was already repaired. Temperature was 140 degrees in this room. I have the simulation being rerun taking into account that environment change."

Camille quickly converted the temperature into something she could reference before nodding. "Good idea. Glad to see it fixed. I don't think I can handle that heat! If the new simulation works out, feel free to send it to the engineering support lab. I'm sure they'll appreciate it. We can talk with Monsieur Torres later. If the spike comes back, like if it wasn't caused by the temperature, then let's hold off so we can solve it."

Ardal looked at her, "I have fur and thick, heavy skin. I don't like it all. I grew up in mines. I don't have to like it, but family has to be fed, so I can handle it." His species, for the most part was equal between the genders, but there was something very important that sows could do, that boars never could. This caused them to have a matriarchal society. He had no problem working for a woman.

“I’d love to hear more of your homeworld, Ardal,” Camille said. “There’s surprisingly little in the Starfleet database about it.”

Ardal grinned, "We like it that way. However, of all the races conquered by the Klingons, we are the only one they respect. They have said if we had any interest beyond our own den and tribes."

"Is your planet still occupied?" she asked.

Ardal looked at her, "I have only been there a few times, during gathering. I grew up going to different Mining Colonies. My people are still there. My father became friends with the Federation Officer who was in charge of mining dilithium. So, my father got put in charge of onsite extraction."

“Fascinant,” she couldn’t help but say. “Is that how you got involved with Starfleet? Through that friend?”

Ardal looked at her, "Mining Colony we were on got attacked. It was a foothold. There was an ambassador there and a few lead scientists. I was good at playing with Starfleet and Federation Technology, coding and had studied a lot of combat situations and battle plans. I used the technology to play with the enemies. Because of my size, none of the visitors knew at the time I was the equivalent of a human early teenager. That situation got me the chance to take the entrance exam, but I had to wait. There was only so much they could stretch the entrance age." He grinned, a toothy grin.

Camille returned his grin. “Well, I’ll leave you to finish your work. I’ll want to convene our entire department in the next week or so, probably just after we leave. Anything you need in the meantime, you have my approval to procure it. We’re going to be able to do a lot of good work once we launch, and I want to make sure we have sufficient equipment.”

Ardal grinned, "I like toys." Then he started adjusting different variables for his Experiment. "It is going to get warm enough that it will be uncomfortable for a human."

"Okay," Camille said with a nod. "I'll leave you to it. Good day, Monsieur King." The Chief Science Officer stepped out of the lab and let her Assistant Chief get to work.

Ardal used the computer to tag the room with a warning for excessive heat. He set the experiment to repeat itself. He used the room temperature from the environmental control malfunction. Once the simulation experiment started, he left. Just because he could handle the heat doesn't mean he wanted to. He had the computer alert him and Dr Levesque of the results.

 

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