Lieutenant JG Amelia Semara - Spatial Phenomena Naming Rules

[Max]

(( Conference Room, Deck 1, USS Khitomer, the Lagoon Nebula ))

With nothing better to do, Amelia let herself gaze out the windows of the conference rooms at the Lagoon Nebula beyond.  Even if it wasn't her job to study the natural universe, there was a certain loveliness to watching the hydrogen colorfully heat up as it contracted in on itself - like watching a flower bloom in reverse time-lapse.

A flash of bluish light sparked in the middle of a dense region of gas, and now it was all she could think about.  Tricorder aimed at the anomaly, she hoped either it or another one of the officers would see the light if it came back.  She didn't love the possibility that Sencha radiation could be making her hallucinate flashes of light.

Semara: I saw a flash of light.  'Bout center-mass, that cloud structure.  :: Still pointing. ::

Hobart and Zerva both crowded up against the glass and each other.  She grinned for a moment.  It was like they were a bunch of little kids on their first Casperian Safari, noses pressed up against the glass for a better look outside.  Then she turned her eyes back to the cloud of swirling gas.  The way it churned reminded her that her stomach still wasn't completely settled.

For a moment, her eyes strained for more detail.  The mixing, ruddy colors reminded her of a particular Betazoid impressionist painter famed for being heavy-handed on the oil paints and the chemical inspiration of his work.

Hobart: Maybe it was some kind of— ::eyes widened:: No, I see it!

There!  Again!  A circular arcing blob of dense gas heated up and burned out, then another.  Like the first bubbles of a pot of boiling water, scattered pockets of ultra-dense hydrogen briefly fused and gave off light.

Thank the four she wasn't hallucinating.  And it was rather stunning, too.

Zerva: ::raises a brow:: Are you sure your tricorder will pickup anything from here? ::realizes he’s too close to them both and takes a step away:: Sorry.

Zerva was the kid who couldn't find the camouflage bug in its little terrarium at the zoo.  She got it.  She'd felt the same pebble-skinned annoyance he had many times.

Semara: :: Turning to Zerva with a smile. :: Prolly not, but it's the only sensor I got.  'Sides my eyes.  C'mere.  Look. :: Back to the window. :: See the spirals in the gas?  If you follow 'em in, you'll find center-mass.  That's where you wanna look...

Zerva: ::clears his throat:: My apologies. I didn’t mean to infer you didn’t know what you were doing. Even so, either I’m blind or… ::sees the faint streak of light:: There! ::soft sigh:: It’s so beautiful.

Amelia grinned.  She knew precisely what he'd meant and didn't mean.  One of the many charms of an empathic sense was how easy it made it to not take offense.  She just quickly flashed a pretty little smile in the dark before settling in to watch the light show.

Hobart: Stars take billions of years to form, right?

Zerva: I believe you’re correct.

Amelia chuckled softly.  Finally!  Her chance to correct the captain, instead of the other way around for a change.

Semara: Millions, with an M.  Still...  :: Beat :: This breaks so many laws of normal-space physics.  Sure pretty, though.

What was a few orders of magnitude between Betazoids anyway?  Assuming Hobart hadn't done something to completely cut that part of himself off, the way it seemed he had.

It would have been nice to have someone around who understood that part of her.

Hobart: ::softly:: I expect not many people in the galaxy can claim to have seen what you’re seeing now, Lieutenants. Whatever it is.

Zerva: It’s a shame we lost power and can’t record this.

Semara: Best I got is the tricorder.

She briefly adjusted the settings to focus on the anomaly.  At the very least, they'd have some basic EM-band and camera playback of the formation.  It would be incredibly blurry, but if Amelia was going to die she might as well have video with the resolution befitting a doomed scientist.

Then she muted the device and contented herself to watch.

It should have stopped.  But instead, the lights began intensifying and swarming, getting brighter and shifting bluer.  As astonishing as it was, it was certainly not normal for the birth of a star - accelerated or otherwise.

Hobart: Huh.

Zerva: What is it sir?

A brief glance at the tricorder confirmed it.  She took the liberty of giving the technical answer.

Semara: The colors are wrong.  The nursery has the mass and composition to form a class M or class K star.  It should be reddish, not bluish.  There's way more energy and heat than there should be.

She shot a glance at Hobart, who was clearly grasping the importance of what she just said.  For once, they were on the same page.

Then, as if enough things that shouldn't happen hadn't already happened, a wave of energy crackled and radiated out from the center of the nebula towards Khitomer.  She just watched for a moment, trying to puzzle out what it could mean.  She echoed Hobart's musing.

oO Huh. Oo

Hobart: Brace!

Amelia simply kicked off and balled up, covering her head, letting the ship shake around the air she swam in suspended.  But the maneuver didn't entirely work: The shockwave must have nudged Khitomer into a low-rate spin, because now the conference table was rising up underneath her.

She thunked artlessly onto the hard surface, though she managed to protect herself with arms and legs covering her head and vital organs.

Zerva: ::beet:: Ow! ::grumbles:: Stupid chair!

Zerva was apparently having equal luck being tossed about.

The aftershock rattled her, and she clutched onto the table holding herself to it.  In the reflection on the surface of the table, the nebula spun in the opposite direction that it spun outside the window.

But that was only the beginning.  No longer in synchrony with the cloud of Sencha radiation floating around the ship, a corkscrew of Sencha-spawned agony burrowed into her paracortex like a Ceti eel hopped up on amphetamines.  She shut her eyes and softly cried out.

Hobart: You okay, Lieutenants?

