From: Katrina L. Browne (kbrowne_at_wellesley.edu)
Date: Mon Dec 31 2007 - 14:21:44 PST
-=(^)=- “A Natural Phenomenon” Con’t From: “Full Circle” -=(^)=- Location: GS-2 Stardate: 2.71226.1411 Scene: Main Engineering Jake shook his head as he overlooked the calculations he had worked out for the fourth time. It was clear that “theoretically” a bubble in subspace could be created and employed as a weapon. But translating theory in to reality was proving more difficult than the Lieutenants Yao and Crichton had hoped. They *had* figured out how to modulate the deflector dish of some of the larger vessels to form small bubbles in subspace, but they were too small to do any real damage. “What if we increase the tetryon outflow by another .4 percent?” Yao asked. Crichton thought over the suggestion for a moment. “It might help, a little bit. But I don’t think we can boost it more that 105 percent of normal with that adjustment and it will reduce the efficacy of the nominalized interphasic modulation.” Crichton was a gifted and creative engineer. It was those skills that had seen the GATE through some of its darker times. Yet, trying to come up with creative weaponry to fight a fight in which the station and her defenders were likely to be horribly outmatched taxed the recesses of the young engineer’s knowledge. Their idea had been creative, but they just hadn’t figured out how to get quite right. Crichton rested his elbows on the large display within Engineering. The device detailed the workings of his technological domain, but it was so far for naught. Jake closed his eyes for a moment, trying to think this thing through. Almost every proposed modification adversely affected an early modification. That making tracking the final product difficult and it also made it difficult to figure out which changes worked well together and which ones did not. Some of the changes might fail to work in pairs, but if you add a third change then the whole was significantly better; that had been the case with the modulation. The first time the engineer had closed his eyes to think things over for a moment, Lieutenant Yao had pointed out that sleep was a perfectly acceptable method of rejuvenation. Giving that particular piece of advice seemed to have spread quite successful through the recesses of the Station. Yet, following lagged significantly behind. Crichton had patiently explained that he was not in fact tired, but just needed to think for a moment for two. This time na did not even see it fit to point out. An idea sat half-formed barely beyond his reach. He knew it was there as if he had the knowledge imparted through a dream. If he just grasped out for a few more moments, he would have it. He was sure. Steps wrung out. Methodically, they pounded. There was a normal din to engineering. Technicians milled about with officers working on the problem of the day. It had an organic energy to it. It flowed freely and some with a generous bent might say that it was the way of a creative space. These steps contradicted so sharply with that flow. Crichton opened his eyes; the moment was lost. What ever the inspiration he had been meant to discover at the recesses of his mind would have to wait for a latter. Lieutenant Kor strode from the modules entrance towards where the Station’s new chief of engineering appeared to be sleeping. Until his eyes snapped open, that was. “Any progress?” Eishnala asked. Though she looked solemnly down upon them, she hoped, most desperately that they had come up with something…anything to repulse the Dominion. Yao shrugged, “We have a new working idea, but we’ve run into some challenges with it.” Kor perked up the moment they mentioned the fact that they at least come up with something viable to work on. She quickly slumped, her antennae dropping perceptively. **Yao, hasn’t anyone ever told you to point out the Elgarn Bear before the snow squirrel in the hunt? Always mention the thing with pointy teeth first,** Eishnala thought somewhat bitterly to her self before asking, “How do you mean?” Crichton rubbed his chin for the briefest of moment. A fine layer of dark pigmentation rested against his cheeks. A childhood friend of the XO had once called the substance 5 O’clock…**5 O’clock shower. I think. I guess because it makes them look like they need a shower,** Eishnala thought for a moment. Jake answered, “The problem is one of resources. The minefield would be perfectly deployable if we had enough of the available parts to fashion enough of the self replicating mines. Yet, our problem is considerably different from that of Deep Space 9 when they deployed them. In fact, ours is considerably more challenging. For one, they had to worry about booby trapping a door. We’ve got to create a three dimensional “shield” of mines, as it were. We just