Posted by Lieutenant Commander Ander Garay (Chief Engineer) in Main Story: Engineering

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Ander Garay (Chief Engineer) in Main Story: Engineering

Posted by Captain Jessip R. Quirst (Commanding Officer) in Main Story: Bridge
Posted by… suppressed (1) by the Post Ghost! 👻
NE Masters was standing in front of the MSD with a PADD in one hand. As he called out the items on the pre-start checklist, the other NE’s responded by checking the various systems.
“Pre-stage flux chillers port and starboard?”
“On.”
“Main stage flux chillers port and starboard?”
“Enabled.”
“Intercooler status?”
“Ready.”
“Space matrix restoration coils?”
“Standby.”
“Dilithium crystals?”
“Check.”
“Emergency shutdown trip?”
“Armed.”

Ander nodded and walked back to the warp core, glancing at the status readouts as he passed by the various duty stations. Arriving at the core he grasped the cool railing and leaned over the edge, looking all the way down to the anti-matter injector assembly at the bottom. Then craned his neck back and looked at the matter injector at the top. Satisfied that everything was ready, walked to the main propulsion controls. Pulling up the injector panel he tapped in the familiar startup sequence.

“Commence engine start,” Ander called out. “Prime matter-antimatter injectors. Set the ratio at twenty-five to one.”
“Ratio set.”
“Initialize deuterium injection sequence.”
“Sequence started. Injector nominal.”
“Initialize anti-deuterium injection sequence.”
“Sequence started. Injector nominal.”
“Power engine core and inject reactants.” With the final words he dropped his finger on the button that opened the injector ports. A deep resonant tone filled the room followed by the steady pulsing as the reactant streams were injected. The core began to glow brightly and the power levels leapt up into the green ‘nominal’ band. “Engines online,” Ander said proudly.

=/\= Air equalization automatic on. Gravitation to automatic. Running lights are on, =/\= NE Shanda’s voice came over the open comm channel from the bridge.
“Engineering is a go,” Ander’s said with satisfaction.
=/\= Engineering is go, =/\= Shanda’s voice repeated to the Captain.

Garay, CE

With the Captain’s order to NE Bannion, the Curie began her departure from the dock. The maneuvering thrusters fired to hold station while the moorings and umbilicals were cleared. For the first time in over a decade, the Curie began to move under her own power. Watching intently from his status board, Ander couldn’t help but feel proud. In fact, he felt prouder than he had in many years.
“Come on you old bucket,” he whispered to her as he patted the console.

Garay, CE

It took only a few moments for the Curie to take up a position at the entrance of the wormhole. The officer at OPS keyed in the broadcast signal and put it on repeat. It wasn’t long before the swirling whirlpool of the wormhole’s aperture opened up to the Curie. The colorful light show from within the wormhole sparkled against the Curie’s hull, across the view screen on the Bridge, and the window wall of 8 Forward. In fact any forward view port would seen the show.

“Mr. Bannion, initialize Aft thrusters then move us up to one quarter impulse. Take us in.” Jessip stated while keeping an eye on the interior of the wormhole.

=/\= Here we go, =/\= NE Shanda’s voice came over the comm.
“Standby for wormhole interface!” Ander called out.

The Curie moved slowly at first but quickly picked up speed as she entered the wormhole. As soon as she began to traverse the passage, the aperture closed behind her. The lights flashed brightly encompassing the entire of the hull. The explorer seemed to be buffeted by unknown winds as the ship shook, jolted and rolled while keeping a steady pace.

“Reset stabilizers to compensate for the subspace occilations!” Ander ordered briskly.
“Initiating stablization routines!”
“Rerouting power to the inertial dampeners!”
“Torsional stress level increasing!”

Every one in a while Jessip could hear his Bridge officers call out items of concern; weakening of the structural integrity field, fluctuations within the warp core, hull temperature increasing. According to the original ships readings, these were expected phenomenon while traversing this wormhole. Jessip was listening for anything odd or unexpected.

According to the ship’s chronometer, they had only a few more minutes to go.

_ Jessip Quirst, CO

“Bridge! We’re beginning to see plasma surges in the EPS manifolds!”
An auxiliary monitoring panel blew out in engineering, sending a shower of sparks and debris across the room. Fortunately no one was standing nearby. An engineer grabbed a portable fire extinguisher from a nearby wall compartment and blasted extinguishing agent into the blackened and smoking maw. The lights flickered as the ships power systems became unbalanced. “Reroute plasma through the secondary coupling!” Ander shouted above the urgent beeping from multiple consoles.

Garay, CE

As the ship continued through the wormhole the hull began to emit a cacophony of strange whining and popping noises as the torsional stress increased. The lights flickered more and more as the power systems surged, fading to a dull level. A cryogenic cylinder ruptured, sending a plume of white gas into engineering. Then it was all over.

The Curie exited the wormhole and decelerated to a stop as the aperture closed behind them. They had travelled several hundred lightyears on a only a few minutes, and now found themselves in the backside of the Beta Quadrant. The last time they were here this was Bat’Leth space.

The hull had stopped making noises and the lights slowly came back up to normal.
“Seal that conduit!” Ander shouted over the hiss of the gas escaping. “And get me a damage report!”
“Engineering to damage control teams, check all power replays. Gravity is down to point eight.”
=/\= DC Alpha, acknowledge. =/\=
=/\= DC Bravo, aye sir. =/\=
=/\= DC Gamma, moving out. =/\=

Garay, CE

Ander watched the master systems display as the computer completed automatic assessments of the key systems. The Curie wasn’t too worse for wear, though the passage through the wormhole had been rougher than he’d expected.
“The result of the earlier collapse maybe?”
“Sir?”
“Sorry, just thinking about our transit through the wormhole.”
“You think it was rougher because they collapsed the wormhole before?”
“Possibly. I’m not an astrophysicist though. Let’s get to work on that power coupling. I don’t want to end up in a firefight without our primary coupling online.”
“Aye sir.”

Garay, CE