USS BURKE: Appearances can be Deceptive.
Mark I Fox
There's quite a bit, but if you do persevere, it does all tie up.
Sorta. Maybe. Honest. *G*
With a mission coming up, I thought I'd better make it self-contained,
so its pretty long...
Location: Chief Engineer's Office.
StarDate: 80323.1712
MissDate: Around Arash's post.
=^=
Venari sipped his tea, reading through some of the documents graciously
supplied (with full diplomatic agreement, this time) by Zatwek
Engineer. The Diplo Corps had quickly recognised the Zatwek level of
technology as basically equivalent to theirs in starship engineering,
and had supplied them with histories and some relatively recent
technical specs, along with outlines of the very latest works by the
Theoretical Propulsion Group.
Venari had read the first few paragraphs about impulse power and been
amused. They had some neat ideas. The Zatwek lined their deuterium
fuel tanks with a supercooled inert neon layer, hence reducing
deuterium loss by a huge amount. He was surprised that it had not been
thought about, but then, deuterium wasn't a big loss. Venari wanted to
know how they travelled fifty thousand light years on one tank of
premium...
Venari looked in awe at the designs of the major propulsion units. The
warp system was truly remarkable. The warp field appeared to be
self-sustaining with their design. The materials used seemed to both
develop and recycle the subspace energy needed to create a warp
bubble. It was as if they could create a warp field with a boost from
their reactor core, and then coast for ten years on it at warp 6.
Incredible... And absolutely impossible to synthesise... The warp
coil material was completely natural and theoretically unstable...
He noted that the Zatwek found antimatter creation a very difficult
task, but also noted they had the technology to produce a form of
neutral charge matter in a sustained tetrion/graviton flux for a warp
core. Venari saw the parallel with Romulan warp cores, a subject he
knew very well... The M/AM streams clash by controlled injection into
the orbit of the artificial neutron star's gravity well, and the plasma
is simply syphoned off and away.
In the Zatwek case, the matter and antimatter were fed through the
neutral charge matter matrix into its centre, and mated with atomic
accuracy. This was made possible by the graviton field holding the
core together. The resultant tetrion damped plasma simply filtered
through the neutron matrix, directed out to the conduits by the
interaction of the graviton and tetrion fluxes. Amazing... And
absolutely impossible to synthesise again... The materials used in the
graviton/tetrion field inducers were horrendously complex, but taken for
granted by the Zatwek because -they-were-natural-.
Venari leaned back. *Natural materials -this- complex?* His instincts
told him it was impossible... Maybe someone of much higher
intelligence was guiding them through the stars... He closed his log
on the technology, and made a note to make sure that the highest echelons
of Diplo and SF would see this... It was too scary, and he assumed
that there was much more to it than met the eye.
[ Chief Kelly to Ensign Venari. ]
Venari wondered just who that was, exactly... "Go ahead, chief."
[ We've got a problem with the runabouts, sir. We could do with you
here. ] The voice was plainly worried, and was that of a shuttlebay
maintainance chief.
"Be right there. Venari out." As he finished his tea, Holly Canon
arrived with a padd. "Whatev... shoot." Venari paused to wipe a drip
of tea from his chin. The Warrant Officer looked at him amusedly.
Venari rolled his eyes. "Whatever it is, it can wait. You're with
me."
"Yes, sir." She turned, and Venari grabbed a tricorder off his desk
before they both left for shuttle bay two.
=^=
The two engineers arrived to be greeted by Ensign Stewart and a group
of technicians. Both runabouts were clearly luminescent, their
duranium panels radiating a soft magenta glow. Holly immediately
flipped open her tricorder, while the Anglo-Italianate CEO approached
the security officer and the chief he had spoken to earlier.
"Sir. We did a prelim scan." As the chief spoke, Stewart handed
Venari the tricorder the chief had used. "As you can see, the purple
appears to be simply visible EM radiation, but we can't see how it is
being produced." The chief shook his head... "But the holes... No
idea. We can't pick up anything. The panels have just oxidised
away." He nodded as Holly joined them. "Hello, sir."
Holly nodded to the chief in return. "Afternoon, Kelly." She offered
her tricorder to Venari. "Looks like the effects of some sort of
plasma."
Venari mouthed the word. 'Plasma...' Stewart looked at them with a
slightly furrowed brow.
"Do you think this is some sort of plasma weapon?"
Venari hummed. "I don't think so. We spent some time in the exhaust
of the Anu, didn't we..." Stewart nodded.
"Is it deliberate in any way? It seems a very efficient way of
disabling a craft." Stewart walked toward the runabout and examined
the hull. Venari followed, and scanned the crater in the outer layers
of the hull panel.
"They're not increasing..." Venari hummed again, and quickly moved to
another crater, indicating for the Chief and Warrant Officer to do the
same. "Damn..."
"Nothing here. Just a hole where the hull should be."
"I need to find one that hasn't..." Venari looked up, and furrowed his
brow. "Give me a leg up, would you?" Kelly shrugged, and clasped his
hands together for Venari to step up to see the top of the craft.
"Whoa.... er..." Venari's tricorder beeped as he wobbled a little,
stood high above the floor thanks to the rather strong Chief Kelly.
"Trace amounts of rapidly disappearing fluorides. Okay, drop!"
Venari bent his knees as he landed quietly, and rose with his tricorder
shown for all to see. "Hydrogen Fluoride. Nasty stuff. That explains
the holes. I wonder how it got there..."
