[backsim] Mikali sh'Shar - The Benefits Of Tiny Hands And Sensitive Antenna
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David Adams
Jan 9, 2021, 8:24:16 AM1/9/21
to Gorkon
(( Spacedock 44, Palanon ))
After hours of intense manual labour, the port nacelle lay in pieces strewn about the floor. Her body ached with all of the manual labour, but there was just no way she could acquire and transport the professional tools required to properly disassemble a ship this size, especially not from Iana Station where they would be needed.
So it was manual work. Heavy and laborious. But the fruits of their labour were clear: the nacelle was now completely exposed. Thick, shielded power cables ran into it, and that was the only thing attaching it to the ship. The guts were exposed.
With the port nacelle disassembled, Mikali scanned it again, and this time the entire assembly lit up with clear and present detail.
Yet the scan didn't make sense. Power was going down the cables straight into the nacelle, and then it was immediately stopping barely two centimetres inside the distributor. She plugged the distributor into a secondary power source, so she could access its internal diagnostics, and the distributor reported that it was perfectly fine. Just not getting any power. Plugged in, attached, but it was like the wires were dead. Or drained.
She hadn't seen something like this since...
Since her childhood.
The hand holding the tricorder trembled slightly, then with a soft breath, she steadied it. It had to be.
sh'Shar: I have a bad feeling about this.
K'Turk: Have you found something?
sh'Shar: Pretty sure. ::She turned the tricorder around to show him.:: Look at the power flow review from the distributor's diagnostic systems. Power comes into the nacelle as clean as a whistle, but then it hits the phase variance compensator's distributor and it's immediately syphoned away. There's your problem right there.
The burley Klingon didn't seem to process what she was telling him.
K'Turk: Is that bad?
sh'Shar: It's bad for me. Good for you. Means I can have your ship fixed in a couple of days, tops, unless I blow myself up in the next minute or so.
She closed her tricorder, turning back to the nacelle's distributor. It was a fat box the size of her torso, with power couplings leading in and (fortunately cold) plasma distributors leading out. Curious, she leaned in close, looking with her one good eye.
There. Just to one side of the device. Exactly what she suspected, knew, dreaded, would be there.
A section of the outer case of the distributor had been crudely cut away and then equally crudely repaired. A hole about the size of a fist had been sliced into the metal, then hastily repaired and painted over. On close inspection, the work could be seen fairly easily, but this part would normally never be visible to the naked eye, nested firmly inside the nacelle.
sh'Shar: See this part here? Someone modified your distributor. Recently, too. Probably about the time you were starting to have engine troubles, or maybe a month or two beforehand.
K'Turk: Response
sh'Shar: I'll show you. The only catch is... we have to do it while the power's on. So this is going to be a little terrifying.
Mikali fished around in her tool belt, stuck a suction cap on the part of the distributor that had once been cut away, took out her laser cutter, and holding the small device with one hand and the sucker with the other, she began to cut, tracing around the incision as closely as she could.
Sparks flew everywhere as the metal yielded to her tool. sliced a rough oval out of the top of the device, following the original cut as closely as she could, possibly twisting her wrist to avoid slicing off her own hand. The metal fell away. She used the suction cap to lift off the hunk, revealing the power distribution network below. Live and full of power. Even a look inside couldn't see anything amiss, the hole was too small and it was too dangerous to widen it anymore. If she knicked the sides of the distributor, the whole nacelle would have to be replaced at staggering cost.
The person who had made this cut knew exactly what they were doing. Just like she knew exactly what she was doing.
K'Turk: Response
sh'Shar: If I die just now, I want my last words to be... ::She couldn't think of anything.:: Just tell Benna sh'Shar I said something cool, okay?
K'Turk: Response
Ignoring his protests, sh'Shar carefully slid her hand into the tiny gap, closed her eye, and slowly lowered her bare hand into the machinery.
