Ensign Juliet Banks – Drop Some Knowledge On Me
Juliet Banks
((OOC: Confirming my understanding of the timing of this scene: Banks is talking with Lacy and Michaels in Engineering; Dewitt arrives, discussion concludes, Bank and Dewitt leave. Banks stops to talk to Semara (ongoing, in the other scene I’m in) and Dewitt heads to Sickbay to confer with T’Dara, and they both regroup in Deflector Control. If I’m wrong please forgive! ;)))
((Timeskip – Deck 15, USS Khitomer – en route to Lagoon Nebula))
Juliet had headed straight to Deck Fifteen after parting from Amelia, and as the turbolift doors parted onto an unfamiliar corridor she realised she’d have to check her ever-present PADD for the deck layout if she wanted to find Deflector Control any time soon. She’d managed to cover the whole ship in her shore leave expeditions, broadly speaking, but as her schedule had gotten busier her exploration had had to become more perfunctory. And the lower decks of the ship all looked much the same, after all.
Thankfully Deck Fifteen wasn’t particularly complicated and Deflector Control was easy to find; Commander Dewitt was there ahead of her, and she hoped she hadn’t kept him waiting long.
((Deflector Control, USS Khitomer))
Juliet stepped up beside the Commander, who was busy at a console with unfamiliar controls.
Banks: Sorry to have kept you waiting, sir. This is the control for the Sencha Dispersion Array?
She indicated the console in front of them, and Commander Dewitt brought up a complex schematic on the console’s viewscreen.
Dewitt: This is it. The array wasn’t part of the original deflector design. It was… is experimental, piggybacked onto the dish for controlled emission testing. In theory, it can disrupt the energy pattern of a Sencha pulse and scatter it before it hits the ship.
Juliet caught his wording, glancing up at him before returning to her study of the array’s details.
Banks: In theory. It hasn’t been used in practice… or it hasn’t worked in practice?
Dewitt: Technically, it worked. Once. But not without a price.
He tapped the panel again and switched displays. This time it showed a timestamped log from their last encounter in the Lagoon Nebula. Juliet blinked at the unexpected change, but almost automatically switched to scanning the logged events recorded when the array was last used.
Dewitt: Before you came aboard, we took a direct hit in the field. The array activated, but a subspace feedback loop overloaded the EPS grid. We lost a lot of gel packs and half of our isolinear routing had to be rebuilt from scratch.
Banks: I think I had just come aboard by then, actually, but I was still in my quarters when it happened, so I spent a lot of time bouncing around in the dark. The “direct hit” was Sencha radiation affecting the gel packs?
Dewitt: ::nodding:: The packs had been infected… I’m not a doctor, so the only thing we could do was replace the important ones and reroute command functions. ::pause:: But this time, we’re playing it smarter. Manual control only, no system-wide integration. We’re isolating its power feed and will install a local kill switch. If the system starts to spike, it automatically cuts off. It will knock out the deflector shields, but that’s better than burning half the EPS grid again.
Banks: A lot better. So, I assume we’ll need to calibrate it to fine-tune the kill switch as much as possible, to minimise the disruption caused if it does spike?
The commander nodded in agreement.
Dewitt: Right… I need you to monitor the diagnostic pulses during calibration. I want any variance outside expected tolerance flagged immediately. We’re not just flipping a switch, we are trying to thread the needle.
Banks: ::nodding:: Understood. ::gesturing at the console:: May I?
The commander moved his hand from the controls, and Juliet paged back through the timestamped log, getting a sense of the sequence of events last time the Dispersion Array had been used with such disastrous results. Here a power surge, there an unexplained delay that suggested physical damage or a code conflict; the log was a goldmine of data that would help them tune the SDA as precisely as possible – if they had time.
Juliet stopped paging through the event log and moved back so the Commander could resume.
Banks: On that note, sir, could I ask for a super-quick briefing on anything I urgently need to know about Sencha radiation?
She gestured at the Sencha Dispersion Array, explaining her situation.
Banks: I came on board during the stop at Earth, but I hadn’t been onboarded by the time the mission started, so I wasn’t in the briefings – and as so much of the last mission was classified and need-to-know, I’m not really in the loop yet. I have an approximate idea about Sencha radiation itself now, thanks to a couple of research papers, but I thought I should ask rather than assume and risk a blunder.
She looked up at the Commander curiously. She was starting to put the pieces of the last mission together, based on references in conversation, the discussion in today’s briefing and her own experience on the bridge as they escaped the nebula last time. But there was still so much she didn’t know.
Dewitt: Response
Juliet listened intently, slotting the facts from Commander Dewitt in among the other things she knew about the last mission.
Banks: Given what I observed at the helm as we left the nebula, Sencha radiation obviously has immediate effects on the ship beyond just the general fact that getting irradiated typically isn’t beneficial. What are the main effects on ship systems that we’re going to have to watch for in the event of encountering further radiation?
Dewitt: Response
Finally, somewhere she could be useful as an Operations officer, not just another pair of hands as an Engineering assistant. She tapped in a couple of notes into her PADD, nodding.
Banks: I’ll make sure Ops has all the non-essential systems that might be impacted on closedown or standby as far as possible, before we’re in range of any radiation.
She looked back up at the commander.
Banks: Alright, hopefully I know what I need to for now. Thankyou for the explanation, sir. I’m ready to proceed with the calibration, if that’s our next step?
Dewitt: Response.
Tag / TBC
Ensign Juliet Banks
Ops/Comms Officer
USS Khitomer – NCC62400
K240206JB1