Building A Better Bomb

Posted on Mon Dec 10th, 2018 @ 1:29am by Lieutenant Commander Shadi Zatra

1,309 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: S1:3: Myriad Problems
Location: Engineering Lab 2
Timeline: MD 61 8.50AM

"Zatra to Jenkins--I need you. I just requisitioned your workshop for an Operations task group, but the good newsss is you're invited. Race you there!"

Shadi sprinted and galloped through the corridors and even up along the wall around obstacles such as fellow crewmembers. When she arrived at the workshop, she let out a hissing cheer of triumph.

"Victory!" Shadi stamped her feet in a circle and waved her talons in the air.

"Actually it's Victor, but I'll accept Victory too." Vic said with a chuckle as he popped out from behind a console.

Shadi gasped at the man. "What? How did you get here so fast?!"

"I have my methods." He said with a wink

Jenkin's did not look happy to have been called away from his Engine Room and was busy multi-tasking with his combadge twittering and a large PaDD in his hands.

"-okay prioritise reinforcing the structural integrity field. We can't do any physical repairs until we're at a full stop, I don't want a work crew out on the hull getting spun off because the ship had to go into evasive manoeuvres. And I don't trust the repair drones out there with Myriad techno voodoo-" he stopped, spotting Shadi and Victor approach. "Gotta go, group project time."

Vic saw Jenkins coming up and smiled, "Thanks for coming Jenkins, I know you've got your hands full at the moment."

"It's not like I have a million and one other things to do," he said tiredly with a wane smile.

"So we've got a starving problem," Shadi began. "Captain Remas was counting on our phase cannons to punch a hole through Abborax's middle, but they had no effect. The Myriad possssess an impenetrable form of shielding with a phase dispersion that soaks incoming fire rather than deflecting it like conventional shield tech. We need to find a way around this, and quickly, because I don't think our tasty ship can survive another attack." She hissed a sigh. "We need to figure out a way to get around his shields and avoid a long fight."

"We could try over loading the shielding array? If you're right about the dispersion tech soaking in energy, we might be able to reach its saturation limit," Jenkins said, eyes narrowing a little. "Of course the power curve of such an attack would be high, we'd probably need to divert all non-essential power to the weapons grid."

He chuckled.

"What if we pulled all power from the warp engines, lot of good they'll do us in a battle." Vic suggested
"Never thought I'd say it, but I miss the idea we'd run into Klingons and Romulans. At least we know some of their weak points, these Myriad...well I don't think we even know one spot they're not strong in."

Shadi shook her head. "Abborax's ship seems designed to fly through the core of a star, which is something I don't want us to try again without repairs. If that didn't overload the shields, I don't think any of our weapons could do it either, no matter high the power curve." She tapped her claw against her chin in thought. "We need to think outside the nest. The Myriad must have a weak ssspot, some vulnerability that requires the cat-and-mouse game Abboraxxx plays. Our quest is to figure out what, and then how to exxxploit it."

"Okay...okay well...well okay," Jenkin's said, sounding a little defeated. He gestured to a wall screen, and scanning reports and false colour images of Abborax's shuttle came into view. "We had these stored on tricorder's, so when the main computer went down we had local backups. From what the sensors were able to pull, hull material is traditional even if its laid out in a non-traditional way. I have one of my engineer's getting very excited to take the shuttle apart, because he thinks the hull of 'sprayed on' instead of being bolted in place, making it a single hull piece from front to aft instead of interlaced hull plates. Very strong. But you break it, it breaks everywhere."

He then tapped a button, and another data set appeared.

"The temperature differential we detected was a cooling system for the shuttles comm's array. Way more bandwidth than even a mid-sized starship would need, all routed back to the main vessel. Tricorder's not great for this sort of work, but the signal was tapping out in the high theta band's of subspace," Jenkin's said. "Funnily enough the signal broke off around the time we got attacked and the Abborax Proxie went offline."

Shadi snapped her fingers hard enough for her talons to spark. "By the Goddess, I think you've got something, Jenkinsss! Why did Abborax threaten us in the first place? Because we refused to surrender our warp technology! And what is the basis of warp technology? Subspace!"

The Ragolar Saurian was blissfully ignorant of how over simplified of an explanation that was.

"Which means that the Myriad tech must involve subspace somehow -- his high-powered transmissions that overrode our systems, his cyber-demon body, and possibly even his dysphasic shielding!"

She clapped her hands together with glee. "Don't you sssee? If we plug up local subspace, then we might be able to jam all of his systems at once--shields, comms, everything! There won't be any way for him to hack our systems or even soak and disperse our weapons fire!"

"I think the Treaty of Algeron forbids us thinking too hard on the development of a sub-space weapons system," Jenkins chuckled but nodded along with Shadi's little light bulb moment. "I mean, it doesn't even have to be a weapons system per se. We just need to rig up a directional subspace antenna, which the Traveller comes equipped with several. But if we want power, the main array is rated for the power we'll need. Then we turn it on, aim it at Abborax, and suddenly his toy's aren't working so well."

It was a predatory scowl that Shadi levied at Jenkins, but she said nothing.

The rotund Engineer then looked at Victor.

"And then traditional weapons should have more of an effect than being merely prosaic," Jenkins continued, his brow furrowing. "I mean...huum...just doing the power calculations in my head, we'd be more likely to burn out the main comm's array than not. You need a lot of juice to spike a signal into the Theta bands."

"I think that may just work!" Vic shouted beginning to think of alternatives

"Whatever it takes," Shadi seethed. "Abborax must die."

"I'll be honest, I like the energy. But when dealing with EPS grids, I'd prefer caution in all things," Jenkin's commented with a smile.

"What if we modified a few quantum torpedoes and made it more of a flash than a bang, something that could push into those bands via a radiation burst instead of an explosive blast?" Vic asked, hoping he was onto something, this sort of thing wasn't his strong suit.

Shadi shrugged. "Starved if I know. Ragolar warriors prefer claws and teeth. Worth a shot?"

“Quicker to muddle with a torpedo that’s going to detonate anyway than a comm’s array we might not be able to replace,” Jenkin’s said thoughtfully. “I think Vic’s plan can be implemented quicker, with the Shadi Myriad Death Ray a work in progress for next time yes?”

"Tasty." Shadi looked back and forth at each one. "Uh, now what?"

"Now we get to play with explosives," Vic said with a sadistic smile

The deck lurched slightly underfoot, and the telltale whine of the warp drive spooling up rattled their bones for a second. But thoughts about the whys of this turn of events cease to matter as the overhead comm's came online.

=/\="Expedition Security to the Arboretum, Expedition Security to the Arboretum."=/\=

 

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