Hastily thrown together mental defenses started to stem the tide.  The cool, glass surface of the conference room table became her shield.  Focused on the near perfection of its smooth surface, she walled off her mind from the outside, one labored breath at a time.  For a moment there was nothing else in the universe besides her and the sweet mercy of a well-built table.

Zerva: ::rubs the back of his head:: Nothing a couple of aspirin or a hypospray can’t fix.

She kept perfectly still and her eyes closed so she could continue to focus and fortify her mind against the terrifyingly strong artificial assault against her telepathic senses.  It wasn't as overwhelming as the first encounter, at least: either there was less radiation to contend with this time, or she had a better handle on how to keep it blocked out.  Or both.

Semara: :: Just above a whisper. :: Think quieter, please.  We must'a gotten bumped into a pocket of radiation.  Been better, but I think I'll manage.

She risked opening one eye to judge Hobart's response.  Throwing so much of herself into such a focused telepathic defense meant she couldn't feel anyone or anything for the moment.  She was managing, but how long she could keep it up was anyone's guess.

Hobart: Response

Zerva: I’ll be fine I promise. Just a little bump and a headache. What was that exactly? I don’t recall ever reading about anything like that in school before or even at the Academy. Mind you I didn’t take any science classes as a major or minor at the Academy.

Amelia switched her focus from the table to what she could remember seeing.happen in the nebula around them.  A scientific curiosity turned out to be a much better image to focus her mind on than a conference table, and mulling it over turned out to be an even better defense against the radiation trying to pry into her head and make her submit to blackness.

She peeled herself off the table.  She could open her eyes now, but she still had to focus.

Semara: Ain't nothin' I ever saw neither.  Maybe we can name it?  :: A sly grin. :: It seemed to suck matter towards it.  Could call it a "Hobart Hole."  Y'know, for the discoverer.  :: A long pause as her smile got bigger. :: Hey, I don't make the namin' rules for spatial phenomena.  You're just lucky I ain't callin' it a subspace sphincter.

She couldn't help herself.  Even in a moment that was objectively bad, she giggled like a little girl at her own joke.  Then she winced and sucked in air as she had to focus to fend off another wave of telepathic Sencha sickness.  Not nearly as bad now she was getting the hang of it, but power couldn't get restored quickly enough.  Get out of here, then get treated.

Hobart: Response

Zerva: ::nodded:: I wonder how the rest of the crew fared? Hopefully that didn’t hurt anyone.

Semara: We're prolly gettin' the worst of it here close to the outer hull.  Our rate of rotation in the radiation cloud looks low, so inner corridors oughta be just fine.  Or as fine as they were before.

She shot Hobart a look.  With any luck, they could move back into the main bridge.

Hobart: Response

Zerva: I guess we’ll just have to sit tight and wait to find out.

Precisely what she didn't want to do.  But it wasn't like she had much of a choice besides sitting there and toughing it out.  It was proving awfully hard to come up with bright ideas when one's telepathically-sensitive brain is being bombarded with pain-inducing radiation.

Semara: :: Shrugging :: Til we got sensors, I got nothin'.

Hobart: Response

She brought herself back to her breath, drawing inward and forcing the rise and fall of her chest to slow down, and letting everything else become a secondary concern.  It was a way to center herself she'd practiced since even before her empathic senses manifested, and it was one of the easiest ways to block the outside telepathic world out.

Would Hobart recognize what she was doing?

Zerva: What of the probe we launched? I can’t see it from here. Do you think it got caught in that light show?

Semara: Prolly.  Why?

Hobart: Response

Semara: If that's true... :: Beat.  Then a shake of the head. :: No.  Even if there was enough juice in the light show to charge the probe, we'd need the uplink back for it to fire.

It was precisely then the lights flicked on.  Amelia softly thumped back onto the conference table with the restoration of gravity, and the nebula outside was largely washed out by the bright white lights overhead.  Still, a brightly burning (pulling?  swallowing?  pulsing?  no one knew...) "Hobart Hole" was still plainly visible drifting back into view - apparently thrusters and automatic attitude control had been restored, too, and the ship was righting itself.

Amelia had never been so grateful for a few degrees of rotation and likely a mere one or two kph of drift correction.  With the slight adjustment, the pain in her head finally subsided again.  Apparently they'd settled back into their original radiation-cloud-synchronous position.  She let out a huge breath and carefully let go of her defenses.

Semara: Oh, that is so much better.

Hobart / Zerva: Response

A few consoles even started flicking back on in the bridge as the ship re-initialized - though it was anyone's guess if they actually worked, or had just lit up.  Clearly it was only backups and a few other minimal odds and ends, but it was something.  Something to stop them from immediately dying.

Semara: Looks like backup power.  Oughta have comms now, might even be able to rig the main viewer...  :: Trailing off. ::  Oh no...

Amelia bolted upright, hopped off the conference table as if she hadn't just fought off a painful bout of Sencha poisoning, dashed into the bridge, and started looking for any console that could tap into either the communications or science array.

Hobart / Zerva: Response

Semara: :: Tapping furiously on mostly dead consoles. :: Comms are up.  So backups will automatically try to re-establish a link with the probe...

A probe which, as Hobart and Zerva had just pointed out, was quite possibly fully charged and ready to fire if the light show had energized its power stores.  It still "shouldn't" fire (a word she was in no mood to trust), since they had to push a button for that to happen, but having a fully-armed Sencha emitter aimed at them with no defense in place was not an enviable place to be.  And if it did fire with Khitomer still in the crosshairs, that was one sure way to massively up the day's casualty count - likely Amelia included.

Hobart / Zerva: Response

Tag / TBC...

Lieutenant Junior Grade Amelia Magnolia Semara

Science Officer

USS Khitomer - NCC-62400

A239710MA0