Posted by Ensign Elemirre Serinde (Engineering Officer) in Cargo Container Exploration

Posted by Commander Heather Grace (Executive Officer/Chief Science Officer) in Cargo Container Exploration

Posted by Ensign Elemirre Serinde (Engineering Officer) in Cargo Container Exploration
Posted by… suppressed (2) by the Post Ghost! 👻
[snip]

“Ensign, you may have some additional tools for your shop. We’ve taken in a Vulcan container a couple of centuries old. Take a team and unload them and bring them back for us to look at. Lay them out along the bulkhead on E Deck. Scan them for metal fatigue. Sort them by use. Separate what we might be able to use,” Lt Green had said. All El thought of as she compiled the team from the various shifts was ‘This was going to be fun.’

With a clang a piece of the container’s lock fell away to the deck with a metallic clang. Boris tugged back his goggles. His curled up mustache and dark eyes made him look like an ancient villain about to make the reveal of the kidnapped damsel in distress or his evil plot to take over the world. “Secure the cutter,” Fiona said. “Good work, Boris. Galen, Dorian. Gloves on. Let’s get this thing open.”

The two, vastly different, the trim, hairy Greek next to the straw colored blue eyed farm boy, but both with insulated gloves up to their elbows stepped forward and each pulled on the wings of the doors to pull it open and make the big reveal

• El, Eng

The side of the right side of the container and part of the top showed signs of a fire of some sort in its past. Likely the reason it had gotten spaced from elsewhere in the vulcan ship’s cargo hold. As the container’s two doors were pried open as the lock fell, the hermetic seal on the container gave way, releasing ancient smells and particles preserved in the vacuum mixing with the fresher air of the Sojourner.

El wrinkled her nose at the wash of smells. Galen sneezed while Dorian waved his gloved hand in front of his face. “The gift that keeps on giving,” he said, looking around the door to within. “At least it’s not like the mummy’s curse,” he said. “Do Vulcan’s curse?”
“Only when it’s logical to do so,” Galen said, using his weight to push the door of the container as far back as he could.
“Can the chatter,” Fiona said, matter of fact as was typical. “Give us some light on the subject.”

El figured that she should let Darlene take that one but she was closer and she was curious. Bringing out a lamp she shone it in ..

The smell had a engrained odor of said ancient fire from the side of the container, inside the faint smell of what perhaps could best be described as ancient onions mixed with the faint smell of old oils, and packed spare electrical tools. The container had a narrow two foot wide service walkway with two racks on either side of labeled plastic containers in the Vulcan language. A quick scan by a hand scanner linked to the universal translator easily enough translated the writings.

“Smells like a backyard firepit next to a garage,” Galen said.
“The way to a girl’s heart,” Darlene said, stepping forward, oblivious to the piercing look from Fiona.
“I’ll look,” El said, scanner now in hand and lamp in the other. The smells were more like home - home being the machine shop and the memory of onions cooking from when she was little. It was an odd mix but not alien to her and one that brought back memories, especially her around the pot meticulously cooking or rather boiling onions. Bringing the scanner up she looked at the Vulcan characters. Alien but really, was it that far off of the Asian languages that she knew and grew up with? Less elegant and rather like doodles and squiggles than anything she would see as language, but well, how card could that be to learn? “Translating,” she said.

On the left side on the bottom shelf the five smaller crates contained 10 plasma welders, 5 plasma battery charging units, and 15 plasma cells for the welders. They were older units that strapped to the upper back and shoulders to the wielder and used a wrist extended cutter unit to allow optional two hands free, or a narrower beam attachment could be put on using both hands for finer work. Running a scanner over all this found 3-4 of the 10 welders with a little cleaning and maintenance could be usable again, of 2 of the 5 plasma cell chargers were equally in usable shape once worked over, and 14 of the 15 plasma cells were still fully charged, and were capable of being recharged down the line one at a time if they got the 2 chargers working. The 15th cell had cracked and was junk by this point.

“Pass me a marker!” she called. “Plasma welders. Some are still working. Want to mark what is working so we’re not pulling out bad stuff.” Darlene slid in, the next one who was slim, though Fiona was likely a bit slimmer. Fiona, though, didn’t like getting dirty and this was a cramped space. “Thanks,” El said, taking the fluorescent dabber.

On the top shelf on the left was six slightly smaller crates then those below. The first three held 16 emergency hull sealant capsules and 3 of their sprayers. While most Vulcan ships used an energy forcefield system for hull breaches in case of power loss these were the next best thing for smaller breaches. The sprayers had an adjustable nose that could spray either fine holes down to a pencil point in size or a wider spray up to 4 or so feet wide. The spray on contact with air according to the basic field manual on a PADD that still worked and translated explained it would quickly solidify in 1.192 seconds. Since Starfleet vessels used sectional emergency bulkheads and something similar to this the haul here would be a nice addition if they ran into trouble with combat or the like. Roughly speaking the sealant was on par with what Starfleet had and a little better in some ways. The second set of three boxes had 3 large ship sectional emergency batteries, as well as their basic hook up and service equipment. Each battery held enough juice to run roughly a single section of a ship for up to 2-4 hours. Looking at the outputs and definitions of what the Vulcans consider a ‘section’ of a ship vs Starfleet roughly they could hook one of these up and likely power almost a whole deck’s power needs for a half an hour to 2 hours in a pinch. Sadly these older models were not rechargeable and so were single use only.

