Prep for Retrieval

Posted on Tue Jul 20th, 2021 @ 6:53pm by Lieutenant Commander Finnley Keating VII & Lieutenant JG FalenvralLi Zh’kyhrihr

Mission: By Artemis' Bow
Location: USS Athena
Timeline: After "Problem Solving"
1637 words - 3.3 OF Standard Post Measure

While holding the door for Keating, Li looked back into the bridge, seeing the Captain and P'rel conferring off to the side and said "Deck 2". Once the Engineer was on the turbolift, she explained, "I assume we'll need weapons so we might as well grab them from the Armory on the way. Or, I mean, you're obviously the ranking officer on this mission. Should I let you say things like that?"

Finn chuckled. "No, that's fine. We're a team. Input, suggestions, etcetera are always welcome," she smiled. The turbolift doors then opened and they quickly made their way towards the armory. "I don't think we'll need more than a phaser each, but we can take a couple of extra to arm our crewmates once we reach them." Finn pulled two phasers and attached them to herself, leaving room on her belt for a tricorder.

“You don’t seem too worried about what kind of resistance we’re gonna face when we get there. The ‘getting there’ part is a lot easier for me to wrap my head around - it’s the kind of problem I know how to work - but not even knowing how much of the crew might be involved in whatever’s going on . . .”

"I'm not too worried about resistance because I don't plan to get caught," Finn winked. "You'd be surprised how far you can get without running into a single soul in those jefferies tubes. Plus she's a Starfleet vessel so we can easily pull up the schematics and figure out our best route to where ever we find the crew. The hard part will be the initial getting on board part."

As Li reached for a phaser rifle, the Armory Officer stopped her. He was an older NCO who looked like he’d be more comfortable brawling in mud somewhere but wielded a PADD at her. “It says here you checked out a hand phaser earlier today. Did you have that to turn in before you get something else?”

She looked blankly at him for a moment, then said, “Oh, right. I did take a phaser onto the station. I blew that up. I mean, the Captain did. It was part of the mission. Do I need to fill out a form or…”

He frowned at his PADD. “Uh, no form. I just need to make a note. We can’t be losing track of weapons.” He started tapping the PADD, muttering to himself, “Blown up by Captain Kane.” then he turned and asked her. “He and Commander Savin haven’t turned theirs in yet either. Should I just assume…?”

“Yeah, they all went together. Boom.” Li slung the rifle over her shoulder and took another hand phaser for her belt then stepped back out into the corridor. “I guess you and Lt. P’rel made it back on board without any trouble?”

"Yea, no trouble for us. Savin told me about what happened to you guys. It seemed pretty traumatic. He said you had to go through surgery?" Finn furrowed a concerned brow. With all the excitement she had totally forgotten about what Li must've gone through. "Are you okay?"

"I think I'm good. It might have been more traumatic for Savin if he was awake through the whole thing. I was out. Not much to be traumatized by other than my role in getting us into that situation." Li looked off to the side, as though studying where the corridor wall met the floor. "Moving forward, I need to work out the details but I think I can get us pretty close to the Cavalier, but I'm not so sure about getting on board either. I've read stuff about matching shield harmonics or whatever but it was all theoretical. Is that something you know how to do?"

Finn didn't press for any additional details. She knew what it was like to not want to talk about things. Instead, she seamlessly moved with the change of topic. "Yea, I think we can figure it out. First things first though, let's get that shuttle back into flying condition." She motioned towards the door to exit the armory.

The floor was still littered with items from the shuttle pods as they entered the shuttle bay. Finn carefully walked around it and then opened the shuttle hatch the same way Mr.Tolbar had done before. "I'm going to work on getting all of the systems running. Can you grab schematics of the Cavalier in the meantime and start planning routes to get to our people? My best guess is that they'd be holding them in the brig? What do you think?"

"Brig makes sense," Li said as she started pulling up the layout of the Cavalier on one side of the screen on the bulkhead nearest the shuttle and a map of the system on the other. "Although I wonder just how many prisoners they have. Our people obviously, but it seems significant that it was the XO - not the Captain - that sent that message. If this is some kind of mutiny on board they may have a lot of Cavalier's crew locked down somehow too. Or we might have a lot of potential allies on board." On the schematic, she highlighted the brig as well as likely points of ingress such as the main shuttle bay to aft, dorsal cargo bay, and ventral Waverider hanger bay.

"That's true," Finn paused what she was doing to think. "If the Captain didn't know about it, then I'd have to guess that a large majority of the crew didn't either. It would be pretty difficult to keep that level of treachery undercover with a large crew involved."

She began sketching an initial course plot, taking the shuttle on a looping path toward the outer system using occultation first by Athena, then by various planetary bodies and debris fields in the system to mask periods of high thrust during which the craft would accelerate and maneuver. "I think to lock this down we need to do a brief test once we're out. Make sure Athena is between us and both Cavalier and the pirates and do a couple burns, see how bright we are to sensors at different angles."

"Seems fair to me, we'll just have to be quick about it," Finn replied as she scrolled through the various systems. Within just a few minutes the main power had been restored. She quickly brought up what seemed like a flight status screen and immediately noticed various blinking objects. She sarcastically mumbled under her breath as she evaluated the display. "Best I can tell the vents need to be opened and some of the plasma lines are clogged. Plus we need to repair the deflection tech and get the engines up. Sure, easy peasy, no big deal. Just fix a whole alien shuttle in one hour."

Finn made her way out and to the back to the shuttle, locating the vents. She pulled a tool out of the repair kit and started to remove the corrosion that had sealed them shut. Fifteen minutes of monotonously waiving the tool around passed before the corrosion had cleared enough to allow the vents to open. The plasma lines were an easier chore. She hooked up a line with an anti-clogging solution and let it run throughout the system as she moved back to the main console to figure out the deflection tech.

By the time Finn came back inside the shuttle, Li had done most of what she could using the Athena's big display and her navcomp and transferred the data to a PADD which was now propped up on the console. Scrolling through menus and controls, she fed unfamiliar terms into the translator and made mental notes about the control interface. "Hey, so she's gonna fly?"

Deep in concentration, Finn almost didn't hear Li's question. "Ah-ha!" She exclaimed before turning to face her partner. "Oh, yes, it will. I'm just getting the deflection/stealth systems back online. The system itself is interesting. It's actually closer to twenty-first century versions of stealth technology than what you'd normally see today. The material of the hull is designed in conjunction with systems that actively absorb signals, which in essence makes it invisible to sensors." Anyone in the room would've seen how her face lit up discussing the subject. Being a history buff herself, seeing the intersection of modern technology and ancient history was exciting.

Li smiled up at the engineer, basking in her enthusiasm while watching her talk. "Yeah, that's how it looks to me too. I think the ship itself is going to be pretty hard to spot in space. Not cloaked, but not putting off much to draw attention. I'm just not so sure about under high thrust."

"It looks like the connection to the mainframe was just severed. Once we get that repaired I think we can fire up the engines and take her for a test run." Without further delay, Finn walked to the back of the ship and opened a panel. After some digging, she found the disconnected pieces and hooked them back up to where she thought the appropriate receiver was.

"Alright, I think she's ready," Finn remarked with a grin as she closed the panel and wiped the dirt from her hands. "Let's take her out!"

After a quick scroll through the helm's status display, Li confirmed, "I'm showing all green here. Nice work."

"Don't say that until you've put her through a few maneuvers," Finn chuckled. "I've done my best, but I have no idea how she'll hold up. It's all you now, good thing you're one of the best pilots I've ever had the pleasure of working with." She gave a genuine smile as they sat and prepared for launch.