Posted by Ensign Kristiana O’Larria (Engineer) in Into Dark Space

Posted by Lieutenant Mike Stone (Chief Engineer) in Into Dark Space

Posted by Ensign Kristiana O’Larria (Engineer) in Into Dark Space
Posted by… suppressed (12) by the Post Ghost! 👻
((This thread didn’t transfer… Long story short, Stone and Kristi are heading into the dark area of the ship to try and help get things back online. We only got as far as agreeing to meet when we moved, so… without further ado.... Meli))

Kristi settled the panel back on the junction she was at and smiled. She knew Stone would want to foray into the Dark Spaces soon enough. The junction she was at was just one of the power leads into that space. As she stood up, she saw him coming around the corner. “Sorry, boss. I was curious if the power to this point was stable. No point in jacking into it if it wasn’t.” She nodded to the toolbox beside her. “I was actually going to come get you, shortly, and see if you wanted to try some of this today.”

Behind her, about ten feet and one intersection away, was the force field and webbing that marked the edge of the Dark Space that was off limits for this deck and section of the ship. Beyond the barriers was an area where power, life support and comms were varied at best, non existent at worst. This section of decking was colder because of the sap of heat beyond where she was standing and she was pretty sure some of that was due to lack of life support somewhere further on. But so far they had managed to keep it confined. Like a creature they couldn’t catch or kill, keeping it at bay seemed the next best thing. Trouble was, it wasn’t good enough for Kristi. She wanted it dead. She was determined to help Mike claim the ship back for the inhabitants and curb, once and for all, the tales of ghosts, AI anomalies and the stories of the ship ‘being alive’. She didn’t believe any of the hype and knew Mike didn’t either.

Her smile was all for him as he drew closer. Seeing the suits, she frowned slightly. “You really think we will need those? If there was no life support, wouldn’t it be sucking oxygen from here as well?” The barrier was unstable because of power fluctuations, the reason for the webbing as well, so had their been a pressure leak, alarms would have sounded more than once in the past. But when she checked, nothing like that had occurred.

Ens Kristi O’Larria
Engineer

Mike nodded in agreement. “Yes, I know the probability we’ll need these are quite low. But the dark side of the ship has it’s quirks that are sometimes compleately unpredictable. In case something does happen, we’ll have a slightly better chance of surviving in EVA’s then without them. Even if there is no breach, the life support is at bare minimum. Could get extremely cold in there.”

He had a hard time saying the next part. Everyone saw him as a fearless engineer. Sometimes he might have seemed cold to his subordinates, but that usualy came with the job of department head.
“Kristi… I’ll be honest… I’m a bit afraid of what can happen there. Too many people got seriously injured and a few even died over there. I’m just trying to be prepaired so nothing bad happens to us as well.”

Lt. Mike Stone, CE

Mike’s concerns were valid enough for Kristi. But as he made his confession of fear, something told her it was aimed more at her than he was saying. Her face softened slightly as she touched him arm to reassure him. “We’ll be ok, Mike. I promise to be careful.” She let go of his arm not realizing she’d used his first name. Except for one other time, in breakfast in private, she’d always called him Stone or Chief.

She took the second suit and began to put it on. The one piece could easily be left without the helmet attached. She had heard all the rumors about the space they were going into. People never coming out, disappearing from ship sensors, odd noises coming from the corridor. But till Mike had mentioned it, she’d thought it rumors. Now she’d take it a bit more serious.

Kristi
Engineer

Mike exhaled a breat he was holding and smiled. He though she’ll complain more about it but he was glad she saw reason in his concern.

“We can leave the helmets off, unless there’s an emergancy. I doubt we’ll experiance a sudden decompression, but it could get very cold without much warning.” He said again, as he put his suit on as well. “They attach to the belt, but if it bothers you have it somewhere you can reach it quickly”

Once he was done he asked. “Now what exacly do we need to do here? What condition are the power relays and circuits? Is it bad or worse then that?”

