Reactive
Posted on 15 Jan 2021 @ 10:56pm by Commander Calliope Zahn & Captain Corvus DeHavilland & Lieutenant Commander Lance Quinn (*)
Edited on on 15 Jan 2021 @ 10:57pm
Mission:
M1 - Emergence
Location: Obsidian Command, CiC & Reactor Maintenance
Timeline: MD07 0800
2274 words - 4.5 OF Standard Post Measure
The parts had been installed. The work had been double and triple-checked. The engineering staff were dead on their feet (indeed, one of them had actually had to be treated for exhaustion). But, Lance mused, they had achieved their goal. Relatively close to schedule, in fact. After the mishap with the refugees he had been momentarily waylaid, but with Barmeadow’s help they were finally ready. He’d even made a mental note to see if Captain DeHavilland might get the real version transferred back to the station. Good help was hard to find.
“Well, Captain,” he declared, as though it were a formality. “We’re ready here. The reactor start-up will happen sequentially. As the first reactor stabilises we will be preparing to bring the next in the chain to operational levels. Slowly, I might add.” He paused. “I feel as though there may be some custom I am not aware of to take place - as if you are meant to give the order?”
“If we had the time, I’d send someone out to chuck a bottle of champagne at the hull,” Corvus quipped with a chuckle, “But seeing as I’d much rather have a sonic shower, we’ll go with the always cliche, ‘make it so’, Commander,” she smirked.
The thought of a nice sonic shower, a hot plate of something that wasn’t a Starfleet ration pack and a return to her regular morning cups of tea sounded heavenly. Not to mention stable weapons, shields, environmental controls and lift controls. Normal was something they’d not seen on this station since they set foot on it.
“Aye, Captain. Bringing reactor one up now.” Lance watched the controls intently. He was calm, knowing that the job was done well enough that there were unlikely to be significant issues. “Twenty-five...thirty percent…” he relayed. It was unnecessary, since the Captain wouldn’t be able to do anything to particularly affect it, but reading off growing numbers seemed to placate most people. “Stand by to bring up reactor two once we have steady reaction control.”
On her end, Corvus watched the little holographic display on the table showing each of the reactors and number one slowly filling with color to indicate its progress in coming online. She wasn’t an engineer by any stretch of the imagination but she knew what would happen if you did this too fast. You stood a solid chance of blowing out systems that would be even harder to repair than the initial damage would be. Slow and steady would win this race.
Calliope had assumed the main Operations station, not as a slight to Ltjg Hokir, so much as what she considered her responsibility in a very ‘highly charged’, so-to-speak, situation. Hokir worked from a support station, assisting with the power grid overview. The map of the power grid was overlaid on a spinning representation of the station but presently was largely darkened throughout, save for the heart of the system where the first reactor was warming up. Ever since the capture of electricity, civilizations had learned to unplug their devices in case of surge— in this case that amounted to disconnecting everything on the grid from the reactors and the central power distribution hubs. Life support, computers, communications, and controls were being operated from reserves, which would only need to serve until they saw each reactor to stabilization and observed the central grid holding. Then began the steady systems onboarding process of powering all the systems back up from the primary grid. Shields, first, she presumed. Then weapons. Their defenses had been a primary point of concern and, unfortunately, the next couple of hours would be the most vulnerable of all. Security and Tactical had been brought to alert. The Marines had been briefed. Patroling ships had been called to closer formations in the surrounding system.
Calliope tracked the power readings and bit her lip. Should she mention what she saw to Lance or was it going to annoy him? He should know she saw it from Ops, at least. “Engineering, there are frequency spikes of point-oh-four to point-oh-seven. It’s within parameters, but see if you can tune that a little?”
“I saw that already,” Lance responded tersely. “It’s well within acceptable levels. And we’re only on the second reactor.” He avoided glancing around to see if anyone clocked his abruptness. “Ensign, bring the third reactor to pre-start levels. And keep an eye on the flow regulator - if that shows any sign of difficulty you tell me immediately.”
Calliope inhaled and forced herself not to remark in kind. She was at a neat console with a hologram image. He was under considerably more pressure below decks. Instead she turned to Corvus to explain what they were discussing. “Captain, see the regulation matrix?” She pointed out the segment of the overlay chart and expanded it in the hologram above them. “As we bring multiple reactors with concurrent loads online, it’s not enough that they each come to full output, but also that they all are balanced in the intermix. There’s a regulator between each of them that works similarly to what we’re used to seeing on ships to maintain power flows from warp drives, but having multiple reactor cores makes for not just a complex output, but a complex input as well. Engineering is going to keep the raw output aligned roughly enough for the regulator to handle the finer adjustments. Each reactor that comes up will require a tighter adjustment to keep them all within parameters.”
“I don’t care if it takes an extra two hours, as long as we get power back online successfully take as long as it needs to do it right,” she replied. The last thing they needed was to cause more problems because they couldn't be bothered to move slow and deliberately.
Calliope watched the progress on the second reactor. “I like those numbers, Quinn,” she said, tapping at the air. “And I’m seeing what you’re doing now. You left the fluctuations so you could compensate with the second as it came up.”
“Almost as if I know precisely what I’m doing,” he said quietly enough so that she wouldn’t hear. “There’s a minor phase variance in the containment field. Am boosting integrity so that it remains constant.” His action complete, Lance leaned back with a minor flourish. “That’s the most difficult part overcome,” he explained to the Captain. “Sequentially the reactors should be coming online within the next few moments.”