don’t have enough time or supplies.” The Andorian woman nodded, “I was informed that the mines were a nonstarter. What’s the issue with the current idea the two of you have been working with?” Yao picked up a P.A.D.D. and keyed something in before handing the device to the other Lieutenant. Dashed and solid lines radiated out in a two dimensional display of three dimensions, depicting planes. An amorphous blob stretched out among the various planes, truncating some, curving others. “Are you familiar with this phenomenon?” Eishnala had not slept through elementary astrophysics, but the state she had been in had been pretty near too it. She had never had her brother Tholos’ passion for the subject. Yet this image was familiar. It had come up more than once and a special emphasis had been paid to it in basic courses on astrogation. “It’s a subspace bubble. Our surveys of this region indicate that there are none, though,” Lieutenant Kor said, looking up from the image and placing the device on the situation display. “That’s true,” Crichton nodded his agreement. “Starfleet would never have built such a large complex around a region in which subspace bubbles formed naturally and in abundance. They play havoc with the fabric of space, making it very risky to travel through areas where they may be present.” The blue woman’s brow lightly furrowed and the gentle arc of two pale feelers curved back to rest lightly against her snow white hair. “Okay… I’m missing something. Why are we talking about astrogation dangers?” “Oh…right. We’ll we did some looking and the Dominion employ a similar propulsion system so we thought we could use them as natural mines, “ Jake summarized, “Lab work has indicated that they should be producible using the deflector array. However, we’ve only been able to calculate how to form very small bubbles.” “Would they do damage to a Dominion vessel?” Eishnala quickly asked. Crichton thought for a moment before slowly answering, “Yessss, but the damage would not deal a crippling blow.” “What if you used to the deflector array to create many of the smaller bubbles and arrayed them such that they acted as a natural mine field? How many bubbles would a ship need to come into contact with to be seriously limping?” Eishnala asked. “We’d have to run some models to answer that question fully,” Yao pointed out. “Best guesstimate?” “The damage would compound some,” the young man in the yellow accented uniform pointed out. “But it shouldn’t be more then a few. 5 or 6 at the most.” Eishnala’s antennae had slowly drifted forward during the course of their exchange. This sounded like progress or at least it was hope for finding hope. “How would we avoid damaging taskforce vessels? And how could we form them without giving too much advanced warning to our enemy?” “The second question is easy to answer,” Yao pointed out. “The Dominion fleet is well outside their sensor range of the GATEWAY and the surround space. While it is likely that they have informants aboard the station, it would be difficult to tell for a fact what we were doing if we employ the station’s deflector array to create a series of small bubbles. We are also planning on flooding the area with a considerable amount of sensor noise.” “They’re sensors aren’t as good as ours in the first place. The Dominion puts a lot more emphasis into their armaments. If the current ships they fly are at all related to their predecessors caught during the Dominion Wars, then really only the Vorta and the First had access to any telemetry data,” Crichton added. “To answer the first question, we were planning on setting the shield harmonix to match the subspace bubbles thus our ships should pass through unharmed.” Eishnala frowned for a moment. “Not being able to modulate shield frequency is a real tactical weakness in a battle. If they figured out that we weren’t randomizing our shields they could a) recalibrate their weapons to match our shield harmonics essentially making our vessels big shieldless sitting mirthr cows and b) they could just adjust their own shielding, ruining the efficacy of the entirey minefield.” Crichton thought for a moment before proposing, “We could easily create a minefield map that informed our forces of the deployment locations and how to avoid them.” “And if that map got out, it would be for naught,” the J’naii scientist pointed out. “Well, we know our computer systems function on drastically different principles to those of a Dominion war vessel. I could design a navigation program that would make automatic course corrections if one of the fleet ships was moving towards or too close to one of the bubbles. The program could alternatively modulate the shields automatically when a vessel was within the range of a bubble and then as it moved away, randomize again,” Jake