Posted by Lieutenant Commander Markus Woods (Chief Star Fleet Science Officer) in USS Centurion- Putting Us Through Our Paces

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Tiberius Cattaneo (Chief of Star Fleet Security) in USS Centurion- Putting Us Through Our Paces

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Markus Woods (Chief Star Fleet Science Officer) in USS Centurion- Putting Us Through Our Paces
Posted by… suppressed (5) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)

A distress call couldn’t be that bad. But then again, he’d thought kind of the same thing about a mysterious message from a distant contact in deep space. Please tell me that this is just a simple emergency, he begged silently to whatever deity might be listening. Meanwhile he reached down and tapped the armchair controls and tapped out a message to send with priority to Captain McBride.

=^=PICKING UP DISTRESS CALL. UPDATES TO FOLLOW.=^=

Lt Cmdr Woods, CSFSO

||This is a gen- … -tress call. … crash … five moons. We’re… los- life support. Archie not.... well. I repeat… this… a general… call.||

Woods frowned. “Baker, see if you can clean that up, and get us any carrier data on the source.”

“Aye, Sir,” Baker replied automatically. He was already working on it. Filtering static and trying to get the sensors to pick up details from the ship and hone in on the exact frequency of the signal and boost power to the comm relays.

NE Baker

A few moments later, McBride stepped out onto the bridge. “Report.”

Captain McBride, Starfleet CO

Mark stood to vacate the chair. “Distress call. The transmission is broken and garbled. Seeing if we can clean it up. From what I could hear, it sounds like they crashed somewhere nearby, potentially around a celestial body with five moons. I am having NE Baker try to clean it up, and see if they were transmitting transponder data.” He paused for half a second. “I can check star charts in the meantime,” he offered.

Lt Cmdr Woods, CSFSO

McBride nodded. “Please do.”

Baker’s efforts seemed to help as the message replayed, though there was still a fair bit of interference and they would have to strain to hear the words clearly, though most were now audible. ||This is a general distress call. Our small research vessel crashed at a gas giant with five moons in the Yalk-… We’re stuck… losing life support. Archie has a head wound and is not well well. I repeat, this is the Research Vessel Sutaane and this is a general distress call.||

Of the systems nearest to them, two had a gas giant with multiple moons: The Iirroun System and the Yalkrin System.

Markus listened to the message even as he started pulling info from the latest survey data. The partial transmission narrowed it down fast, with the Yalkrin system seeming to be the winner from context clues. “Looks like Yalkrin is the system.” He frowned, pulling up what data was available on the gas giant. - Mass, gravity, orbital period, rotational period, atmospheric composition, atmospheric pressure, anything they had on it’s system of moons, and of course distance. He fed the star map onto the view screen to give them a God’s-Eye view of their potential destination while starting to crunch some numbers in his head.

Fingers dancing over the displays he focused the sensor arrays toward the system and widened the bandwidth to see if he could pick up anything beyond background cosmic radiation.

Lt Cmdr Woods, CSFSO

McBride frowned. “Civilian ship?” he asked, looking over to Cattaneo.

Captain McBride, CO

Tiberius saw the glance from Captain McBride and went ahead and began the scan of the ship. He expected the result to return to be a civilian ship but you never knew. Sometimes, enemies were known to request help being a “civilian ship” but not actually being that. He continued to look at the display until the results of the scan confirmed or denied the ship being a civilian ship.

Lt Cmdr Cattaneo
COS

Baker kept working at the signal even though they had a good deal more to work with now. “Captain, do you wish me to try and connect with them or send a reply?”

NE Baker, comms

“Yes, send a reply and tell them we’re on their way. If you can get a response, so much the better,” McBride said.

Baker wasted no time. =/\=Research Vessel Sutaane this is the Federation ship USS Centurion. Do you copy? We are enroute to your location. Respond Please.=/\=

NE Baker, Comms

The Suutane came back registered as a civilian research ship that was more or less a kitted out runabout that was registered with the Federation Science Council and conducted small independent research projects. It was listed as being under the command of Leeann Drayman and usually had 2-4 people aboard in total. In addition to an advanced sensor suite, the ship had metaphasic shielding.

The Yalkrin System was a small, uninhabited system 2.6 ly from Oed with four planets orbiting a Class A star:

Planet	Type	Distance	Other Notes
Yalkrin I	Class B	0.8 AUs
Yalkrin II	Class N	4 AUs
Yalkrin III	Class J	6 AUs	5 satellites
Yalkrin IV	Class C	11 AUs	Planetoid

The current hypothesis for the large distance between Yalkrin I and II is that there was once another planet there that was knocked out of the system.

Yalkrin III, the gas giant, was about the size of Saturn at 102 ,000 km in diameter. Its metallic core was surrounded by hydrogen (89%) and helium (11%) and with a density lower than water, a surface pressure of 140 kPa, and was 95 times the mass of Earth. It had a magnetosphere slightly less than Earth’s. It’s solar year was roughly 6989 Earth days and it’s rotational period was 16 hours.

