Posted by Lieutenant Commander Daggum Hammor (Chief Operations Officer) in Chasing the Muse

Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Va’rek (Engineer) in Chasing the Muse

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Daggum Hammor (Chief Operations Officer) in Chasing the Muse
Posted by… suppressed (8) by the Post Ghost! 👻
Va’rek had been completely consumed in his latest project, to the point where he’d spent nearly every waking moment off duty at the small workbench area he now kept in his quarters. He was constantly tinkering with scaled models, running simulations, and always refining his process. Like distilling the thing until it was stronger than gasoline… He kept at it. Until he was ready, finally, for a full-size trial of the experiment…

For this, he needed a few things that weren’t exactly handy.

This would involve a trip to see the quartermaster… Which didn’t go exactly as planned.

However, he was soon made to realize he must speak to Daggum Hammor, a man who could get things.

Va’rek ran through the ritual of tugging on his uniform to straighten it somewhat as he pressed the chime for entry. He stood waiting at the COO’s office door. Perhaps this Mr. Hammor would be more willing to see reason. Apparently, the man was an engineer himself, and a good one at that. Va’rek raged inwardly for a moment, at the culture of Science Academia, where a lowly engineer was looked upon as freakish if they came upon a creative idea all on their own and didn’t simply apply the ideas of others to real-world ops situations. None of this showed in his very Vulcan expression, however…

-Va’rek, Engineer

A deep voice said “Come on in.” and the doors to the ‘office’ slid open.

The room was more observation platform than office. A single desk and two chairs in front sat facing the door. The other three walls were entirely windows, and looked out over the cargo bays of Deck Six, and both were the usual flurry of activity. Cargo came and went, and personnel arrived and disembarked. A lone figure sat at the desk. An Orion, and a truly large one at that, in the gold uniform of Engineering with Lieutenant Commander pips on his collar. Looking up, the hairless green head with emerald eyes looked at the figure in the doorway. “Lieutenant. What can I do for you?” Hammor asked flatly, but professionally.

Hammor, Ops Chief

The interesting view had no visible effect on the Vulcan, nor did Hammor’s appearance for that matter… Though his lack of affectation had little to do with the usual Vulcan arrogance, it was merely that these things were generally unimportant to Va’rek. He stepped into the office in his usual unhurried, matter-of-fact motion and clasped his hands at the small of his back. He was tall, but rather oppositely built than Hammor. He was thin, wiry, with dark eyes and a shock of unruly dark hair tamed by an almost regulation cut. He was obviously not a man of brute strength. However, he had that quiet confidence about him that only those who’d survived intense trial seemed to be able to carry off. This, along with his seeming lack of the typical Vulcan attitude often made him memorable when he otherwise wouldn’t have been.

“Commander,” Va’rek nodded as he spoke, dark eyes settled on the Orion. “I need to requisition a small Subspace Power Generator if you have one available.”

-Va’rek, Engineer

Hammor leaned back slightly. “An SSPG? What are you guys doing in Engineering? Building a whole new warp core?” he asked with a bit of confusion. The generator was capable of producing sizable amounts of power in a small device. And by ‘sizable’, the designers meant very cleary ‘dangerous and unstable’. Still they had their uses.

Hammor, Ops

The Vulcan frowned. “The Athena has two warp cores, why would we need to build a third?” The words were out before he caught onto the man’s sarcasm, but he nodded understanding. “I am working on an experimental structural integrity field emitter. It would be much safer to use a power source that is not internally supplied by the ship.” He seemed to assume that the Orion would make sense of this explanation.

-Va’rek, Eng

Hammor looked at the Vulcan and blinked… and then blinked again. “An experimen… a… wait. I wanna make sure I have this straight. You are working on an experimental - by which I am assuming untested and unproven- structural integrity field emitter… and you are asking me to provide you with a SSPG to help you power said field emitter… which you are, I take it, in the process of building on this very ship… and, um, under whose supervision is this work being done may I ask?” Hammor asked, a slight hint of shock apparent in his voice.

Hammor, Ops

“I have yet to build the actual emitter, though I do have a few scaled models.” He began, then inhaled and started over. “I have four degrees in physics, I do not see why I require supervision…” The Vulcan let out a small sigh in an almost human manner, then he produced a small PaDD and handed it to Hammor. “The math is good. At least look at the math… Simulations have been successful at various scales, up to 1:10.”

-Va’rek

Hammor took the PaDD and looked at it for a long moment and then took a deep breath. “Ok… so about half that math I have no idea about. But I think you may be taking the wrong approach here. See, I get you have four degrees in physics… but this isn’t a physics problem. It’s an engineering problem, Lieutenant. I mean, yes… your plans look solid… but you can’t really do this on a star ship. Understand? Trying to generate a field like this-” and he touched the PaDD, “- is a massive risk. If you are off even one fraction of a point in your distributions and calibrations? Hell… you’re gonna cause the ship to collapse in on itself in a matter of seconds. And if that wasn’t bad enough, look here…” and he pulled up the plans and equations. “See here?” and he pointed at the simulated plans. “Here is where you should have a bifurcated relay to draw off micro-surges and redistribute the excess evenly across the relay systems. And what you have instead is an amplifier. That’s gonna explode as soon as you get anywhere past… oh… I’d say one-point-twenty-one gigawatts. After that?” and he made a low explosion sound and his hands went from balls to slowly expanding.

Hammor, Ops

The Vulcan opened his mouth to answer but was caught slightly off guard as he ran the calculations in his mind. His fingers twitched as he crunched the numbers in ways most people could only boggle at. Then his eyebrows rose in surprise. “Surak forgive me… The draw-off of the circuit should allow for greater fluctuation…” He quickly fell into another set of mental calculations, mumbling slightly before looking up again. “I need you to look at these simulations, you may have solved the problem!”

-Va’rek, Eng

Hammor shook his head. “Whoa whoa whoa… slow your roll, there J-G. I’m not the one you should be conferring with on this. Have you taken this to the Chief Engineer? Commander Legen would be much more qualified to go over this with you than me. And for something like that, you need all the qualifications you can get.”

Hammor, Ops Chief

There was a suspicious tint to his expression as Va’rek considered this. “I have had other supervisors try to steal my work before, hopefully, you can see my position here…”
There had been that time on the Wolverine with that terrible russian man… Not to mention his own brother back home managing to steal his idea and cause a dreadful accident. “I am unsure of who I can trust with something like this.” He finally said.

-Va’rek, Eng