Hooking Up The Jumper Cables

Posted on Fri Jan 10th, 2020 @ 1:17am by The Narrator & Lieutenant Commander Mara Ricci
Edited on on Tue Feb 4th, 2020 @ 4:00pm

Mission: S2:1: Into The Drowning Deeps
Location: Canopus Station/ RCN Dauntless
Timeline: MD 1 : 23.45

Chief Stroma, now out of her armoured vac suit and in the day uniform of the Carcosian Navy, watched over every member of the Canopus Station engineering team. To be fair the other Carcosian's did the same, though many seemed curious at the familiar-looking people in strange uniforms. The only two who seemed utterly unaware of the intrusion of spacers from the other side of the uncanny valley were two Carcosian Marines in heavy armour, the sensor pitted face plates lowered as they kept their rifles at a ready.

The main power room of the Dauntless had had a pair of floor lights brought in to illuminate the space. The false vacuum reactor still rested in its cradle, the material still looking putty-like under the glare of the lights. Stroma sighed heavily and walked over to Mara.

"I will admit...your tool pushers seem to know something about what they're doing," the shorter Trill woman said grudgingly.

"They'd better," replied Mara. "They all spent four years studying engineering at the academy and at least five more years in the field. There isn't a single ensign in all of Engineering. Well, on this station anyway."

"Ensign being the lowest officer rank, right?" Stroma asked as she stepped over one of the think superconductive cables pulled through the ship from the airlock. The heavy braided sheath had taken an antigravity harness to get in, and even with four people handling it would be hard to move without the harness. But once activated with power running through it, the cable would seem to wriggle and writhe with the current passing through it.

"Three years of basic training on Carcosia, and then two years of tech school on Crest before they'd even let me hear a spanner," Stroma said. "Started out as a Spacer 3rd Class on this old Comet2 class cutter. Little thing maybe a hundred meters long. The vacuum reactor on that was the size of a cricket ball. Do you guys still have cricket? Its a sport back home."

"I'm vaguely familiar with it," replied Mara. "Or at least, I'm vaguely familiar with a sport called cricket. Is that the one where you call "bowler" and a guy lobs a ball that you hit sort of underhand with a wide bat?"

"Whoa. Using antimatter still, and you don't know anything about cricket. Truly a backwards society," Stroma said without the acid she usually laced her words with. "So...has your Commander told you to keep certain topics off the table? If I asked you about your home, are you going to give me a sanitised version or just clam up?"

"Neither," replied Mara. "Although, I have to warn you; my view of Earth has been greatly romanticized of late. That tends to happen when you haven't been home for several years."

"Well, my question was going to be about Trillius Prime. I mean I know what Earth is, every kid get's taught the histories when they're in primary school. The worlds all of the Carcosian's came from before the Exodus. No, my question was going to be about the Trill people. They're not still...doing that thing are they?" Stroma asked, her voice dropping down low, as though speaking about something unseemly or taboo.

"You mean joining?" asked Mara, confused. "Yeah. Nobody is required to participate, though. It's entirely voluntary. My roommate in the academy was joined. She said the idea gave some Trill the creeps and that's okay. It's not for everyone."

"It shouldn't be for anyone," Stroma said with a disgusted look on her face. She shivered. "Blue Fire the thought gives me the creeps. The idea of giving over your own personality, your own lifetime, to a symbiote. Are you even 'you' after you join, or a weird combination of all of the stolen memories of the past? Sounds like dying to me."

"As I understand it, a bit of both," replied Mara. "You're still you, but now you've got the benefit of hundreds of years of experience."

"And of course the words coming out of your mouth are solely yours, and not those of the slug in your belly?" Stroma tapped her knuckles against her chest and shook her head. "Bless the Presence all the Trill symbiotes died after planetfall on Carcosia. A rough transition for the survivors, but there were enough un Joined to keep the gene line going."

Mara grinned. "I'm human," she pointed out. "Only Trill are capable of being joined."

"I'll try not to hold that against you. Some of my best friends have the misfortune of being spotless," Stroma said. "Okay, I think we're ready for the shunt. You want to comm you're terribly dangerous power source and tell it to shove the lever into dangerous territory."

She then cupped her hands around her mouth and whistles.

"All hands! Prepare to receive pier-side power!" the tiny engineer bellowed.

