From tgladsto@sewanee.edu Fri Jun 19 12:59:25 1998 Date: Mon, 4 May 1998 19:13:28 -0600 From: tgladsto@sewanee.edu To: Dante Expeditionary Force List Serve Subject: [DANTEXF] USS YORKTOWN: Here we go again.. DANTE Expeditionary Force Official E-mail BEGIN TRANSMISSION FMD: 3.1000 [Katz to Ne'telkmar, status report!] Retal shook his head slowly, taking a quick glance around the vast, cathedral-like dome of Main Engineering. Repair teams were running about, some of them lugging heavy tool kits along by their sides, intent for the emergency turbolifts and the engineering lifters. Most of engineering was fairly in order, a few panels askew, one or two of the displays shorted out by the power surge resulting from the hit. It was the warp core, however, that gave him the most concern. Two tech teams were milling about at its base, hurridly setting up an antigrav lifter, while others carefully placed the necessary materials upon the paneled surface of the lifter. Superheated steam emerged from two fof the central plasma conduits, and the bluish tint of a high-grade containment field shimmered around a long, hairline fracture running across the antimatter injector. He took in a quick, hissing breath of air before replying. "It doesn't look too good down here, sir. There's been some damage to the plasma conduits, but it looks repairable. The main problem is the antimatter injector casing. It's cracked, but I think I can pull it back together again. Until I do, we've barely got normal power, but if we try to go to warp before the damage is repaired..." he shrugged. [How long?] "Best guess? Half an hour, at least." [We can't afford that, Retal.] "I know, sir. I'll get on it right away. Ne'telkmar out." Tapping his badge off, he blinked rapidly, and then strode over to the base of the towering column of the warp core. Turning to Chief Kelverts, he spoke in a slow, purposeful report. "What do we have?" The tall, lanky Centaurian glanced quickly from his console back to the chief engineer. "About what you can see, sir, but that's more than enough. We've got fractures in both plasma conduits, and the antimatter injector housing's been cracked. The containment field is holding, but we can't keep it up against the kind of flow we'd have in full warp." Nodding prefunctorially, the CEO scanned the assortment of techs before him. Four were just finishing connecting and loading the antigrav sleds, while the rest were staring worriedly up at the damaged warp core. "Okay, it looks like we've got our work cut out for us. There's no way we can replace the damaged parts, so we'll just have to repair them." Turning to Kalverts and Tamera, the head of the other tech team, he continued. "Do you have rereplicators set up?" They both nodded, almost in unison. "Good. Tamera, you take the right-hand conduit, and Kalverts, you take your team and repair the left. I'll work on the injector casing." Kalverts cleared his throat. "Ah, sir, I believe there is an extra antigrav sled in the storage locker..." At Retal's grin, he trailed off. "I don't think that will be necessary chief. Let's get to it." Taking in a deep breath, Retal reached out with his mind, carefully wrapping himself in energy, binding his body into the surrounding air. With a barely detectable woosh, he rose from the deck, rising at first slowly and then more and more quickly, until he reached the crack. Moving himself closer to the ridged column of the warp core, he paused for a moment, listening to the thrumming of the core as matter and antimatter combined in an intricate pattern of energy. Shaking his head, he reached out with one hand, feeling the delicate ridges of the crack in the injector. The damage appeared to be merely cosmetic from the outside, but the radiation shielding had been damaged on the inside. This would be a bit difficult. Pointing his free hand down to the floor, he wrapped his mind around a spanner, still concentrating on keeping himself afloat. There was a whirr as the small instrument flew through the air, smoothly landing in his hand. Closing his fingers around the molded handle, he released his mental hold on the device, and brought it up by his face. Carefully adjusting some of the settings on the handle, placed the carved nozzle up to one edge of the crack. Pressing the activation key, he felt the recoil as the spanner's micro-arms extended, snaking through the crack like a pair of infantesimally small, creeping vines. Within a minute, the device beeped, and a portion above the handle became translucent, and then snapped into focus, displaying a series of small, colored chains of spheres, split in the middle by a comparatively wide crack. Behind the clusters and chains, a red haze of energy shimmered. Retal swallowed, then released