Ensign S'Raga - Thank You for Calling

[S'Raga]

(ooc: There haven't been any sims for the 6th House team since my last one, so I'm moving the story forward as per the 48/72-hour rule. My previous sim is pasted below, and click here to skip to the new content.)

 

Mirror, Mirror, in the Sky

((Idrustix – “Mid-Islands Region”, Island 4, Valley))

S'Raga stood up and stretched his back, which responded with a series of satisfying cracks. He'd spent a good portion of the last two hours crouching beside his collection of signal boosters, trying every idea he could think of to establish some kind of communications link. On the ground in front of him, the boosters were barely recognizable as the Starfleet-designed sleek and shiny metal cylinders that they started out as, and now looked like a mess of spare parts and tangled wires. In fact, that happened to be what most of their camp looked like at the moment. 

Shaking some feeling back into his legs, S'Raga looked over towards the Commander, barely visible behind the remnants of his accommodation pod. He had been completely fixated on trying to construct a make-shift ops centre, but progress was slow and he seemed to be wearing a bit thin. He then turned towards Hopper, who was beckoning him over to give him some kind of radio-protective drug against the tetryon radiation. As he walked over to her, he glanced upwards. The tetryon barrier emitted by the alien satellites cast a deep amber filter over the night sky. He was reminded of something he read in an ecological history book many years ago that depicted Caitian forest fires blanketing the sky in smoke that would colour the stars red. He imagined it must've looked very similar to what he saw now.

Despite their current conundrum, S'Raga had actually been enjoying working with Lieutenant Hopper these past couple hours. Her scientific mind couldn't let go of a good puzzle, and the situation they were in was about as puzzling as it could get. They made a good team; with S'Raga's proficiency with communications equipment and Hopper's expertise in theoretical physics, they were able to bounce ideas off each other and come up with potential solutions that he otherwise would never have thought of on his own.

The science officer administered the hypospray to S'Raga's neck, which she then did to herself as well.

Ukinix(H): I’ve almost got a tactical feed happening, hooked into our proximity sensors.

Lohani: Some good news would be most welcome now, Commander.

Lekasa: Responses

Ukinix(H): ::Tapping PADD, under his breath:: C’mon, c’mon…

Hopper: We might need to work out some sort of shielding. Tetryon particle bombardment wreaks havoc on sensors and tactical systems – anything requiring a confined beam. It’s like shining a flashlight in the fog.

S'Raga grabbed his water bottle and took a couple sips.

S’Raga: What I wouldn't give for a metaphasic shield generator right about now...

Ukinix(H): Robin, what have you been able to find out about the satellites.

Hopper: A lot. But I’m sorry to say most of it’s not that useful to us. What I can say is that they appear to be forming a sort of shield or ‘net’ around the planet. Nothing in, nothing out. They’re emitting tetryon radiation… ::Glancing at Lekasa and Lohani::  Particles which are stable in subspace but, when exposed to regular space, get all…  ::searching for a word::  …silly. The fact that they’ve managed to form a coherent network is impressive, but also really annoying.

Ukinix(H): Have the extra two comms boosters we had working to get contact to either the Kitty Hawk or the other teams?

S'Raga: ::Gesturing to his pile of boosters:: I've been working on linking them all together into one big comms array. It should be ready for testing soon, I just gotta work out the bugs.

Ukinix(H): Lieutenant Grurg, how long until sun-up?

Grurg: Two hours and thirteen minutes.

Lekasa: Response

Lohani: ::A concerned look towards Robin::  And you sure the medication you’ve administered will keep us safe?

One of the PADDS the Commander had integrated into his ops station suddenly exploded in a field of sparks, causing everyone to duck or flinch. After realizing what had happened and assessing that there was no real danger, S'Raga worked on smoothing out the fur on the back of his neck, which was now sticking straight up thanks to the sudden shock.

Ukinix(H): Dammit!

Hopper: ::Examining the ‘burn out’ PADD::  It’s been overloaded. The circuitry can’t handle the radiation… We can try running the cabling under a few inches of topsoil.

Lohani: If that’s all it takes, should we be taking shelter somewhere? Perhaps a cave.

