Refractions: A Thousand Papercuts
Posted on 27 Feb 2024 @ 9:05pm by Commander Calliope Zahn & Captain Corvus DeHavilland & Lieutenant Commander Christophe Leblanc & Lieutenant Ethan Gunnarsen
Mission:
M4 - Falling Out
Location: Pathfinder, On Patrol
Timeline: MD25
1647 words - 3.3 OF Standard Post Measure
The Pathfinder rocked under another round of adaptive fire. Although not a big ship, Pathfinder was easily outmaneuvered by the tiny little pirate vessel which could switch its heading or even outright swivel on a dime, making targeting the nasty little skiff a frustrating exercise as it wore down the Pathfinder’s shields. It was not unlike being ankle bitten by a small dog.
And it was becoming tiresome. Calliope sat slightly askew in the Captain’s chair, her chin in her thumb and forefinger, trying not to express her exasperation as she watched another of their phaser volleys fly wide. “Ms. Saaba, I know you’re doing your best.”
“Yes, Commander,” the Bolian confirmed as she tried to apply predictive pattern recognition to the little ship. “I’m trying.”
The Pathfinder swayed gently to and fro again as another bite was taken at the ankles.
“Shields?” Calliope’s fingers fanned out as she asked the question, one she had already repeated a dozen times in the past ten minutes, since launching their own shuttle. It was well out of visual range, deep into the ice rings now, and hopefully able to locate the transport ship they had come to aid. No sooner had they dispatched it than the skiff came barreling out of a blind zone. While they couldn’t seem to put the hurt on the little buzzard, they could at least keep it occupied and off the shuttle below. Hopefully Lt. Noah Koroushi, who was leading the away team otherwise comprised of their Marine fire team, would be able to make contact and secure the Virgil...
“Shields are at Eighty-six percent,” Saaba replied.
“Lovely.” Calliope stood up and strode towards the viewport to lean in over the ops station. On screen was a huge skyline, the edge of a gas giant, and below them the busy clutter of actively colliding ice rings, their formation being relatively young and not yet settled, like much of the rest of this system including the outer shell of icy elements that made the entire interior of the system unscannable from the outside, like a mirror of reflective particulate matter. A perfect hiding place? Or perhaps far too obvious for the freighter to have gone to ground, so to speak. But as the saying went, ‘Any port in a storm’. Calliope had to admit she might have made the same call the captain of the SS Virgil had while being under attack. She wondered if the Virgil had been fending off more than just this one little skiff. They had shields and repulsor cannons and the tiny ship would have posed minimal threat. It was possible the rest of the pack was also somewhere in the system, also hunting for the Virgil in all the signal scatter...
“Stay alert.” Calliope said, knowing that her order wasn’t going to do anything to counter the scanning scatter. She thought about the probes they had used to narrow down the location of the Virgil. “Mr. Edgerton. Do we still have any contact with any of our search probes?”
“Yes, Commander,” Chief Edgerton nodded, already accessing them and turning their efforts towards them. “I may be able to assist the targeting systems with additional telemetry,” he offered. “Standby.”
The shields lit up again, the little skiff a dark, sensor absorbing triangular form crossing the view port and twisting and diving once more.
“Negligible effect.” Saaba reported after a second, having watched the meter drop and then rise by the same measure…. “Damage is equivalent to regeneration that pass.”
“Mr. Edgerton, can we trap this annoying hornet?”
“I may have a lock, Commander,” Edgerton replied, frowning at his panel as he worked it, slowly shaking his head. “No… sorry, Commander. They’re jamming the tractor somehow. Not entirely sure how… working that out now…” he trailed off, now on a mission to figure out just how they were doing that, and if he could manage a counter.
“I suppose we could do this all day at this rate. Just keep them drawn away from the Virgil., Mr. Gunnarsen.” Or from their best guess at the Virgil’s position, at any rate.
“Will do, Commander.” Ethan’s gaze never left the screen as he eased into a curve that would hopefully lure the quarry aside while still providing some cover for themselves in the process.
“Any word from our away team?”
“Negative, Commander.” Ensign Rieblin all but glared at the screen. “Ice rings are creating a signal barrier; I can’t get anything in, and I’m not sure if anything I’m sending is making it out.”
