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Saucer Seperation

Posted on Sun Jun 12th, 2016 @ 4:05am by Captain Enalia Telvan & Commander Angelica Fairchild & Commander Sinek & Lieutenant Ventarus Nosplet & Lieutenant Taro Ishakawa & Chief Petty Officer Ginifred Klem & Ensign Julián De Rivera

Mission: Talosian Perversions
Location: Various
Timeline: When the Shuttle Returns

-=Runabout=-

Enalia sighed heavily. It had been a long two weeks, but they were finally back. Well... Relatively back. They were at stationkeeping at the moment, about six kilometers from the starboard side of the Hera. They had released the tractor on the cargo pod and were waiting for the saucer separation to finish before they and the workbees the ship had sent out could maneuver the pod into the main hangar bay somehow. It was a slow process, to be sure, and she just hoped whomever was at the helm on the Hera didn't hurt the ship too bad. It was bad enough that they had to do it at all due to the size of the cargo pod. Once it was secured, it would still hang out of the bay a good forty meters, but once it was at least in there, they could empty it and start disassembling and recycling it. Yes, Starfleet even figured that into the resupply.

-=USS Hera Bridge=-

Commander Sinek sat in the Captain's seat, being given the task to oversee the separation. There were any number of variables that could negatively impact the Hera and her crew. There was only a few variables that lead to a successful operation. One of those was an efficient Chief of Operations; another was a helmsman that could maneuver the saucer with precision. Lieutenant Ishakawa, Ensign De Rivera, and himself had gone through several simulations in the past two weeks. From those simulations, the Commander had every ounce of his confidence in their abilities.

Ishakawa had the systems on line; he went through all the separation protocols and especially the transfer of power between the Star Drive and the Saucier Section; it was a simple enough maneuver after the simulations. The fingers danced across the control panel as he routed the power to the thrusters. He would route the sensory grid for the Helm to have the best view of the separation, science did not really need them at this point.

Ensign De Rivera had never performed a saucer separation in his entire life or short career with Starfleet. Aside from the basic simulations at the academy and the simulations he and the other two men went through to prepare for this, De Rivera was venturing into new territory for himself. They had reached a 90% success rate with their past simulations, but the Ensign couldn't help but think about the 10% chance of failure. You have to get this right. Everything depends on it he told himself.

-=Outside the USS Hera=-

Then the locks started releasing, gasses escaping for just a moment where the decks were sealed off from each other. It wasn't on par with that of a Galaxy class, as the Hera didn't have more than emergency bulkheads in place, but at least the saucer could separate. It would take them a few hours to manually reconnect the saucer and stardrive on top of that.

Then the saucer started inching it's way apart from the stardrive, the tiny fusion reactors and impulse drives doing little to move the saucer under its own power. The RCS maneuvering thrusters might have been doing more work. From the runabout, it seemed that the back edge of the saucer had scraped the pylon just slightly while the locks were releasing, but it could have been Enalia's imagination.

Ishakawa had the emergency Structural Fields on stand by as the sauser inched away from the Star Drive. WHile a Galaxy could simply do an impression of a guillotine with the head neatly separating from the body; the Hera was more complex and harder to get back than off. Having all the command protocols and power resources separated was the important part, the Hera now represented two distinct space craft with no connection to one another.

-=USS Hera Bridge=-

Ven looked up from his station on the bridge and announced to the room, "Saucer separation is complete and successful."

"Very well," Sinek commented. Turning to Ensign De Rivera, Sinek flatly commanded, "Ease us away two kilometers to give them space to maneuver."

Making the proper adjustment, the helmsmen did exactly as ordered. "Easing us off Sir at two kilometers...nice and slow" replied the Ensign. "Eased off" he added, fully concentrating on his console.

"Aye, Sir" replied the ensign being very careful.

-=Runabout=-

It was Enalia's turn to do some piloting. Tapping the comms, she sent a quick message to the bridge crew. "Good job everyone. That couldn't have gone better. Stand by while I line up the pod."

Pulling the cargo pod closer, she lined it up as best she could and parked it right in front of the open shuttlebay door. Then she let the tractor go and pulled the runabout to a safe distance to watch the shuttlebay tractors and the workbees slowly maneuver the pod in through the doors, barely clearing them and only able to pull the pod halfway in before running out of room inside due to the central column.

"And this is where we wait until it's unloaded and we can disassemble the pod" Enalia knew it would take more than a day to get it disassembled and pulled in enough to close the doors again, but at least the workbees could start the process of rejoining the saucer and stardrive, cutting the time to do so by at least an hour when they had enough clearance to start the process.

Then a thought occurred to Enalia that she'd forgotten about earlier. "Chief, will the Thor fit into the secondary shuttlebay?"

Chief Klem snorted "Why do you have to ask that now?" said Klem shaking her head. "It should fit...maybe a little snug, but it'll fit."

-=USS Hera Stardrive=-

The stardrive bridge had some impressive holoemitters, and Angel had probably cycled through a dozen different bridge settings before finding one she liked, a mock-up of a Constitution-class. Her little bridge crew had rolled their eyes at her, but she'd cheerfully set it as the default anyway, reminding them it was just the appearance that was changed. She'd been busy enough with that for a while, so when she looked at the screen again she just stared at the monstrosity that Enalia had brought back with her. There is no way in hell that's going to fit where the pod usually goes. Shaking her head, she wondered if Enalia had thought of that before agreeing to this. She wasn't sure if they could even take it apart and stow it in a cargo bay or seven.

-=USS Hera Bridge=-

From the saucer, Sinek observed the size of the pod and how much of it stuck outside of the hold. He raised a brow as he estimated the length not inside the hold. He began to run numbers inside his mind. According to his calculations, it would take several hours for the pod to be broken down far enough to be fully contained. He ran the numbers into the computer, confirming his calculations to be accurate 3.21 hours.

Ishakawa was looking at the whole operation and noting the POD size and restrictions he began running simulations of the 'break-down' of the POD being recycled as raw material for the Hera. While it will do a fair job of topping off the stocks there were going to be problems with the break-down. Looking at the projected schedules ; crossing it with the acts of fate, he figured worst case the Sauser reconnection would take at least three hours more because of the difficult maneuvering would not allow any room for mistakes. Those kinds of odds often proved to be disterous.

"Would it be best of we totally recycled the POD before re-connection?" Ishakawa asked. "I can tell you within a good guess-timation how that will progress and us going back to the star drive might cause damage to either or both ships and that will affect the schedule where waiting and then an easy re-connect might be a better option?"

"Captain," Sinek added from the saucer, "since it will be several hours before we may reconnect, is there anything you would like for the saucer to do while waiting?" Sinek didn't believe sitting still in space was logical. It was best to put this idle time to good use.

-=Runabout=-

Enalia was waiting for something like this. Activating the comms, she replied with a grin. "Just focus all efforts on breaking that pod down for now. As soon as everything is done and we've got the ship bolted back together, we're having a dual wedding."

 

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