Posted by Gamemaster Wookius Furrius (Gamemaster) in Main Simm - Engineering Delivery

Posted by Lieutenant Koria Sutret (Chief Engineer) in Main Simm - Engineering Delivery

Posted by Gamemaster Wookius Furrius (Gamemaster) in Main Simm - Engineering Delivery
Posted by… suppressed (14) by the Post Ghost! 👻

<snip>

The place had a feeling of being ancient, that it had been there a long time. Moreover, the construction of it did not appear that it was made by any human architect, or even something recognizable from the Federation. It had a half ‘fortress’ appearance with ‘factory’, but mixed with that of a beetle or mushroom.

As they landed there was a small crew of people waiting for them. A large industrial anti grav platform lay in wait.
- Wookiee

With the runabout touched down, and the rear door open, Koria made her way out the side hatch. “Mok, don’t scratch the replicator before we’ve got a chance to deliver it.”

Mok looked a little blue-green. “No danger there Chief. On the upside if I get shuttle sick in disembarking nobody would notice with these colors.”
Sheila shut down the shuttle and disengaged the rear hatch. “Well lets get you on the ground before you mess up my shuttle. Next to one another they looked not too far unlike Laurel and Hardy with their physiques.

Seeing the large antigrav platforms waiting, she did let out a little sigh of relief. At least they weren’t going to have to rely on the slim platforms they had to use to move the unit into the runabout. They were fine in there, but anything with a little more power would give them a slightly larger margin of error.

Lt Sutret - CE

It was raining outside. Dark clouds slowly slid by dropping small, cool droplets making the facility look wet, slick and more like a natural thing than constructed. The rain caused the port where they landed to look even more aged and dirty.
- Wookiee

Koria shivered slightly at the cool rain, hopefully wherever the units were going would be dry. As her teams unloaded the second unit, she stepped up to the small group of people waiting for them.

“I’m looking for engineer Walter. I have a delivery for him.”

Lt Sutret - CE

“He’s on his way,” said one attendant. “Was delayed by a small AC outage in the processor level. Workers get pretty riled up if it gets too warm there.” As the second unit slid down the ramp the attendant came up to it and slapped its side, perhaps to see whether it was solid or not. “I hear one of these is staying close to the hangar and the other at the machine shop? Some kind of … what?” he asked.
- Wookiee

Koria chuckled, “I can totally understand that. You’d be surprised just how cranky a crew can get when the temp is not just right.

“I wasn’t told where they were to go, but my crews are more then happy to help get them moved over and situated. But we’ve got two fully enclosed industrial replicators here, including internal power supplies. We got a unit to keep up on the Chimera, and in just pursuing the options, these units can make just about anything you could think of.”

Lt Sutret - CE

The attendant made a face suggesting ‘huh?’ What’s the difference between this and any other industrial replicator? That it’s portable?”

“Portable yes,” said Walter, emerging from around the side of the runabout with another engineer in tow. He looked even smaller and older than in real life. “According to what they tell us the internal programming is more precise. In other words it is a glorified toaster. Specialized.”

“Lieutenant. A pleasure.” He looked at the machine. “Over the years they have given us this and that to work with. Mostly it’s corporate kit. Is this Fleet or MagCorp kit?”
Walter et al

OOC: Nearest Sutret might gather is that it is a bit of both, possibly a collaboration

“Probably someone decided that they wanted to reinvent the wheel,” Koria said with a grin. “It’s a pleasure to meet you in person. From what we can tell, it looks to be a bit of both. Maybe a collaboration? Because it has the redundancy and ruggedness we’d see out of a Starfleet piece of tech, but it definitely is more showy then anything they would usually give us.”

Lt Sutret - CE

Walter said, “The Shogun engineer liked playing cards. How about you?” he asked, then, looking at the units said, “They have their own power source by the look of it. But do they have a connection to the facility for custom patterns or external power supplies?”

He waved and others helped move them onto the lifts. “I guess it’s experiment time. You game?”
- Walter Niven

“Cards? Well I played a few times back in the Academy, but they quickly stopped asking me to play. Something about ‘beginners luck’,” Koria said with a grin. “Let’s just say I’m a quick learner.”

Walter waved dismissively. His hand was thin, old looking like him. “Not poker. Too many do that here. Do more friendly games. You heard of Euchre? Some kind of German game. It’s casual, fun and can be played for hours.”

“You-Kerr?” Koria asked sounding it out. “I’m not familiar, but I’m sure I could catch on.”

Walter chuckled. “Funny. I get that a lot. They don’t teach you young kids anything important these days do they?” he said which, by his tone, could have been jest but it was hard to tell precisely if he was serious.

“We weren’t given a whole lot of info enroute, so I was hoping that you’d be up for some experimentation.” Motioning to the rest of her engineering team to fall in around the units and help move them, Koria followed Walter. “I suspected that they should have some sort of external power connection, otherwise it would make their usefulness rather limited. Same with the ability to make custom patterns. But we were trying not to break any of them before we arrived here.”

