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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) Starfleet Ship Design Bureau, Refit ("To Boldly Go...")
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Comet 2
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    • "Captain's Log, Stardate 24357.2; The Comet has left spacedock at Nahr and is approaching the edge of claimed space at high cruise. Our upcoming mission will go best if we are right on top of our quiet running game and hold our nerve. So I feel that the crew needs a challenge before we are ready to head behind enemy lines. Thankfully, the Polaris' patrol group is nearly back, and that gives me an idea..."

    -

    Adan th'Enoth stretches out at the table in his quarters, a set of playing cards in his hands, shuffling back and forth. The lights are dimmed, and synthehol and nibbles are mixed among the sloppy piles of chips.

    "So not just an Ambassador's sensor suite," notes Tib Mirendair as he taps a finger on his data padd, "We're supposed to also get by a Kepler and Centaur's sensors?"

    "If you want to see how good you are, you have to test yourself against the best," says Adan with a gregarious smile.

    "If running silent was easy, Mr Mirendair, everyone would do it and no one would bother with restrictive full cloaks," chimes in Rezzeth Bakari, the Chief Tactical Officer. Adan can't help but marvel as the human spacer rolls a playing chip back and forth across his knuckles with practiced ease.

    Adan laughs as he tosses another chip into the pile in the middle of the table. "Oh, so that's why the cloaks are restricted to dress uniforms? Call, by the way."

    "Atrocious human card games, I fold," says Saea Ildistoor, grimacing as she drops her cards onto the table. "A Kepler, you'll find, Mr Mirendair, can play a scouting role well, but its sensor package is actually no better than the Centaur, and less refined for this task than our own."

    Adan turns next to the Chief Medical Officer, the Paddah transfer, Beneth Mikout. She takes her time as she checks her cards again before replacing them securely on the table, again tallies her chips, prudently considers it, then shakes her head, closes her eyes and throws a set of chips almost at random into the pot. "Raise ... let me see, two hundred. We used to hear in the Magen Chalal about Starfleet ships making sensor ghosts of themselves, but I never really understood how that worked. For a while we just assumed ships were running with a limited cloak."

    Bakari snorts loudly and flips the chip he was playing with into the pot, then fishing our three more from his pile. "Well, if you ever want to see the process raised to an artform, try tracking Explorer Corps ships when they don't want to be seen. As an LT I was manning tactical sensors on the Justice as the Courageous was leaving stardock one day, and let me tell you, the eyes of Justice were not on her that day. Whole sensor contact got reclassified by the computer as stellar-wind interactions before they got out of photon torpedo range."

    "Right, but how?" asks Mikout.

    "It takes really good passive sensor work, for a start," begins Adan. "Gotta know exactly is out there that can give you away, and what you can use to disguise yourself."

    Ydzazzi the engineer takes over next as she tosses chips in the pot. "Engineering and Operations uses navigational deflectors and integrity fields to carefully regulate anything that escapes. If at warp, keep the oscillations of the subspace field so smooth it looks like background fluctuations in your wake."

    "Right," says Tib Mirendair, Chief of Operations, excitedly. He tosses his cards in towards the pot and turns to the doctor instead. "Cloaks present as a hole in space leaking tachyons, that's how we get on their trail. What we do is try to look like what's supposed to be there. Skirt around subspace anomalies so we fit in, go through oort clouds and let them refract our drive wake every which way, spoof interactions between other local forces."

    Saea straightens herself out in the seat and frowns at the others before more succinctly putting it as, "It is the science of presenting a sensor signature so reduced and modulated that other sensor operators discard your contact as background contacts. I hate it because they turn off much of my high-energy equipment while doing so."

    "Call again," says Adan th'Enoth. "I've spoken with Sydraxian officers after their change of government. They swore blind for a while Miracht must have had a cloak. Towards the end of our hostilities with them, their sensor operators were hitting almost anything and everything vaguely anomalous with active sensors."

    "That's a big part of the trick, Doctor," says Bakari as he calls again. "Look like something that doesn't warrant active sensor sweeps. The strength of a cloak is how it holds up to active sensors. You can still spoof it if you're good enough, and again, I've actively swept areas I knew had an Explorer Corps ship before and turned up a 'subspace transient shear' according to the computer."

