Posted by Ensign Elemirre Serinde (Engineering Officer) in Engineering - Does Something Smell Burnt?

Posted by Lieutenant Paige Garrison (Chief Engineer) in Engineering - Does Something Smell Burnt?

Posted by Ensign Elemirre Serinde (Engineering Officer) in Engineering - Does Something Smell Burnt?
Posted by… suppressed (7) by the Post Ghost! 👻
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.
- El, Eng

“That was what I was going to suggest. There is most likely an issue with the sensors if we are not able to pickup where the power is going, hopefully you’ll be able to find where the blackhole is. Let me know what you find out.”

Pushing herself back from the console to give El some space to work, Paige pulled the communicator out of her pocket.

[O] Engineering to Crewman Morales. Have you made it to the bridge yet?[O]

Lt. Paige Garrison - CE

[o] Morales here. Not yet. While going up the tube I crossed paths with the XO. I’ve been filling her in. She asks if you could use her help down in engineering. [c]
- C Morales, Eng

Paige took a deep breath before responding. The last thing she needed was another person floating around engineering especially as they were trying to clean everything up. But she also didn’t know the XO well enough to gauge how blunt to be.

[O]I’m sure we can find her something to do. So I guess send her my way, and get up to the bridge and find out what they are doing to the ship.[C]

Lt. Paige Garrison - CE

A few minutes? Maybe just a couple? there was a reply .. [o] Bridge to Engineering. Chief, I am at the bridge and have briefed the Captain. [c] It wasn’t precisely the answer to the order but one thing at a time. Little point in telling the Chief that the Captain was hanging in mid air being brought down by the ankle ..
- MT Morales, Eng

[O] Any luck figuring out what they are trying to do? And any chance that they can stop?[C]

Just before Natalia arrived, Maria-Teresa managed to glean from the engineer on deck what had transpired without interrupting any of the activity on the bridge otherwise. She relayed this down to engineering .. though figured the XO would have a similar report when she got there. [o] Chief, we had picked up a weak transmission and moved into an asteroid field to get closer and investigate. The asteroids were many and the ship was doing evasives to avoid them until the explosion that took out the power junction and deflector. They’ve been doing what they can to maneuver out from there utilizing nominal thruster power available. By the look of it we’re almost clear from the asteroids. [c]
- Maria-Teresa Morales, Eng C

Paige cursed the person who thought it was a good idea to fly headfirst into an asteroid field, without taking at least some sort of precautions. [o]Understood. Do what you can to help them get out of the field as quickly as possible, and to deter them from doing that again.[c]

[o] We will do what we can Chief [c] came the reply ..

Meanwhile, Natalia had been meandering her way towards Engineering, it was actually pretty quick in zero g, once you got into a rhythm and had banged your head a few times and after a few ““hui” and blin_s. It was this, “ah _blin followed by a barrage of other Russian phrases, that announced the appearance of the XO. She looked around trying to find the chief, and then she spotted her, near an Ensign. She floated over.
“Need a hand Chief?” She asked matter-of-factly. Gently massaging her head.

Natalia XO/CSO

“Could use an arm,” Paige said with a short laugh. “Whatcha know about ship power systems Commander?”

Lt. Paige Garrison - CE
Lt. Paige Garrison - CE

Natalia laughed.
“I know the basics. We covered basic ship’s systems on the Command track at the Academy. I can follow instructions and I’m a quick learner. I thought it better to make myself useful down here rather than twiddling my thumbs on the bridge.” Natalia replied with a grin.

For El the screen data was forming slowly. Too slow and she fought her patience and training to just wait for it. Sasha was looking like he was in the same boat for transferring any power. Were they working at cross purposes? While her brash chief was with the XO, El shifted lightly over to Sasha’s station, propelling herself along the thin railing. “Sasha, we’re both doing the same thing with trying to route power. You’re waiting for the system and I’m not seeing where the power is going to. I’ve set up a power tree to tell us where the power is going to but it’s taking forever. You take my place there and set your station to alert you if it successfully routes power. I’m going up to E-Deck to access the computer core library directly.”

With that she planted her feet and then shot up through the open ceiling to catch herself on the deck above, on E-Deck. Shifting angles she pushed off to the computer library room that was just off the engineering area. Truly, on this deck, apart from some quarters and the cargo bays, everything here was engineering. Pushing herself into a chair and using her knees to keep her in place she brought up the main computer directly. This affected sensors, artificial gravity, thrusters and propulsion and turned engineering into a chaotic pool of damage control. This was too perfect, at least to El. If they did get out of the asteroids then what? A waiting ship? Using multiple consoles El brought up system diagnostics for armory control and hull polarization to see if there was anything unusual there that might just happen to get knocked out next. With another display she brought up the cochrane. Was anything infringing on them going into warp? On a third she did the same with impulse engines. On a fourth and final display she sought to bring up a comparison between the damage they took with what the ‘refit’ had done while in space dock.

In the back of her mind she had thought to tell the Chief her speculation but she was with the XO at the time and Sasha could watch a lagging system as well as she could.
- El, Eng

Natalia CSO/XO