STF

Into Dark Space

Posted Sept. 28, 2018, 10:45 p.m. by Ensign Kristiana O’Larria (Engineer) (Melissa Aragon)

Posted by Lieutenant Mike Stone (Chief Engineer) in Into Dark Space

Posted by Ensign Kristiana O’Larria (Engineer) in Into Dark Space

Posted by Lieutenant Mike Stone (Chief Engineer) in Into Dark Space
Posted by… suppressed (5) by the Post Ghost! 👻
<SNIP>

As she stood up, Kristi checked the PADD. “Ok… so the next node is… there.” Her head rose as her hand pointed into the darkness beyond them. This panel had been just inside the edge of light from the ship’s ‘good’ area. But the next intersection was completely in darkness. She took a deep breath and grabbed the light on her hip. “Here we go…” she laughed, but it was shaky. “What was it that ancient mariners used to say when heading into the black space on the map? “Here there be monsters..” or something like that.” She was sure it was something monstrous, despite not recalling the exact words. She had a hobby of exploring the ‘unknown’. So what they were about to do excited and scared her all at once.

She just hoped ‘excitement’ was the feeling that would rule the day.

Ens. Kristi
Engineer

Mike put his arm on her shoulder, and felt her twich slightly. “Hey don’t worry about it. If anything wierd does happen, we’re aborting immediately. And we got the suits to protect us.”

He wondered slightly where her enthusiasm went. Just yesterday she wanted to go into this damn abyss as soon as possible and fix it for good. Now Mike was actualy a bit sad he gave in. Kristi was struck with the reality in what condition the USS Viking is quite hard it seemed. And they haven’t even seen much.

He activated his flashlight and shined into the darkness. He felt slightly uneasy himself. What more was waiting for them the further they went?

After a few meters, there was a small puddle on the floor. Mike shined up, and there was what looked like water dripping down, slowly. “Viking doesn’t have any plumbing.” He said, wondering where it came from. “Condensation perhaps?” He asked. It felt a bit colder here then it did at the begining of the hallway.

“Let’s proceed.” He said, deciding to ignore this for now. “The next node should be close by.”

Indeed it was located at an intersection. The panel was lying on the floor, and the wires were exposed. A different kind of shock followed. “Wow, would you look at that.”

Mike shone his light directly inside. “I might actualy start to cry.” He joked. “But this is just beautiful.”

Indeed it was. The cable managment in this node was spot on. “Look, they even put tags on what everything is… I don’t think I even saw this in newer ships.”

Wires had tags on them, easily identifying main or auxilary lines. The biogel pack looked almost new as well. There wasn’t even any webs or dust, which was actualy quite common elsewhere.

“As far as I know, we’re the first one here in over a year. There simply wasn’t time to send anyone here for any repairs. Can’t recall anyone doing this fine of a job as well.”

He scratched his head. “You know there are supposed to exist creatures opposite of gremlins. No idea how they are called. But while gremlins are rumored to destroy machinery, their counterparts are supposed to hold it together. Like a ship making it to shore before sinking, or airplane breaking down as soon as it lands safely.”

He waved in dismissal of the idea and grabbed the tricorder. “Mhm, I guess I can see why they left the pannel off. There’s absolutely no power at all in any of the wires. Perhaps they weren’t finished yet with repairs on another node and left it off. “

He shrugged. “I guess there’s not much to do here as well.” The intersection split into two ways. Both hallways looked equaly dark. “We can check if the previous and this node have severed connection somewhere, or we can continue and check further down the hall?”

Lt. Mike Stone, CE

Kristi set a marker tag on the railing by the leak, as a reminder to see to it later.

When the panel was inspected and Stone made the comments about ‘good gremlins’ and being impressed, she shook her head. “I don’t understand. How can creep crawlies that have the intelligence to destroy a ship be hogwash, but the self same creatures who are good, are a possibility? I think you a little bit crazy, boss,” she laughed and began to relax. “The simplest explanation is, at some point, this hall was started for refit or rewiring. Something happened,” she shrugged and looked around. “I am guessing maybe ‘too much’ change in ‘too big’ an area at once. Something cascade failed and the whole section fell to basically, I don’t know,” she shrugged, “something akin to a cryo mode. Like the ship just completely shut down everything. For whatever reason, missions, attacks, whatever… no one ever got back here to fix it. Or the failure was too overwhelming to fix out here and it needs to go to drydock for fixing.”

