Jhalib Ekal, "Old skool was the best school, evidently."

[Deliera Jay]

((2 Hours, 35 minutes remaining))

::His rebreather didn't work on magic alone.::

::The reason for that statement was simple. His physiology handled a lot of strain, especially having done so for about a century now. Heat, gravity, humidity - all of these things were handled individually.

::He was, however, nearly a century old - and it was starting to show.::

::Once they entered the deflector control room, it was evident they'd have to do more awkward and rushed activity so to get them to the area they needed to be. He'd clambered through what were essentially Jefferies Tubes before - mainly on Esperance, the Cait spacedock, the SS Rowena, the USS Eagle at one stage - but when you've just come out of a temporal jump, at 100 years of age and suffering the long-term affects of chronometric radiation, the last thing you really wanted to be doing was crawling through Jefferies Tubes.

::To make matters worse, the rebreather was detecting lower oxygen levels. Nothing dangerous as of yet, but once it reached a lower threshold, the rebreather wouldn't be able to supply the additional capacity he needed - it took what breathable atmosphere there was, accumulated it, and dumped it directly into the mask. It can't do that if there's nothing left to breathe.

::Jhalib crawled into the tube, silently wishing Delano had taken the lead, seeing that he was was much quicker on his feet in his younger years than he was when Jhalib last saw him.::

Delano: Sounds like something has power down there.

::A hum was reverberating throughout the tube. He recognized it, if only fleetingly - like something he knew he'd heard before, but couldn't put his finger on it.::

Ekal: That doesn't make sense. The ship's meant to be dead in the water.

Delano: I guess we’ll need to take a look.

::They came to a junction, climbing down a ladder and crawling through a curved section of the tube. Finally it opened onto the access platform behind the deflector - at this point, Ekal needed to lean against the wall for a minute to catch his breath. The oxygen stats on his chest were back in the yellow zone. That's fine. If he was going to die on a Starfleet ship, ironic that it'd be the one he'd been working to change the course of for something like twenty years of his life.::

Delano: Have you ever heard of a time dilation effect like this before?

::Delano was in a bit of a rush, though, so best not lean against this bulkhead for too long.::

Ekal: Only in textbooks. In the fun "did you know?" sections in the footnotes. I never thought I'd run into one, let alone get stuck in it for a few months.

::His chest was heavy and breathing a little harder than it should be as he kept pace with the other vulcanoid, but Jhalib stared at his mentor, eyebrows pulling together.::

Ekal: You think this was man-made?

Delano: I don’t know. But the energy pulse we detected right as things went to hell seems too big of a coincidence to ignore.

Ekal: Sure, but . . . that could have been anything, right?

::The two reached the platform. If he thought the humming sound from the Jefferies tube was annoying before, it was now vibrating against his eardrums.

::He must have missed it, looking around the area, but Delano snapped an arm back to his torso as if he'd been slapped across the hand, a flash of light flicking in the corner of Jhalib's eye.

::A forcefield.::

Delano: What the hell?

Ekal: You're joking. Who put up a forcefield during an evacuation?

::Delano pulled out his tricorder.::

Delano: This isn’t a Veritas forcefield. Something else is powering it.

Ekal: Something else?

Delano: I guess someone doesn’t want us getting in there. Any ideas on how we could get through it?

::His eyes rummaged the area of the field. With little consideration, he took a step back, eyeing the area. The response the man gave was less than confident.::

Ekal: If we . . . find the emitters, we can short them out?

Delano: Response?

::His arms flailed a little as he tried to explain the awful simplicity and not very confident suggestion he'd given.::

Ekal: I have never been an engineer! I studied social sciences, temporal mechanics-

::Oh.

::He pointed at Delano's tricorder, his brain actually kicking in as twenty years of study finally reared it's ugly and confusing head.::

Ekal: Scan for chronometric particles.

Delano: Response?

Ekal: You said it couldn't have been a coincidence that this happened when we ran into an energy pulse.

Delano: Response?

::The vulcanoid flicked at the forcefield, trying to determine exactly where it was drawing most of it's power. If it was a 25th century field - likely, given that a Veritas field would have be compromised when the ship began its descent - than it's power source would utilize a key interface.

::As in, it'd literally use a key. If there was one thing the Tholians had yet to master in the 25th century, it was apparently lock-picking. Old skool methods were sometimes the best methods.::

Ekal: They really thought of everything.

::Maybe that's what hurt the most. That the TIC was so intent on ending him, erasing his family as if they were mere numbers on a PADD. Collateral damage. At this point, what made them any better than the sphere builders? Than the Tholians?::

Delano: Response?

::Ekal was already on the floor of the platform, head poking under and past the railing for a good eye-sight.::

Ekal: A generator would have been put into place long before this occurred. It only causes more complications if a traveler is left behind in a foreign year.

::Much like the virus the Veritas caught, thanks to it's frequent use of civilian tech to upgrade and improve upon its systems when Starfleet resources were still months away. There were pros and cons to every situation.::

::This just happened to be a con.::

Delano: Response?

::Jhalib again pointed, but down on the platform below.::

Ekal: There. That console. There's going to it when there shouldn't be.

Delano: Response?

Tbc . . .

Jhalib Ekal

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