snip

~Creeping Dread

The fire control group paused. Fiona took out a scanner to read the temp and shook her head in frustration. “Easy, Fiona,” Bekele said. “There is a lot of energy in plasma. It takes time to cool it down. Keep on it.”

El gave the spare communicator to Aeled. “Get this to Lt Green in deflector control. If you can assist them do so. If not return. Go,” she said. Then, turning To Dorian who was over with Fawkes, she called out, “Dorian. Grab another two communicators and head to sick bay. Tell them we have injured from an explosion and need assist. Give the CMO the communicator if she wants it. If not hang on to it and head to the Armory for a damage report from there and the torpedo launch bays. Go now.” More quietly now, “Fawkes, move Millicant into my machine room.”

El then shifted gears. “Sasha, what is going on?”
“The break is causing a power drain. I don’t know where it is bleeding out but it is sluggish,” Sasha said thickly in his Russian accent. He was getting frustrated. Rick nodded his agreement that it was difficult.
“Keep on it and focus on diverting power to the hull polarizing and thrusters,” El said. “I’m going to work on our gravity.” With that she pushed off and moved around to an undamaged console to see what the problem was with the artificial gravity.
El and others …

The console readouts for gravity control was confusing. Power that was meant to be going there wasn’t but the system wasn’t reading a break in the line. It could be wrapped up in everything behind the melted junction but another possibility was the power was getting diverted.

The ship jolted again as it took another hit.

~Creeping Dread

El blew out a breath that would have scattered her hair had it not been tied back in a pony tail and hung on with the jolt. Fortunately it didn’t feel bad and it felt far away from her so she studied the screen. THAT made no sense. There were supposed to be priority of action with power that automated these the power distributions and gravity was not low on the list. Even after a power disruption like this automated AI controls would reprioritize power use unless manually adjusted. El thought of just trying to force the hand behind things; if the bridge had made a change then priority was given to it which would not allow her to just change it and her attempt would be useless but then there would be a flag in the system that told her what was done in the logs.

No, right now, before leaping to any conclusions of nefarious actions she should see a birds eye view of where the power was going before trying to bleed energy from elsewhere. Until she knew where it was going it was hard to snag some. Carefully she tapped in the command for a power distribution schematic with energy flow and levels and where it ended up at. Where WAS This power going? Or, if it was related to the break, where WAS it being bottlenecked?
- El, Eng

“Where’s the bleed?” Paige said having floated over towards El. The fire seemed to be under control, at the moment. “The systems should have started automatically switching over, unless the space dock crews messed with that too.”

She still held her left arm tight to her side, and had one ear open for the chirp on the communicator.

Lt. Paige Garrison - CE

El’s mind rang with the warning long ago that there was a warden on board. Was this the cause? Was this intentional? That junction. The power. The deflector. Just the right things to distract. But that wasn’t the thing to engage the mind now. She felt the Chief nearby and her question was El’s question. “The display is slow to form. The power is going somewhere. Automatics should be regulating this according to ship’s priority even in an emergency state. There are protocols.” Her tone was focused and with a touch of tension but her movements smooth, unrushed but her mind was racing.

While she waited for the distribution to form El reached to bring up those very protocols. Had they been disabled? Changed? Around her the work continued. The spray to the junction continued, drops of it floating in the air that had not clung to a surface, the sound a wet hiss that drowned out other conversation to a muted background noise. The engines sounded labored. She could feel the changes in course as the ship wheeled about, made all the more noticeable with the lack of gravity and the infinitesimal catch up of the inertial dampers. The crash of a collision with a rock highlighted the danger was still present.
El, Eng

The power display loaded on screen with thirty percent of the total output completely unaccounted for. The largest chunk was going to the polarized armor plates, followed by the deflector dish, maneuvering, what life support systems were functioning, and lesser power draw system like lighting and whatnot. So power was moving somewhere but it wasn’t being metered by what was likely various sensors.

~Creeping Dread

“What’s left? We don’t have energy beam weapons like the Vulcans do to take up power,” El said under her breath. “Hull polarizing makes sense and sensors. We’re not maneuvering with engines. 30% can’t just go into nowhere and be undetected. So where are the blank zones? Either there is damage somewhere or something is not right.”

El cleared the screen and explained to the Chief what she was doing. “I’m splitting the screen here. On the left part I’m bringing up a standard historical snapshot of where power normally goes to on the ship at any given time and a percentage distribution as it widens out from the mains here. That is out baseline to go with. Next on the right I’m bringing up a current distribution. But I’m taking it from the core outward so it gives us data in stages. If there is a blank spot it should show up as we expand our distribution web. We know a couple of the biggies right now with HP’s and sensors but there is a bleed somewhere .. hopefully this will help us tell where to look.” With her finger she hit engage on the real time power distribution web starting from the power core outward and compared it with the baseline optimum of where it should be going.

Somewhere in there the communicator that the Chief had pocketed went off. [o] Green to Engineering. I need someone to go to the bridge and do a program on the fly on the navigational console. Whomever can try to do that. Sasha. Serinde. Chief. The power to the deflector is badly damaged. Fused cabling. We can jury rig it so it has power to work field density or the dish rotors. Not both. The program is for navigation to manually toggle one to the other. [c]
- Green et al plus .. El, Eng