It had 5 moons, none of which had an atmosphere and were basically all large rocks:
Moon A: 1.2 day orbit- 286 km in diameter
Moon B: 5.7 day orbit- 1,123 km in diameter
Moon C: 22 day orbit- 4,905 km in diameter
Moon D: 43 day orbit- 1756 km in diameter

“Helm, alter our course for the Yalkrin System. Warp 9.5 as long as we can sustain and then drop us to Warp 8,” McBride ordered. “What would our ETA be?”

The helm took a moment to work it out and looked over their shoulder. “Just over 10 hours, Captain. Changing course and speed.”

Jonathan nodded before opening a comm line. =/\=Bridge to Engineering. We’re responding to a distress call and we’re going to push the engines as long as we can, then drop to Warp 8. Helm says it’ll take us 10 hours. Let me know if that number can improve.=/\=

=/\=Bridge to Sickbay. We’re responding to a distress call. You’ve got about 10 hours before we reach the system. Crashed research vessel. More details to come.=/\=

OOC: Planet classifications can be found here, if you’re interested: https://www.star-fleet.com/library/bookshelf/rm/misc-planetclassification.html

Captain McBride, Starfleet CO

The voice of the Betazoid CMO came back over the comms, =/\=Acknowledged Captain. We’ll be ready. Please let us know when you have a crew manifest. Fayth out.=/\=

Fayth, CMO

Mark was running the calculations in his head when Sharah’s voice broke in, interrupting his thoughts. Memories flooded back with a stab of pain, and just for an instant he looked as if he had been run through. Then it was gone, replaced by a careful poker face, honed over years of play. Catching his breath, he shook it off, bracing himself with one arm against the panel in front of him.

He frowned, considering options. They might be able to push the Centurion’s limits, but the Avenger-class was something of an aging design, but could still get the job done. The question was, would they be in time? There was… one possible way to get aid to them faster, but it was crazy risky, and probably a one-way trip for now. And their cartographic data was somewhat out of date. Of course, they’d get more info on that when they were closer. But they were well within the high resolution scanning range of the Centurion.

Tapping on the displays he brought up the EM systems, specifically the Low-Level Thermal Imaging sensor and the Variable Band Optical Imaging Cluster. Correcting for the ship’s current Doppler shift and warp field lensing, he chewed the inside of his cheek. That wouldn’t get them data on the Suutane. It was still lightyears away, and as much info as was available at his finger tips, he couldn’t make light break the universal constant in that way. But it would give him a very detailed look at the system as it was a couple years ago. Which that could give a very updated map from the time, and then shifted forward to where things actually were this moment. The science lab was better equipped for the task, of course.

He brought up the Localized Subspace Field Stress Sensor. It was useful for studying subspace anomalies. That was it’s general purpose, in fact. But it could be used to track a ship’s warp signature. No, scratch that. If they had to put down on a rock somewhere their drive was likely shot until they could repair it. Otherwise they’d probably be running straight for the Centurion to hide behind it’s skirts. No. But if they were attacked… It was worth running anyway.

Turning the Centurion’s sensor suite toward the Yalkrin system, he went to scanning for any active or latent warp signatures. As he did he murmured in a pleasant sing-song tone, “Come out, come out, wherever you are…”

Lt Cmdr Woods, CSFSO

After having the scan data, it was nice to know what kind of ship they were going to go rescue. Tiberius is hoping it was not under attack because I do not believe it could take much based on what sort of ship it is. Tiberius went ahead and started tuning the sensors for weapons for potential cloaked ships in the vicinity. He wanted to make sure he was ready for anything when they arrived at the ship. He looked over at Commander Woods and said, “I see you are working over there. Have the sensors been adjusted to what is needed? I would love to have a readout of what you are seeing at tactical if you don’t mind?” He waited for a response from Commander Woods.

Lt Cmdr Cattaneo
COS

“It’ll be on the main viewer when I start getting returns, but sure I can mirror it to your station,” Mark said, barely looking up. Consternation flickered through his tone, for just a moment. “I’ll keep an eye out for tachyon emissions and the like too. I really hope this is just straight forward, but never hurts to expect an ambush.” He was, of course, aware of what Cattaneo was doing with his sensor arrays. But… He frowned.

Then tentatively expanded his awareness, questering down a few decks, trying to ignore the general ‘texture’ of the crew, looking for one very specific, well-known node or contact. A familiar, if .. painful presence, but tentative in his efforts.

Lt Cmdr Woods, CSFSO

The familiar presence was there, it was always there whether it wanted to be or not. But it was greatly changed, crumbling, weakened. As if it was an old earthenware vase with thousands of cracks that were slowly and steadily allowing the liquid inside to seep out. Then it quickly turned into a bare trickle, but with effort. There was a pause, mentally held breath and a barely caught desperate flash of need for home and family - the images unfamiliar too him.

It wasn’t in Sharah to turn anyone away no matter what happened. She couldn’t despise anyone, hate them. She had an enormous capacity for compassion and caring even when it hurt her. There was another pause and then, ‘Markus, is something wrong?‘

Fayth, SFCMO