Lt. Mike Stone, CE

Just a little bump… (Sorry… M)

Kristi finished putting on her suit and settled her helmet behind her right hip on the belt latch. As Mike finished donning his, the young engineer responded. “Well I’ve checked the conduits and panels from the junction box on this deck all the way to here. Everything works great.”

She not her lip a moment and glanced into the darkness. “My suggestion is we simply go to the next panel.” She picked up the plas sheet beside her too box and showed him. “About thirty feet to the next intersection. Then it’s ten more feet to the right on the starboard wall.”

Letting him examine her map, she reached down and grabbed her small set of tools and smiled. “Shall we?”

Ensign Kristi

“We shall.” Mike replied and grabbed his own toolbox and gear he carried with him. As they moved down the hallway however things quickly began to turn to the worse.
The strong white lights were replaced by a dimmer, less stable version. Many lights flickered ocasionally, and some didn’t work at all.
Mike wondered if they only needed replacment, or was there more to it.

“If everything looks stable at the next panel, then just replacing the malfunctioning lights should do the trick. Gravity in enviromental conditions are still good here.”

He grabbed a piece of metal, that probably came from the ceiling plate and hurled it down the hallway. Except for the noice it made, it flew as one would expect.

“So far so good.” He commented. “Let’s take a closer look.”

Lt. Mike Stone, CE

Kristi let it a laugh that broke the nervous silence she’d been in. “Roger that… Gravity… Check.” Moving to set her box down at the panel just to the right at the next intersection, she smiled. “Let’s just assume it’s bad connections from being neglected for so long.”

They were about twenty feet into the restricted zone as she knew down, grabbed her tool and stress removing fasteners. “We can check this panel, then the next. I’m thinking of the one just before it and the one just after it are good, then we can check individual rooms and sub sections.” She glanced up at Stone with a soft expression. “My guess… Something electrical happened, spooked some folks and neglect and fear have just cause the cascade of failures. I’m honestly betting there is nothing won’t this ship that some clean plugs and a good dusting won’t fix. I’m guessing you inherited the panic and got swept up… That’s all.”

Her voice want accusing him of anything. Quite the opposite. She was supporting his decisions letting him know she understood. But also that she’d stay at his side and see things get fixed proper. “Got it!” She smiled in triumph as she turned to set the panel behind her on the floor.

Kristi
Engineering

Mike looked at her and smile. Gosh, is she really this naive? Or is she just being sarcastic? He thought. A full engineering corps wouldn’t restore Viking to it’s former glory even if it worked on the ship 24/7 for a month. You fix one thing and two other somewhere else break. Any sane person would give up already…luckily for USS Viking, he wasn’t, and he continued to do his best to keep the ship floating.

“Pee-jewww....I think we’ll need those EXO suits sooner then I thought.” Mike said and grabbed his nose. The plate kept a horrible decomposing smell perfectly preserved until someone dared opening the pannel. “I guess here’s your answer on what cased this node to fail. That critter seemed to have bitten one of the power lines and died.”

It was hard to identify what exacly was it. It looked like a rabbit or a rat at first glance. Mike didn’t want to throw a second glance at it’s rotting corpse, but it was either him or Kristi.

“I think i have a plastic bag, let me remove it from there.”

Even though he had gloves on, he grabbed one of the large tweezers and scooped the dead body.

Lt. Mike Stone, CE

As the smell of decomp wafted up, Kristi almost rocked back on her heels. “Bless the gods…” she laughed and waved her hand to try and swat away the offensive odor as she laughed. “One of the NEs was telling me that some time ago there had been a … gremlin… that the word? problem. Something about some strange critters who had infected the ship and caused all kinds of damage. Could this be one of those? I had thought it was nonsense.” As he moved to take the small carcass from the duct, she shook her head. She had been told all kinds of stories about the Viking. She hadn’t experienced anything since her original arrival, so at this point was merely counting half the stories as embellished, and the other half as completely fabricated.

