Straining Structural Integrity

Posted on Thu Jun 28th, 2018 @ 9:25pm by Commander Rita Paris & Lieutenant Commander Thex sh'Zoarhi

Mission: Holographic Horrors
Location: USS Hera, Deck 24, Main Engineering
Timeline: 2395
Tags: BlueandGold,Braveandbold

Making her way down to main Engineering using the Jeffries tubes may have been an unconventional choice, but it made perfect sense to Rita Paris. After all, the holo emitters were apparently installed in the tubes, but the ship’s computer was not really paying close attention to the narrow passages. While Mugatus and mounted civil war cavalry and land sharks might be entertaining in the spacious corridors of the Hera, apparently there was considerably less capacity for mischief in the tubes between decks.

Arriving on Deck 24, Rita had to dodge a squad of small dinosaurs that tried to hem her in around the graviton generator controls, then had to use a loose plasma conduit cable to swing across a chasm that had opened between the sensor bays and the chief engineer’s office. For all the trouble she was going through today, she surely hoped her pal the acrobatic engineer wasn’t hanging somewhere else in the starship's belly fixing any number of the myriad problems that were cropping up all over the Hera.

Thex was in a bad mood. With very little sleep, being crammed into the hot and heavy salvage gear and just having had to crawl through half the ships Jeffries tube just to get to her office. Now she was looking at a hologram showing all of her men and what they were doing. Most were still waiting for a security team to finally show up to protect them while they worked. She let out a sigh as the door opened though she smiled at who had entered.

" Hello, Rita." She said her eyes still fixing on the hologram.

Taking in the situation at a glance, the buxom bombshell flopped down in a chair, a far cry from her usual demure settling into place while being acutely aware of her short skirt and the attempt to maintain decorum. Instead, she blew her rebellious bangs out of her face then ran her fingers through her shock of honey blonde hair. “So your boys can’t repair and defend themselves from whatever crossed-circuit comedy the computer is playing at simultaneously, so the result is that repairs are proceeding slowly even as more systems break down because of shipwide tomfoolery. How’m I doing?”

" Yeah, that's basically it. I have three teams one keeping life support online, the other's trying to shut down the holo emitters and the last one is trying to theorize on how to do the impossible. " Thex replied keeping the frustration in her voice under control though still obvious.

“Oh good… I wouldn’t want to catch you when you're busy,” Rita chuckled slightly, then catching the look from the angry Andorian, she coughed and shut it down. “Sooooo I might just have an idea of how to get us outta here- I know, right? Score one for the slow kid in the classroom. But it’s gonna put more structural strain on the Hera than my sports bra at a full run. So I thought I’d come down and lay it out for you, so I can get the blame instead of some poor science ensign. Besides, traversing the Hera has become something of an extreme sport today, so not like I was going to send someone else with the comms still intermittent at best.”

" What's the plan, Rita? At the moment I'll take any suggestions, " the andorian replied still keeping her eyes on the holograms, though through her tone she indicating that she was still clearly listening.

“We’re going to attempt a Spindizzy maneuver,” Paris replied. “Basically we’re going to use the graviton generators and rotation of the Hera to repel the particles of dark matter and negate the immediate ionization of the storm so that we can form a warp bubble and get the hell outta dodge, as it were. I can give you the more complex details of it, but the principle is that fore to aft we’re going to rotate her at high speeds to make this happen. And we’re going to keep it up until we get out of this crummy storm, probably reversing the rotation to balance the stressors on the superstructure if it takes too long to get clear.”

“Now, while I have faith in the inertial dampeners, well… I don’t think this sort of thing has been tried this century with a modern starship. So I thought before I start straining the structural integrity I’d run it past the resident engineer.” Paris eyed her slender blue friend from across the desk. “Thex, for what it’s worth, you look worse than me. And I’m running on human endurance.”

" Thanks, it's not every day I've been given a task no one’s ever done before and not even allowed to grab a cup of coffee. Your idea could work, but we'd need to hope that both the ship holds together and the inertial dampeners don't fail. We could use the passive gravitronic variance grid to start her moving, but that could rip of a nacelle if it fails, " the andorian replied, as she began running a few things through her head.

“Yup. This is what I specialize in- plans that nobody in their right mind would try, but it’s the best idea we’ve got,” Paris waved offhandedly. “Nobody said you couldn’t have a cup of coffee, Thex. I still have to run all of this past the Captain and the Science department, so at this point I just need to know if this is the kind of plan that’s going to tear the ship apart. So just theory for now, no extra work.” In truth, while it felt nice to be trying something and enacting a plan, Paris was worried about her petite pal.