Returning to center stage, Calliope settled back into the command chair. “Then we continue to run interference and trust them to find the Virgil. Bridge to Engine room.”
The communique interrupted Danica’s sentence as she gave orders to an Ensign amid the bustle of the engine room. She was accustomed to being the second engineer on the totem pole during any given regular duty shift, so command aboard a starship was a bit of a leap. Still, she tried to ignore the noise and hurrying crew around her and stay confident and calm.
“This is Lieutenant Vega.” She said, lifting a finger to silence the Ensign in front of her.
“Take measures to maintain shield regeneration rates. We’re going to have to hold out here until we hear back from the away team.”
“Yes, ‘ma’am. I’ll take a closer look.” She said as she left the Ensign behind and made a beeline for the shield control station. Placing a hand on the shoulder of the Petty Officer stationed there. “We need to speed up the shield modulization rates. I’m all ears for your recommendation.”
She didn’t hesitate to listen to the people around her. After all, it wasn’t like she knew everything.
“The shield generators have to compensate for the strains of the generation process when frequencies are rotating. If we were to pull the shields closer to the hull, it would reduce that work and speed up the modulation rate.” The woman said, a self assured expression on her face.
“Any downsides?” Danica asked, realizing she had read a paper on the relationship between shield, diameter, and shield efficiency at some point in the past few months.
“No, ma’am, besides the fact we’ll need to go without shields for a split second. “It would be a bad time to get hit”
“Noted, thank you.” Danica said with a nervous smile. She tapped her commbadge. “Bridge, I’d like to recommend we reduce the shields to 1.2 meters from the hull in order to increase efficiency.”
Calliope gave that a thought. It would create a smaller target for the skiff, which was getting a lot of easy punches to the bubble. Not to mention the generators wouldn’t have as much range to project, even if it did increase the surface geometry. “Yes, bring it in,” Zahn approved.
Down in the Engine Room, Danica gave a nod of understanding to the Commander even though she couldn’t see her. Immediately feeling silly, she turned to the shield station. Standing next to the Petty Officer, Danica reached over and pressed a few keys. The women worked together silently for several seconds before Danica raised her voice over the din of the room, tapping her commbadge again.
“Alright, Bridge, we’ll experience about half a second of shieldlessness during the shield geometry shift. Hopefully the pirates shooting at us won’t…get lucky.” she said, furrowing her brow.
“Understood. Engine Room, hold for my mark between volleys.” Zahn responded, waiting for Saaba to give the clear at tactical.
“Yes, ma’am.” Danica said, her voice slightly shaky. The stakes were higher, and she had yet another reason to interpret herself as the dumbest person in the room. She shook her head, but remained silent, waiting for the Commander’s orders.
Over the comms, Lt jg Saaba could be heard coordinating with Gunnarsen as they took new evasive action. There was another point of loss on the shields before it was over and Zahn, counting on the phaserbanks of the little ship going through a standard charge cycle spoke again. “Clear for the adjustment, Ms. Vega.”
“Initiating the shift in three…two…one…mark.” Danica said then, and pressed the initiation button. On the display in front of her, the white arch around the ship’s display went black, and indication that the shields were down. Even though there was only a half second between when the light went off and it would inevitably come back on, her heart felt like it skipped a beat. Would she screw this up? But, despite her doubts, the white light appeared again at the expected time, this time closer to the diagram of the Pathfinder. “Shields are up again, ma’am. We’ll run some analysis down here and see how much faster our modulation rate is.”
“Excellent. If you see any other ways we can tighten the grid performance, call them out.” Back on the Bridge, Calliope examined the results of the shield adjustments. With a 26% modulation rate increase now factored in, the death of a thousand papercuts was going to be staved off appreciably longer. Crossing her legs and sitting back, she waited for more of the same kind of expert problem solving from the other departments as the Engine Room was delivering. Soon, she knew, Edgerton would have the additional probe telemetry for targeting, and Ensign Reiblin at Operations would find a way to hear comms through the refractory ice.
It was just a matter of time, so long as they could buy themselves more of it.
