The Long Crawl
Posted on 08 Nov 2020 @ 1:22pm by Lieutenant Commander Godiva Kimberlye
Mission:
M1 - Emergence
Location: Jefferies Tubes
Timeline: MD05 1200HRS
1374 words - 2.7 OF Standard Post Measure
There was nothing that would make an Engineer more uncomfortable than lines upon lines of hand run ODN cables, EPS hook ups, and information boosters. It would have made it worse that they jutted out from random places, onto various decks, and were spooled across the ground in places. It was far from pretty, in fact, it was down right ugly. Any other day and Godiva likely would have had a heart attack to see an Engineering team making such an absolute mess.
But there was no Engineering team.
And this wasn't any other day.
And Godiva had made the mess.
So, with her knees hooked around the ladder, and was hanging upside down while she adjusted one of the cables in question, wrapping it around the ladder a few times to keep it in place and somewhat neatly to the side to allow people to still use this junction. She pulled it as taunt as she could without risking damaging the delicate components as she did, and then pulled herself up to connect it to a makeshift computer terminal. This terminal was little more than a computer relay with a PaDD hard wired into it.
Her face was contorted in the darkness, only the pair of IR goggles to let her see what she was working on, but it meant no risk of an accidental discharge. Carefully she connected each line into it's proper spot, and watched as the PaDD registered the connection to the rest of the network she had been creating over the last hour. It was going faster than she had hoped, seeing as it was just her working away on the project. She watched for a minute on the PaDD as it sputtered out it's information. Six decks below the main sensor network was registering that a new sensor had been connected, it just wasn't receiving the information. Which was fair, because three decks up the deep space telescope was still not actually connected to the network. This was however the last relay she had to install, the next line was straight up to the telescope itself. She heaved a heavy sigh, because this was the easy part. Connecting the telescope would mean deep down below she would have all the information fed into the sensor grid to try and understand what it was receiving. But, with the Main Computer barely functional, that information had to be processed as well, and fed to the various systems that would need it. Which mean stealing, er, acquiring, a computer core from a shuttle. She hadn't asked for permission from Flight Control, but the shuttle she'd stolen it from was destroyed anyway, definitely no longer serviceable, so it was likely no one would even notice anyways...
1400HRS
The telescope was in remarkable shape, all things considered, having been nestled into its housing and left offline during the incidents that had lead to this station being pulled into the void where it had disappeared. That meant that as other systems were scrapped for power, this one which was of very little use to someone stuck inside a pocket of subspace with nothing in it, was left alone. Even it's own computer terminal had been left alone. Had. Most of it's base now lay down on the deck plating, and cables were fed into it in ways that made it very clear that this was a hack job and not something that could be sanctioned by the Starfleet Corps of Engineers. Lines connected at weird angles, as Ms. Kimberlye carefully soldered connections to one another, eyeing the terminal that hung near her fact. She watched as various bits snapped to life, then faded out, connections made, power briefly delivered, and then with nothing to actually talk to, the system powered down. Carefully she worked away, the silence of the room completely lost to her, and she putzed away with ease.
It took some time, how many hours she was unsure, but she finally pushed away from here handiwork and grimaced. It looked awful, but it meant that they would be able to watch their surroundings. This was going to be the most important part, they weren't completely blind now. More like a bat, with great sonar capabilities. But at the very least they could watch a ship approach, and the woman theorized, with enough fine tuning, they could probably track a cloaked ship with the system. Not that it would be super likely to be good enough for that, but hey, the theory was sound enough. Dusting herself off, Godiva untangled herself from the mess, and stood up, took a look at everything, sighed, and picked up her tools and bag. This was the easy part.
1940HRS
Like giant pythons, a mass of cables snaked themselves into the Intelligence Office. It was tied into everything after all, and she could easily modify that same system to feed the information back out to the rest of the Command Deck. Sitting on top of the non-functional holotable, the shuttle's computer core glowed angrily, finding itself bit into by one of the mighty pythons. Another became a hydra, its many heads sinking their teeth into various spots on the holotable, as well as a pair of units that were formerly PaDDs. The whole room flickered in a way that indicated the unstable power draw, but Godiva monitored the situation carefully. One of the various crew that was still working on the deck had been kind enough to bring in some rations, which sat equally spread about the room as the woman worked and ate. A third PaDD was added to the mix, as she keyed in lines of code to make sure the system was in order and working as expected. "Spaghetti and Meat Balls" the back she was spooning into her face proudly exclaimed. It was, to some degree, close in flavour, if you ignored that it was a brick.
There was an angry buzz, and the computer core changed colours, with a flare of the lights in the room, which quickly dimmed. But, according to the system she was, at the very least, receiving a signal from the whole mess. The first of the PaDDs in the hydra's mouth, proudly declared that it was connected to the main sensor grid and had power. The second was telling her that the telescope was active and receiving information. With one last look towards the python that was coiled around the borrowed computer core, she nodded, and was gone from the room.
It was a short walk to the CIC, and once inside, she nodded to a few of the crew that were working there, as she made her way to the sensor controls. Keying in her commands to the system, she brought up the Intelligence network, and began feeding information from that system to the system in front of her. It took a few minutes for the two computers to talk to one another, but eventually she was getting a steady stream of information.
Keying a few commands in, she pulled up the first test, a local area sweep that would tell her how many ships were near by. She knew this information, she'd had the various ships around her feed the information to her so she could calibrate everything. Firing off the last in the series of checks, she let the system begin feeding back to her. It took a moment, longer than anyone was used to with a modern computer, but it started giving her data. Four ships in the immediate local volume, and then fifteen total within ten light years. Stretching the grid, she started getting information from about twenty square light years, and then let the system begin to process. This would give them, at maximum warp, a three hour warning grid. It wasn't great, but it was enough to at least let them know a ship was coming, hail them, and hope for the best.
Now the woman let her mind slip towards thoughts of the rangers on board, and she began to plan for tomorrow as she packed up her tools. She had much to think about.
