From voyager@massmed.org Fri Jun 19 12:42:30 1998 Date: Thu, 21 May 1998 21:39:50 -0600 From: "Michael A. Natale, MD" To: Dante Expeditionary Force List Serve Subject: [DANTEXF] SB ALIGHIERI: A Glimmer of Hope [The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set] [Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set] [Some characters may be displayed incorrectly] DANTE Expeditionary Force Official E-mail BEGIN TRANSMISSION Location: SB ALIGHIERI, DS-230 Stardate: 100522.0600 GMT FMD: 5.0500 Scene: Windstar's Quarters The room was dark and quiet when Tao began to arouse from sleep. Tao had slept soundly, his body taking full advantage of the chance to recuperate. He felt fresh and alive, as if nothing could ruin his day. Unfortunately there were about twenty-seven somethings out there trying to do just that. Tao rose from his bed and wrapped a robe around his body. He stepped out into the main area and sat down in front of his console, calling up the information the two pilots had obtained yesterday from their encounter with the Dalriadan frigate. He reviewed the data and the reports from the science department about the nature of the Dalriadan gravity drive. Old habits die hard for the former SCI as he read the reports. It seemed that the science department were having a field day cataloging the strength of the gravity shields but could not determine how the Dalriada generated the fields or how to get the missiles through the shields. Tao scrolled past the reports back to the technical data the scanners had obtained. It carried the field strength, area effects, approximate perimeter and field frequency. In many ways the Dalriada shields were similar to the personal shields employed by Borg drones, except Tao highly doubted the Dalriada were capable of adapting their shields the way the Borg could. Suddenly a light went on in Tao's head. He quickly called up the station's library and accessed all information regarding the first few encounters with the Borg. Not surprisingly, most of those reports were by a Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS ENTERPRISE-D. Tao had remembered reading about the exploits of that legendary ship at the Academy. As he remembered, one of the strategies employed by the crew of the ENTERPRISE-D when first encountering the Borg had been to modulate the frequencies of their phasers in an attempt to cut through the Borg shields. It had worked briefly but the Borg were able to alter their shield frequencies to prevent the phaser fire from doing harm. Similarly, the J'em Hadar have a way of determining the shield frequency of enemy ships so that their weapons can cut through an enemy's shields like a 'knife through butter'. Part of the information obtained by the pilots was the field frequency generated by the gravitational shields. Tao theorized that by resonating their phasers to the field frequency of the Dalriadan shields, their phasers might be able to cut through the shields and do some damage. If the missiles failed, it would still give the starships a fighting chance against the Dalriadan warships. He downloaded the information to a PADD, quickly dressed, and left for the Command Center to run his idea by CDR Greyclaw and the others. As he made his way down the hall, he thought to himself *Now if we could only figure a way to defend ourselves against those pulsed xray lasers, we might survive this war. ----------------------------------------------------- NRPG: David: Let me know what Greyclaw thinks of this idea. Our ships need some sort of fighting chance out there. Mike G: Any thoughts? Timeline: FMD: 5.0500 Tao reviews the enemy's defenses Mike N Respectfully submitted, LCDR Tao Windstar (aka Michael Natale) XO, SB ALIGHIERI, DS-230 voyager@massmed.org This message sent by an official member of the Dante Expeditionary Force Are you also posting your messages to the newsgroup?!!! END TRANSMISSION