Command Training - The Silent Killer

Posted on Thu Aug 27th, 2015 @ 2:59pm by Lieutenant Commander Ciaran McIntyre & Captain Tim Williams & Lieutenant Commander Horatio Hawke

Episode: Lost Property
Location: Main Engineering [Deck 11, USS Highlander]

Main engineering was strange when it was empty. The consoles still lit up and chirped as they went through their processes, but without anybody around to man them, the blue glow of the warp core looked positively ghostly against the bulkheads. The crew were all throughout the ship, in their quarters and in a state of suspended animation; a necessary precaution against the nebula the ship was passing through. Higher brain activity was disrupted by its unique properties, but the ship had had no other choice but to pass through it.

Mac had woken to find that the equipment keeping him in stasis had completely failed, and upon checking the computer, other systems seemed to be failing across the ship as well. The computer's responses were garbled and inconsistent, and so his only way of finding out what was going on was to check the systems in engineering manually.

Oh, christ. He thought as he tried his hardest to come to, trying to feel his way back to consciousness - those stasis fields always kicked him right in the arse. He shook his head violently - probably against all good sense.

The turbolift still seemed to be functional, a little slower than usual perhaps but there was nothing to be done about that. Maybe it was just the grogginess which made it feel that way. Eventually it reached the engineering deck and he dragged himself along the corridor to the main doors.

"Of course you don't." He huffed as the doors completely failed to open, resulting in him walking into them at full pelt. "Why would you help me out?" He opened the small panel on the right hand side and racked his brains for a second. Engineering wasn't his strong suit - everyone knew it - but since he was the only one there, it was up to him. He clipped the chip which brought the door's detection cycle back to life. The door heaved open, leaving him face to face with the cavernous void of main engineering.

He didn't even know where to start. If it was anything more complicated than a simple button press he'd be up a creek without a paddle, but if he didn't get it done then the whole crew would float through a nebula forever, choked to death in their sleep.

Catch Twenty-Two, he thought. He approached the master console, the one which he had watched Ethan effortlessly manipulate time after time and stared blankly at it for a moment. Things seemed to be draining of power all across the ship.

"Computer, what is the source of the power drain?"

The computer's vocals seemed to fizzle and crack throughout its response but Mac gleaned that something had gone wrong with the auxiliary power distribution. Fantastic. What the hell does that mean?

He cycled through every junction and sub-junction he could find. Main power seemed to be running at a reduced capacity, he thought back to the briefing, a side-effect of the nebula.

He found something, helpfully highlighted in red by the computer, which was taking up an absurd amount of the auxiliary power which was supposed to be running as an undercurrent, supplementing main power if it dipped during their passage through the nebula. "What the hell is that?" He asked, hearing his voice bounce back off the walls.

Junction 406-526-N was the name on the tag and Mac found himself poring over a PADD, trying to find its location. Eventually he found it, standing up and raising a finger in the air as he did so. "Ah ha!" He shouted again to no-one.

It still made no sense but at least he had somewhere to go. When he reached the quarters, assigned on deck four, he found exactly what he was looking for. "Well, well, well." He said aloud as the doors sighed apart in front of him, revealing an incredible garden in every single space which wasn't occupied. It reminded him of a botanical garden he had once visited near Inverness and the heat was oppressive.

He didn't doubt that in the computer's confused state it was reading the living, breathing, reproducing flowers as the crew and assigning all of the auxiliary power assigned to life support to them. Chances are that the power distribution of the ship's normal function was covering their existence - very clever. There was a sure fire way to fix it too.

"Computer, lock onto all botanical life at my current location and beam it to the Deck Four airlock."

The program froze and Hawke materialised into existence amongst the plants. He looked almost comically incredulous, holding his arms out at his sides, a PADD in his right hand. "You're really going to space these defenseless lifeforms to solve an engineering problem?"

"You're damn right I am." Mac replied with a smile. "Is this an actual thing? Does Ensign Graves really keep an entire garden in his quarters?"

As he stepped out of the overgrown fauna, Hawke shrugged and said, "I wouldn't know; I'm not one to pry." He straightened his uniform and tapped on the PADD. "This was an unusual one we dug up from the training archives. Not everyone is so ... direct in their solution, but you correctly identified the problem and your plan to destroy poor Ensign Graves' prized collection of botanical marvels would have corrected the problem. Maybe."

"What was the other solution?" Mac asked, always desperate to pick up little engineering tidbits which he could later forget.

Hawke waved a hand dismissively, "Oh, something to do with rerouting internal sensor arrays or secondary EPS junctions or something like that." He tapped at the PADD and the scene around them vanished. "I'll send you the scenario report to read; there are some good solutions in there."

"Oh, yeah." Mac replied sheepishly, looking at the simulated transporter, frozen half way through its run. "Guess I must have forgotten about those."