A problem on two fronts

Posted on Fri Sep 30th, 2016 @ 11:43pm by Captain Tim Williams & Doctor Talm Aleint-Um MD & Lieutenant Commander Horatio Hawke & Lieutenant Commander Jean Reynard & Counselor Melony Taylor & Lieutenant Ryan North

Episode: Lost Property
Location: USS Highlander - Briefing Room
Timeline: MD05 0810hrs

Grif and North had just beamed back to the Highlander as Hawke and Williams were on their way down to the transporter room, so the captain had decided that it would be more beneficial to move their catch-up to the briefing room, and invited the rest of the senior staff to join them. Seated now around the table, with Tim at his usual place in front of the view ports, he began filling everyone in on the conversation he had just finished with Captain Chandrakala.

"It seems that the arrival of our newest guest was something of an accident," he told them. "It was a combination of factors; apparently the doctor was inside the imaging chamber investigating a boradium leak at the time of the accident, which occurred at the same time as their chief engineer was attempting to remodulate and invert their warp field, and bring their own ship back into phase with us. The combination of factors sounds to me as a plausible cause for the doctor's sudden appearance in our phase - but at this point it's largely just an assumption that the two events combined caused the shift." He looked over to his science officer and chief engineer. "Does any of this tally up with what you found in your investigation?"

Ryan nodded. "It's not an assumption, I'd say its pretty much fact at this point. However, the state that the doctor arrived in leaves much to desired."

"That's putting it lightly," Tim agreed. "How is our visitor doing, Doctor?"

"He is stable," Doctor Aleint-Um, the avian medical officer replied, filling in for Doctor Takanashi. "The radiation poisoning from the boradium can be treated, as can the other affects of his uncontrolled phase-shifting. He will not be awake for another few hours at least, but he is making progress."

"Well that's something at least," the captain responded. "Do you have a working theory yet on how the boradium leak in the imaging chamber, and the warp field modifications worked together to phase shift the doctor?"

"It was a very... unique set of circumstances," Ryan said, leaning forward slightly in his chair. "We think the ship was exposed to a prototype radiation source the Romulans were working on. We think that the doctor was injured in the attack as well as the imaging chamber being damaged. After placing him in the chamber and running some scans they realized something was wrong and tried to transport him out. And then he ended up back in this phase. Well, that's the short version of our theory at least.

"It's certainly very possible from what I've see," Jean said. "After we spoke with their captain, I started running a new set of sensor sweeps. There's been a definite change in interphase permeability between the two versions of the De Salle. The tiny overlaps that we first saw - the glitches and switches and so on - have become more frequent and more intense, which could allow for an uncontrolled large-scale transition under the right circumstances. I don't know if it's because of our subspace communications link or if it's what they did with their warp drive, but either way it could be both a serious problem and a possible solution to their situation."

Hawke leaned forward. "What are the right circumstances for such a transition?" he asked, wishing he knew a lot more than he did about interphasic physics.

"Their ship exists at a specific quantum frequency relative to ours," Jean said. Waving his hand in illustration, he continued, "It's not entirely uniform, and occasionally a peak in the waveform is, uh, high enough to intersect our reality. It's not completely random, but it's not easy to predict, and it can be affected by things like radiation and magnetic fields. They seem to have accidentally stumbled across something to encourage the process."

"Can we control this process?" the captain asked. "Bring the waveform high enough for us to be able to bring the rest of the DeSalle crew over to our phase without the side-effects Doctor Elliot suffered?"

Ryan considered what the captain was asking. "We'd need an awful lot of power and an awful sensitive phase discriminator do do that, even then I'm not sure how we can account for the biological factor. Our bodies weren't designed to handle the stress of such a transmission. I'm not saying its impossible but it won't be easy and at the moment, I really don't have any idea how to do it."

"What about the duplicate DeSalle?" Tim asked, following up on his earlier thought, as he and Hawke finished talking to Chandrakala. "The only other times Starfleet has recorded a similar phenomenon, attempts to bring the two ships back into phase has resulted in the destruction of at least one of them. Can we be sure that our attempts to bring the crew back aren't going to cause the destruction of the ship? At least before we're able to recover the crew."

"If we can duplicate what caused the doctor to come over inside their imaging chamber, we might be able to link it with ours and beam them over without having to directly inject anyone with radiation," Jean said. "The chamber shielding would prevent a chain reaction from spreading to the rest of the ship. With that said, we will want to find a way to decouple the ships and move ours as soon as we've evacuated them. If they stay linked together we're going to start seeing dangerous chemical reactions as molecules interact, and if any antimatter slips over and the containment fields don't line up perfectly, that'll be that for our historic artefact."

"OK, so we have two things that we need to focus on," the captain said, standing and beginning to pace around the briefing room table. "Coming up with a way to safely duplicate the conditions of Doctor Elliot's phase shift in order to transport the crew of the DeSalle over, and figuring out how to decouple the two ships." He paused in front of the wall monitor used for presentations as he made up his mind on where to assign his people. "Ryan, Jean; I want you to work on a way to beam the crew of the DeSalle over. Captain Chandrakala and per people are eager to be involved in figuring this out, so set up an open comm-link with them, unless you think it will cause too much risk with the waveform. They might be able to fabricate something over there to perform a similar function to our test cylinders. If we can beam one of those across safely, that should be sufficient to start beaming people over."

Ryan nodded. "We can see what we can do sir just don't hold out too much hope."

"Stop being such a pessimist," Jean said. "We'll get it done, sir, with everyone's body parts intact."

Ryan rolled his eyes. "Enthusiasm not withstanding, we'll do our best but I don't want people hoping for a miracle that might not happen."


"Grif, Hawke; I want you two working on a way to decouple the two DeSalles. I'd still like to be able to return one of them to the Federation Historical Institute if we can, but the crew's wellbeing takes priority."

“Speaking of wellbeing I am sure I don’t really have to tell anyone here that the entire crew is going to need a bit of time to wrap their heads around the 200 year difference and that practically everything that they knew has changed.” Melony said “Having the DeSalle for the Federation Historical Institute is nice and all but it is also the closest thing to something familiar, and would save quite a bit of shock at some of the changes if they at least had that to fall back on, especially as there are likely to be effects that can’t be pre-empted. It’s a good staging area if you will so that they aren’t just thrown in at the deep end.”

"An excellent point," Tim agreed. "You have your assignments; let's get to it."