Deck 14

Posted on Tue Oct 20th, 2020 @ 10:14am by Lieutenant Commander Thy'lissa Shan & Ensign George Paxton

Mission: The Shadow of Arachne
Location: Deck 14
Timeline: MD-01 after "The busy Bolian"
1039 words - 2.1 OF Standard Post Measure

The report of problems in phaser control reached Thy'lissa's antennae just as she'd finished repairing the intermix resonator on the impulse engines. After the devastation of the Pico's detonation, it was one of dozens of small-to-medium sized tasks that needed resolving to get the ship back into a position where they might be prepared for a slugging-match. She had to take a minute to digest the issue, but the report of theta radiation concerned her. It needed bumping to the top of that list.

"Where's Lt Keating?" she demanded, looking about. "Is she in phaser control?"

"Yes ma'am, she's in the phaser control room on deck 8. Some sort of concern about a Bolian down there." George said, unsure of the specifics surrounding her departure, just that it seemed urgent.

"Very well. You just volunteered, Ensign - we need to get to the main phaser batteries. It sounds like we have a serious problem down there."

"Um, aye aye ma'am," he said, quickly closing out what he was working on and jogging to catch up with Thy'lissa as she exited engineering. "What's going on with the main phaser batteries?" He asked as they walked towards the turbolift.

"Theta radiation leak. If it spills out into the ship then we're in big trouble. Not to mention the fact it could be used to track us."

Thy'lissa entered the lift first followed by Paxton, after which the doors should have closed, but nothing happened.

"For crying out-" Thy'lissa snapped, her Andorian temper getting the better of her for a moment. "The turbolifts as well?"

George pulled the panel off next to the door. “This doesn’t look like a quick fix,” he said. “Maybe we should just try one of the other ones.” He quickly suggested, hoping she wouldn’t immediately default to taking the jefferies tubes. The last thing he needed right now was for his claustrophobia to kick in in front of the second officer.

Barely hiding her annoyance again, Thy'lissa just gave him a nod. "Hopefully this radiation leak in the batteries isn't so severe..." she grumbled, motioning for him to lead the way to the alternatve.

They jogged to the other end of the deck. Luckily that turbolift wasn’t damaged and they arrived on deck 14 a moment later. George had been trying to run through the possibilities of what could be causing a theta radiation leak in the main phaser batteries, but couldn’t come up with anything since Starfleet had eliminated that form of waste years ago.

A red pulsating object with several cables branching out from it immediately caught George’s eye as they entered the room with the radiation leak. That device did not belong on the phaser batteries. “I’m pretty sure that’s our problem,” he pointed it out to Thy’lissa as she entered right after him.

They moved closer to investigate as the pulsating of the device increased, but were stopped in their tracks by a forcefield. Someone had clearly put this in place to prevent the device from being removed.

"Well, this is new..." Thy'lissa noted. She pointed to a nearby workstation. "See what you can do to get that barrier down," she suggested, pulling out a tricorder. "Looking at the radiation levels we don't have long to bypass and get to the device causing it."

"You think we could override it somehow? This bypass might take a minute." George asked as he started to dig through the interface on the console to find a bypass.

"I could try my command codes. Maybe it'll override the field?" She wondered aloud. "Computer, release security forcefield, authorisation Shan-Delta-Six-Four." There was a pause. The computer chirped, as though acknowledging. But nothing happened. "Of course it wouldn't be that easy, would it?" she sighed, looking at the Ensign. "Between Breen, turbolifts and security fields, this has not been a very good day."

"Dang, I was really hoping we'd catch a break," George responded. Being relatively inexperienced it took him a minute to figure out how to bypass the controls and bring down the barrier. Immediately after it disappeared, he moved to inspect the device attached to the batteries. "Uhh, this is completely out of my realm of expertise. I have no idea what any of these connections do. More importantly, I have no idea which one turns it off and which one causes it to do something bad." He looked at Thy'lissa, hoping she had some ideas to disable it.

"Step back, Ensign," she motioned, taking a knee as she studied the device. "I saw someone do this once, let's hope I'm just as good at it..."

Closing her eyes, Thy'lissa's antennae suddenly came to life. Few people outside of the Andorian species knew that they were for more than just decoration; a highly-trained Andorian could detect spectrums of energy that lay beyond the usual humanoid senses. And the delta radiation emitted from this device was one such spectrum. Her hands moved silently and carefully over the wiring of the foreign object, her head twitching as the antennae worked. Then, finally, she found what she was looking for. "If you're religious, Ensign, I suggest you pray..." she breathed, wrapping her fingertips around the base of one of the connections and pulling it sharply free.

George cringed and prayed that they wouldn't be blown into oblivion. "Oh thank God," he let out a sigh of relief as he opened his eyes fully and realized he was still in one piece. Thy'lissa had successfully chosen the right connection to disable the device without blowing up the ship.

They made their exit, and after a couple of trail and errors with the still finicky turbolifts, managed to arrive on deck 4. There had been a report from the bridge of theta radiation in the phaser battery area on that deck as well. As they arrived at the source, their suspicions were confirmed that a replica of the same device from deck 14 was what had also been causing the problem here. Having already been through he process once, they made quick work of disabling the second device.

"Good work, Ensign," Thy'lissa finally concluded. "Let's hope that's the worst of our nightmarish day over and done with..."