Slippin' Into the Future

Posted on Sat Feb 18th, 2017 @ 11:54pm by Captain Tim Williams & Lieutenant Commander Jean Reynard & Lieutenant Griffen Tanol

Episode: Preparations
Location: USS Highlander - Captain's Ready Room
Timeline: MD 1

Jean whistled to himself as he walked down one of the Highlander's corridor, on his way to a meeting called by the captain. The ship was earrily silent around him. For all that the lights were still on, with all the systems drawing from external power and life support from spacedock the ambient noise had dropped to almost zero. The nigh-complete absence of the crew just added to the effect; most people had cleared out on their way to leave or other assignments so fast you'd have thought the abandon ship alarms had gone off. Lower the lighting a little and it'd practically be the opening scenes of a horror holonovel.

"I don't like this." Grif spoke up for the first time since she had met up with her Operations counter part. "It's too quiet it makes me feel like something is broken and if I don't fix it we're all going to die in a matter of hours." The Trill frowned with a look of unease on her face as she played nervously with the tip of her plait.

The bridge didn't do much to contradict the Trill engineer's notions, empty as it was of all personnel. Tim's voice sounded clearly through the door intercom once they pressed the chime, no longer needing to compete with the sounds of a busy command centre.

"Come in, take a seat," the captain said once the door had opened, ushering them in and directing them to the couches that sat beneath the forward-facing viewports. His desk was strewn with PADDs, and he carried one in his hand as well, it's screen currently dark. He perched himself on the arm of the couch opposite the two officers once they had taken their seats.

"Computer, seal the door. Adjust the room monitoring presets in accordance with security protocol nineteen alpha." As the computer chirped to confirm it had carried out his orders, he held his hand up to forstall the question likely forming in the minds of his officers. "Just procedure, don't worry," he said. "Starfleet has had both of your security clearances increased, and what I'm about to brief you on is classified."

"Classified?" Jean said, perking up a little even though he knew most things classified inevitably ended up being extremely boring, if not tedious. "Something to do with our upcoming mission or the refit?"

Griffen arched an eyebrow as she stared at the Captain. Classified was generally interesting to the engineer because it involved something that she could take apart and put back together and attempt to keep in some form or another. For both Operations and Engineering to be involved in a meeting for classified tech meant it had to do with the ship. "Refit, only reason only the two of us would be here." Grif commented as she thought over the options of tech she knew to be 'classified' but with work underway.

"Could be something about the graviton catapult," Jean pointed out. To Tim, he added, "If it's fueled with puppies, I'd rather not know."

Tim chuckled at that. "No, the Klingons are supplying us with boat loads of tribbles to power the thing," he joked. "But you're right that it's about the refit," he said, looking over to Grif. "As you both know, when the Starship Voyager returned from the Delta Quadrant fourteen years ago, they brought back with them all kinds of new technologies - from the Borg, from other species in the Delta Quadrant, and even from our own futures. Since they came back, Starfleet has been working on reverse-engineering those technologies; the graviton catapult that will allow us to return to the Delta Quadrant after all this time is the result of one of those projects."

Jean nodded. "Their doctor was keynote speaker at an artificial intelligence conference I attended a couple years ago. Very interesting man."

"Another project which was quite high profile for a time was Starfleet's efforts to create a working slipstream drive. The USS Vesta was designed around it, although all of the initial tests of the drive failed. Starfleet shifted its focus, but a team of engineers continued working on the designs. Last year the Vesta and her slipstream drive were deemed to be fully operational. The ship has been assigned to Task Force 37, joining us in the Delta Quadrant."

"Really?" Jean said, surprised. "The last I'd heard, the test drones kept meeting gruesome fates. I hadn't realized there'd been a breakthrough."

"That was during her original run. She went back to the drawing board and a couple of new engineers joined the project." Griffen replied as she bit her lip thinking it over, "Yoshi Minawara's his name. He became lead on the Slipstream drive. If he really got that drive working and we're getting one... I might just kiss the man next time I see him. This is going to be an extensive refit, we're going to have to cut holes in multiple decks, maybe even the hull..." The Trill mused to herself as she looked out into space.

"You beat me to it," Tim said, chuckling. He was glad to see that he wasn't the only one to be excited about getting their hands on the new drive. "Once the Starfleet was able to prove that the technology works with the Vesta, they wanted to start looking at retrofitting the drive to other classes in the fleet. Since the hull stresses of a slipstream flight are very different to those of a conventional warp flight though, not all of our designs are compatible. A Galaxy class for example would be torn in two with its exposed neck section. Streamlined hull geometry becomes very important all of a sudden, as opposed to just making a ship look good. Luckily for us, the Highlander is an Intrepid, and not only is she sleek, Voyager proved that the design was compatible with the technology, even if their own attempts couldn't hold a sustained flight. I have some friends in the Corps of Engineers - or at least, Admiral Garner got fed up of seeing me call - and I was able to convince Starfleet to have the Highlander be one of the first ships to have this drive fitted."

