Posted by Lieutenant Naomi Locke (Science Officer) in Main Sim - Bridge

Posted by Vice Admiral CockRoach (GM) in Main Sim - Bridge
[snip]

A few minutes later three NE service techs came onto the bridge with haz mat suits on. Seeing the mess they groaned a bit, “..Urgh that is a horrible stench! What happened?” One asked as they got to work cautiously.

GM CockRoach

El’s first stop was to collect her uniform at the decontamination area and don it. Her beliefs did not set her up in any way as a prude or wilting flower if that was the applicable term. Everything had happened so quickly and once emerging on the bridge with the beast she had felt her fight and flight reflexes powering up along with her adrenaline. She had been ready to fight yet had seen the flash of fear in Lt Green’s eyes as he swung at the creature. That had been the first moment of vulnerability she had seen in the Lt. What had been more startling to her was Helena’s actions in shooting the wounded beast. El’s principles were such that life was sacred. While the creature was deadly and dangerous still it grated that Helena would simply shoot it like that at the slim justification that the Vulcans recommended it. It changed how El looked at the pilot who was capable of such a swift, deadly act.

Changed, El moved to Warrant Office Jackson’s quarters. He answered after a minute, shaving cream smeared over half his face and a cream towel draped over his shoulders. The end of it had SS Whitestar embroidered in blue. Curiously he had a ball cap on that had SS Saratoga on it. At his furrowed brow El said, “Lt Green needs us on the bridge for a fix. A … creature made a mess of the tactical panel.” Tyler Jackson shifted the toothpick that had been on one side of his mouth to the other. “You’re not messing with me, are you Ensign? The only creature I know of is Walters’ dog.” El shook her head. “Stowaway,” she said. “Six legs. Killed two crew. Samuels in decon.” The last came out as a whisper and Jackson’s toothpick stopped moving. “I’ll be right there.”

El took that minute to find a comms and call to Ensign Gagarin to tell him to bring up Rick with him with a Crawler to search the vents. In the remaining seconds, El thought that that duo was the worst to pull up with Sasha’s paranoia and Rick’s own fears. Perhaps this may help them with that. WO Jackson’s quarters was on C Deck. As they wound down to F Deck to collect tools, El explained the damage to him and the creature. “Never known anything like that,” he said in a tone that had a drawl to it. He’d told someone once in the lounge that that was a good Southern accent. Emerson Fawkes, from British ‘upper crust’ as someone had said, thought the accent was ‘provincial’.

They made it to the bridge just ahead of Sasha and Rick, but behind the clean up crew. Making their way around the maintenance crew they came to Lt Green who pulled himself up to his feet. “Board will need replacing as will this console top. Whatever it did, it knocked out the targeting and firing controls. I don’t know if we have parts but that’s for you two to figure out. Scanners are damaged but may be able to be fixed.”

He saw Rick and Sasha coming onto the bridge. “Carry on, then,” he said and Jackson beat El to the reply, her own ‘Aye aye, sir’ being a soft echo. Green moved past them toward the two, noting too that Walters had brought the dog with him. He was going to get himself into trouble if he kept that up, and not only from him.

Meanwhile, Jackson said, “Ensign, I’ll look at the connections and boards underneath. Y’all have the finer fingers so work that control console off and we can birddog what we have to work with.” El glanced over at Lt Green who had turned and looked at them, and her in particular, with a speculating eye. El had done something wrong and she hadn’t even started. Sighing, she pulled out a magnetic driver; with the clear consoles the screws keeping it down were under it, and she took care to not damage it and the membrane under it any more than it was. Still even El could see that one area of damage was right over the targeting and firing controls and they looked blackened around the membrane.

El, WO Jackson, Ens Gagarin, PO Walters ..

Over by the comm’s station NE Paul spoke, “..So do we want to try to look into this comm signal more? Also we got that video processed and scans for this natives below the ground if anyone wants to review those fully too?” he said.

GM CockRoach

As El and Jackson fussed with the tactical console, El found herself splitting her attention between that and what NE Paul was saying. Comms signal? Natives? She had heard of them when she was down there but not seen anything remotely. Only the big cats. She was still perplexed by the drop off of the power and wanted to look at that issue; if they couldn’t sustain power past a certain level in drilling then extracting minerals no matter how rich would be impossible shy of open pit mining - something that was very frowned upon in this day and age. But then even if they could dig, would it not still affect any machinery that descended that far? Maybe.
“Have you reset the board, Ensign?” WO Jackson asked, bringing her back to the present. It was in her hand and he knew it. She snapped back to the now and seated it. The wiring was .. bad. “The board is in,” she said after a minute but the cabling that runs to the console LED is shot. Hang on,” she said, wriggling in farther and shining a light. “No, no good. The creature caused the leads to fry at the console membrane. That whole membrane needs to be changed out if we hope to send commands through to the armory controls.”

