RP Log: A Little Educated Guessing
| Roleplay Log | |
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| Participants: | |
Location(s):
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| Stardate: | |
| 2022-08-14 21:11 | |
- Main Engineering <USS Buran NX-96400>
- Main engineering is a long rectangular room interrupted by a large circular area in its center. Each end of the room has bulkheads lined with consoles and LCARS panels, collectively able to tie into almost every single system aboard the vessel. On the far end of the room opposite the corridor entrance is a large console, affectionately known as the pool table, that rises out of the deck independently of the rest. The pool table contains the Main Engineering's Master Systems Display, and acts as a general monitoring system for the ship's systems.
- Both to port and starboard are access lifts to the vessel's four nacelles. Spanning multiple decks up and down, and held in place by a series of purposefully designed tension rods, is the ship's massive warp core.
Znaiyu follows the order and makes for the pool table, eyes gleaming. "Have we got any new info on whatever Commander Coil found on Volan?" she asks hopefully.
"As a matter of fact" LePage says, taking up a hand controller and engaging the pool table, bringing up a diagram of the Volan remote-reactor and the cloak from the Cardassian cruisers. "That's exactly what we're tackling"
"Great," Znaiyu snatches up the secondary controler. "I was hoping we'd get first crack at this. I thought from the last report the cloak systems themselves would be fairly ordinary. Except for maybe their method of connection with the remote reactor." She brings LePage's scans of the cloak up on her half of the table and skims them with interest. "I didn't get a chance to look at these when you initially took them."
"So, the great mystery of how the cloak was able to be maintained while firing has already been taken from us" LePage says. "It got remotely powered by the Volan reactor which removed it from the system loop of the ship which removed the instability inherent with that. But, we can still try and fill in the gaps here about how that power got to the cloaks so that we can begin to better identify these things in the future, and relevant to engineering, how it was integrated into their systems"
"/How/ the power was delivered is a more interesting mystery anyhow," Znaiyu says. "Given all the places we've run into the remote-powered cruisers, they've figured out how to send power incredible distances. Probably without too much loss over distance, because cloaking systems aren't exactly power-cheap even under normal circumstances." She sounds and looks almost green with envy, whiskers and sears pricked forward. "do you think the pocket universes aren't a side effect, but the method of power transfer?"
"I think it's part and parcel and two sides of the same coin" LePage says. "Remember the warp wave experiments seventy odd years ago? Those were massive energy transfers, but they were uncontained in a lot the same way as these pocket universes... which I'm really not liking that name, I still feel like that's not necissarily how that works. My initial feeling here is that it's got something to do with the subspace regular space interface. Thoughts?"
"If we're working with the same or similar principles then," Znaiyu says, "we ought to be able to preemptively discipate their carriers before the energy can even be applied to their ship systems. I wonder if the scans you took of the cloaking system just before the ship was destroyed could lead us bacck to earlier evidence of its use than the pocket ... than whatever their carrier is. Some use or abuse of the border between subspace and regular space would make most sense, if it's not actually some sort of real pocket universe. We just haven't been able to detect whatever it is early enough to make any difference in time yet."
"Well, having a realtime scan of the cloak on operation, while time-locked to external scans of that ship and it's local space and subspace, goes a long way in understanding the interface and operation here" LePage says. "Let's step through the data here as the cloak operates and as subspace is disturbed" He says, using his hand controller to start them running through the data.
There's a bit of silence while the data scrolls, and eventually Znaiyu sighs. "We're doing the difficult parts before the easy ones," she says, stopping her own scroll at the first detectible spacial anomalies. "We get to see when the energy transfer arrives, but we could really do with seeing it at its point of origin. I don't suppose we have any data on the reactor itself yet?" She scrolls a touch further back and studies the scans a few milliseconds before noticeable anomalies begin to register.
"The way the local space is affected, there must have been additional buildup of energy along the conduit, whatever it is, before our scanners begin to detect it here. What if we altered our scanners to take more note of this range here ..." she highlights something on the display for him to see, but doesn't sound entirely convinced even with her own suggestion.
LePage nods. "The problem here is that the Volan reactor isn't likely to give us more data, now with everything that's gone down. In the end, we know why the cloaks did what they did but the power transmission would be a nice solve... There's probably a reason that doctor mentioned in the reports made it his speciality. The conduit is the key, I would agree, but it's in that interface between subspace and real space. It exists between when it shouldn't, I think"
Znaiyu nods slowly. "The reactor's out of our hands anyway. And I'm not sure experimentation with the system they have in place would be smart anyway, look at all the damage its already caused. We can't contain the results until we've pinpointed the conduit." She taps her extended claws thoughtfully on her controler. "I don't just can't see how to tease it out into the open with the data we have now. If it is on the line between subspace and realspace, our sensors will have to undergo some heavy alteration to sniff it out. What if it /is/ some line between universes rather than a line between spaces? There have been cases here and there we could at least draw scan data from to compare."
"It's worth some consideration I suppose. At that point, it's really crossing into Commander Coil's world then. But I thought we'd take a look and see if we could glean something interesting from this data" LePage sighs. "It's not always the case that we do"
"Sometimes it takes multiple goes," Znaiyu agrees. "It's worth another look with fresh eyes once we've had some sleep and maybe a meal. Can I copy some of this info off for myself? I'd like to have another go at it when I wake up later. Some of the best ideas happen in the middle of the night you know?"
"Yeah that works" LePage nods. "You can copy this onto your PADD, just mind the restrictions with the data transfer and know it could disappear if it has to, the usual caveats"
"Good enough for me," Znaiyu says. She transfers the data over to her PADD before tucking it away and giving the pool table a last, long eyeball. Like something might pop out and enlighten them. "Let me know if you have any flashes of insight in the meantime. It would be something to pull this problem apart before the science department can do it."
"Fair enough. If you need anything, you know how to get at me. I think I'm going to retire for the night" LePage says. "Good training, I'll get more lined up for you when we can"
"Aye sir." Znaiyu salutes and clears her screen. "See you then."