Lieutenant (JG) Thea Kairis - Buzz Buzz Buzz
Quinn Reynolds
((Power Plant, Gibaria Outpost))
The room was vast. Conduits from the narrow tunnel flowed along the walls, finding their way into cabinets and junctions with an almost organic meandering. Other tunnels and openings punctured the walls in places, piping feeding in and out of those, too. Arteries and veins, all leading to the heart suspended in the centre of the room, and the source of all their troubles.
A toroidal fuel line wrapped around the centre of the sphere, feeding in matter to the artificial singularity within. Above and below the sphere were the housings for dilithium crystals, as vital for Romulan power generation as they were Federation. It was through them the reactor's output flowed, into the conduits feeding into the rest of the facility.
Kairis: If we can't stabilise it, then we need to find the backups before we bring the singularity to minimal reactivity. We have to maintain power to the rest of the facility, else we'll leave our teams stuck in the dark with nothing working.
Sevo: There's no way to completely shut down a singularity, unless you have a few million years to spare. The most we can do is stop feeding it mass, then dump any excess energy as waste.
zh'Tisav: If we stop feeding it, it would only be a stop-gap. It would likely start siphoning energy from the isolation fields that keep it suspended.
A protest died on Thea's lips, about to point out that she hadn't suggested shutting the reactor down, but lowering its reactivity because she knew they couldn't shut it down. Maybe something of the protest still showed on her face, because Sevo abruptly changed tact.
Sevo: I apologize ahead of time; I'm going to be asking a lot of dumb questions.
Kairis: I think we're all a little out of our depth here, sir.
Sevo: If it's overly active right now, why is the system not drawing all that power from it?
zh'Tisav: Because it can't...
Thea nodded. The output was a potential source of the instability—the reactor was ploughing power into systems not designed to handle that much energy—but not a confirmed one. The extra power being shunted into the facility's systems might only be a problem for future maintenance engineers, and nothing to do with their current issues.
Kairis: If you're talking about the gate, the scientists disconnected it from the power supply in their earlier attempts to shut it down. The rest of the facility's systems are drawing power from the reactor.
Sevo: Did the earlier explosion destroy key components? Is there a way to replace them?
Kairis: The explosion damaged the primary distribution trunk, but there are backups. ::She paused and then clarified, because Sevo had expressed she was struggling.:: The explosion was a symptom of the reactor's instability, not the cause. It's why my team got caught in it; we were already on site to investigate the instability issues.
zh'Tisav: Any damaged parts should have replacements in stores. If not we'd need to repli… Wait! The vines! You said they broke open a door, right?
Thea had an inkling of where this was going, but she didn't interrupt and looked toward Sevo to hear the answer. If true, something that potent could do all kinds of damage, and do it out of the common lines of sight. Her gaze briefly drifted up to the AQS housing suspended in the centre of the room. From tiny flowers sprouting in the gaps between flagstones, to alien vines smashing through high technology; life was fragile and fierce in equal proportions.
Sevo: Response
zh'Tisav: If they can break a door, they can probably break other things, like the power transfer system. And being part metallic, they're probably conducting some energy to places it's not supposed to go, kind of like a short circuit. If they've damaged the EPS system and/or shorted it out, that could destabilize the generator.
Thea's lavender gaze landed thoughtfully on the Andorian, and she nodded. It was logical and fit the facts of the situation as they knew them. It could even explain the explosion that had injured her team, when nowhere else in the facility had seen such a dramatic response to the reactor's instability.
Kairis: If those vines have infiltrated the distribution trunk, it could account for why it exploded when we haven't seen that happen anywhere else. It might also give us a heads-up for any other vulnerabilities, and we could reroute before another disaster happens.
Sevo: Response
zh'Tisav: Bypassing any damage should be straightforward. That might help with the core instability, but likely won't solve the bigger problem. Thea, I think your feedback idea melts ice. If the gate's being powered from the other side, then the gate is connecting the two systems. Anything done to it on the other side could affect our system here. I hate to keep comparing things to a short circuit, but that's what it is. Blocking any feedback, or redirecting it, might solve a lot of our problems.
Her idea 'melts ice'? Thea hadn't heard that turn of phrase before, no doubt uniquely Andorian, but it was rather charming. She nodded again, pleased to find her thoughts in alignment with the other engineer. They were stripping the problem down to its components, and it felt like they were making progress.
Kairis: That's what we thought. ::She nodded.:: We'd have to identify what's coming through the gate and causing the interference. I imagine it's nothing that appears on normal scans or diagnostics, or the staff here would have figured it out already.
Sevo: Response
zh'Tisav: There's three of us; one can look at any feedback from the gate, another can look at power distribution, and the other can see to the backup power, just in case. Thoughts? Or am I just fighting a makra with a stick?
Kairis: That all makes sense to me, sir. I'm happy to take on the backups if Commander Sevo would like to investigate the feedback coming through the gate? ::She glanced toward the Trill.:: It wouldn't need deep engineering knowledge; your scientific background probably gives you an advantage there, looking for something that's there but shouldn't be.
Sevo / zh'Tisav: Response
There was always noise in any reactor room, no matter what the underlying engineering was. Here, it was a low hum of electromagnetic fields, the soft hiss of fuel injection, and underneath it all, the whisper of air circulators. So when the AQS buzzed, it immediately caught Thea's attention. She glanced up, squinting as the sound turned into a rattle, the sphere vibrating against its moorings.
Then, abruptly as it started, it stopped. Thea's heartbeat did not decelerate quite so rapidly, and she swallowed, feeling her pulse in her throat.
Kairis: I, uh... Think we should hurry.
Sevo / zh'Tisav: Response
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Engineer (Damage Control)
USS Gorkon
simmed by
Commanding Officer
USS Gorkon
T238401QR0