SB EPSILON -> USS REGENT: Difficulties Overcome
Becky Peterson
Ensign Aielin Borriel left the Vice Admiral's office and retraced her steps
to the docking bay. Once there she consulted her PADD and found the D-warp
shuttle that she was to take to the USS Regent. On board, she quickly went
through the preflight check list and was soon on her way.
After carefully positioning the shuttle and calculating the exact amount of
time she would need to travel in order to arrive at her destination, she
engaged the D-warp drive and settled back to relax. There was nothing for
her to do until she arrived.
When the shuttle popped out of D-warp, Aielin quickly scanned her
surroundings and was relieved to find that she had arrived close to her
target destination. She plotted a course toward the position of the Regent.
The asteroid belt that the Vice Admiral had warned her of soon appeared in
front of her, and she was forced to pay close attention to where she was
going.
The asteroids moved in ever changing patterns as their different orbits and
velocities brought them to new positions. Still, their dance was slow and
stately, and Aielin was able to make her way through it with composure,
though not with ease. Finally, she sent the shuttle darting through a small
gap between two asteroids and emerged into a large empty space. At last.
She was an adequate pilot, but never felt comfortable navigating through
anything but empty space. Totally empty space.
After a quick glance at the sensors, she was back in the asteroid belt
again, this time positioning the shuttle so that it would stay behind one of
the larger astroids. The Regent had been right where it was supposed to be,
but it had shields up and was surrounded by a small fleet of vessels that
seemed to be threatening the ship.
Aielin had no idea what the situation was. The Regent had apparently been
involved in some sort of negotiations; something had gone wrong, but what?
She decided that it didn't really matter for the moment. She needed to get
onboard; when she was there, she could find out what was going on.
Getting there would seem to be the problem. She studied the sensor logs and
found that the sensors on her shuttle didn't seem to be designed for
anything but the most rudimentary information gathering. She learned
nothing from the sensor logs that would help her figure out the best way to
get to the ship.
Basically, she had two options. Either she had to get to the ship without
letting the vessels surrounding it notice her, or she had to find some way
to find out more about the capabilities of the vessels. At first glance,
both alternatives looked equally impossible. The clear space in the
asteroid belt prevented her from escaping notice whether she was trying to
get to the ship or find out more about the vessels surrounding it.
What she really needed was a cloaking device. Unfortunately, she didn't
have one. So what she needed was something that acted like a cloaking
device. Unfortunately, she didn't have one of those either. So all she had
to do was make one. Of course.
She surveyed the shuttle: shields, phasers, communication, tractor beam,
sensors, replicator, impulse engines, computer. Not much to work with when
designing your own do-it-yourself cloaking device. If she was an engineer,
she would probably have a better idea of exactly what she would need to do,
but as a science officer, she knew how the device worked, but not how to
make one.
Aielin frowned as she thought. A full-scale cloaking device was obviously
out of the question. It would completely hide the shuttle from detection by
absorbing all radiation and reemitting it on the other side of the ship,
creating the illusion of empty space. But if she was careful, she might not
need such a sophisticated device. If she could only make the shuttle less
noticeable, the vessels might be concentrating on the Regent and not notice
her. Her mind was drawn to the variation of a cloaking device that the
aliens had used in the holodeck simulation on ALB. Had it been only yesterday?
That cloaking device had absorbed radiation and reemitted it uniformly. That
had not made it completely invisible, but it had made it less noticeable and
harder to track. How would you go about making one of those? The shields
were the obvious place to start. They reflected certain types of energy
already. If you changed the configuration just a little, they could absorb
energy. Then there would have to be a second layer to reflect the energy
back out. She frowned. The shields normally only had one layer. Was it
possible to make them form two? Only one way to find out.
After quite a bit of work Aielin was pretty sure her almost cloaking device
would work. She flipped the switch and was confronted with one effect that
she hadn't counted on. The cloaking device reflected all the radiation back
out, so inside she was blind. That wouldn't work.
The only solution was to make holes in the cloaking device. Difficult, as
well as dangerous. After calculation, she found that twenty two holes would
provide the most viewing area with the least risk of detection. The holes
didn't have to be all that big; after all, people saw a great deal with
only two small holes for admitting light. Making the holes proved to be the
challenge. Finally, Aielin had to settle for fourteen holes, which were a
little bigger than she felt entirely comfortable with, but were definitely
better than being blind.
The only problem left was that with the shields acting as a cloaking device,
she didn't have any shields. But she could modify the tractor beams to act
as shields. They would provide less than half of the protection of normal
shields, but would have to do. Finally, Aielin was ready to go. She moved
slowly away from the protection of the asteroids, ready to run if the
vessels showed any signs of noticing her. They didn't, and she moved
steadily closer to the Regent with each second. Finally she was just
outside the range of the shields. Time for another risk.
She set the communications for as tight a beam as it could handle and opened
a channel to the Regent. "This is Ensign Aielin Borriel reporting for duty.
I am in a cloaked shuttle right outside of your shields. Please drop
shields for long enough to let me in."
Then she waited. She didn't know if the Regent had gotten notice of her
coming or not, and if they hadn't they might think her message was a trick.
Then one of the alien vessels fired some type of energy weapon at her. The
tractor beam/shields held, but barely. Aielin didn't know if they could
stand another such attack. The attack had apparently proved her bona fides,
though; the Regent dropped her shields, though not before another blast had
caused the shuttle's improvised shields to fail. Aielin shot through the
space where the shields had been, hoping the aliens wouldn't fire again.
They did.
Time seemed to slow as the energy blast tore through space toward the
shuttle. Aielin desperately tried to convert the cloaking device back into
shields, with no luck. The energy blast flew through space toward the
unprotected
shuttle . . . and splattered off of the Regent's shields, which had gone up
again just in time.
Aielin let out her breath in a deep sigh, and turned the shuttle toward the
shuttle bay. She needed to report to the Officer on duty and find out what
in the world was going on.
Respectfully submitted,
Becky Peterson
Ensign Aielin Borriel
eng...@umslvma.umsl.edu