Hopper: ::To Vananth-Polgonz::  Damned if we do, damned if we don’t, ma’am. We go find shelter and we’ll eventually get toasted anyways. At least here we have a chance at regaining comms. The radiation is worse up the side of the volcano.

S'Raga: The Lieutenant's right, we're having a hard enough time establishing communication as it is, sequestering ourselves in a cave will make it impossible to get a signal out.

Lekasa: Response

Robin shrugged, stepping closer to Ukinix and crouching beside him.

Hopper: ::To Ukinix:: I don’t know about you, Commander, but I’m finding this whole thing confusing. Why trap us on the planet indefinitely? Why hasn’t the Kitty Hawk taken action yet? There’s a puzzle piece missing.

Ukinix(H): Well the weird thing is that nothing has happened.  And I’m sure Captain Rahman and Rivi are onto… whatever the hell is going on up there.

Lohani: I should hope so. You’d think they’d have made more of an effort to at least inform us of what is going on up there!

S'Raga started taking another few sips of water.

Hopper:  ::Annoyed look at Lohani::  I’m sure that if they could they would have.  ::Standing, walking over to the Caitian Ensign::  S’Raga and I have a theory – something that might allow us to get comms back, at least to the other groups.  S’Raga, want to explain?

S'Raga froze for a short second, suddenly aware of everybody looking at him expectantly, and still holding his water bottle up to his lips. He gently placed his bottle back down as his mind raced to put his thoughts into coherent words.

S’Raga: Umm, well, when we tried sending signals through the comms boosters, we noticed they were instantaneously catching echoes of their own signal, but not the signal itself, just its tetryon signature. So we ran a few tests and we saw that the ::gesturing towards the sky:: tetryon barrier above us bounces back a hundred percent of the tetryon particles that we send towards it. It's essentially a perfect mirror, but in subspace. So the idea that we came up with was to modify the comms boosters to emit tetryon bursts and adjust the array's subspace geometry so that we can bounce the signal in a particular direction. If we aim it just right, the tetryon burts could bounce all along the inside of the barrier and reach beyond the curvature of the planet and hopefully reach the other teams stranded on the surface.

Lekasa/ Ukinix(H): Response

Hopper: It’s a bit of a longshot, but it’s something. The problem is we’ll need to dismantle and modify our comms boosters. Which means if it doesn’t work, we’ll just be even more out of touch…

S’Raga: Right. I already dismantled the three that we deployed earlier, but for this to work, we'll most likely need the components from the rest of the boosters in Lieutenant Hopper's pack plus the ones that the Kitty Hawk beamed down yesterday afternoon. Even then, this will only be to communicate with the other away teams. As far as we can tell, there's no actual way to penetrate the tetryon barrier, so communication with the Kitty Hawk won't be an option.

Lekasa/ Ukinix(H): Response

Hopper: It’s your call, Commander. But it’s the best shot we’ve got, at the moment.

Lekasa/ Ukinix(H): Response

S'Raga: Another thing to keep in mind is that even if we're successful in sending a signal to the other teams, there's no guarantee they'd be able to send one back. If not, we could send them instructions on how to use their own signal boosters to make a tetryon burst emitter, but we should be prepared for the possibility that it may just be one-way communications.

Hopper: Response

Lekasa/Ukinix(H) /Lohani: Responses

S'Raga: We can run a few more tests, but so far it's looking promising. The emitter will probably be ready by mid-morning, but if there was someone else here with some knowledge in communications equipment that could lend a hand in dismantling the other boosters, we could be transmitting by sunrise, as long as the radiation doesn't fry the circuits before then.

Ukinix(H): Response

Lekasa/Lohani/Hopper: Responses

(End of previous sim)

Thank you for Calling

((Idrustix – “Mid-Islands Region”, Island 4, Valley))

The sky had turned from an inky maroon to a deep, rich amber as the 6th House team worked on S'Raga and Hopper's "Tetryon Signalling Device", and the sun was just starting to hint at rising above the horizon. In addition to the first three signal boosters that S'Raga had dismantled and daisy-changed together, the group had incorporated six more boosters into their contraption. It was quite an impressive device, considering it was built out of improvised materials. All together, it was now the size of a circular dining table, with pieces of phase inducers and subspace transceivers sticking out at various angles. Sorting out how to bounce tetryon beams against the alien barrier was actually quite simple. It was converting it to and from comprehensible comms signals that was the tricky part. S'Raga already crashed the software twice trying to sort it out, and they already had to replace an entire induction coil when the first one was fried by the bombardment of radiation. To make matters worse, S'Raga was starting to feel some nausea, also a result of the radiation.

