Unexplained Issues

Posted on Fri Jun 10th, 2016 @ 7:48pm by Captain Tim Williams & Lieutenant Commander Horatio Hawke & Lieutenant Commander Jean Reynard & Lieutenant Griffen Tanol & Lieutenant Ryan North

Episode: Lost Property
Location: USS Highlander - Briefing Room
Timeline: MD04

Straight from the transporter room, they had assembled in the briefing room to bring the captain up to speed on the latest developments. Hawke gave a brief rundown of what systems they had been able to restart and restore and what hadn't gone so smoothly.

"However," Hawke said ominously as he came to the end of his report. "However, there were some ... unexplained issues we encountered as well."

"Unexplained issues?" the captain asked, starting to go through the things he could remember of the old NX ships in his head, thinking they were issues to do with the craft's archaic systems.

"Well, sir," the first officer continued, a hint of discomfort in his voice. "Some systems or even switches on consoles would ... change, seemingly of their own accord. For example, at the helm, whenever I switched the throttle safety into active, a moment later it would switch back to inactive." He pointed over toward the science officer. "Mr North had a similar issue with the secondary sensor array and Mac with the phaser turrets. We couldn't find any explanation for these things occurring, so I decided to get us all back here before something more vital was switched off."

Ryan looked around the table, a part of him hadn't wanted to leave the ageing starship but the MACO in him told him that it was probably a good think that they get out of there sooner rather than later. Given what little they knew about what had caused the ship to end up all the way out here it was a safe bet that being onboard her was dangerous until they could come up with more answers. Well, assuming that they could come up with more answers.

"The computers on the De Salle shouldn't be capable of doing that," Tim said, his brow creasing as he understood his XO's meaning. "They're pre-duotronic. They could run simple pre-programmed routines, but only when instructed to by whoever was operating them. They shouldn't be able to revert user commands like that." He rubbed the stubble on his chin as he tried to think of an explanation for the problem. "Wait. The throttle safety? That's a physical switch on that helm, isn't it?"

Hawke nodded, "Yes, sir. It's a safety switch on the throttle control itself."

"There's no way the computer would be able to switch that on its own. There are no mechanisms in the switch for it to be capable of it. Safeties like that were designed so they had to be human-operated, so to speak," Tim said with a quick glance at Grif. He knew she'd take no offence at the turn of phrase, especially given the age of the design, but he was aware of how much things in the galaxy had changed since that time.

"And no way that a computer should be able to subvert a command like switching around the secondary sensor array. What's more unsettling to me is the fact that they are two seemingly unrelated systems."

"The only thing that all the systems have in common in the main computer," Jean added, "but even leaving aside the physical switches, it checks out as operating normally."

"Did anyone pick up any strange readings over there?" the captain asked, looking for something to use as a starting point in figuring out what was going on. "Strange energy readings, distortions, even phantom readings on the tricorder?"

"I did do scans of the helm controls," Jean told him. "The controls themselves match the schematics in our database, so it's not a case of the crew having modified the ship. There were no magnetic fields beyond what was generated by the equipment, and the switch isn't magnetized anyway. The readings when it was flipped are identical to when the commander did it, so if there's an outside force working here, it's acting like a normal interaction between solids." He grimaced, knowing that this was going to be one of those weird ones that was hard to measure with conventional instruments. "It could be... telekinesis, or something invisible?"

"We ran a full array of scans from the Highlander before we beamed over," Ryan pointed out. "And the ship came up clean."

Tim sat for a moment in thought. "Suggestions?" he finally asked.

"There's some specialized detection equipment packed away in Cargobay 2 that I'll break out, plus a few other gadgets we only have as replicator patterns," Jean offered. "There's some rare phenomena that our standard tricorders and shipboard scanners aren't built to register, maybe whatever this is will show up on them."

"Do it. I also want us to re-scan the De Salle with our regular sensors. Go in-depth; run every analysis you can think of. Maybe we missed something that wouldn't come up on a normal scan."

"I want to take the computer core apart sir. I know it's preprogrammed subrountines mainly, but those cores back then did have the ability to be more free thinking. We know from records that a few engineers made their ships a bit more complex. I want to see if we have one of those on our hands, it would explain a few things apart from the switch." Grif said as she fiddled with the tip of her braid, "I just... know it will have an answer for us, somehow."

"If nothing else," Jean said, "the core should be able to generate a complete list of any unexplained activity with the ship's systems, now that we know to look for it. Every time one of those switches got flipped or the sensors reset themselves, there should be a record of a result without a cause."

"Agreed," Tim said, nodding his head to the suggestion. "Get to work on it, but try and make sure we can put it back together. I'm still hoping that once we've figured out this issue, we can still deliver the ship to Starfleet as a working museum piece. Any other suggestions?" He looked around at his officers, continuing when nobody else spoke up. "Then let's get to work. Let me know as soon as you find anything."