Her smile brightened and her whole body visibly relaxed as her mind suddenly made sense of things. Whether it was the ‘true’ explanation or not, it only mattered that to her, right now, it was the truth. “You leave a whole section this derelict, it’s bound to affect other systems. Even the difference in pressure could affect floors above and below it. Noises, lights, all those things. Right?” She turned and smiled to him and he would once more see the fearless bright woman before he first met in the Jeffries tube the day she arrived in his engineering bay.

Ens Kristi O’Larria
Engineer

“Right you are. Well why the section has no power isn’t that important right now. We had everything, space battles, sabotage, critters.... ” Then he snapped his fingers and pointed to the node. “Guerin....this could be his work… he was one hell of an engineer as well. Looked like a dwarf on steroids, but liked to keep things tidy. Went missing about a year ago.”

Mike didn’t want to get too gloomy. “I’d like to inspect one more node, I guess we could split to cover the ground quicker if we each go down one hallway, but I think we should stick together for now. See what’s the situation down one hall then the next one. If both are also dead, then I think best action would be to reconnect the first node that’s working again with the second one, or see if there’s a break or something like that....”

He knew it was important to check things out, but he also didn’t want to just walk around the ship and just assess things. He know the situation was bad enough. It was about time something was done as well, even if it was just bringing a few halls more online and functional.

Lt. Mike Stone, CE

Kristi almost held her breath as he recommended they should split up. Thankfully, he decided staying together was a wiser course. She relaxed inside and nodded. “We can check that one first,” she pointed down the hall behind her. “Then that one over there.” Her hand waved to the one back behind him. “And I agree. If they are fine, we start at the beginning and one by one get things running. If they are all tagged like this, it should be relatively straightforward.”

As she turned to head towards the panel on her side, she frowned. “What do you mean ‘disappeared’? How can someone disappear on a ship?” The idea that dead critters weren’t the only thing they would find, tightened her chest a bit. Afterall, a small rodent was one thing. A crewmember was a completely different story all together.

Ensign Kristi

“Left it is then.” Mike said. As they walked he explained a bit about the dissapearances. “Well acording to our ship’s records i think over 60 people are missing, that were supposed to be on our roster. I think there might also have been some administrational error here and there, but truth is, for a few dissapearances our teleporter was responsible. We learned that transporting up to 3 people at once is perfectly safe, but any more then that and the matrix buffer overloads and simply… forgets what he held. We’re not sure what all went missing, but we suspect there has been a few crewmembers amongst other things. ”

He realised their conversation took a rather dark direction. If he had a better singing voice, he’d start to sing ‘Heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s off to work we go....’ luckily for Kristi’s ears he had enough self control and easily suppressed that wish to sing.

“Man, that sure was a nice job. If the next one was fixed as well, we could be done with this section before noon.”

Lt. Mike Stone, CE

Kristi listened as Mike talked about missing crewmen. A nervous laugh filled her throat, “Remind me to stick to shuttles.” The idea of being mixed up, it even lost COMPLETELY, during a transporter accident suddenly scared her to her core. “Yet they keep you in space,” she murmured under her breath.

“What was that?” Mike asked not catching the last part of what she said compleately. “I actualy like shuttles a lot. Definately a prefered travel method over our teleporter.”

He wasn’t so sure why he used plural for shuttles. USS Viking only had a singular fully functional shuttle. Second one was able to fly, though he wouldn’t want to risk entering a planet’s orbit for sure. The third one was mostly stripped for parts for the other two and definately required a lot of work before it would fly again, if ever.

She wondered who had done what that was so terribly horrible to render an entire vessel exiled into space, away from maintainance and refitting.

As she neared the next panel to check, she smiled for him once more. “Here’s to not having to order in for dinner,” she laughed and knelt down. Settling her box beside her, she began to unfasten the panel
Ensign Kristi O’Larria
Engineer

While Kristi was busy with the panel, Mike took his tricorder and started to record power readings.

Lt. Mike Stone, CE

OOC: If you want, I’d like you to pick what we find....
((Working with CO and GM on an idea… Meli))

OOC: Oh boy, now you’re getting me worried…
Miha

((Been respectfully asked to halt this till Mike and Kristi (who are in the shuttle bay) can storyline back to here… GM has plans to tie this to the SIM… email me …. lol.. I’ll bump it once a week to keep it on top… Meli))


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