Grif grinned like an idiot as she turned back to face the captain. She'd be one of the first engineers in Starfleet to get her hands on a Quantum Slipstream drive and actually get to tinker with the drive.

"While Starfleet fully expects our neighbours to learn of the drive sooner or later, our assignment to the exploration group in the Delta Quadrant was part of the deal of getting the drive." He'd already made the crew aware of their reassignment, and given the long-distance nature of it, had let them know that he'd entertain any transfer requests any of them wanted to make to stay closer to home. "I think their logic is that the further away the slipstream-equipped ships are, the longer it'll take for the drive to become public knowledge. Plus, it makes a lot of sense to have ships out there in case the graviton catapult fails; slipstream could mean decades off a trip back home."

"The specifications of the drive however, are classified - top secret. Only the command staff and those working directly with the drive are to have full access to the specifications. Both of your clearance levels have been raised." He reached behind him to grab a pair of PADDs from his desk and hand them over. They were the security-enhanced models, with biometric sensors to make sure they couldn't be read by just about anyone who picked them up. "Everyone else on the ship is being vetted and will be cleared on a need-to-know basis to be around the drive. Obviously our helmsmen need to be able to operate it, Ryan will need to know what effects it has on subspace and so on, but Starfleet wants detailed knowledge of its workings to be restricted as much as is feasible in day-to-day operations. It also means that our refit is going to be much more substantial than I let on - we're going to need an entirely new deflector dish, and the structural integrity field is going to need replacing in its entirety. We also need to carve out space for a dedicated computer core to run the slipstream calculations. All of the details are on your PADDs."

Jean snatched his up and started scrolling through rapidly. "We may as well replace the secondary deflector while we're at it, since a primary failure would be even worse than usual. Same with the navigational array, given the current one won't keep up at that speed. In fact, given how much of the ship's going to be opened up, now's the time if there's any other upgrades that would be nice to have but inconvenient to install."

Grif scrunched her face as she scanned the timeline for the retrofit. "They seriously think they can do this in six weeks or less?" Shaking her head, Grif went over the list in her head what would need to be done, what they'd have to do to get it done. "This will take at least even if we pushed it six weeks would be the minimum, I'd say realistically we're looking at ten maybe twelve weeks depending on what else we want to upgrade. We're going to ahve to cut at least one hole in the hull for the computer core, ripping out the deflector dish will take at least two weeks and another two for installation of a new one depending on how mch more advanced it is..." 

Grif could have gone on and on but forced herself to stop. Williams used to be an Engineer he knew exactly where she was coming from and Reynard was smart enough to see the line of reasoning. "We could upgrade the phaser arrays at the same time, probably some of the primary power conduits as well. Hell we could even get some more room back too by upgrading some of the older systems. You know how it goes technology gets smaller."

"The Highlander's scheduled for a three month refit," Tim said, holding up his hands to forstall his chief engineer continuing the list any further. "I told Admiral Garner that 6 weeks is far too short a time frame for the upgrade to be done to my standards, and she relented. Even without the new drive, as part of our assignment to the Delta Quadrant, every system on the ship is under review for upgrades; we're going to need to be able to operate for extended periods in deep space, so our defence and navigation systems are getting updates, Starfleet is sending us a new comm array that'll make it easier for us to tie into the Pathfinder system, and there are a whole raft of other upgrades that aren't covered under the classified section. We'll need to upgrade the ship's stores too - we're going to need to carry enough spare parts to see us through a long trip if the worst happens and we lose the drive and the replicators, and Starfleet wants to make sure we can be self-sustaining for food if we need to be, so the airponics bay is going to be stocked to the brim. Even with three months and the yard engineers help, we're going to have our hands full."

"Now, we've got a Lieutenant Commander Bralt from Utopia Planetia preparing to brief us and the rest of the engineering and operations staff on the details in the cargo bay, but I wanted to make sure you were both briefed on the new drive first. Any other points before we head down to join the others?"

Jean was already deep in thought about the points Grif and Tim had raised. The new computer core might be able to go through the open deflector mount while it was out, saving the need for a separate hole, and the power conduits mostly ran though the same spaces as the SIF guides... he had to stop himself from getting ahead of the game.

"No, there's nothing that can't wait until we hear the technical briefing," Jean said.

"Might as well head down. Can't promise my head wont be going a mile a minute. Lots of planning." Grif replied with a shrug.

"Let's go meet the rest of your departments in the cargo bay then," Tim said, pushing himself off the arm of the couch and releasing the seal on the doors before leading the way out of the ready room.