Mara tapped her combadge. "Ricci to ops," she said. "We're ready for the juice. Start slowly."

=/\=Aye, chief, sending power now,=/\= came the reply.

The hum came first, like a swarm of bee's slowly making its way drunkenly through the corridors and decks of the Dauntless. Then the heavy superconductive cables by their feet shifted, the sheer amount of power running through them enough to make the magnetic fields bunch and constrict around each other. A good percentage of the Station's power budget was being funnelled through those cables, so a failure now would be...noticeable. At least to an observer far enough away to avoid the shockwave.

In its cradle, the heavy orb of the vacuum reactor rested, but now the complicated etched patterns on its shell began to shift and wriggle about, reconfiguring themselves into ever more complex configurations.

"We have secondary control algorithms coming online now," a Carcosian engineer said. "Primary control sigils should begin to cycle shortly."

"Well, I'll be damned. Looks like it's going to work after all," Stroma said as with a groan of chaffing metal the sphere began to slowly rotate in its cradle.

"There's a reason they sent me to Canopus," Mara commented, watching the readout on her tricorder. "And it certainly wasn't for comic relief. Ops, back off a bit; I'd like these spikes a little shorter."

=/\=Understood.=/\=

The spikes immediately responded. "How's it looking on your end?" she asked Stroma.

"Cradle's taking the charge," Stroma said as she glanced at a solid-looking display console. It probably didn't explode in a shower of sparks at the moment of a light impact. "If we're lucky and nothing goes wrong, the cradle will be charged enough to refire the Vacuum Reactor once we've exited the heliosphere."

Stroma looked away from the screen.

"Of course, if you could convince your CO to let us go down to your colony and deactivate that Prior structure, we could get done a lot faster. Plus we'd be able to leave without traipsing to the city limits." The Carcosian engineer said.

“I don’t think it would take much convincing,” Mara replied. “We’d like to get along with the colony and giving them an easier time of it would definitely improve relations. I’ll see what I can do.”

"Trust me, it'll be for your own good. A Prior Censor deciding you and your tech is bad for its patch of the sky, it's not a good thing to be hanging around," Stroma said. "My grandfather was part of one of the first expeditions out of Carcosia following the Exodus. A week out they came across a star system, no terrestrial worlds just a single gas giant with six platforms in orbit. Bone white filigree, hundreds of kilometres across, all spaced around the gas giants equator orbit."

She smiled.

"The Crown Of Artemis is the official name of it. Fitting given the Censor took Umbridge to the nuclear missiles in the survey ships silos. As soon as they crossed into the energy dampening field all six of the platforms opened fire with a magnetic force weapon. Split every single atom on survey vessel without releasing any of the stored energy, just turned the ship to dust," Stroma made a show of dusting her hands. "Prior Censor's only care about the facilities they are managing. We're just moss growing on the sidewalks their makers' left behind. Sooner it's turned off permanently, the better for all sentient life in this system."

"Not to mention I can get down there and check out the ancient alien technology I was supposed to investigate a week ago," added Mara, glaring at her left arm. "I'm sure being able to do my job would be a good enough reason for Ingram."

"You talk to your boss, and I'll talk to mine," Stroma said. "Huum your shuttlecraft run on antimatter as well as I take it? Might be a better idea for us to use one of the Dauntlesses longboats. They run on silicate batteries we can charge from the power shunt."

"Is someone who knows how to fix it coming with?" asked Mara. "I mean, I'm sure I could work it out if I had to, but I don't think you'd want me poking around in one of your ships without proper education."

"We have a few tech's who have educational backgrounds in the Esoteric Sciences. See Prior tech doesn't play nice with the normal rules that govern traditional three-dimensional matter. The Vacuum Reactor is a product of our own experience with Prior Tech, as well as other breakthroughs made on the homeworld," Stroma said. "We'll go down with a full detachment of Marines, techs and our science geeks. Our Long Boats are designed to operate for short periods in close proximity to high power Prior Censor fields."

"Sounds like we could learn a thing or two from you," Mara allowed. "Might not be a bad idea to build something of our own. But, I digress. Yes, I think we'll take you up on it. As long as I can observe and learn."

“I’m all for teachable moments,” Stroma said, crossing her arms. “Yeah...your team isn’t totally useless.”