his grip on the side of the core. Quickly, he summoned another menu to the screen, a group of molecules of many different forms, constantly rotating. Selecting a series of them, he returned to the display, and began to build, placing seperate molocules to link up with others, completing the chain of the leaflike radiation shielding. Somewhere inside the crack, he knew, the twin snakelike arms were moving with incredible speed and accuracy, funneling infantesimal particles to their proper place. The process was agonizingly slow, but it was much faster than completely replacing the antimatter injection unit. Minutes ticked away as he carefully moved the spanner through the crack, inching up microns as the twin arms completed their task, funneling atom after atom into their correct place. Twenty minutes passed, and he dropped one arm to his side. "I'm finished here. Kalverts, Tamera, how are you doing?" "Fine, sir," Kalverts called back. "Both the conduits are up and running now, so we should be set to go." "All right. Set the warp engines for a test field, and run it through the programs." "Yes, sir." To his left, he could hear the high-pitched, almost inaudible whine of the antigrav platform decending to the deck. There was a thump, and the sound of footsteps, and then Tamera's silky voice filtered up to him. "We're set down here. Test field locked in place, and the base programs are loaded." "Very good, ensign. Start on my mark. Three... Two... One... Mark!" There was a slight pause, and then Tamera called up again. "Test program running. Field generation complete. Phase one complete, entering main phase. Warp one set for testing... entering testing mode..." The wall in front of him began to humm and vibrate slightly, visible only because the hairline fracture was swaying back and forth. Within seconds, it got worse, until the vibration was clearly visible on the outside. Shaking his head quickly, Retal reached out with his mind, filtering through the protective leafing of the radiation shield, into the carefully guarded, field-surrounded antimatter injector. Inside, energy flowed, streams of pure antimatter rushing into the partial vacuum, exactly as they should have. However, from there on out, things got worse. The antimatter, instead of flowing smoothly through the openings created in the field directly into the dilithium crystal chamber, was being clogged, swiftly accumulating inside the shimmering electromagnetic field. Even a field with such a high power rating could only contain so much mass, and if the injector continued functioning at such an accelerated rate, the warp core would destroy itself. Reaching out, he dipped into the Lake, feeling its power flow into him, replenishing the lost energy he was using to levitate. Fatigue drained away as pure psionic power rushed through his veins, filling him to the brim. Swiftly, he twisted the energy, bending it and weaving it around the electromagnetic field, strengthening it and slightly modifying it. Taking in a quick, hissing breath of air, he felt the force of the antimatter pressing outwards, and focused his power into containing it, keeping it from destroying the entire ship. Seperating his mind, he wove the Lake's energy once again, and when he spoke, it rang across the room like a great roar of Kel'tarian thunder. "Stop the test!" There was a beep from down below, and the pressure on his mental field receeded slightly. "The test is stopped, sir." Still focusing on keeping the antimatter contained, he replied, this time without the amplification. "The field valve appears to be insensitive. I can let this batch of antimatter through, but I'll probably end up having to go in there anyway. Set the computers for a momentary surge of seven hundred thirty megawatts." There was a pause down below as the team made the necessary adjustments. "It's done, sir." "Good." Relaxing his mental grip on the containment field, he focused on the valve, shimmering with energyas it tried desperately to keep the flow of antimatter to a minimum. For a second, he paused, carefully examining the problem before our eyes, and then he lashed out, an intricately woven spear of psionic energy striking the area in the field just outside the valve. The electromagnetism melted like ice on a warm day, fading into nothingness under the power of his strike. The antimatter rushed into the combination chamber, combining with the matter stream and creating pure energy, channeled through the dilithium crystals in a nanosecond. Sighing in relief, he withdrew his mind, letting the electromagnetic field return to its predetermined form. His comm badge buzzed, startling him. He fell a few millimeters before calmly resuming his mental grip on the surrounding space, taking in