She stood up and took a step back to grab some fresh air and give the small space a chance to air out a moment. “Mike… can you be straight with me, please?” She leaned on the wall and looked at him. The look on her face was serious enough that he would know something was wrong. “The stories… the hauntings, computer intelligence… the gremlin things… are they real? I mean, there is no such things as ghosts. Couldn’t it be malfunctions and gases, hallucinations, and simple cascading failures that are causing this stuff?”

While here face was serious, she had absently crossed her arms across her stomach while asking him, as if to protect herself from whatever answer he was about to give. And while her face was calm, there was a hint of something akin to ‘fear’ in her eyes.

Ensign Kristi O’Larria
Engineer

((Whooops… this was Kristi’s post, not Kalika’s… Meli))

“Oh boy…” Mike said out loud. It definately wasn’t an easy question. “…that’s a tough one. I don’t believe in ghosts to be honest, but every story ususaly has some truth behind it. Now I still think a lot of people exaggerate or simply jump to conclusions. Sometimes a blinking light can easier be explained by a ghost then a malfunctioned switch. Why is that I do not know, you’d probably have to ask a shrink or someone like that.”

He looked at the dead critter, now safely stuffed in a plastic bag. “I don’t think this looks like a gremlin at all, but I doubt it was the only one of it’s kind. If one already damaged a power node, I’d rather not think what a hundred or even a thousand of them could do to the ship.” He shrugged and smiled “And don’t even get me started on the computer and it’s AI. We tried fixing it a bunch of times. At one point it’s inteligance dropped to like IQ 50. When you wanted it to open a door for you, you first needed to explain what a door is. And if it had to do math, it always first played the Number song. Right now it’s extremely inteligent, some say even sentient. Loves to mess with people and their emotions.” Mike shrugged again “I simply ignore it.... works most of the time. Or maybe it just leaves me alone, since I’m the one repairing the ship…who knows.”

As he talked he worked on the wires the critter damaged. Once he was done, it seemed as if the area was better lit then before. “I guess that’s that for this node… shall we continue to the next one?”

Lt. Mike Stone, CE

Kristi smiled. She was grateful for the answer he gave her. She had the feeling he didn’t buy into the hysteria, but hearing him say it greatly relieved her mind. “I doubt bringing it up with a shrink would help. Especially if they are on the ship.” She laughed slightly and grabbed up the bag with the rodent as he stood up. “I’ll leave this here,” she set the bag just inside the panel and then secured it to the wall. “We can grab it on the way out. This way it won’t get forgotten elsewhere.”

As she stood up, she checked the PADD. “Ok… so the net node is… there.” Her head rose as her hand pointed into the darkness beyond them. This panel had been just inside the edge of light from the ship’s ‘good’ area. But the next intersection was completely in darkness. She took a deep breath and grabbed the light on her hip. “Here we go…” she laughed, but it was shaky. “What was it that ancient mariners used to say when heading into the black space on the map? “Here there be monsters..” or something like that.” She was sure it was something monstrous, despite not recalling the exact words. She had a hobby of exploring the ‘unknown’. So what they were about to do excited and scared her all at once.

She just hoped ‘excitement’ was the feeling that would rule the day.

Ens. Kristi
Engineer

Mike put his arm on her shoulder, and felt her twich slightly. “Hey don’t worry about it. If anything wierd does happen, we’re aborting immediately. And we got the suits to protect us.”

He wondered slightly where her enthusiasm went. Just yesterday she wanted to go into this damn abyss as soon as possible and fix it for good. Now Mike was actualy a bit sad he gave in. Kristi was struck with the reality in what condition the USS Viking is quite hard it seemed. And they haven’t even seen much.

He activated his flashlight and shined into the darkness. He felt slightly uneasy himself. What more was waiting for them the further they went?