S'Raga: Alright, I'm initializing the tetryon signal converter now. It seems to be working within nominal parameters... Those parameters being "not crashing the system", anyway. How are the emitter arrays?

Hopper: Response

S'Raga: Ok, it sounds like it's as ready as it'll every be, then. What do you think?

Hopper: Response

S'Raga: ::Nodding, and turning to their XO:: Commander Ukinix? We're ready to give it a try now.

Ukinix(H): Response

Lekasa/ Lohani: Responses?

Just then, a strange, garbled sound, flooded in static came from their make-shift tetryon array.

Unknown Source: =/\= Kkzzzzxt... Kxxzzztk... =/\=

Lekasa/ Lohani/ Ukinix(H)/ Grurg: Responses

Hopper: Response

S'Raga: I'm not sure, I haven't even transmitted a signal yet. Hold on, let me try to clear up whatever's coming through.

S'Raga crouched back down at the control panel and worked on isolating the source of the noise.

S'Raga: It looks like we're receiving a signal of some kind. And it's using the ambient tetryon radiation as a carrier wave! That's actually... really ingenious.

Unknown Source: =/\= Can everyo--kkzxt ... Kxzztk--nsign Richards =/\=

oO Of course this is Nathan's work! Oo
S'Raga: ::Tapping away at the control panel:: Attempting to enhance the signal.

Keehani: =/\= Ensign Richards, this is First Secretary Ukinix, what is your status? =/\=

Ukinix(H): Response

S'Raga: Ok, I've activated the transmitter. You can respond now, Commander.

Ukinix(H): =/\= It’s bloody good to hear your voices. =/\=

Any Sixth House: =/\= Response? =/\=

S'Raga let out a long sigh of relief. It had been a long night, and he couldn't contain a wide grin on his face as his hard work was paying off.

Lekasa/ Lohani/ Hopper/ Grurg: Responses

Dro: =/\= It is good to hear from the other teams. Carter was called back by the Ambassador shortly before the satellites were deployed. Have we got any other communication that has been had with the ship? Or an idea what has been going on? =/\=

Ukinix(H): =/\= Looks like we know as much as you do, Son Dro.  =/\=

Ukinix(B)/ Siyel: Response?

Dro: =/\=Beyond the major circumstances things are no real complaints from our end…=/\=

S'Raga: ::To Hopper, very quietly:: Signal strength and stability are nominal. It's actually working!

Hopper: Response

Dro: =/\= Scratch that, a storm has spun up and is heading our way, we have some higher ground nearby but we need to break camp to move the equipment. Let's stay in touch and try to coordinate as much as possible. =/\=

Keehani: =/\= Understood, Son Dro, please stay safe.  Sixth House team, what is your status? =/\=

Ukinix(H): =/\= It’s approaching sunrise here, we’re hoping to be able to scout out further at first light to get an idea of what’s going on.  We’ve been trying to get our comms boosters working. =/\=

S'Raga covered his ears as a loud and extremely unpleasant staticky screech filled the comms channel. Almost as quickly as it started, everything went silent.

Ukinix(H): Response

S'Raga: I'm not sure, Commander. Our tetryon array is still online, but all signal activity went dead.

S'Raga clambered over to another control panel on the other side of their contraption and furiously typed in some more commands, trying to isolate the source of the problem.

Hopper: Response

Lekasa/ Lohani: Response

S'Raga: It's not a failure on our end. Whatever cut the signal came from an outside source. If I had to guess, I'd say our alien friends in orbit caught on to us.

Ukinix(H): Response

Lekasa/ Lohani/ Hopper/ Grurg: Responses

Tags/TBC

Ensign S’Raga

HCO Officer
Amity Outpost
A239908S11