a quick breath of air before flying back to his normal place. [Katz to Ne'telkmar, status report.] "I'm afraid it's not good, sir. The antimatter injectors have been wiped, and I'm going to need to entirely recalibrate them. After that, the warp engines should be in usable condition. Give me about half an hour." [I see, commander. Work as quickly as possible; I have a feeling we're going to need them.] Retal swallowed before responding. "Understood, sir. Ne'telkmar out." Blinking once, he took a deep breath and relaxed his mind, letting the mental bonds that held his form in place flow and blend. His body appeared to shift, features melting and flowing, loosing distinction. A clear, pure light began to shine through what still remained of his skin, spreading like fire across it until his body appeared to be one of pure energy rather than matter. At last, the final bonds holding his normal, humanoid form relaxed, and he became pure energy, a ball of light and power hovering in midair. Swiftly, he moved forward, once again in his natural form, and passed through the wall. There was a slight tingle as his purely psionic form crossed the radiation shielding, shifting and adapting as it seeped through cracks to small for radiation waves, arriving on the other side with a barely discernable lurch. As he settled his purely energetic form in the center of the antimatter injector, he started. Lines of electromagnetic force ebbed and flowed around him like the sea at high tide, constantly shifting in design and form. With each shift, they intertwined with each other, knotting and tangling in a complex sphere of opposing forces. Mentally, he hoped that he could get them untangled before whatever the captain was afraid of actually happened. *What's the problem, boss?* Tankle's sarcastic, concerned tones broke smoothly into Retal's thoughts. *Warp engines. The antimatter injector's been so messed up that it's not responding to any instructions, and we're going to need it soon.* *Need a little help down there?* *That might be desirable, yes.* An instant passed in silence, and then Retal felt a new presence beside him in the injector, a shifting pattern of energy that was both there and not there in the same instant. He could barely feel the psionic lines connecting the shifting pattern to the toadstool-like form of Tankle, still in his office. *I'm here.* *I noticed that, watcher. Now, if you'll look around...?* The amorphous pattern of energy shifted slightly, scanning the surrounding confusion, before pausing. *What happened?* *A good question.* He paused for a second before continuing. *I believe that the hits we took may have gotten the fields that the injector uses tangled, so that it's impossible to allow enough antimatter through to supply warp engine power. What's more, any attempt to inject enough antimatter to reach warp levels will overpower the field and destroy the warp core, and us along with it.* *That's a pretty tangle. Where do we start?* *I'd say we begin by straightening out this field. Just watch me, and follow my actions. Once you're ready, you can start working on this by yourself.* Carefully, Retal immersed himself in the Lake, feeling its power suffuse him, and he extended it, weaving it through space and time, around the conflicting fields. Slowly, he meshed the grid of pure psionic energy with the lines of electromagnetic force, meshing the conflicting patterns together into one. He moved on, a web of energy building around him, cancelling out the areas of flux and reconciling the twin fields to each other. After a minute, he felt Tankle's careful power join his, supplimenting his web as he moved from one vortex of force to another, smoothing the conflict over with a careful weaving of the Lake. Together, they continued for several minutes, shifting the dancelike web of power from point to point in the spherical battleground of forcec, leaving a shimmering wake of energy behind them. In minutes, they had completed more than half of the field, healing the circuitry and the flow of power in the same psionic surge. Far above the range of human senses, Retal felt his name, winding through the data net of the ship at near-light speed. Pausing for a moment, he reached out his mind, encompassing the signal and carefully deciphering it. The strange, twisting sequence of energy resolved itself instantly into words. [Captain Katz to Ne'telkmar. I need warp in four minutes or we're history.] The words hit him with the force of a crazed Keltairian drake. He gave the signal a second to have reached his communicator, now a free pattern of electrons inside his psionic form, and then responded, extending his mind through the ship, filtering through the decks and private quarters, past the Ariel lounge, which still gave him a pang of regret and sorrow, and up to the bridge, where his mind came into focus on the air directly in front of Captain Katz's communicator. Siphoning off a portion of the immense energy that filled him, he extended it, making the molocules of air in front of Katz's communicator shift and vibrate in a specific, familiar pattern. "Understood, captain. I'm working on it. Expect warp engines to be on line in three minutes." He broke off contact. *Three minutes?