    "Maybe they should be sending an Explorer Corps ship on this patrol then," notes Saea sourly.

    "The Fleet is more than just the Corps," countered Adan, before offering a gregarious smile. "We're more than capable of it, let's just keep away from those big Sanctuary tenders, okay?"

    -

    "Bridge Ops to Science Lab One," came a big booming sounding voice.

    Saea groans aloud and taps her Starfleet badge, saying, "Ildistoor here, can it wait?" She recognised the voice as Tchua, who often covered a number of Ops workstations beyond Environmental on bridge shifts.

    "Lieutenant-Commander, I've got the whole ship reading as ready except your lab. Could I get you to join the wave?"

    Saea's vision blurs for a moment as she tries to tamp down an apocalyptic scientific fury. After a deep breath she says, "I just got a new data-package from Daystrom, this mustn't wait. It'll only take a few hours."

    She knew that if it were anyone other than the easy going risan Tchua, she would have gotten a response that starts, "With all due respect," and proceeds downhill fast from there. As it is, Tchua's voice is strained as he replies. "Ms Ildistoor, you know I can't go and delay the start of silent running by a few hours. I've already got unfriendly eyes on my back from the Captain wondering if I'm caught in a riptide. In fact if they were any more intense I'd say she was standing behind m-argh!"

    Ildistoor looks upward in askance, raising a brow at the surprise high pitch noise. Her expression quickly turns into a queasy blanch as she hears the beep-warble noise of a second communicator joining the exchange. "Villeneuve here, this better be good."

    The Chief Science Officer visibly squirms, drawing looks from the other lab staff. "Captain, um." She turned and glanced at the progress data on the recently added Organic Nano-Isolation Resequencer, brought on board at the Starbase overhaul. "Daystrom has made breakthroughs on the theory behind Singer chipping, I'm trying to test and verify."

    There is a long silence on the line before Villeneuve comes back with, "Do you need to be supervising it while it works?"

    "No, it can be left to process for the next few days," replies Saea.

    No delay this time as Villeneuve replies sharply, "Leave it running. Report to Astrogation, that lab is going to make it harder to match the emissions."

    The Lieutenant-Commander visibly sags in relief. A moment later she realises her scientists are watching her with bemusement and straightens up. "Yes, Captain. Understood."

    "Bridge out."

    -

    Victoria Villeneuve made one last look over the panel at Tchua's workstation before she gave a sharp nod. "Alright, that'll do it." She turns and catches the attention of Tib, who was waiting patiently on the operations panel near the viewscreen, and calls out, "Hit it, Mr Mirendair."

    "Aye, Captain," he volleys back across the bridge before stabbing one of the few physical buttons on his control panel.

    In a flash the blue spacing bars on the status displays dotted throughout the ship turn a vivid yellow. A sharp double-chirp sounds and repeats, until a computer voice declares, "Yellow Alert, Yellow Alert."

    Villeneuve walks back towards her chair. She can see Tib speaking, announcing something over the crew address channel. Around her a host of other officers were in action. Ydzazzi's Second Engineer, a tall Caitian, is furiously tapping away to coordinate responses across the ship. Tib finishes talking and hands off his station to a Lieutenant in order to head off into the ship at large. The Seyek who serves as Ildistoor's main assistant is at the science panel, coordinating the flow of passive sensor data to Ops people in astrogation who need to null out the emissions. A Communications officer is talking to the nearest starbase to explain why they were suddenly losing their signal on sensors.

    Well, at least, why they should be losing their signal, if all goes well.

    After three minutes, the word comes from Commander Rezzeth Bakari, her Chief Tactical Officer. "Captain, we are currently operating at fifteen percent of our normal emissions."

    Villeneuve frowns at that. The original plan envisioned getting it down to five percent. Their approach relied on getting it down to at least ten. You need to be within a certain margin to effectively hide through most interstellar distortions. "How bad is Science's lab affecting it?"

    Rezzeth taps at screens for a moment before he shakes his head and says, "Minimal impact. Up to two percent at worst. We think the bulk is coming from recently overhauled equipment in Engineering."

