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Posted on Sat Feb 3rd, 2024 @ 12:27am by Lieutenant Xavier Leiko & Lieutenant Commander Finnley Keating VII & Lieutenant JG Astrja Kyan

Mission: The Trojan Horse
Location: Main Engineering
Timeline: En Route
846 words - 1.7 OF Standard Post Measure

"Xav," Finn nodded towards her friend as he approached. "I see you've brought some help with you? I don't think we've had the chance to formally meet yet," she held her hand out to the Andorian. "Lieutenant Commander Finnley Quinn Keating the seventh, though most call me Finn or Keating."

"Lieutenant, jg, Astrja Kyan," she took the hand firmly. "A pleasure."

"Whoa, you got the full title," Xavier said to Kyan with a grin. "That means she likes your vibe. High praise from Madame the seventh here."

"Look, the full title becomes important if you go looking for me in the system. An annoying thing about sharing the same name for generations is that its easy to look up the wrong one of us. I'm pretty sure that happened to Mason while I was on shore leave actually and he ended up dialing my dad. Not exactly who he expected to see on the other end of the video screen," Finn chuckled.

"Now if we can just do the same for the Athena, make others see something other than what they expect," said Astrja.

"Exactly," the CEO smiled and waved towards a console next to them. "We think we have an idea. We can reconfigure the shield matrix to output a specific signature that masks our true selves. However, we'd need some sort of back up shielding in place, in case things don't go our way. So I'm thinking we pull power from the engines to support the back up. It lets us reflect the right signature output, have a back up shield in place and siphon power from the engines to feed into that whole stealth mode that we're going for. I'm more of a propulsion person than a power person though, so...tell me what I'm missing here. What are the risks with making all of these power changes? Can we do it?"

"We can," Xavier said, trepidation in his voice. He stood with one arm across his chest, the other stroking his chin. "The issue with the Athena is she has a much higher energy signature than most ships of her size due to having three warp cores. The one in the Alpha section is inert until the ship separates but the other two pump out enough power that we literally light up the map." He scratched his chin as he thought it through. "Instead of siphoning off from the engines, I would suggest we take the secondary core offline and divert the power to the shields. This should give us the power we need to make your plan work, however, if we need to make a quick getaway we may struggle. Thoughts?" He asked as he looked at both of them in turn.

"I like it," Finn smiled. "Interestingly enough, the start up procedure for the warp cores takes longer when the ship is in one piece. However, when we separate it lessens the start up time because each warp core has less to integrate with and only has to worry about providing propulsion to one section of the ship instead of integrating with a much larger structure. We could suggest to the Captain a back up plan of doing an emergency split if we need to make a quick getaway. It's not terribly fast, but might be a little faster than the alternative."

Astrja ran some simulations on her datapad. "The problem with using shields for the disguise is that scanners tied to weapon systems will still read it as shields." She tapped out some other sequences. "If we stay out of weapons range that will probably not be a problem but still, a concern."

"Staying out of weapon's range may not be an option since we won't know how many forces will be waiting for us," Xavier said as he pulled up the same simulation from Astrja's PADD and transferred it to the computer screen. "Borg protocols include a randomised shield harmonic, maybe we can adapt that program?" He continued, thinking out loud. "A constantly changing harmonic that reflects sensors. It won't be foolproof but it should give us an edge."

"Isi," said Astrja, "if we add a desychonic phase shift into the shield pattern, it will look like we have just been spotty with our shield emitter maintenance. That might make people overlook some of the rest of it."

"Seems like a winner to me. Sturgis is pretty good with programming, perhaps you two could work together to integrate the protocols and work in that desychonic phase shift?" Finn asked Astrja.

The Andorian nodded. "Certainly, sir."

"Good, that leaves the warp engines and the power output to us and our teams," Xavier said nodding at Finn. "I estimate 18 hours of work with no hiccups."

"Good luck," said Astrja.

"18 hours with warp engines and power outputs? Don't threaten me with a good time, Xav," Finn chuckled. "Regroup in 30 minutes and we'll get started?"

"Throw in a bottle of rum and it's literally your heaven," Xavier quipped back. "30 minutes sounds good, let's get to it."