* Tankle's surprise resounded through their psionic link. *It's taken us ten to get this far, and there's at least that much ahead of us. There's no way-* *Have you ever studied ancient Earth history, Watcher?* *Can't say I have, but how does that relate to the fact that we're going to be blown to bits in the next few minutes? Are you all right in there, boss?* *Quite fine, Tankle. There is a motif that is repeated in several places in the history of Ancient Earth, and has been paralelled with other, similar legends throughout the cosmos.* *And that is?* The telepathic toadstool's thought was tinged with anxiety. *The problem of the Gordian knot.* Focusing his mind, Retal submerged himself in the Lake, letting its energy flow into him, and then out again, through a series of precisely timed strikes, the first connecting with the electromagnetic field scant nanoseconds before the others. The energy of the Lake filled him to the brim, streaming out through his mind into the field, nullifying the static conflict and allowing the field generators to work freely once again. Mentally, he took in a deep breath of air, and then propelled himself out of the injector chamber. *That's done it. Not as careful as I would have liked, but I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.* As his shimmering form passed back out of the chamber, he reassumed the shape of a normal human, the light branching out to form limbs and a head, and then refining features and finally dimming away, leaving the shape of a humanoid in a starfleet engineer's uniform. Keeping only a loose psionic grip on his body, he let himself fall to the floor, then turned to Tamera and Kalvertz, still staring at the antimatter injector. "Go! Patch the antimatter system back through the loop as fast as we can." "Sir, without a proper harmonics setting, we won't be able to get past warp two..." "That's going to be enough. If we don't get into warp space in the next couple of minutes, we won't have a harmonics setting to worry about." "Understood." They turned to the control panel, rapidly bringing the warp injection programs back on line. Retal walked over to the main diagnostic panel and patched into the main sensor grid with a quick keystroke. The schematic of the Yorktown faded, to be replaced by the hulking form of the pirate station. Inside, he could almost see the energies building, feel the hundreds of charges scattered throughout the base come online in a quick burst of power. It was going to be a close race. From behind him, one of the lower-level techs piped up. "Sir, I've picked up something on that frequency you wanted monitored." Even with the funeral pall of impending doom hanging over Engineering, he recognized the voice. It was that of a young tech he had assigned to monitor for the cloaker. "Put it on screen, Arydd." "Aye, sir." The sensor image on the diagnostic panel shimmered, a bluish colour falling over everything, except for a small section on one of the pylon arms of the pirate base. Something with the general shape and size of the pirate cloaker. "Good work." "Injector programs running, sir. We can have warp two at maximum before we reorganize the harmonics setting." "Roger that." He reached up, touching his comm badge. "Ne'telkmar to Captain. Warp engines are on line, but I can give you warp two at the most." [Understood, Ne'telkmar. Can we keep the warp engines on line until we reach SB-ALIGHIERI?] "I'm not sure, sir. She's barely holding together right now, and I had to use just about everything we have, including the kitchen sink." "I see. Do what you can to get us to SB-ALIGHIERI as quickly as possible. I have a bad feeling that something is happening in that area." With a flick of his wrist, Retal deactivated the comm and turned back to Arydd. "Get a second-degree sensor lock on that area." He indicated the shimmering array of colours on the display. "I'll do what I can, sir." Moments later, the ship lurched into warp. Time seemed to extend and contract for a second, the normally perfect harmonic calibration slightly off-kilter. "Sir, we're experiencing a bit of subspace warp turbulence." The woman's words were slurred and drawn out at points, almost painfully rapid at others. "I can see that, Tamera." Extending his