After a few meters, there was a small puddle on the floor. Mike shined up, and there was what looked like water dripping down, slowly. “Viking doesn’t have any plumbing.” He said, wondering where it came from. “Condensation perhaps?” He asked. It felt a bit colder here then it did at the begining of the hallway.

“Let’s proceed.” He said, deciding to ignore this for now. “The next node should be close by.”

Indeed it was located at an intersection. The panel was lying on the floor, and the wires were exposed. A different kind of shock followed. “Wow, would you look at that.”

Mike shone his light directly inside. “I might actualy start to cry.” He joked. “But this is just beautiful.”

Indeed it was. The cable managment in this node was spot on. “Look, they even put tags on what everything is… I don’t think I even saw this in newer ships.”

Wires had tags on them, easily identifying main or auxilary lines. The biogel pack looked almost new as well. There wasn’t even any webs or dust, which was actualy quite common elsewhere.

“As far as I know, we’re the first one here in over a year. There simply wasn’t time to send anyone here for any repairs. Can’t recall anyone doing this fine of a job as well.”

He scratched his head. “You know there are supposed to exist creatures opposite of gremlins. No idea how they are called. But while gremlins are rumored to destroy machinery, their counterparts are supposed to hold it together. Like a ship making it to shore before sinking, or airplane breaking down as soon as it lands safely.”

He waved in dismissal of the idea and grabbed the tricorder. “Mhm, I guess I can see why they left the pannel off. There’s absolutely no power at all in any of the wires. Perhaps they weren’t finished yet with repairs on another node and left it off. “

He shrugged. “I guess there’s not much to do here as well.” The intersection split into two ways. Both hallways looked equaly dark. “We can check if the previous and this node have severed connection somewhere, or we can continue and check further down the hall?”

Lt. Mike Stone, CE

Kristi set a marker tag on the railing by the leak, as a reminder to see to it later.

When the panel was inspected and Stone made the comments about ‘good gremlins’ and being impressed, she shook her head. “I don’t understand. How can creep crawlies that have the intelligence to destroy a ship be hogwash, but the self same creatures who are good, are a possibility? I think you a little bit crazy, boss,” she laughed and began to relax. “The simplest explanation is, at some point, this hall was started for refit or rewiring. Something happened,” she shrugged and looked around. “I am guessing maybe ‘too much’ change in ‘too big’ an area at once. Something cascade failed and the whole section fell to basically, I don’t know,” she shrugged, “something akin to a cryo mode. Like the ship just completely shut down everything. For whatever reason, missions, attacks, whatever… no one ever got back here to fix it. Or the failure was too overwhelming to fix out here and it needs to go to drydock for fixing.”

Her smile brightened and her whole body visibly relaxed as her mind suddenly made sense of things. Whether it was the ‘true’ explanation or not, it only mattered that to her, right now, it was the truth. “You leave a whole section this derelict, it’s bound to affect other systems. Even the difference in pressure could affect floors above and below it. Noises, lights, all those things. Right?” She turned and smiled to him and he would once more see the fearless bright woman before he first met in the Jeffries tube the day she arrived in his engineering bay.

Ens Kristi O’Larria
Engineer

“Right you are. Well why the section has no power isn’t that important right now. We had everything, space battles, sabotage, critters.... ” Then he snapped his fingers and pointed to the node. “Guerin....this could be his work… he was one hell of an engineer as well. Looked like a dwarf on steroids, but liked to keep things tidy. Went missing about a year ago.”

Mike didn’t want to get too gloomy. “I’d like to inspect one more node, I guess we could split to cover the ground quicker if we each go down one hallway, but I think we should stick together for now. See what’s the situation down one hall then the next one. If both are also dead, then I think best action would be to reconnect the first node that’s working again with the second one, or see if there’s a break or something like that....”

He knew it was important to check things out, but he also didn’t want to just walk around the ship and just assess things. He know the situation was bad enough. It was about time something was done as well, even if it was just bringing a few halls more online and functional.

Lt. Mike Stone, CE