Posted by Master Chief Petty Officer Karl Johansson (Chief Engineer) in Main Sim - Engineering

Posted by Ensign Hugh MacClure (Engineering) in Main Sim - Engineering

Posted by Chief Petty Officer James Franklin (Engineering) in Main Sim - Engineering
Posted by… suppressed (9) by the Post Ghost! 👻
Engineering was being inundated with calls to report glitching monitors and read outs. The most recent one came from sickbay. [O]Sickbay to Engineering. We’re having some sort of odd malfunction with one of our monitors.[o]

-OZ

On the back of that request another came from the bridge. [O]Asam to Johansson. What can you do to the deflector and shields? We’re going into the nebula.[c]

Cpt. Asam, CO

The chorus of calls hadn’t stopped — Sickbay, Science labs, even auxiliary stations in the lower decks were reporting the same thing: monitors flickering, diagnostic readouts spitting phantom errors, systems behaving as if caught in overlapping echoes.

Then it hit closer to home.

The impulse control console at the heart of Engineering shivered with a burst of static, panels stuttering in sync with the disturbances rolling through the ship. Status lights for the port engine went amber, then red.

Impulse Drive Status: OFFLINE.

A low vibration tremored through the deck plates, the faint thrum of the engines fading until it was gone altogether. For a heartbeat, the entire room was quiet — no steady hum, no familiar rhythm of the drives. Just the ship’s background life support systems holding steady.

Emergency readouts painted the picture in stark terms:

Power flow diverted mid-cycle, relays tripped.

Control circuits unresponsive to reset.

Restart attempt: INHIBITED — error code cycling too fast to track.

And through it all, a subtle distortion ghosted across the deflector diagnostic panel — the same interference Johansson had just been asked to brace against for the Veil.

The Sentinel now had shields, deflectors, and warp power. But impulse? Dead.

-OZ

[O]Engineering, what happened to the engines?![C] She wasn’t waiting for answer. It was clear she expected them back on before they ever went out.

Cpt. Asam, CO

[O] Engineering here, Captain. We’ve got shields back up, but I’m getting some strange readings on diagnostics… Impulse Engines aren’t responding at all, I’m trying to reroute power and get them restarted. Stand by. [C]

Franklin swore quietly to himself, and began the start up procedure for the Impulse Drive while keeping one eye on the Diagnostic panels. “C’mon Darlin’ don’t do me like that…” He muttered, checking power levels. The interference on the Deflector screen panel caught his eye and he stared for a moment, brown eyes focusing as he ran through another diagnostic. Checking the Warp Core, he briefly wondered if he could shunt power to the Impulse Drive through the backup relays… The silence and lack of vibration made him unconsciously nervous, his feet unused to feeling nothing through the deck plates.

-CPO Franklin, Engineering

Hugh was scratching his head trying to figure out what was wrong with the impulse engines but he couldn’t get a diagnostic to tell him anything. As he looked over, he said, “Chief, I’m at a loss as to what is happening.”

MacClure, Engineer

“One of us ought to get to deck one and manually check the impulse drive…” Franklin glanced at MacClure, the concern showing on his face. “Where’s the Chief?”

-CPO Franklin, Engineering

A hatch to one of the maintenance shafts hissed open, and Karl pulled himself free “You try to get some quality maintenance done and my engine bay falls apart” He muttered to himself, but the annoyed words did not match the smile on his face. He half-leapt half half-jogged to check the maintenance display, stroking the console absently as he read “Franklin take a team and check the Imp drive” He said as he tried to enlarge and pause the error message “MacClure check the relays that tripped, I’ll see to the control circuits, everyone grab a communicator if you’re leaving home” He made his decisions quickly.

Master Chief Karl - CE

“Aye Chief,” Hugh replied as he got up to go inspect all the relays.

MacClure, Engineer

“Aye sir.” Franklin nodded to Karl, and went to the nearest equipment locker. He pulled out two communicators and turned back. “Mac, heads up..” James tossed one of the communicators to MacClure, grinning. Then he headed for the hatch, opening the remaining communicator and hailing two on duty crewmen to meet him on deck one to inspect the Impulse drive.

-CPO Franklin, Engineer

Hugh grabbed the communicator out of the air and nodded.

MacClure, Engineer

Karl grabbed his own kit and a communicator “Alright let’s get our girl back in fighting form” He called out to the team.

Master Chief Karl - CE

The silence of the drive chamber stretched — too long, too empty. For a ship this size, the absence of vibration was like a heartbeat gone still.

MacClure’s relay inspection revealed a mess of tripped circuits, but the pattern wasn’t random. They’d blown in sequence, like dominoes tipped one after another, each cascading failure already queued before the last collapsed.

On Franklin’s trek toward Deck One, the impulse corridor felt wrong beneath the boots. The lights stuttered, flickering not with power loss but with a strange doubling effect — as if two overlapping versions of the same space were fighting for primacy. His tricorder scan caught it: relay feeds pulsing on and off in microbursts too fast for human eyes to track, each flicker generating phantom readings in the surrounding bulkheads.

And at the main console Karl examined, the “cycling” error finally stilled long enough for a message to appear, just a breath longer than a blink.

ERROR: INPUT ANTICIPATED.

Then it was gone. The restart inhibit resumed, codes scrolling too quickly to follow.

For an instant, though — for anyone near the board — it hadn’t looked like code at all.
More like letters forming. Words. Shapes.

And always, just at the edge of hearing, that low vibration. Not from the core. Not from the drives. From somewhere else, threading through the hull itself.

EvilJen, DDoSFEO