Counting Grains Of Sand

Posted on Tue Sep 8th, 2015 @ 12:46pm by Lieutenant Commander Ciaran McIntyre & Lieutenant Ryan North

Episode: Lost Property
Location: Astrometrics [Deck 8]
Timeline: MD01: 1510hrs.

Ryan had come across plenty of Klingons during his time as a MACO. Generally speaking, they tended to be in the same side for most things. They may have had a different way of doing things but peace with them had lasted this long. Well, as long as it could be expected. Given what they were doing around the Gorn border was starting to point the finger that perhaps the empire was through being on friendly terms with anyone.

He input a few more commands into the computer, watching as the data started to flow by the massive screen in front of him. He wasn't sure what he was looking for really, Klingon ships had incredibly sophisticated cloaks and detecting them was near impossible... though that usually didn't stop one from trying.

"How're you getting on?" Ciaran McIntyre entered astrometrics and was instantly overcome with the notion that he had never been in the lab before. It was quite something. A massive viewscreen took up the entire far wall, much larger than the one on the bridge and showed a tactical overlay of a Klingon fleet manoeuvre. In the lowered pod which was surrounding by chirruping computer banks, stood Ryan North the ship's Chief Science Officer. "Any luck?"

Ryan turned around as their tactical chief entered. "Depends on what you are referring to."

Ryan tapped a few keys and image zoomed out some. "Interference from a nearby pulsar decreases our sensor resolution some so its hard to get a completely accurate account of how many ships there are."

McIntyre hummed quietly to himself. That was exactly what he'd been referring to. The Highlander was hooked up to the live scans coming in from the long range telescopes and he, along with Lieutenant North, was attempting to work out exactly how many Klingon ships were present. "Can we tell if they're phasing in and out of cloak yet? At least that would give us something to go on."

Ryan tapped in a few more commands. "I've only detected a few battleships that have cloaked and decloaked. It's possible that the same interference from the pulsar limits the cloaks ability to completely cover the cloaked ships energy emissions. That might explain their reluctance to use it at their present location. Once they move out of that system however, the interference shouldn't effect them at all."

"Well, we'd better make sure we log as many as we can before they move out of the system." McIntyre still didn't fully understand the technology but it looked like North had a handle on it. "If we can work out how many ships they have, hopefully we'll be able to tell if any break away from their war games."

"I've got a running tally going but like I stated before, I doubt that its entirely accurate. I would say we are looking at roughly 20-30 ships," Ryan said, pulling up some new images on the large screen. "At least two of the newer Negh'var warships. Looks like they also have a healthy compliment of cruisers and Birds of Prey as well."

McIntyre hummed quietly to himself. "That's quite a fleet." He said eventually. "If they're setting up to attack Gorn space then we might be in for trouble. Anything else?"

"Actually, I've been working on a way to penetrate the cloak," Ryan said, moving to the other side of the pod before typing in a series of commands. "So far my results are less than stellar. The Klingons have been perfecting it since the Dominion War and most of our intelligence is out of date on systems weak points."

"Interesting though." McIntyre appreciated the Science Chief's nous. "What information would you need on Klingon ships to get it up to speed?"

"Probably nothing that the Klingons are willing to share," Ryan pointed out. "Any intelligence from Starfleet command but I doubt that they are going to have anything that I haven't already looked at."

McIntyre nodded sagely. "I'll see if there's anything I can rustle up."

"There have been some interesting theories put forth using heavy graviton fields to establish spatial identification but the downside is that you'd have to be extremely close to be able to employ such a field. It might work for us but it would require extensive modification of the main and secondary deflectors. We could do it but I'm afraid that it's a bit of a longshot."

"Well, keep at it Lieutenant." The security officer said with a conciliatory smile. He doubted that it had been North's dream assignment to get stuck in astrometrics trying to do the equivalent of counting all the grains of sand on a beach. "Let me know how you get on."