Posted by Ensign Elemirre Serinde (Engineer) in Main Sim - Port Nacelle - A Nacelle With A View

Posted by Ensign Elemirre Serinde (Engineer) in Main Sim - Port Nacelle - A Nacelle With A View

Posted by Vice Admiral CockRoach (GM) in Main Sim - Port Nacelle - A Nacelle With A View
[snip]

El crawled along the tube thankful that she didn’t mind these spaces. The smell was different than engineering. There it was a mixture of smells but always a hint of the machine-ey there. Here it was almost rarified. Ozone like. With the air a feel of autumn. She’d first really felt that season in Britain. At first she liked it. The changes were something she had not really seen in her island paradise growing up. But when the cold started to hit the lustre had dimmed rapidly.

Reaching her destination El looked at the coil and the status display next to it which was mostly status indicators. She placed her scanner on the plate next to it where it magnetically affixed to it and made connection to it. More data scrolled over the small face that El took in. Everything was within operating parameters, showing green everywhere but for one yellow tick that suggested a small charge buildup. That was normal and occurred through regular operation and was usually dealt with in routine maintenance. It had been done at the last check, she noted. Maybe it was this area of space, or perhaps something leaked when they were hit by the plasma blasts from the orbiting platforms. It hadn’t done any damage to them but electronics were skitchy things.

[o] El to Engineering. Damien. I’m at the coil. What are you reading for negative charge buildup at the 12xB junction chips and coil? I’m getting a notice that it is higher than it should be [c] She set her comms on the decking and upped the speaker volume while she shifted to get more comfortable.
[o] Rosa here El. Damien’s coffee got too much for him. I’m reading a 12.8kw charge. That is up from the normal. Uh .. [c]
[o] 11 .. [c] El said helping her out. [o] Can you send a degauss command through with a PM notation on the log and we can see if it needs more work [c]
[o] Bringing that up now. So El, when are we going to get together. You said you’d teach me some choice words in Chinese and I’d do the same in Spanish? [c]

El, Eng

El mused and remembered that conversation and had written about in her ‘Dear Zeffie’ diary. She really should get back to her on that. As she waited for information to come she glance out the small view port. Thinking of Elm she felt sad. Her world looked broken.

As El was working on the coil, out a small view port to her left, she could see the swirling gravitic anomalies that ebbed and flowed within the system and which as they knew roughly covered a vast 4 some light year radius. These eddies which not only disrupted long range comms, sensors, but also warp travel, making any effort to get from within this system to beyond the anomaly’s edge by impulse would take easily 100 some years or more. Something which in short was just not doable without turning the Bonaventure somehow into a multi-generational habitat.

As she watched the eddies weave and bob out the small 4 inch circular port she saw coming into view the edges of the blasted war torn planet below. The view in this case was mostly of the southern areas of the planet. Where the more hostile MACARM forces were arrayed. Looking at what she could see it seems the ESM had given as good as they could have considering the circumstances of the MACARM’s superior armaments and surprise attacks on them. Cities it was clear were burning, and vast swaths of land were on fire, smoking, or just irradiated hellscapes. Already too she could see signs of a deep nuclear winter coming across the planet, within months if not sooner the whole planet would be caked in its icy grip and no doubt the survivors on both sides would drop even further. In way she would probably reflect this was probably a lot like what Earth went through to some degree in the horrid years of World War 3. The question though was could like Earth this planet’s populace survive and pull itself out of it?

She had seen photos of the War; her family had had some influence in it she was told. Given that she was of oriental origin and her parents not, El was evidently adopted. In that she had often wondered what play they had, her unknown ancestors. Those thoughts crumbled at the changes outside.