Lt Sutret - CE

“Our greatest need is over in the mine. As tough as the equipment is there are still a lot of breakdowns and material part needs there. Good place to start. We can set up there not far from the indi replicator that is on its last legs.” He brushed at a dribble of rain. “Let’s get out of this rain. It tends to come down dirty. The locals like it but find it oily.”

The mine section was not close by and it was nearly an hour to translate the large device down halls, corridors and an elevator to a large chamber. Centrally the shaft where the workers descended was old, blackened and smelled of machine oils and steel. “This leads down to the remote chamber. Mining is done by drone equipment and the operators set up there. The dirty work comes once the ore is brought up. The only people really who go down there now are inspectors and geologists.”

They came to a place that looked no different from many of the other spot in the chamber, though it was opposite a long bank of industrial and personal lockers and caged equipment. That included some exo-skeletal machines that looked like modified military equipment. “We can set up here,” he said, “And give things a go.”
- Walter

“Sounds good,” Koria said as she motioned for her teams to help the mining crew with the machine. Looking around at the room they were in, she paused as she looked over the exo-skeletals. “What exactly are you mining for? And how far down are you mining?”

Lt Sutret - CE

As it was getting set up which was more in the positioning than with anything that was technical as it looked to be more of a plug and power. “This mine has been in operation for hundreds of years in varying capacity. There has been periods when it has not been operating.” He gestured. “You can see the age of the building. As far as anyone can say it is the original construction but the natives are not saying who built it. Heavy metals mainly to construct duranium alloy for ships. There are shafts going down several kilometers that we use. There are others that go farther that are ancient. Nobody has gone there and probes don’t come back up. Kinda the Bermuda Triangle of a mine.”
- Walter

“Natives? Won’t say because they don’t know? Or has something got them spooked?” Koria asked as she looked around. She could definitely see the age in the building, but there must be a pretty good vein of ore if they were still mining here after a couple hundred years.

Lt Sutret - CE

“Magnus doesn’t have the appetite for the risk and legal departments to venture there,” Walter replied with a smile. “They have no need at the moment as the mining as it stands is profitable. Some of the guys says it’s haunted. I figure it’s either a radiation or heat or, as my daughter jokes, a balrog.” He chuckled. I had to look it up.”

“Mok! How are you guys doing in getting the units integrated into shore power? Any issues?”

Lt Sutret - CE

Mok replied from around the unit. “Just searching for the hammock program in here, chief. As the ancient earth advertising said, ‘It’s Millet time’.” Knuckles rapped on the edge of the unit. “Power looks steady. This is some power conversion circuit here!”

Walter moved around and nodded. “The original power cabling which we’d need to tear up the walls to get to is quite alien. We needed this circuit to refine the power flow to company and Federation standard.”

Koria looked around at the teams installing the units and then back at Walter. “So after we get these installed, what do you need our help with next?”

Lt Sutret - CE

“You could look at this power cabling, or, to get your hands dirty, there’s a jammed lift that brings up the ore on shaft 3.”
Walter

Koria had moved around and looked at the power cabling, and how they had retrofitted the circuit to work with the alien tech. But at Walter’s words she stood up. “I thought you would never ask. We’ve had it a bit to cushy up on the Chimera,” she said with a chuckle. “Let’s take a look at this jammed lift of yours.”

Grabbing her engineering kit, she gestured for Walter to lead the way.

Lt Sutret - CE

“It is in the production area of the mine. This lift recently jammed for no explicable reason. Power was lost just before it jammed so all cameras and visual we had on it went with it. All there was was a flickering of the lights, a bit of interference on the camera feeds then nothing. Everything on the lift was robotic; drone suits principally. We don’t send people down there to do the actual mining. They lost power too which was unusual. It’s all on magnetic lines for transportation which makes it all the more strange. Whatever happened tripped the physical safety measures to prevent a freefall.” He flashed a smile across his craggy face. “Quite a mystery.”

“Hopefully you haven’t offended some of the locals and they’ve put a curse on this place,” Koria said with a chuckle as she followed after Walter.

After a trip through corridors that increasingly became worn and old they came to a broad open room that stretched high above. It was mostly open but for two large visible pits with machinery and equipment scaffolded about them. “That’s the one over there,” he said, pointing to one. “We can go to the control room.” Said control room was off to the side and above, overlooking the open room. Three large horseshoe shaped desks with monitors all along its interior were there; two were manned. One was dark. One fellow in coveralls who was peering over the shoulder of another at one desk looked up and waved. “Hey Walter,” he said, then went back to his observation.

Walter sat at one of the chairs; there was room for three there, and began firing up the system.
- Walter

Standing behind Walter, Koria pulled out her tricorder. As he began bringing the system up, she started a quick scan of the area, just to see if there was anything that could give a hint to why the lift had stopped working.

Lt Sutret - CE