said. “It’s hard to effectively use evasive maneuvers when your computer might second guess what you’re doing,” Lieutenant Kor noted. “In cross fire, it could cost more lives than save.” “True. You could dodge one way and have the computer put you in the path of something else dangerous. What if we have the program provide a proximity warning and inform the pilot of the location of the disturbance if and only if the ship is within a safety perimeter of the anomalies.” “Sounds like that might be the best way. The modulation program sounds like it will likely help, but this just gives the vessels a choice about what they want to do in combat and a little redundancy,” the Andorian woman nodded, her antenna straightening as she smiled. “Will do. Shouldn’t be to hard. Now was there anything else we can help you with?” “Would they dissipate if a Dominion ship did run into one?” Kor asked “No. They’re pretty hardy. They are almost as good self-replicating mines, but with less fuss.” “If they are so hardy, how will we get rid of them if we win this thing? Permanently mining the wormhole would have vast economic and social repercussions for both quadrants. It would be as if the wormhole had never reopened.” “They’ll slowly dissipate on their own, but there are some tricks we have to reduce them. Basically, what causes the damage is the effects of the tetryon particles. They occur naturally in subpspace, but when exposed to normal space they produce a highly energetic form of radiation. It can be a little unpredictable which was why we here having difficulties figuring out how to form a large enough bubble that would be stable enough for a our purposes. These particles can be neutralized so once we have enough stability in this region we can remove them.” -=(^)=- Location: UNKNOWN Scene: Shimmering Lake A Bajoran man walked the rocky shores of a sea that stretched to meet the horizon and the fiery sky. Golden hues melted into one another reflecting the hidden world’s dusty atmosphere. The world had once been habitable, but no foliage grew upon its surface. The ruins of a forgotten civilization pointed to the cause. The buildings remained remarkably preserved without the interference of nature to reclaim them. A gentle rippling noise filled the air, but the place was much too quiet; too quiet to humanoid ears at least. The tinkling sound of a Bajoran earring sounded as alien to this world as the language that had once marred the silence. For a moment, it seemed as if the chain with silver trinkets reflected the colors of this world. Yet, it was more than a reflection. The small disk, no larger than a centimeter or two became possessed by the gold of the water and the sky. The disk no longer reflected gold, it radiated it. A moment later the entire earing seemed to melt away as if it had been nothing more than a mold of reality, rather than the stuff of it. The gentle thuds of steps stopped for a moment as the man came to edge of the lapping shoreline. The Bajoran knelt down for a moment (probably too gracefully for a man his age) and ran his fingers through a fine combination of sand and rocks. He felt the texture of the dust that choked this world to death before it fell back to the ground. “Was your time amongst the solids such a harrowing experience that you must reconnect with the land before you reconnect with the Link?” A bemused voice boomed into the stillness. The Bajoran stood stiffly up as if affronted. “No, but I have moved events in such a way that they are now coming to a head. We have many decisions to ma…” “We are all too familiar with your actions, young one,” a woman’s voice this time filled the void the dead civilization had left after its collapse. “…to make.” “Indeed?” a man asked, but he was barely a man. He seemed more as if he had once been a wax figure that was incidentally animated, yet not before he had stood sitting in the sun for too long. “What decisions should we have to make considering you were meant to observer the solids. Not meddle” “The situation was out of my hands. I was framed for a crime I did not commit and was exposed for a what I am,” Rylar spoke quickly as if afraid that his jurors would find him guilty of some heinous crime before he would get a chance to fully explain himself. The woman made a scoffing noise, clearly unimpressed. “Than you must have maintained your visage as a solid very poorly. Someone was suspicious, no doubt.” Rylar had flinched before she spoke. “There was no flaw in my form. These solids have always proven tricky. You negotiated with them. You experienced the plague they brought to us. You felt your form flake away, slowing become a part of their solid world.” “We do not speak of those times,” the man almost hissed. The woman’s harsh features (surprising considering her nature) softened