Anomaly: Practical Joke...or Sinister Threat...

Posted on Wed Mar 16th, 2022 @ 5:00am by Captain Devin Hadenbeer & Lieutenant Commander Dorian Sheppard & Lieutenant Commander Ull Arkyn

781 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Into The Void
Location: Engineering and Bridge
Timeline: Several days into voyage

“Ok Travak, take it up slowly. Seven point two . . . three . . . four . . There. Hold it steady at seven point four.”

Lieutenant Commander Sheppard stepped around the Tellarite Ensign working the PADD and tapped the Assay display in front of her. “See there?” he asks. “You’ve still got a stable ion containment field, but your efficiency is up three-quarters of a percent.”

“Was three-quarters of a percent really worth our time and energy?” Ensign Travak complains.

Sheppard smiles. “It is when you multiply that by every conduit in the ship over the next however many years, yes,” he counters.

“Rabahk,” he calls to the far monitor. “How’s it going on your end?”

“Seven point four and holding,” the Ensign replies.

“Good,” Sheppard states. “Nice work team.”

He taps his comm. “Sheppard to Ull. You can bring banks three and four back online. Let me know if the anomaly persists.”

"Thank you, Sheppard. Bringing them up now." Ull responded and then began slowly bringing up power to banks three and four. He watched closely as he brought them online. Luckily the anomoly they had noticed earlier seemed to be gone.

"Ull to Sheppard. I'm not seeing the anomaly, but I'm seeing slightly different power readings than I saw earlier. Did you guys make any changes on your end? Nothing was made on mine. Want to make sure it isn't an issue popping up." The readings looked better to Ull, but he also knew sometimes they looked better before they got way worse.

“We’ve made some minor adjustments to our calibrations,” Sheppard replies. “I’ll keep an eye on things to make sure they stay stable.”

"I'll keep a watchful eye on my side too, Sheppard." Ull watched as phaser bank 3 suddenly had a spike in power and then shut itself off. "Sheppard, bank 3 just shut off. I think it may have a faulty regulator. I'll add it to the list and get my techs checking my side of it. 4 seems to be holding steady though."



-faulty regulator- Sheppard wonders silently, tapping the PADD and scrolling through a list of recent reports. Finding what he was looking for, he taps his comm.

“Negative, Arkyn,” Sheppard replies. “Maintenance reports show Phaser Bank regulators were tested at Space Dock on arrival and number three was replaced, along with the ODN relay.” He furrows his brow when his diagnostic attempt reads ‘ERROR’.

“What’s your induction reading” He asks. “I can send a team to run a local diagnostic on the syndalytic capacitor. For some reason the Level 1 diagnostic won’t process from this station. Could just be a delayed buffer refresh, but I’ll need to physically flush the charge.”

"Induction levels are reading low." I'll send some of my crew to help out with it. It seems like number three is going to be out problem child of the have already replaced parts before we even make it out of the dock."


“Acknowledged,” Sheppard replies, then clicks a status report memo on his PADD and heads for the secondary hull in the neck of the ship.

/-scene change- location: Battle Bridge-/

When Sheppard steps off the turbolift into the secondary hull, he sees Ull’s team already disassembling the panels to access the isolinear optics chips.

‘-Damn, they’re efficient-’ he muses silently as he approaches.

“Sir,” an Ensign (whose name he doesn’t know) acknowledges his arrival. “I’ll have a report ready for you momentarily.”

“Carry on,” Sheppard says. “I’ll be inside,” he explains, nodding to the Battle Bridge.

/-swoosh-/

The Battle Bridge has minimal power to it at the moment, but the dim lights brighten at his entry and a work station powers on, emitting a pale blue glow. Touching the icons to bring up a self diagnostic, he confirms Ull’s low induction reading. Detaching the overlying panel, he separates the connectors and reaches in to toggle the charge switch on the capacitor. It’s turned off. ‘-hmmm-’ he wonders, toggling it on.

Tapping his comm he relays his findings to Ull.

“Sheppard to Arkyn. I found one problem,” he explains. “It looks like someone forgot to set the synaptic capacitor when they replaced the regulator,” he says. “Bank three should come back online in a few minutes. It just needs to rebuild its charge. Did your team in the corridor find any other irregularities?”

"Arkyn to Sheppard. They found an induction coil with damaged contacts. Not seeing where the damage came from though. They should have it replaced momentarily." Ull hoped that this fault would be just that easy.

“Acknowledged,” Sheppard replies. “I’ll log it and follow up with a scheduled diagnostic. Thanks for the help.”

 

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