No room for gloves or protective equipment. No room for mistakes. With her only remaining eye shut and blind, she fell into the sensor output of her antenna. Each little stalk could get a vague sense the air currents flowing out of the box, the heat of the dangerous power circuits, and working together they could paint a rough picture of the inside of the box. No detail of course, and the exercise was like navigating a corridor by the sound of opening and closing doors and the reverberation of ones own footsteps, but it would do well enough for her purposes. She used its simplistic information to guide her hand down, down, down between the walls of live current to where the conduits entered the distributor. Seeking a device. Something that had not appeared on the scanner. Small. Invisible to handheld sensors and internal diagnostics.
Maybe it wasn't there. She should have found it by now. Her hand sank in up to the elbow, down and down, until finally her fingertip brushed up against something hard and unyielding.
Moment of truth. If it was a live wire, she would never even complete that thought before an ungodly amount of electricity leapt through her entire body, killing her instantly and making one hell of a mess for whatever unlucky son of a Bolian who would have to clean it up.
The fact she survived confirmed her worst fears. It had to be a limpet. Would have almost been better to be the wire. Almost.
Her fingers closed around a small box, something that would fit neatly into her palm. She felt around its familiar dimensions, finding the small release latch, and pressed it. The device came off in her hand, cables dangling out from it. She could sense the obstruction they made in the tiny gap, blocking the air flow. Like a thick wall within a pair of walls.
Then she repeated the process in reverse, raising up her hand, slowly and carefully, until she withdrew it completely. It came out with the box, four thick cables coming out the bottom, connecting it to the distributor. The beige box, nondescript except for the wires and a simple switch, rested comfortably in her hand. She gave it an experimental shake.
sh'Shar: Well. That was terrifying. Haven't done that since I was fifteen... had smaller hands back then. It was a lot easier back in the day.
A lot easier to install them, but she neglected to state that part. It might enrage the poor man to know that she had tricked dozens of others just like him.
K'Turk: Response
Mikali waggled the device. It rattled faintly, wires still attached, warm to the touch from all the power flowing through it. It was still live — couldn't be removed while it wasn't, because the current was its defense against anyone who discovered them, and if it was cold the switch couldn't be pulled and the whole nacelle would have to be cut in half to remove it — so she handled it with (some) care.
sh'Shar: It's a bypass. The Hew-Mons call them 'limpets', but to the Ferengi they're called blek'rektarii. Means 'ball and chain'. They're basically power sinks. Installed one of these in the critical system of a mark just like this. Typically in the computers, weapons, engines, or life support if you really wanna be a cold-hearted hongr'val mon-kri and straight-up kill the poor sod, you know? They ingenious; the devices passively listen for a subspace signal, and when it's sent they absorb all the power of whatever system they're attached to. It's engineered to remain there until the mark — that's you, by the way — pays up to remotely disable it. They're shielded against scans, they hide themselves from computers and diagnostics, they're almost impossible to find unless you know exactly what you're looking for. ::She bounced the device in her hand.:: My guess is that their plan was to just keep milking you for "repairs", finding problem after problem that would cost more and more, but you scared 'em off before they could really put the squeeze to you. Or you ran out of latinum so they just took what they had and ran for it.
K'Turk: Response
sh'Shar: Your ship wasn't broken. It was sabotaged. Probably by the Ferengi who conveniently swept in with a perfectly timed "loan" for "repairs".
Hopefully this Ferengi's name was not Xhard. Or he did not work for Xhard. If that miserable bastard was back... Mikali's toes curled inside her steel-toed boots. Last time they had seen each other had been a screaming match in a Bajoran courtroom so many years ago, and Mikali had sworn that the next time she saw him, she would give him one of her famous "warp speed groin kicks", a combination of strong legs, heavy boots, anger, proper bracing and technique, and physics.
Surely Xhard couldn't be here. Surely not. But these boxes were his signature scam, when he wasn't out smuggling Ketracel to the Dominion, and perfect to have the small blue hands and unique antenna of a teenaged Mikali sh'Shar install (for a measly six and a half percent of the profits, of course).
She hoped he had merely franchised the idea and some other miserable toad in the Tyrellian sector was paying him royalties for the technology. She hoped that very much indeed. Anyone but Xhard.
K'Turk: Response
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