momentarily. Addressing her companion, she pointed out, “They are instructive in this instance.” She than looked at the Bajoran who had visited their world, “They can indeed deceive and manipulate. It is the way of solids to attack what they fear. But now was not the time to attack them. You have left us in a precarious position. And for what?” She reached out a peech-clad arm and touched him for a moment. “Because you were bored among them.” “I…I was n…” Rylar sputtered. The woman shook her head for a moment. “There is no denying what is shared through the link. You are young and guard your thoughts poorly.” “You allowed your boredom to press us into a conflict that has already cost us greatly. The vorta report that they have not heard from a few of our brethren,” the man said coolly. “We were not ready for this at this time.” “But don’t you see? Now is the right time. The wormhole has closed. The station’s allies have abandoned them and have joined us. The outpost is alone in a region that is now solely our domain,” Rylar said plaintively, pleading his case. “They are not friendless. A fleet arrived even without that meddlesome portal between space.” The woman nodded her head in agreement, “No, they are not friendless. But it is worse than before. The portal has reopened and we have committed acts of war. “We can still win this conflict and if we can capture the station we can assure that the Federation will never pose a threat to us again. The GATEWAY has some of their military’s most advanced technology. We can learn its secrets to ensure that we remain eternally without peers,” the Bajoran who was not a Bajoran continued to try to persuade the most venerated among his kind. “This is not our decision,” the man scoffed. “It is for the entire Link to decide. They will hear your thoughts today,” she said. For a moment it seemed as if she was overtaken by an extreme sense of fatigue, but it past before her face became the expressionless mask that had made it so difficult for Federation diplomats to comprehend her intentions. “And we have heard the Vortas’ thoughts on this matter for sometime. It seems as though they may have swayed you, young one. They mean to serve, but their nature is as all solids are. They think us gods, but still they manipulate constantly. It is a shame you could not see that and it is a shame it will likely push us into a conflict that we will win, but its effects are not likely to be a grandiose as you presume. -=(^)=- Location: Dominion Warship Scene: Office Einoon lightly rubbed the fibrous growths that delineated his species. The young god had been gone for much time on the world of the gods that hung bellow the vorta’s vessel. The ship hung lazily above the world that appeared as if it was totally unremarkable. Its dusty shimmering places did not seem to be the sort of thrown from which the rulers of whole regions of space would issue dictates from. Yet, that was what was exactly happening as Einoon waited. The decision the founders would make could reshape the entirety of galactic history. His ears always itched when decisions were being made about his future that he had little control over. He didn’t like being in the place of indecision. But Einoon also knew he served at the pleasure of the gods. **And so I’ll wait at their pleasure as well,** he thought as he looked out over the sea that represented the pantheon of his faith. Einoon’s brow furled for a moment and squinted out over the sea that was so calmed. It seemed, as if for the briefest of moments, that it had become a chaotic thing, swept by a storm. Perhaps that was the simplest explanation, a storm was coming. A bleating noise caught the vorta’s attention. “Come in,” he called, still somewhat distracted by what he saw of the yellow, brown, gold, copper sea below him. A hulking Jem’hadar man walked in to the bear office. The First looked at the back of his weakling overseer. From time to time his thoughts waged a war with his genetics. The First would at moments such as these, when Einoon’s guard was completely down, imagine how easy it would be to murder the man who dolled out the white and issued orders in the name of the gods. Yet, the First occasionally thought that those orders were in name only. “Yes, what do you have to report?” Einoon asked, his voice tight as he watched the sea ripple in one large mass from the atmosphere. **That’s not possible.** “The founder has returned. We are to move upon the Federation at the first available moment,” he said, clipping his words slightly. “It seems as though you have your war to plan.” -=(^)=- NRPG: Just a little look at the other side. Shall we start this thing? -=(^)=- Lieutenant Eishnala sh’Kor Executive Officer GS-2 From HyperNews_at_youth.net
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