Turning On The Lights

Posted on Fri Jan 15th, 2016 @ 3:05pm by Captain Tim Williams & Lieutenant Commander Ciaran McIntyre & Lieutenant Griffen Tanol

Episode: Lost Property
Location: De Salle, D-Deck
Timeline: MD02 0950hrs

Tim led his reduced group out of the computer core and into the corridor outside. It was quite eerie with only their helmet lights, and he could just make out the turbolift door at the end of the corridor. Before that was an intersection where he paused to check the deck plans on the interface strapped on the arm of his EV suit to confirm that he needed to head in either direction to loop around the centre of the ship and reach the hatches to engineering. He chose left, purely because that was the side of the corridor he was closest to.

The ship was small by modern standards, and so it wasn't long before they took another left, and arrived at the hatch to the upper level of the ship's main engineering room. These hatches were different to the others on the ship, in that they had a large lever that needed to be manually unlocked, and then the door had to be moved on hinges against the counterweights designed to pull it shut again like an old Earth fire door. Thankfully in the zero gravity the counterweight had no effect on the swing of the door, and Tim was able to open it without too much effort. After only a moment, they were stood on the upper mezzanine, looking down on the horizontally-mounted engine core.

"Bloody hell." Mac said, realising that all of his observations so far had only served to irritate his more science-minded colleagues. "That's a bit of a blast from the past."

"You got that right," Tim said, glee clearly evident in his voice. "I don't think Starfleet has built a ship with a warp core like that since Kirk's days."

Deciding to forego lumbering in his magnetic boots over to the ladder he could see, Tim opted for the quick way down to the lower level. Deactivating his boots, he held onto the railing and swung himself over before giving himself a slight push so that he drifted down to the floor. He activated his boots just before he landed so that he didn't bounce straight back up again.

"Let's see if we can't turn the lights on, shall we?" He said, moving over to one side of the warp core. If he remembered his 22nd century starship technology, there were two small power stations at the rear of engineering that powered the monitors for the core itself. They should also power the ship's emergency lighting, which should also be brighter in engineering to allow for work to go on to restore whatever system had taken out the main lights. "Grif, head to the power station on the other side of the warp core. As long as both of these are working, we should be able to give them a quick charge from our suits' power packs." The power stations should be self-charging, so a quick burst to fire them up, and they should take over themselves from there. They only had a limited power supply, but it would be enough to let them check on the status of the warp core.

Grif nodded as she slowly made her way over to the power station. The old horizontal warp core was enthralling, the sheer size compared to the limited output compared to today's standards. A warp core an 1/8th of the size these days could outpower it. Tapping the control panel trying to see if it even had an ounce left in it Grif was rewarded with nothing. Pulling the panel below it off she began to poke around. "I think it should still work. Possibly."

"You should see a large round port under there," Tim said, as he checked for the same thing on his side. Finding it easily enough, he reached up to grasp behind him at the extending cords that could be pulled out from the power pack attached to the back of his suit, and fed it out once he had a grasp of it. The connector on the end of the cord was designed to be adaptable, with various connectors that could be reconfigured to link with any foreign system; the logic being, if you needed to recharge your suit on an away mission aboard an unknown ship, you shouldn't be stuck with a Starfleet-standard power connection.

Finding a configuration the looked right, he connected it in to the port beneath the console, and tapped the controls on his wrist to give it some power. He started off slowly, so as not to burn out the old systems. Before long, the power station began to vibrate slightly (Tim imagined it was humming, though the vacuum inside the ship would have prevented him from hearing anything even if he didn't have his suit on). Disconnecting the cord, he watched the lighting and the control panels slowly come to life one by one, as Grif finished powering up the station on her side too.

"Holy hell." McIntyre gaped in awe as the almost perfectly preserved engine room came to life. It was pristine, save for some minor console damage and a thick layer of grime which lay over a few of the panels. "This is quite something."

"Yeah, you can say that again," Tim said, moving back along the warp core and lifting himself up onto the raised section which stood at the front of the warp core. He started tapping a few buttons to see if he could get some information from the console there. "It looks like the warp core is completely out of dilithium. Probably used up keeping power running for as long as it could. Other than that though, the core seems to be in pretty good condition."

McIntyre left the engineers to their machinations and walked over to one of the secondary consoles, the one which was most covered in the thick, almost viscous material. He wiped the glove of his EV suit over it, ignoring the flickering and chirruping of his tricorder. The grime wiped away easily but instead of a console underneath, he found the remains of some blue cloth, trimmed in red.

The security chief recoiled in horror as he realised what the beeping was in aid of - the tricorder had picked up biomatter and now so had he. "I- I think I've found some of the crew."

"The crew?" Tim asked, glancing over briefly with a frown of confusion on his face. "What do you mean, Mac? There's no-one else here."

Mac raised his arm out in front of him, scanning the substance with the wrist-mounted tricorder, his helmet light illuminating the grey-brown smear on his glove. "I think this is them."

Tim looked over towards Mac properly now, and saw the patch of cloth that had been uncovered under the grime, and the residue that now caked the fingertips of Mac's glove. "Williams to Highlander. Get Doctor Takkanashi suited up and over here with a medical containment team now."

He then switched to the comm channel for the away team. "Williams to North. We've found.... some remains of the crew. Don't touch anything that you haven't already and hold position there until you're told otherwise."