Meanwhile, Sasha had the Crawler out and, with a small tablet control pad was running it through a diagnostic. “Camera good, remote response good, sound good, sensors good.” He looked toward Rick and the dog of whom the latter, in Sasha’s estimation was looking at the crawler as something that was inferior to it. Rick was petting the dog in between making small adjustments to the crawler. It looked like something Sasha put together with blocks when he was a child. And as ugly. “Set it up,” he said to Rick who picked up the unit. It was smaller than the dog but it’s six spider like legs went out wider - though they were adjustable. And probably heavier, Sasha thought.

Rick picked it up and looked at Nessa. He thought the dog could do a better job but if there was another of them creatures in there the dog would be toast and they were looking for damage. Reaching up he slipped the Crawler unit into the broken duct and slid it in. “Set, sir,” he said to Sasha who brought up the control screen. Setting it down on an unused console he made room for Rick to be there too. “Take notes on damages,” he said. The unit would log it and record it but having notes would at least give them a starting point. Rick pulled out his own tablet unit and prepared to make notes. “And forward ..” Sasha said as his fingers moved on the control pad and set the Crawler in motion.

• Sasha and Rick

Naomi aided in collecting samples best she could. She pulled out the swabs and ran it down the length, collecting what sample she could. Her hand lowered into the tube before snapping it shut. Satisfied it was secure, she passed it off.

Once she finished her section, she caught the mention of the comm signal. She moved in closer as she listened to the conversation.

Sadly. technology repair wasn’t her best skill.

-Lt. Naomi D. Locke, Sci

With the crawler in motion damage seemed more or less non-existent within the crawl space that led down to deck 2, it would be a time consuming process to check all the duct work on the ship but so far it seems beyond some basic light scratching here and there on the walls as it skittered about.

GM CockRoach

Seeing little help she could provide, Noami moved to the science lab to examine the samples.

-Lt. Naomi D. Locke, Sci

“What have you got?” Green asked as he lumbered over from the tactical console where he had been overhearing the discussion. That didn’t sound good so he was hoping for good news on their end. He looked at Gagarin, lanky, rosy cheeked, and not looking like he was out of high school. Put a cowboy hat on him and he would look like one of those animated movies of old. What was his name? It had been a long time since he had been afflicted by that movie but for some reason it had stuck with him. All but the name apparently.
Sasha turned and stood in some order of attention. “Lt, the damage so far is centralized to this panel. The ducts are showing clear.”
“Just some scratching of the paint here and there,” Rick added, huddled over the remote controls and screen.
Green leaned over to look for himself. “Should we continue, sir?” Sasha inquired. His Russian accent was thick.
Tugging at his shovel of a beard he shook his head. “Set it on an automatic search for anomalies, log and record. It must have had a nest somewhere so we should search for that. In the meantime let’s get this panel fixed.” He glanced at it. “And toughen it up. That thing came through the vent like it was nothing. Let’s at least make it a challenge next time.”

Turning back to the others Green he saw Serinde and Jackson each taking an edge of the console top along with its membrane and carefully lift it off. Blackened leads and wiring met them along with a small trailing of smoke from one. With the sound of damaged frame being pulled out behind him and the examination in front of him Green felt .. good. The apparent danger was past. He was calming down. At least his hand was not shaking anymore but he did keep the spanner close at hand. Just in case. Serinde was cleaning and examining the leads; her fingers very sure and exacting. Green approved, for once, with her. Jackson was carefully unwrapping the new membrane. How successful that was applied would tell what they were going to be able to do. But better them working at that then he. Reggie’s fingers were not made for fine work. He could do it but others could do that better. His attention went to Serinde as she let out what sounded like a soft curse in what? Chinese? Well, she was that, so why not? “What is it?” he asked.
“Sir, the terminal node that sends commands direct to the armory is fried. We’ll have to trace the cabling back to see how far it is bad. We’ll have to send the information from here to the armory for them to target from there until we get this fixed. I think the rest we can salvage of the console command systems.” Serinde didn’t sound happy and Green frowned. It wasn’t even a battle that took this system out and he knew they didn’t have a lot of replacement parts aboard of that caliber. “Carry on and do what you can. When you’re through there trace out the cabling. We need to know what is broke before we can fix it. Jackson get a detail to fix up the other damages here.” He turned to Sasha and Rick. “The venting is damaged in the decontamination room as well. Get on that when you’re through here.”

There was still a stench about the bridge. He turned to Naomi. “Lt, do all aliens stink like that?”
- Green and others …