mind slightly, he slighlty stabilized the immidiate area of main engineering, and his words slid smoothly through the turbulent sea of subspace, not affected by the sudden temporal disturbance. Choosing his steps carefully, he crossed the space between himself and the two tech chiefs, bending down over their console and entering in a quick code sequence. Typing rapidly, he roughly estimated a proper harmonics setting, and patched it in through the main computers. With an almost sickening lurch, the ship returned to normal, the subspace turbulence still present, but significantly reduced. Breathing deeply, he straightened, turning to Arydd. "Do you still have the cloaker on our screens?" "Ah.. yes-" The last was interrupted by an explosion. The ship shook, the shockwave tearing through space and connecting with its hull for an instant. Like a giant rock caught on the crest of a tidal wave, it passed through space, velocity increasing rapidly for an instant, and then dropping back to normal as the wave of force passed. For a bare moment, artificial gravity ceased, and throughout the Yorktown, items hovered in midair, people taking a step and finding themselves flying. Then, gravity returned, and people and things came crashing to the ground with a painful thud. Tensing his body, Retal landed on his shoulder blades, and rolled forward onto his feet in a single, swift motion. Throughout the ship, others were not so lucky, and injury and damage reports began flowing in from all decks. One of the younger ensigns paused for a moment, and then shouted out a summary of the damage. "Sir, we've got minor damage reports coming in from all decks. It appears no major systems were hurt, but some of the minor ones are off-line." "Very good, ensign. Send out Alpha through Gamma teams and keep me informed." By then, Arydd had regained his breath. "Sir, I've lost the signature!" "What? I thought we were still within sensor range!" "I- I know, sir, but the starbase blew up, and when the sensors could detect anything on that annihilation signature band again, the ship was gone." He turned, looking pointedly at the diminutive, reptillian cadet. "Destroyed, or just gone?" "Sir?" He turned, walking back over to the damage control screen and once again cancelled the damage control schematic. It took the sensors seconds to relocate the pirate base from this distance, and a little bit more to sense for the annihilation signature. When it came up, Retal swore. "There's no way to tell from here. If something like that ship were destroyed, the annihilation signature would clearly be visible, even after its demise." He placed his hand on the display, right over the muted reds and greens surrounding the cloud of debris that had once been the station. "We can't tell anything from this. They could have been destroyed and hiding the destruction was part of the function of the cloak, or they could have gotten out in time and gone to warp. They could be almost anywhere in the asteroid belt by now, at warp seven." He almost spat on the ground, and then turned back to the cadet, whose eyes were wide in shock. "Don't worry, there's nothing you can do about it. I swear, though, the next time that pirate shows its grubby little bridge around my ship...." Leaving the words hanging in the air, he sighed and turned to Lemara and Kalvertz. "Now, let's see what we can do about that annihilation setting..." ******************************************************************************** "Don't worry, I'll have it all figured out by the time we reach the Frontier." BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP "What's that?" "The Frontier." --The Last Starfighter ******************************************************************************** All: Aieee! It's the eternal post! They keep on getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger... [VBEEG] Seriously, though, I'm glad that there's a lot for me to do now. Gives me something to post about.. >8-D= Yoni: How's this? Thanx for giving me one big, almost totally inoperable ship 8-) Lt.Cm. Retal Ne'telkmar CEO, USS Yorktown NCC-1717-E Indigo Fleet Yahoo! Bet you all thought I'd forget them, didn't you? 3.1000 Retal evaluates warp engines [Tom] 3.1005 Retal begins work on engines [Tom] 3.1040 Engines almost blow up; status report [Tom] 3.1042 Retal begins work on injectors [Tom] 3.1050 Injectors repaired [Tom] 3.1051 Warp Engines on-line, cloaker located [Tom] 3.1100 Shock wave collision, cloaker lost [Tom] All MDs are given in fleet time. As Yoni didn't give a time index on his last post, I'm having to improvise most of this. This message sent by an official member of the Dante Expeditionary Force Are you also posting your messages to the newsgroup?!!! END TRANSMISSION