Holly looked at the assorted technicians. "When did you first note the
glow?" A jumpsuited yeoman answered.
"A few minutes after the runabouts docked, sir."
Holly looked back at Venari. "Deflector shields?"
Venari smiled. "Engineering logs." He gestured to open docking
hatch. "After you, Ms. Canon." Holly nodded, and made her way up
into the Bohr, followed by Stewart and Venari. As Venari entered, the
resourceful Irish Mariposan had already punched up the last few moments
of the Bohr's flight.
"Yes, deflectors powered down on docking, residual deflector energy
reduced to ten percent after two minutes." She leaned back and
indicated to the panel.
Venari tapped an access code into the next panel. "Computer, bring up
Zatwek engineering documents, security access as given. All references
to plasma." Stewart raised an eyebrow.
"You think that the exhaust from the Anu is causing this?" he asked,
still a little wary of Starfleet's latest acquaintance.
Venari distractedly nodded, peering at the data... "Aha... Tetrions,
of course. The Zatwek control the plasma's exit from the warp core
with a tetrion/graviton field. Under impulse power, both plasma from
the main reactor and raw deuterium from the tanks is then channeled
into the impulse exhaust to provide extra thrust - like a simple
turbojet's afterburner." He paused to let this sink in, before
addressing the computer. "Computer, would plasma that has passed
through a tetrion field be detectable to available scans."
<< Negative. >>
"Computer... postulate based on available data, how would tetrionated
plasma..." Venari raised his eyebrows with this... "...affect
deflector shields in normal operation?"
The computer toned, and there was a short pause.
<< There would be no detectable emissions. There is a possibility the
energetic graviton field may retain a residual amount of tetrion
modified plasma according to Cherenkov's graviton field laws. >>
Stewart shrugged. "Every engineering student knows that a deflector
shield attracts a tiny amount of plasma residue."
Holly hummed... "Computer, would the field retain more, or less
tetrion modified plasma... based on the same assumptions." Another
pause.
<< An energetic graviton field would retain ten to the power five times
more tetrion modified plasma than DAD plasma. >>
Stewart raised his eyebrows. Venari muttered to himself...
'Cherenkov, Cherenkov, Cherenkov...'
Suddenly, Holly looked at them with a look of annoyed relief. "The
field decay. How simple. How could we have missed it. I'll
demonstrate... Computer. When a graviton field decays, how is the
trapped plasma energy radiated?"
<< Infra red electromagnetic radiation is produced. >>
Holly continued with enthusiasm. "Passing plasma through a tetrion
field changes its properties. Not only does it become more attracted
to graviton fields, but it also changes the base wavelength of the
light emitted as the previously trapped plasma turns to EM radiation.
Now it becomes visible light. Purple light. And a lot more of it."
Stewart nodded. "Okay... That explains the glow. What about the
holes?"
Venari looked at the diagram of the impulse system of the Anu. "Neon."
he stated, straight off the top of his head. This revelation was
greeted with quizzical looks. Venari shrugged. "Neon. The Zatwek use
neon to line their matter fuel tanks. It reduces deuterium loss
through the tank wall."
"But I thought you said the glow was due to the plasma... I don't see
a connection..." began Stewart.
"Nothing to do with the glow at all." Venari smiled as the science of
the answer slowly materialized in his mind. "Theoretically speaking,
if you strip a hydrogen atom out of a neon atom, what do you get?"
Stewart pondered. "Er... fluorine. Ahhh..." His face brightened as he
saw the connection. "Injecting neon doped deuterium into the plasma
exhaust strips the neon down to fluorine in the flux..."
Holly continued the sentence. "...and you get droplets of corrosive
hydrogen fluoride in the cooled plasma residue..."
Venari smiled, and finished it. "...Which was held next to the hull,
and then dripped onto it when the deflector shields powered down and
the plasma was released."
Venari shrugged. "And then the metal fluorides simply vapourised with
the plasma conversion, destroying the evidence."
Stewart nodded. "Sounds good, but its still conjecture." He turned.
"I have other things to attend to... its good to know the runabouts
are not in danger." He paused. "They aren't, are they?"
Venari grinned. "Yes, they'll be fine. The glow should disappear of
its own accord, but I think we'll strip the residue away and do some
repairs. That won't take long. Ms. Canon, if you want to start on that
with the shuttlebay crew, I'll go and run some experiments to confirm
all this 'conjecture', and I'll get back to you."
The small group dispersed to their new duties, content with the
knowledge that two brand new runabouts weren't about to melt in the
shuttlebay.
=^=
NRPG: I warned you... *G* I -really- enjoyed this... I hoped it had
enough interaction to balance the technobabble, and anyone could
follow the detective trail... :) Hopefully, I won't have to tidy
up a situation quite so quickly again, but I also hoped you
enjoyed it. *G*
Arash: I hope I posted Stewart okay... I guessed he'd know quite a bit
about deflector technology. :)
All: I'll post Venari arriving at 1925 when I've recovered...
Tomorrow, perhaps!
Oh, and hi, ALB tutor! *BG*
=^= Respectfully submitted by Mark Fox, the erstwhile Typy of... =^=
Ens Marco Venari, Lt.(jg) Guitrey, Lt.Cmdr Patrick Canon,
CEO, USS BURKE, Green. CNS, USS SARATOGA, Silver. 2O/OPS, USS STORM, Blue.
=^= =^=
Burke homepage: http://www.brunel.ac.uk:8080/~em92mif/sf/burke/home.html