LCDR Nolen Hobart — Wrangled (Part II)
Nolen Hobart
((Bridge, Deck 1, USS Khitomer, the Lagoon Nebula))
Sensing an opportunity, Hobart snapped his fingers and pointed at Semara, who correctly inferred that he was giving her his “go.”
Semara: =/\= Ouachita, Lieutenant Semara here. Can you get Michaels for me, please? I'd like to know the exact condition of the probe. =/\=
Zerva: Right. Probe first.
Michaels: =/\= I am here, Lieutenant. The probe appears to be in working order with no obvious damage beyond a few micrometeorite impact marks. Those do not appear to be significant. =/\=
Semara: =/\= Good to hear your voice, Michaels. Briefly, please - what exactly is the condition of the probe and its power levels? =/\=
Nolen leaned back in his command chair. Now they were asking the questions, and hopefully they’d get a lot more clarity than guesses and “probably nots.”
Michaels: =/\= The probe is in good condition. I removed the rear access panel to conduct my study. I noted, in particular, that the gel paks appear to be free of the damage we found in the gel paks on Khitomer. Doctor El'Heem is disabling the probe's sensors. At his current pace, we should have blinded the probe in another twelve minutes. =/\=
The sensors in front of Lieutenant Semara made some kind of declaration, interrupting the flow of the still fairly terse conversation. Lieutenant Zerva bolted upright and began to gesture for Semara’s attention.
Zerva: ::panics:: Lieutenant! ::motions her over:: What is that on the screen? Look here. There’s a color I haven’t seen yet. Right in the middle of the radiation on the screen not more than 200 meters from the runabout. What is that?! It’s not the Ouchita or the probe.
Semara dashed to his side with all the alacrity that he’d hoped to have seen in her simulation at Sol Station. It at least outwardly appeared to be connected to a sense of urgency.
Semara: :: To Zerva :: Two hundred meters off... Just appeared there now? Sounds like sensor misalignment... The probe might look like that if…
As she trailed off, she looked back towards him to meet his gaze. She seemed almost pleading to him. He stood from his seat and strode over to look at the screen with them. This wasn’t a simulation, he wasn’t just observing. He could respond to her with orders, but he had no idea what he was supposed to understand from the readings.
Semara: =/\= Michaels, how would you describe the energy readin's in the probe? And the radiation appeared after these readin's? =/\=
Michaels: =/\= Preliminary power readings indicate that the reactor is operating as designed. It is more powerful than similar reactors I am familiar with. The reactor's radiation shielding was intact, so I only took minimal readings on the radiation. Approximately 142 becquerels, slightly higher than I anticipated. If we limit our exposure to thirty minutes or less, there should not be significant health effects. ::beat:: Lieutenant. You are concerned about something. ::beat:: Are you still there, Amelia? =/\=
Hobart: ::softly:: Somebody’s going to have to start saying something definitive or so help me I’m just gonna set the ship to self-destruct. What is this?
Zerva: Response
Semara: :: Muting comms :: Cap'n, everything we're seein' and everything Prix and Michaels are sayin' is all pointin' at the probe's pre-fire sequence. I don't know how or why. Our telemetry link's still down, so it ain't us.
Hobart: If it “ain’t us,” the probe “ain’t” corrupted, and there “ain’t” no one else out here besides the runabout team, how could this happen? Give me a timeframe. ::holding up a hand:: Strike that, give them a timeframe.
Zerva: Response
Semara: :: unmuting comms :: =/\= Still here, Ouachita. Be advised we think we got readin's consistent with the emitter preppin' to fire. I reckon' you got another ninety seconds or so to do whatever you're doin' and get out. =/\=
Michaels: =/\= Great. Michaels out. =/\=
He wasn’t sure what happened in Texas or on Vulcan, but Lt. Commander Hobart was pretty sure he had a very different understanding of the word “great” than Ensign Michaels. And what came next troubled him more.