“It’s just us here, Thex,” Rita offered in a low conspiratorial tone, the concern evident on her face and in her voice. “You and the cavewoman from the stone knives and bearskin days, alone in your office. So it goes no further than this, but I have to ask- Thex, are you okay?”

The agile Andorran was quiet for quite some time before she finally replied. " No, Rita. I'm not okay. I've barely had any sleep, just been promoted and now I'm having to try and save the closest thing I have to a family from a situation no one has escaped from in theory, let alone reality. And I can't even get a cup of coffee, because the nearest replicator has been destroyed by a rampaging holographic T-Rex. " The andorian finished, almost silently.

While she had spent an awful lot of time in therapy and expressing her own problems to other people, Rita felt she was rather poor at helping other people with their problems, unless they were on a starship or planetary scale. In this case, she too was exhausted, but apparently Thex had it worse. The promotion had gotten her inner demons off and running, and instead of sleeping happily, the weight of the rank on her mind had given her a sleepless night. Which had now gotten compounded by another sleepless night, now with dinosaurs and the enlisted mess floor turning to lava and cyclones in the gymnasium.

Said rank also brought more of a sense of responsibility for the lives around her, so even more stress. Thus Rita Paris thought for a moment- when her anxieties had hold of her and she ran to Sonak for support, what would he do?

Rising from her seat, the lost navigator stepped around the desk and put her hands on her friend's biceps, urging her to rise. When they were both standing, she fixed the blue-eyed Andorian with her own baby blue eyes, and with an encouraging smile, she spoke.

"Thex, the rank is just what you were doing anyway. It doesn't make you more responsible- you were plenty responsible before. You're still chief engineer, you know? A lot was already riding on you. And yes, we're exhausted and yes, it sucks- I don't care what Xustos says, I'm not eating from one of those replicators until we're out of here. Food already tastes weird here," Paris muttered.

"But the point is, we're all here. We're all working on it. And we're all going to save one another, because we're a crew. And that's what crew do. So," the gold minidress clad old-fashioned gal fixed her pal with a grin. "How about we define some new boundaries in the laws of physics and really take her for a spin. Oh, and save the ship and the crew AND be the first in history to pull it off?"

" Was it always that easy in the old days? Just break the laws of physics, save the day, go home and get the green alien space babe?" Thex jokily replied, feeling better having gotten it all of her chest.

"It kinda was," Rita admitted with a giggle. "We did so much stuff that really did not make a lot of sense, but there was always some sort of scientific doubletalk or some weird alien device or advanced technology or mysterious powerful being. Something would happen, or we'd make it happen. Probably works the same way today, and if not, hey! You've got the good old days right here!" Rita picked at the hem of her skirt and danced about like a capering loon for a few seconds, crossing her eyes and stricking her tongue out.

The Andorian laughed slightly to herself, feeling better at having the talk with her friend." Remind me to ask you for a tour of your old ship on the holodeck when I get this mess sorted out. It sounded like an interesting place. Well, as soon as I figure out where we'd get power to try our plan. "

"Wait what?" Paris stopped dead, turning slowly to eye the engineer. "What do you mean figure out power? What's wrong with the ship's power?"

" At the moment nothing. But some rampaging sword-welding albino destroyed the negative plasma pulse drive on deck twenty-six. We can't get the power from the emergency power cells if main power fails. I'm going to go and nick the Orion scout ship’s pulse drive, and I can use it to fix the problem for now. " The Andorian explained.

The sigh that issued forth from the anachronistic officer was deep and heartfelt, but then she squared her shoulders and picked up her chin. “All right, grab me a tool belt and let’s get going. I’m not about to leave you heading for the flight deck alone, and while I may not know one end of a spanner from the other, I’m still a spare set of hands.” While she was perennially in over her head and out of her depth on the Hera, shipmates teamed up to help shipmates in any era. “You maybe got a phaser down here I can borrow?”

Thex grinned as she walked over to her desk. Fishing around underneath her desktop, she pulled out two phasers from a hidden compartment. " New additions since the last encounter. Stay behind me, okay? This suit is built for combat, and it can take a beating. " she said, handing her friend one of the phasers.

“Looks like it’s time for that team-up again, the brave and the bold,” Paris quipped, taking the phaser and checking the charge and settings. After the last time she had laid hands on a phaser and not known how to work it, Paris had acquainted herself with modern Starfleet standard weaponry. Satisfied, the golden girl deferred to her thoroughly modern and rather well-armored friend. "Lead on, Lieutenant Commander sh'Zoarhi."

"Let’s go make some trouble.”