Faulty Bit Of Kit

Posted on Fri Sep 11th, 2015 @ 12:57am by Lieutenant Commander Ciaran McIntyre & Lieutenant Commander Jean Reynard

Episode: Lost Property
Location: Security Centre [Deck 6, USS Highlander]
Timeline: MD01: 1350hrs.

Jean had settled in to his office and was getting down to business. His top priorities were getting to know his own staff and getting to know the ship. In his experience, every ship and station had its own unique set of quirks that started gathering from the moment the keel was laid and grew with age. A ship like the Highlander, refitted after a long period of being abandoned, had more than most. Most were just minor differences between it and an 'ideal' Intrepid-class, but it was always possible there were genuine problems lurking. There were a string of complaints about long waits for turbolifts at the aft observation lounge, for example. Was it a glitch in the traffic software, a natural issue arising from the isolated position of that stop, or an indication of magnetic leakage from the nearby warp plasma conduits? Only by digging into details like that could Jean figure out what his priorities should be for his first few days aboard.

"Oh, for christ's sake." McIntyre shouted, kicking the main console in the Security Centre and sending a vicious clang echoing throughout the room and a shudder running up his leg, hitting every pain centre on the way through. "Dituri! Has it been doing this all day?"

McIntyre's assistant in the security department looked up from her desk where she had been cross-referencing lists of Starfleet deserters with officers who had been assigned to the Highlander within the last six years. Just a hunch, she had told herself. Mac's shouting had made her lose her place. "Dammit, Mac. I was half way through."

"Sorry - has this been acting up all morning?"

"Yes, Mac. It has." She was fuming, but she'd get over it.

McIntyre ignored her irritation and tapped his combadge. "McIntyre to Reynard. Do you have a minute?"

"Sure thing," Jean replied. A little hand-on experience would do him good and save his eyesight from staring at a screen too long. He reached for a toolkit he kept at his desk. "I'll be there in a minute."

McIntyre smiled at Dituri. "Back to work then Alana. Those lists won't cross reference themselves."

Jean arrived quickly, since there were only two decks between his office and the security center. He looked around, not having spent much time in any ship's security areas before. He'd always interacted with that department mostly on away teams, not aboard the ship.

"What's the problem, commander?" Jean asked, joining Mac at the main console.

McIntyre looked at the console and then round at the Operations Officer. "Absolutely no idea. Every time I try to access the patrol reports from last night, I get locked out and the console seems to reset all of its access."

"Really? That's interesting," Jean said. He pulled a small PADD and an optical cord from his belt. "Is it just the patrol reports, or anything else? And can you access them from any other station?"

"No - just the patrol reports - they seem to be locked out across most of the systems." McIntyre thought for a moment. Why would that be? Unless the patrols had found something which someone was trying to hide. "It usually comes in as a data packet and then the computer sorts through the data and translates it into overlays on the galactic charts. It seems to be getting stopped before it can even run."

"Curiouser and curiouser. Well, let me open it up." Jean got down on the floor and unlatched the well-dented access panel to the station's innards. He rolled onto his back and wormed his way inside, until he was shoulder-deep into the machine. Spotting a particular piece of equipment, he attached a diagnostic lead to it. "Mmm-hmmm. I think I may know the issue. Try running it again real fast."

A few chirrups saw McIntyre gain access to the reports which began their sorting process. "Looks like it's back."

"Yep, that's it." Jean jerked something free and wiggled back out. He held up a small nondescript black box, about the size of his hand. "This is a CRM-113 authentication unit. It's part of your encryption system. For some reason it's not liking the ID codes attached to the data packet, so it's shutting down the decryption process before it even gets started."

"So it's just a faulty bit of kit?" McIntyre had already unearthed a conspiracy which all the way to the top of the Federation in his head. Symptom of an over-active imagination, he supposed.

"Well, it's saying that there's a time discrepancy between its internal clock, the ship's master chronometer, and the timestamp of the original sender," Jean explained. "So it's possible we've somehow lost ten seconds without realizing it... or it's just a known glitch in the circuit that's supposed to compensate for impulse-related time dilation."

He shrugged and pocketed the unit. "I can have it fixed in ten minutes, and most of that's just getting into the secure safe for a new time chip. No problem at all."