Commander Jo Marshall - So Much for the Twofer (Part I)
Jo Marshall
((Observation Bay, near Engineering Annex, Gibaria Outpost))
They'd escaped the homicidal vines in the Engineering Annex (which may or may not have been hallucinogenic—the jury was still out) only to stumble into an Observation Bay containing a Type-9 shuttlecraft that was having an existential crisis about which dimension it wanted to exist in, courtesy of some scientist who'd looked at a perfectly functional mode of transport and thought, what if it existed in four places at once? Topping it off was the discovery that the dimensional shear array keeping the quantum-confused shuttle stable had been offline for fifteen hours and would catastrophically collapse in four.
So far, it had not been the best day.
Marshall: Right, new priorities. Fenn, I need you to work out how to access and restart the auto-stabilisation sequence. Your call, make it fast. Kovar, shuttle access. We need the onboard computer active and talking to the external systems but the pocket is blocking the connection.
Fenn: Aye, Commander.
Kovar: Copy that.
Tasks seemed mundane when the problem they had was staring them in the multi-dimensional face, but there was a rhythm to it. Something tangible Jo could grasp in her hands. Something that could make the situation better. She felt beads of sweat rolling down her spine in the warmth of the bay, where the shear array sucked the air out, or pulled the air in—Jo wasn't entirely sure which.
Finding something to pour herself into, she examined the bay's layout. The only possible escape route barring the way they came was the large frame of a door the shuttle had likely used, and beyond that, critical systems were nil. The entire construction of it seemed… odd. She circled the perimeter, her eyes tracking structural supports, emitter arrays, and the positioning of the monitoring stations. The bay didn't look retrofitted to accommodate the shear array; it looked built around it.
Which meant the scientists hadn't just stumbled into dimensional experimentation as a side project.
Lost in a staccato of her own thoughts, Fenn's words brought her back to the present with all the subtlety of a phaser to the face.
Fenn: Found it Commander! There’s an automated stabilisation subroutine we can run.
Kovar: Excellent. If we are successful in executing the subroutine, that would also solve the issue of shuttle access. I have heard others refer to this situation as a “twofer,” if I am saying that correctly. Good work.
Marshall: "Twofer" is about as good as it can get. Well done. ::Pride swelled for a glimmer of a second before reality set in again.:: What do we need to do to get it to work?
Fenn: Ok so because the shuttle is maintaining a presence in multiple dimensions, the power draw needed for any stabilisation attempt is going to be immense. Long story short, the computer won’t allow the subroutine to run until we find another 53.47 terawatts of power for it to run successfully.
Jo blinked, then blinked again, because surely she'd misheard. A sequence of very poor decisions brought them to numbers like that; mostly in after-action reports with ominous titles like 'What If We Just Reversed the Polarity?'. Fifty-three point four seven terawatts. Kovar's expression had equally shifted in the Vulcan manner suggesting he was revisiting several fundamental assumptions about everything and finding them all wanting.
Kovar: Ah, so much for the aforementioned twofer. It seems that I will truly need to attempt another means of access in case we are unable to find the necessary power.
Marshall: Fifty-three point four seven terawatts. ::She repeated it, then shook her head as she looked toward the shear array with narrowed eyes.:: Of course. Why would anything on this station need a reasonable amount of power?
Fenn: We might want to check in with the power plant repair team. Ideally, we'll need them to get whatever fuels this thing running properly again first unless we’ve got... ::pausing to do the maths:: ...nine Galaxy class starships we can plug in to the outpost.
Kovar: Indeed, I am sure that we are not the only team who are facing inefficiencies due to inadequate power.
Marshall: We're going to find it. ::Said with perhaps more confidence than she felt.:: We just need to convince the power plant team our dimensional crisis is more urgent than everyone else's dimensional crisis. Keep at it. I'll see what I can do.
TBC