    The Captain turned towards her First Officer, seated next to her. "Th'Enoth, time to put your Yoyodyne consultant hat back on. Go down there and see what can be done."

    "Not a problem, Captain," he says as he rises to his feet.

    Victoria considers her next step. They have only just begun but they're already racking up the setbacks. Yet time is already of the essence and she has to get her ship into motion. To the seasoned Indorian navigator she says, "Helm, lay in a course for the Tooruna Canopy cluster in the Oort Cloud, three-quarter impulse."

    "Tooruna Canopy, three-quarter impulse, aye, Captain," read back the Indorian.

    "Engage."

    Some twenty seconds later, Rezzeth mutters something that Victoria is just close enough to hear. She cocks an eyebrow at her tactical officer and turns to lean past the Captain's chair to say, "My bridge is not an Andorian cargo pier, Mr Bakari."

    Rezzeth stiffens upon realising he has been overhead. "Apologies, Captain. Emissions spike, passive sensors indicate our impulse engine wake is more detectable, not less."

    That is about as unwelcome as feared. "Getting this assignment right after an overhaul complicates everything, but we'll just have to adapt. Advise Ydzazzi, let them know I want the Drive Systems Division to pull all shifts in. Forget the Polaris, we won't get anywhere if everytime we drop to hide in an anomaly our impulse engines stand out like a transponder."

    -

    Ydzazzi leaned over the railing near the heat exchanger of the primary coolant loop. Her face is twisted into a snarl that would be unbecoming of a Starfleet officer but is par for the course for someone who spends most of their time at the Intazzi Yards. Frankly, if her equipment didn't want to get nasty looks, it shouldn't let her down like this.

    "We can run it off the backup coolant loop until we isolate what is generating the resonance in the thermal transfer," explains one of her warp core crew, a human Chief Petty Officer who had spent their entire Starfleet career working around warp core systems.

    Ydzazzi's antennae twitch. Human officers made for the most harrowing engineers. At least with Gaeni engineers you knew what to look out for. With humans you never knew when they were about to suggest something terrifying.

    Apparently Adan th'Enoth is of the same accord. "That option doesn't thrill me," says the First Officer. He leans at an odd angle against the railing. It was just as well, Ydzazzi thought, that th'Enoth knew his stuff, or he'd have hardly made it past JG with his presentation. Probably drove the Captain to despair.

    The Chief spread his hands helplessly and says, "We can try to diagnose it in use, but I'm sure you can see the complications." He half turns and points to a similar looking construct peeking out from around the warp core. "It's a full-size backup."

    Ydzazzi exchanges a look with Adan, both of them bearing a sour expression. "And if anything happens to it while we have this one cracked open for inspection we may have to dump the core."

    "Well that wouldn't do," says Adan, pushing up from the catwalk ledge. "Ms Ydzazzi, get in touch with Science. Lieutenant-Commander Ildistoor got some new toys with the last overhaul, and I seem to recall there's a new scanner in there that makes our tricorders look like show props."

    Ydzazzi pauses for a moment to process that, then says, with a little shortage of composure, "She got one of the experimental Tetryon scanners?"

    "I know," says Adan with one of his gregarious smiles. "For someone who professes not to have any friends, Ms Ildistoor sure has a few of them in high places." He gestures dismissively towards the high-pressure tube of antimatter, deuterium, and dilithium that could punch a hole in Nahr if anything happened to it, making Ydzazzi's antennae twitch again. "I'll go see what's going wrong with the starboard impulse reactor, you sort out the coolant loop."

    -

    Victoria strips her jacket off and hangs it neatly off the back of a chair. A set of long overdue stretches ensue before she settles down at the table in her quarters. The mostly familiar feeling of the warp drive runs through the deck. Mostly familiar, for the Comet's warp drive has always had just a little bit of unfamiliarity to it compared to other more conventional Starfleet drives. Something just that little bit more fiery and intense - presumably that Intazzi influence. She didn't mind it. Helped keep her on her toes.

