Posted by Vice Admiral CockRoach (GM) in Main Sim - Main Engineering - Flashy Scans
[snip]

El didn’t reply right away. Behind her she could hear Bekele ordering the casing off from around the field generator and another crewman to monitor the unit’s temperature while two more were sent to get extinguishers of a sort that cooled. Typically used to extinguish plasma fires they could, if used right, cool down units. She would have to trust Bekele. They were also running out of Engineers to use. She herself was quickly scanning her work for errors. A trickle of sweat could be felt sliding down her spine. At the 45 second mark she slapped her hand down on the comms.

[o] Bridge. Engineering. El here. We’re ready. Engaging … warp flicker effect [c] .. or whatever it was that they were doing that it might be called. Was her voice a bit harried? The Captain’s was. They had all been up all night. She wanted a shower.

OOC: What no fancy engineering language to call what your doing? Other then ‘warp flicker effect?’ :P

OOC: Hey, El’s new to this :p

She called out to the rest. “Engaging!” And hit the button.

El, Eng

Just a second later the entire ship shuddered hard. It felt akin if anyone among the engineering team remembered or had experienced the effect of an old 21st century vehicle being shifted badly with its transmission. The ship was trying in effect to go forward to warp, but the alterations the team had done were keeping the ship still. The warp bubble formed around the Bonnie and extended just enough to cover the emerging subspace hole. The flickering soon after begin just as the massive alien structure finished doing what it was preparing to do.

El felt the jolt and hung on to the console, her eyes wide. Two fingers on her left hand crossed in a ‘good luck’ expression.

The engineering teams were however, too busy in their jobs of holding the Bonnie stationary and together to really analyze their work in action to the alien structure. But in short, sure enough the Bonaventure’s comm array picked up an effort by the structure to send some kind of high energy subspace comm burst, but it was of a design and type that they could not really understand, nor probably do so for decades or more to come (aka decoding it is beyond your era!), it seems the structure despite its failure to do so tried again, and again the flicker effect of the Bonnie’s warp bubble interfered or blocked the attempt.

Seeing the display El’s mind looked at the information but even with her mind it was jibberish. She could see patterns but it was not much different than seeing patterns in a 2,000 piece jigsaw puzzle splayed out over the top of a table.

This went on for almost four more times over the course of what felt like an eternity to the running ragged engineering crew, but was in later hindsight barely more than 3 minutes at most. The strain on the poor Bonnie though was evident in that time, consoles flickered, sparks shot out of vents or wires, lighting flickered or dimmed across the ship, and the life support semi-failed in places causing the temperature to rise across the ship upwards of 110 some degrees fahrenheit. Added to this was the worsening vibrations which would make everyone feel like their whole bodies were being shaken apart in places. In short the ship was doing something that it was clearly never meant to do. For in engineering, these effects were multiplied, the warp reactor itself was in a fit hissing and groaning and humming in ways it was never meant to do. Power readings were off any known status charts, it was not that the core was bumping out more power then it normally could, but that the equipment that monitored such simply could not keep up with the reports flooding the computer chips so fast. In effect the status needles went mind boggling up and down across the charts to be basically useless to read from. So the engineering teams were basically making made adjustments on the fly, with essentially guesswork based on reactions they were seeing or hearing around them and hoping for the best! Later on it might be a wonder how someone/the engineering team had not simply made some mistake and blown them all to kingdom come! But hey once they succeeded it sure would be an engineering miracle and would surely make them look bad ass to others right?

She was getting warm. In the background El could hear the others calling out statuses and readings and orders. It sounded chaotic. Off the cuff. And, in places, contradicting. Why was she suddenly concerned about the lack of Reggie and him being in sickbay? Every time she heard, or out of the corner of her eye she saw something spark or blow she counted the number of reprimands she was going to get. Her teeth were rattling and she clenched her jaws tight. The seating of the stool she was on felt like it was loosening. Her shortness didn’t help with her not being able to get her feet on the decking well enough to not feel like she was going to be thrown off this ride. Still, it was exhilarating – if they lived through it!

Then after a nerve wracking eternity (aka 3 minutes or so!) the alien structure nearby seemed to pulse and its own lighting flicker, then with a multitude of tiny fires and explosions across the mammoth structure it seems its internal systems gave out and it died an almost anti-climatic death, aka it simply shut down. Readings on the structure showed however, that despite this radiation levels would likely be of a deadly nature even for decades to come, meaning an up close examination of this alien structure was probably not going to happen in their life times.

Then it stopped. She blinked. Was it over? Energy readings on the other ship were just .. fading. Radiation was still over the top but .. did they cause that or did it have an internal programed timer to shut down after it had punched out what it was going to do? Automation was a wonderful thing when it worked. A hand that had a decided shake to it reached out and aborted the ‘flicker’. Immediately sounds changed from screaming and tortured to an almost eerie quiet followed by the occasional spark, relay click and, in places system reboots.

Then El realized she was it. THE officer on deck at the moment. She felt all eyes on her and a huge weight both lifted and on her. How could that be? How much trouble was she in? Just to look at ship systems would cause her anxiety. They’d be fixing things for weeks and she would be the one on the deck with a toothbrush scrubbing it to teach her a lesson to not try that again. It had all happened so fast. The chronometer only showed minutes. This whole operation from the ship appearing to now was so short. How many mistakes had she made? Maybe nothing would have happened if they just let it do it’s thing and avoided all of this damage and risk. It just ‘felt’ right given her data to stop it. Were feelings enough?

Then, in the background she heard a sound. At first she didn’t realize what it was. It was a slow. Melodic. Then she knew. It was clapping, she guessed from Petty Officer Bekele. Then others joined in and it was all El could do to hold back a sob and tear; the latter came anyway. Slowly relaxing her death grip on the console she turned, jaw trembling despite her attempts to bring it under control. A hand wiped away a line of tears down her cheek.

“I don’t know what we stopped,” Bekele said. “I don’t know what we did, but you did it. Good work Ensign. Now you did your side. Now we will do ours and make things presentable to the Chief when he comes back. No,” he said as El started to protest. She wanted to be a part of this too. “Take a few minutes to gather yourself. Others will be calling on you soon enough.”

El slid off the stool. Her legs felt rubbery for the first couple of steps.
“Nice work El,” Rosa said, coming in. Her cheek was smudged as though something had blown near her.
“You did it,” Walters added. Others said things and she was sure she had answered but could not later recall if she had. It was all she could do to not run into her machine shop. As stifling there from the heat that it was it was dark and quiet and she could compose herself. As the door closed she could hear Bekele making duty assignments.

Once engineering shut down their made experiment, systems slowly and sluggishly came back to normal or rebooted. The ship was in rough shape, but everyone was alive and while the Bonnie would probably have to put back into port at Earth for a week or two was easily fixable. In turn warp capability was restored as were long range comms and uplinks back to Earth Starfleet. The planet that had blown itself to kingdom come and back was still there, presenting an interesting anomaly in and of itself as how many star systems ever had two planets on opposite orbital sides of each other? The population likely could be helped if Earth decided to do so, but there also was the consideration that given it was an Earth starship’s crew that had indirectly caused all this problem however, well intentioned in their situation, maybe it would be best to simply leave the planet to its own devices and just observe from a distance.

Regardless whatever, the future may hold for the Bonnie and her crew, this was certainly one mission that people would be talking about for years to come. Once their course was set the Bonnie came about and lept smoothly back to warp, on their way back to Earth for much needed repairs, they would arrive at their current speed within 2-4 days give or take.

==End Sim!!==

GM CockRoach

Thanks Rob!!!