“What is a realistic timeframe for full systems restoration?” Corvus asked, “Keep in mind, while I would like everything functional, I don’t want to do it at the expense of things coming online smoothly,” she clarified. It wouldn’t do for them to get trigger happy in bringing things online and end up crippling the station to the point they were sleeping on the Pathfinder.
“Once all four reactors are up, containment is holding, and the flow regulation tests out, we can start onlining systems. *If*,” Calliope stressed, “there are no major hitches in the primary systems’ grids, we should have power to all systems within two hours. Results may vary, however. The functionality of the systems will be reliant on a lot of other maintenance factors. But they’ll have power available. Since we discussed it as priority, Tactical has been working with maintenance to make sure shields and weapons systems are ready for power up. I have the most confidence in completely onlining those systems. Main computer, comms, and life support in already established habitable areas should be simple enough to switch back to from the reserve power. Internal sensors will be powered but require maintenance and will be unreliable. We’ll get some external sensors back, but there’s been limited maintenance. We should have a boosted resolution from the new sensor net once our array is repowered and we can tune in the signal. Transporter systems should be functional, but I wouldn’t recommend using them without full safety reviews as they’ve been unmaintained since being shut down.”
Calliope couldn’t repress a devilish grin, though she tried. Her smirk could be heard through the open comm line. “As momentous as coming online is, there are thousands of decks to bring back up to code. Engineering’s work has only just begun.”
“Well I’ll sleep much better knowing we’ve at least got full power to shields and weapons,” Corvus folded her arms worriedly.
“There is a structure and procedure to all things,” Lance replied tersely. “Shields and weapons systems draw far more power than secondary systems such as life support or replicators—”
“That’s true, they’re power hogs.” Calliope confirmed with a shrug at the hologram of Lance. “But we can run life support from reserved power for several days. That’s more than enough buffer.”
“—It is, of course, your priority. It just may not be as efficient.” For a moment his eyes drifted to Calliope. “There are some things that I would argue need to be solved more urgently.” He turned back to his console. “It is, of course, Captain’s discretion. Reactor three is showing nominal flow regulation. Prepare to commence start-up of reactor four in sixty seconds.”
Calliope sighed. “Acknowledged.” Quinn had to have seen the systems order she had been developing for Operations to run. He was only just now suggesting there was a better one? “Commander Quinn, please advise as to what issues need solved more urgently.” Husband or not, you never waved off an engineer using the word urgent.
“Shields and weapons are no good to me if they’re only available for five minutes, and then crash,” Corvus answered, “Mr. Quinn I trust your judgement on this. You know our goal. Initialize systems in the order you think best,” she ordered, swallowing her own urge to demand he bring weapons and shields back online immediately, damn everything else. It wasn’t too late to change her mind. Right?
Calliope dropped her detailed plan of systems restoration on the mission table where it made a sharp slap, and she leaned on her knuckles. “Captain—” She stopped herself from launching off into a tirade in the command center. “A word in private, Ma’am.”
Corvus looked to her, raising an eyebrow curiously and then nodded, “Carry on as you are, Commander,” she said, terminating the audio feed. “Give us some space, folks,” she said to the rest of the officers nearby who took the hint to find another station. “Calli?” she asked once they had gone.
“You’re taking orders from the tail of the ship.” Calliope said, speaking low and in confidence. “Quinn wasn’t in the Tactical planning sessions. We’ve funneled efforts into shield emitter maintenance and phaser array repair. Powering up unmaintained systems first gets us nowhere when we have shields and weapons prepared to power. You should hear him on advisement, but so far he’s only referencing start up protocol and efficiency levels. Operations already took that into account when we made the alternate restart plan.”
“You’re right. Quinn wasn’t in the tactical planning sessions, so we don’t know what he might have said about our plans and subsequent efforts. That may have been a mistake on our part,” Corvus answered. “Something we don’t know yet. I don’t see any harm in letting our Chief Engineer fly the ship for now,” she said, shaking her head. It didn’t make sense why Calli was arguing this. “Unless there’s something else going on here?” she asked, “Everything… ok at home with Lance?”
Disbelieving that Corvus thought this was personal, Calliope slow blinked. “You’ve had the pedal to the floor in the race to get the reactors up. It’s necessitated most every waking minute for Lance since he’d finished his tea on arrival. He didn’t have time to attend talking panels on sector threats. *Your* gut has said we need to get some cover over our asses since we took the first tour of the station. And now, in the moments when we’re most vulnerable we’re going to commence start up on non-defensive systems because Lance likes protocol? Corvus...”Calliope sighed. “You’re second guessing yourself is what this is.”
Corvus chewed on her lip and folded her arms over her chest. Cover was the thing they needed most. Maybe she was second-guessing herself. She’d have been lying to herself if she didn’t admit to being terrified they’d be left helpless here in a situation worse than what they’d started with. She let out a slow sigh, turning to Calliope, “Maybe y-.” she started, only to be interrupted by Ensign Labeck.
“Captain. I have a priority subspace transmission from Admiral Sepandiyar.”
“Naturally,” she muttered under her breath, “Put it through here,” she ordered with a tight smile, waving at the table in front of them.
’You’re right, Calliope.’ Tired of catching everyone’s disdain, Calliope constructed the rest of that conversation in her imagination as she straightened her uniform to present to the Admiral. ‘Oh no, it’s you, Corvus. You were right all along.’ The hologram of Admiral Sepiandar flickered on and Calliope refocused her attention to study his serious visage. It wouldn’t be long until they had Admirals around as a matter of course and, if she was being honest with herself, she was hardly prepared for it...