“Hull sealants. Still good,” she said, marking them .. she whistled. “Batteries still good here but they look like single use. I’m not seeing adapters. Might be good to reverse engineer them to see if we can’t get working models that recharge.” She wriggled further along in the tight space quite cognizant that the others were waiting for her to finish her scans.

OOC: Taking some license with engineering wording to call duro-chips the thing Vulcans used prior to Deuteronic computers in TOS and so are still more advanced then what you all got for the Ent era :)

On the bottom right shelf, they found the 8 boxes contained six duro-chip scanners, six duro-chip diagnostic and maintenance tool sets, six duro-chip extension wands for chip placement or removal, and six duro-chip emergency data shunts, and six duro-chip emergency short term data storage units. All were in solid shape and fully usable.....if they had a ship that used the Vulcan’s duro-chip based systems. The top 4 boxes however, contained a sizable amount of high data bandwidth cabling, at least by Starfleet standards, several cable running tools, and a sizable amount of micro-circuitry sensor units used to catch breaks or damage int a cable run. Looking at the capacity of the cables they had enough here to run the length of the ship from bow to stern about 2 times! It was also ironic that high capacity cabling like this was exactly what they could have used on their last mission to fix the tactical console on the bridge. Given it was slightly better even then they had now they could make some cable runs to improve response times from the bridge to key systems down the line if they wanted.

El whistled. “Chips, well, useful if we had some Vulcan systems .. and cable. That could be good.” She figured she’d outlived her time here and needed to get the others to work. Wriggling her way out she faced the bunch who were looking at her.

All in all this wasn’t a bad find! Certainly many useful materials they could use in some form now or in the future if they wanted. The only group of things that weren’t immediately useful was those tools related to the duro-chips the Vulcan used.

GM CockRoach

She addressed Fiona. “CPO Cleare. Please remove the batteries, cabling, plasma welders and hull sealants to the machine shop. We’ll look further to triage them and see what we can do with them. The rest ..”

“Find anything good?” Heather said stepping into the cargo bay. She was sort of interested in what might be in them, and it definitely beat looking at sensor readings for yet any longer.

Cmdr. Grace - XO / CSO

El saw Commander Grace enter as she was facing that direction so was nor surprised at her inquiry. Did she detect a tone of curiosity and eagerness? “Start with what is closest and work back. It’s a tight fit. Move now,” she said, stepping aside and moving over to be closer to the Commander. “Commander,” she said, “There is some good things in here. “Plasma welders, single use batteries that could power a section of a deck for a time, cabling and hull sealant spray. I think we can use some or all of them in some capacity.” She moved aside as Galen and Dorian hauled out a welder to set on a cart. Fiona was at a door pointing at each piece to come out next. “There are some data units - scanners, replacement tools, storage units and such. Thinking they are more in your department. Should we send them to your lab?” She said the last a bit louder so Fiona could hear and so direct.
- El, Eng

“Yes please. Perhaps there will be some information on these that the Vulcans have been holding out on giving us this whole time.”

Looking over over the welder at the welder being set on a cart she had to wonder how much was still usable. “And these are still usable? They weren’t affected by prolong exposure to vacuum? Like the sealant spray for example.”

Cmdr. Grace - XO / CSO

“Surprisingly they came out pretty well,” El replied. In point of truth El was very impressed at something almost two centuries old being yet sealed in open space and the units managing the cold for that long. She struggled with the option of openly admitting that. Credit given where due. When it came to the Vulcans El hesitated and wanted to find fault but could not, and it would be prideful not to. “Very well, actually,” she added. Pointing to the welders she said, “They didn’t come through as good. Only some of the packs and chargers are usable but enough are that we can use and may be able to salvage parts from the rest or study their circuitry. The emergency batteries are charged but unless the Vulcans had some kind of means of recharging them they are one off’s for us. We may be able to learn more about them and how to make our own. They would be handy situationally. The sealant looks good. Most of these were vacuum sealed.”

As Dalene was passing by, Fiona Cleare said in her precise Irish lilt, “Kohl, collect all of these Vulcan chips, scanners and tool sets. Remove them to the science lab up on D Deck.”
“Will do PO Cleare. Deck D Science lab,” she said, repeating the order and waiting for Galen and Dorian to shift their first load over to Engineering and for her to have room to get her designated kit out.

El, Eng and others ..

Heather nodded at the engineers and other crew swarming over the containers as they separated out the material.

“Well I’ll leave you to it, and see what my science team is able to make out of the scanners and such once they get down to the lab. Let me know if you find anything else that is interesting okay?”

Cmdr. Grace - XO / CSO