    A cup of tea has been left by her Yeoman, and Victoria takes it up and sips. A reward for a busy day. She leans back in her chair and calls out, "Computer, readback telemetry dashboard Vic-theta-one."

    There is a little confirmatory chirp, and then from the speakers, "Telemetry details are as follows: destination, Arigan system subpsace distortion; current Warp Field strength, one thousand, five hundred and twelve Cochranes; destination referential frame velocity, seven hundred and forty times c; current subspace and electromagnetic spectrum emissions versus standard operations, twelve percent; expected time to destination, thirty-six hours."

    Well, it's cutting it close. This should skate by with the Typhoon's sensors, but the Kepler and Polaris could easily get a lucky break at this range. But once they arrive at Arigan, they'll need impulse, which will shine like a beacon even through the distortions unless th'Enoth can get it fixed. But they need that distortion to mask their arrival and course change by scattering their warp drive wake and making it look like a natural occurrence.

    Thankfully, Adan is confident he can get the impulse drive and reactor to stop emitting excess Delta radiation in time. But the question of the coolant loop's resonance was going to be a pain to resolve.
     
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    • ah teething problems. bugs and what have you. At least the bug fixes and teething problems will be fixed and reported up the chain so that proper corrections can be made to the wave.

    The Rest, Well that remains to be seen.
     
    We've got twentyish of that class under construction, from memory. Every one of the chief engineers assigned to those vessels should be going over the data packets Comet sends home - they've got their work cut out for them.
     
    Those are a lot of minor problems that seem to be popping up.
    Still early days. Things should even out.

    And hey maybe all these errors will be smooth out during the production of the others.

    Nice little story so far, having a little bit of a hard time tracking who is who doing what but other then that very much enjoying it.
     
    Yep, very well written episode I thought, lots of world-enriching detail, though also a fairly slow buildup to whatever is going to happen happening.

    Also, Much ado about sensors (which I appreciate).
    Redhead222 said:
    Nice little story so far, having a little bit of a hard time tracking who is who doing what but other then that very much enjoying it.
    Click to expand...
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    There's a list of some of the command crew here- USS Comet
    Bridge Alpha Shift
    • Environmental Officer Lieutenant JG Tchua, Risan
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    As for the teething troubles, is it a bit concerning that a year after launch they're still running in to so many? The main front of the build wave will also be launching soon, early in 2327.
    Anyone recall if the Kepler prototype had similar issues reported in logs?
    OneirosTheWriter said:
    seven hundred and forty times c; current subspace and electromagnetic spectrum emissions versus standard operations, twelve percent;
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    Still, Warp... 9 I think, at 12% emissions isn't too shabby, eh.
     
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    OneirosTheWriter said:
    A Kepler, you'll find, Mr Mirendair, can play a scouting role well, but its sensor package is actually no better than the Centaur, and less refined for this task than our own."
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    The Kepler, Centaur-B and Comet designs were all finalised in the mid-late 2310s, following the Gabriel and Arcadian conflicts. As it happens, in the new ship builder, they all share the same (then) bleeding-edge T3, 2320s High Fidelity Sensor, which is specialised in minesweeping (and anti-cloaking) capabilities. These get called upon in the Skirmish phase of fleet battles with minefields.

    We worked out that in-universe this likely derives from a Starfleet Tactical mandate to address our frigates lost to minefields in those conflicts, leading to a decade of frigates deploying that particular sensor package. Particularly as those designs are likely to see combat in the early, skirmish phases of battle and encounter minefields. (We even went as far as installing an updated T4 version on the Rennie-A, though that cruiser doesn't skirmish).

    The broad range of general scientific and analytic capabilities on the Kepler mean that that's the only specialised sensor package installed. (The Centaur-B has a T1 Tactical sensor array dating to the earlier Centaur-A refit, and the Comet has both a T3 Tactical sensor array and an Ambassador-style T2 long-range sensor array, on top of the minesweeping/anti-cloak capability).

    "Without" that Watsonian(?) interpreted-mandate from Starfleet Tactical to focus on minesweeping, and the parallel drive to push it into the Fleet Scout role, it's quite possible the Kepler instead would have had a long-range sensor package and S10.
     
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