Posted by Captain Chris Taggart (Commanding Officer) in MAIN SIM: “In the Badlands” – Bridge

Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade John Forster (Chief Weapons Officer) in MAIN SIM: “In the Badlands” – Bridge

Posted by Captain Chris Taggart (Commanding Officer) in MAIN SIM: “In the Badlands” – Bridge
Posted by… suppressed (1) by the Post Ghost! 👻
OOC: You can choose whether your character is on the Bridge for now or in their station elsewhere. Respond accordingly. Let’s get this party started!

The viewscreen displayed turbulence beyond familiar classification. Not disorder, precisely. After all, true disorder did not exist. But it was a complexity so dense that even pattern-seeking logic struggled to extract structure. Vast tendrils of ionized plasma arched across the void, glowing in unstable pulses of various colours. It was reminiscent of the rainbows back home on Vulcan. Kastarak’s mind shifted momentarily to the memories of seeing the rainbow on one of those rare occasions when rain had poured and left the arid atmosphere moist for a short while.

Kastarak returned to the present. Electromagnetic interference crackled along the ship’s hull in irregular rhythms. The irregularity was more disconcerting than regularity would have been. Radiation spikes fluctuated with no harmonic baseline. Again, the chaos was more unsettling than anything else. If there were any kind of noticeable patterns, then logic could help. But logic failed to help him now.

There were moments, brief andfragmented, where the storm almost seemed to respond to itself, as if governed by a logic not yet understood. Kastarak watched in silence, cataloguing each observable anomaly. The Badlands had always been volatile, but this storm exceeded previous parameters by orders of magnitude. It was not simply dangerous, it was unique. Perhaps artificial. Perhaps natural but rare beyond recorded history. That distinction would matter later. For now, what mattered was stability, survivability, and data acquisition. His thoughts turned to the Science Department. Grey, Nightroad and their colleagues across the Federation would find much to study here, for years, perhaps decades. But in this moment, the storm was not a research opportunity. It was a threat that masked other variables. The unknown nested within the unknown.

Kastarak looked around the bridge. The bridge was quiet, but not still. The subtle shift in lighting, the muted flicker of console alerts, the background hum slightly altered by emergency power distribution all confirmed what he had already deduced: warp drive was offline.

That was expected, given the intensity of the discharge. The warp core had shut itself down automatically. No breach. A logical response. Still, the interruption added complexity to an already unstable scenario. He was certain Mr Batario or Ms Lovejoy would relay a report as soon as they had the chance. Their expertise was sorely needed now.

Sensors were failing across multiple arrays. Forward sensors had gone first, predictable, given their exposure vector. The remaining lateral and dorsal systems delivered fragmented telemetry. What little they offered, however, was extraordinary. Subspace fractures behaving like spatial eddies. Charged particles oscillating at variable phase states. Readings so far outside standard parameters they bordered on theoretical constructs. Kastarak mentally filed each anomaly under categories for later classification.

The storm was likely ongoing. But was it stable? Increasing? Cyclical? He turned his focus to the scientists. Mr Grey might begin constructing a temporal decay model. Mr Nightroad could isolate chronometric irregularities and compare them to historic Badlands events. Perhaps even extrapolate a safe operational window. In the background, he noted with discipline that shields were holding, strained, yes, but functional. Seventy-three percent. Declining. Rate tolerable for now. That, too, would need monitoring. But the key unknown remained the storm’s behaviour.

Kastarak looked at the map on his screen. He was the navigations officer as well, so he took a special interest to this job. He saw a distress beacon, where one had not been only minutes ago, with an estimated location of 20,000 km away.

That was close, dangerously close, given the current sensor blindness. Half the diameter of Earth. A short distance by starship standards, but in this environment, it was at the same time vast and uncertain. Kastarak remained still, but his thoughts moved quickly. A distress signal where one had not been before. Was it new, a starship suddenly in distress, or an old beacon suddenly reactivated by the charges?

All possibilities had precedent. But logic dictated a structured response, not speculation.

First: assess mobility. Could they reach the source under impulse power alone? Impulse was active, but degraded systems demanded confirmation.

Second: determine visibility. Could sensors be redirected, reconfigured? Perhaps a partial forward sweep via lateral redundancy. Perhaps something more improvised.

Third: risk evaluation. Shields remained stable—just. But without visual or sensor contact, any movement was effectively blind. And yet, the distress signal altered the equation.

“Colleagues,” he announced. “There is a distress signal, 20 thousand kilometres to our starboard side. Suddenly activated. I am ordering a yellow alert condition.”

“Mr Batario: how long until warp is back online? Ms Lovejoy, what about our impulse drive? Can we traverse that distance?”

“Mr Dawson: Can you isolate the signal and gather more data of what it is?”

“Mr Grey, Mr Nightroad. Anything in this storm that can help us recalibrate our shield to make it stronger, and withstand, and get our sensors back to full operations?”

“Drs Symar, Lynset. Prepare for non-ship casualties. Coordinate with Mr Valharra for on-ship security.”

“Mr Forster. Are our weapons still online? Can we defend ourselves in case of a hostile situation?”

Finally, he turned to the captain. Ones they had the report, the final decision on what to do rested in the captain.

Kastarak, Lt Cdr
First Officer and Navigations Officer

Chris never saw a storm like this in all his life. He wondered if this felt like the sailors of old navigating very treacherous ocean waters. He has a boat and had been in many storms but nothing compared to this.

Rising out of the Center Chair he nodded to Kastarak while trying to maintain his balance. “That is very good Commander. I want to see if we can launch a short probe towards that other ship and then use that to boost our comms and then try to hail it.”

“Secondly I want all of this data we’re collecting on this storm to be sent to Starfleet Headquarters and have NE Johnson look into the archives about this sector. Maybe there is something about this in the past.”

“Thirdly. When Mr. Forster is done with his immediate duties, have him and Science get together to see if we can use our photon torpedoes to maybe neutralize the ionic stability of this storm and allow us to pass through. “

He walked a little closer to the view screen and just looked out at the storm amazed.

Captain Chris_Taggart
Captain USS_Chernov

John was at the tactical station “yes sir weapons and shields are still online but I don’t wanna fire a torpedo in this area intill I have more data on this storm” his fingers danced across his console inputting commands and checking data.

Lt. John Forster (CWO)

Chris slowly turned his head toward Lt JG Forster so that he could see him clearly and with a slight bit of irritation in his voice, “That’s what I just said Mr. Forster. Get with Science and see if it is possible. I didn’t say fire one.” In a calmer voice he added, “But thank you for the information on the shields and weapons systems. That’s good information. Run a diagnostic on them both and see if there are potential issues with them.”

He turned back to the view screen. “I wonder how long those lightning bolts are? They must be thousands of kilometers long. Fascinating.”

Captain Chris_Taggart
Captain USS_Chernov

Dawson began adjusting the scanners to hone in on the distress signal. “The storm is offering a great deal of interference,” Dawson said, “But it does seem that sending a probe as a kind of signal booster should help with cleaning up the transmission.” Dawson braced himself against the turbulence of the ship as he worked the controls. He was trying to see what he could make out from the signal before launching the probe to hopefully get a sense of what they were charging into.

Lt. Dawson, Comms.