Michaels: =/\= Michaels to Lt. El'Heem. Ras. Stop what you're doing and get back to the access hatch. Khitomer believes the device is going to fire in approximately a minute. We have to switch to plan B. =/\=
El'Heem: =/\= ::groaning between breaths:: Shit, Michaels. Okay. Okay. How? =/\=
Hobart’s jaw flexed. Usually when you were making plans, you shared them with your colleagues. Usually, before anyone had begun to work on Plan A, everybody was familiar with Plans B through D, as well. For as much as Ensign Hobart had enjoyed winging things and improvising, Lieutenant Commander Hobart was beginning to develop a very healthy sense of self-loathing.
Michaels: =/\= If the probe does not know how to target or fire, it can not do either one. Unclamp the gel packs and pull them out. Do not... I repeat ... do not touch the isolinear chips. Think of it as brain surgery on the probe. No pressure. You have slightly more than sixty seconds. =/\=
El’Heem: =/\= ::stilling breathing laboriously:: Right. Brain surgery. With a broken hand. ::swallowing hard:: Easy. =/\=
After that, the comms went quiet. There was no way to know what was going on, or whether Dr. El’Heem was successful in his engineering surgery, except by staring at the limited feed of information coming in. And Hobart didn’t dare interrupt him. He saw signs of energy transfer, and then a bright discharge, he thought, but looked to Lieutenant J/G Semara for guidance.
A rumble of force echoed through the hull of the ship around them and Nolen stabilized himself on the console the three of them were huddled around.
Prix: =/\= Ouchita to Khitomer Bridge, Engineering and Sickbay. We transported Lieutenant El’Heem to sickbay. The energy discharge hit us hard… We will try to return to Khitomer shortly. Ouchita out.=/\=
Hobart: What happened out there?
Semara / Zerva: Response
Prix: =/\= Ouchita to Bridge. Do you read? =/\=
Hobart: =/\= Khitomer reads, Ouachita. Go ahead. =/\=
Prix: =/\= The probe seems deactivated… Do you want… ::pause:: Should we get it back to the Khitomer? =/\=
His nostrils flared as the acting Captain returned to his command chair. This was the question he had wished they’d asked before they’d launched. A scientist lingered in the back of his mind, and beckoned for him to answer in the affirmative. There was so much yet to understand about what had gone wrong. And two of his officers had been injured in the attempt to deactivate the probe. If he didn’t bring it in, get it under control, their efforts and their injuries would have been in vain. And with their work completed, a compelling argument could be made that it posed no ongoing threat.
But the argument wasn’t compelling enough, and neither was the pride of officers gone rogue.
Hobart: =/\= Ensign Prix, listen to me very, very carefully. As soon as you’re operable, I want you to set one microtorpedo to minimum yield, load it, and then get that thing the hell out of my sky. =/\=
Michaels / Semara / Zerva / Prix: =/\= Response =/\=
Hobart: =/\= This is not a discussion. Blow it up and get your asses back here. Khitomer out. =/\=
He reached over and cut off the communication line, and then looked at the two Lieutenants on the Bridge with him. He stared at them in silence for a solid ten seconds.
Hobart: Speak your minds.
Semara / Zerva: Response
Hobart: And now listen: after every battle with the Lattice Alliance, the stars are strewn with debris. Starfleet has warehouses full of Sencha emitters. That probe was expendable. To Starfleet, this crew is expendable, too. The defensive technology on this ship is what matters, and the only part of our mission left to complete is to get it back to Starfleet.
His words were punctuated by a small shockwave that marked the end of the Sencha-equipped probe, and the beginning of their next great challenge: surviving the anomaly, restoring the ship, and getting home.
Semara / Zerva: Response
Hobart: Good. Semara, keep eyes on that thing. Zerva, give her whatever she needs.
Semara / Zerva: Response
Nodding, he tapped his combadge authoritatively.
Hobart: =/\= Bridge to Engineering. I need my ship, Con. Have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in?
Dewitt: =/\= Response =/\=
TBC
———
Lt. Commander Nolen Hobart
Executive Officer
USS Khitomer (NCC-62400)
A240001NH3