As these thoughts went through El’s mind something moved out in the strange darkness of the eddies to the planet’s northern poles. As the spin of the planet and orbital shift of the Bonaventure made this more evident she could see, yet not see......something, in the darkness. As she squinted there was a clear sign of small ripples along the northern pole of the planet, clearly signs of low level gravity waves affecting the planet’s own natural gravitational field. But if she wasn’t mistaken there seemed an odd effect of these same waves rippling up and almost around some unseen object. The effect though was so slight that maybe she was just seeing things, who could say.....

“What is that?” El rubbed her eyes. Was she seeing things in her tiredness? Or was space clearing and was there … she squinted to focus more.

OOC: Adding in the addition of events happening from the planet!

As this all happened the ebbing and flow of the gravity anomalies in and around the planet and the vast system about them suddenly seemed to ebb out and cease! Within minutes the ripple effects and stirring gaseous around them (and later when they would check even the 4 light year radius that trapped them) was soon gone! They were free, but in turn the alien planet was still here and present.

More to the point though El could suddenly see that the strange ‘something’ in the darkness above the northern pole region seemed to shimmer then fade into view! Above the pole was a large deeply black diamond shaped object of some sort. At a rough eyeball guess it was about 50 meters high by 40 meters wide. As she watched at the top and bottom tips of the object two small white light sources begin to blink in a slow pulse effect, which as she further would watch over the next two minutes had steadily grown in speed.

GM CockRoach

“Oh … ” the following words were in a strain of Chinese that would have certainly been taught to Rosa. A chill went through her. This could be good. Or not. 98% seemed good enough at that moment.
[o] Too fast El. Do it slower [c]
[o] Rosa .. hold please .. I’m coming back. We’ve got a bogey out in space here. Optimize power for polarizing the hull. Anything left put to sensors. [c] She said that quickly, yanking the scanner from the wall and shoving it onto her belt. The comms she put in one hand as she turned about and started crawling with purpose.
[o] Power is good. Damien’s coming back. But .. What? El you are thumping. If I didn’t know you I’d say that was monerias. [c] as the muffled sounds of the comms contacting the decking of the tube came quick but repetitive.

What WAS that thing? she wondered and what were they doing there so .. well period. What were they doing there?! What was it?
- El, Eng

The trip back, even though El was hurrying more than when she came in, felt longer to reach the exit. Twisting as her boots hit the deck she locked the hatch back into place. Stuffing her comms unit in a pocket of her uniform cargo pants she loped back into engineering. There was still no ship wide alert, yet, so the rest of the engineering crew were asleep. Damien. Rosa. Walters. Herself. Galen must be out on PM work. And she was the only officer. Sure Walters was a petty officer and in a way similar in experience. The chief was down on the planet.

“Status?” she said loudly enough for everyone there to hear.
Walters replied, “Space around us is clear. I think we can go to warp. Engines are hot. Power available.”
“Can we see what’s out there on a screen here? Damien, you’re always looking at the stars.”
Damien said, “Ma’am you make it sound like a bad thing to be a hobby astronomer.”
“In this case, bring it up.”

El moved in close, as did Walters. It felt close crowded around the console. She pressed a comms unit there. [o] El to bridge. Power is optimal. Early look here is that we may be able to go to warp. Engineering is standing by. [c]
- El, Eng

“That’s a lot of power in that thing,” Walters commented as he read the output. El found herself unconsciously chewing on a nail as she scanned that output.
“It is. We’re lucky it’s only a fusion like reactor,” El replied though with the drop of that implied a ‘for now’. “The Cochranes primarily power our weapons and shielding. We may have an edge there. I can’t imagine how fast that would be though.”
“How did it come to be there? How long?” Damien asked.
“Can we tell? Spectroscopics? Sensor readings?” El asked. “Hull composition comparison? Did it come from this world? This system?” Was it one of the planet’s ‘defenses’ that just came into play? Was it one of those ‘serpents’? She looked a the black triangular hull. Didn’t look like a snake. More like a triangular turtle .. er, with a huge power core.
“Checking,” Damien said, methodically tapping at the controls. It was something he could do. It was something that he’d not had to do for a while.
- El, Eng