Dark Matters Ionizing

Posted on Fri Jun 15th, 2018 @ 4:08pm by Lieutenant Mona Gonadie & Petty Officer 2nd Class Ila Dedjoy

Mission: Holographic Horrors
Location: USS Hera Bridge
Timeline: After the USS Hera leaves Granweh

Ensign Gonadie was in charge of night shift again and that meant she got to be called Captain for a full 8 hours and sit in the Captain's luxurious chair, center stage. That also meant she was fully responsible if anything bad happened on her watch. Hence why she took the job very seriously, even though night shift was the most relaxed shift on the ship. The lights were dimmed, everything was in standby, no one expected anything of the bridge crew... But Mona knew better. 750 lives and the ship itself counted on them to be vigilant in their duties.

They wouldn't be vigilant enough.

When you're traveling through seemingly open space at warp 8, you don't think much can go wrong. Modern long range sensors, especially on a heavily tweaked and modified Nebula class starship can detect even the slightest variance in space.

Or so they thought.

"Captain, I'm picking up something..." came the call from the crewman from Operations. It was too late though. The ship struck something hard, knocking it out of warp and bringing it to a dead stop almost faster than the inertial dampeners could react and causing the structural integrity field generators to literally scream in protest, the deck echo bars reverberating throughout the ship like a wounded beast.

"Report!" Mona demanded, clinging to the command chair for dear life so she wouldn't go flying into the view screen. A continuous, pervading roaring noise could be heard as well, which made the whole experience less than pleasant.

Ila Dedjoy happened to also be on night shift and was at the science station. "I'm rerouting the pod sensors! The data's coming in now!" It would take her several long seconds to process what she was looking at while several other consoles sparked around the bridge. "We've run into a dark matter ion storm! We won't be able to form a stable warp bubble until we're out of it!"

Then the crewman at engineering finally had a report. "We're dead in the water, Keptin! Engines offline! Shields offline! I think I kin get the shields working, but i nae kinnae get the warp drive going!"

"Just get us shields for now! We can worry about engines next!" Mona knew she had to at least shield the ship and crew before worrying about getting them out of it.

After a few more seconds, the roaring died down and faded out to almost nothing. "There, I think I have it, Keptin. Shields are at seventy two percent and holding."

That would do for now. Mona pressed the ship wide alert and intercom. "All hands, this is the bridge. We have encountered a dark matter ion storm and this is what has caused the recent disturbance. For the time being, please refrain from excessive energy consumption and report to your stations for further instructions. Bridge out."

Mona then steeled herself for the next thing she needed to do. Brief the senior staff on how the ship got broken on her watch.