Lt. JG Lyra Voss: Countdown
Sarah Terry
For a brief and wonderful moment, the thrill of scientific discovery was enough to push all other thoughts from Lyra’s mind. With any luck, this was the lynchpin that would help them come up with a method to safely handle the cores going forward.
Voss: It means the cores are *alive.* I mean, part of them, anyway. Does that mean we could find them with lifesign scans? Measure a healthy population of these protozoa versus a declining one?
She and A’Mayri were staring at the same screen, with a similar tilt of their heads - the mental connection between them was obviously still present, even if it was fading. It made the conversation that much faster - not quite the immediacy of telepathic communication with another Betazoid, but a shared understanding that kept them from having to explain too much to one another.
A’Mayri: The rate of rapid consumption overshadowing reproduction would make it difficult for a normal life scan to read. The hawking radiation and matter field surrounding the cores black hole would diminish any notable signs from most lifesign scans—but I believe you are still correct. We would just have to adjust the life scan specifically to their signature. Would you be able to compute the necessary equation with the equipment we have now? I will repair whatever is needed.
Lyra brought up a status screen for the connected lab equipment.
Voss: I can definitely get started with the data we have from the failing cores, but that only helps us define one end of the range of healthy versus dangerous growth rates. Can you… ::a small flinch before she continued again:: can you see if you can get one of the chambers back up and running? We need more scans to properly define the full range.
There was a half-second where she almost stopped herself from asking the ensign to do *anything* with the containment chambers again - a spike of guilt and fear that briefly made her swallow her words. But this was normal engineering repair work. Nothing inherently dangerous. And A’Mayri was a talented, competent officer - she didn’t deserve to be treated with kid gloves just because Lyra was afraid.
The other woman nodded and immediately got to work with her scanner.
A’Maryi: If we consider that the extensive power draw we pulled from the cores was what disrupted the balance of the core’s self-sufficient fueling method due to forcing the black holes to overconsume their fuel source, adjusting the scans to a fresh core should give us enough information to build the programing needed to identify and diagnose what stage of life the core may be in. It would also give us the rate in which the protozoa can reasonably repopulate, which would in turn give us a better estimate on how long a healthy core can truly sustain itself for. If we know the limit—
Voss: –we know exactly how long each core has left. We can extrapolate enough data points to tell us the lifetime of use at normal power draw rates, and also adjust for power spikes, best and worst case scenarios… ::with palpable relief:: We can catch them before they fail.
The half Vulcan pointed to Lyra, her eyes almost sparkling with satisfaction.
A’Mayri: Yes! Quite brilliant of a solution ma’am. If we cannot correct this failure once initiated, we can at the very least understand them well enough to keep those involved safe. The method we develop now could be disseminated fleet wide and warn the sector.
Lyra couldn’t help leaning down over her screen for a moment. Her legs felt a little bit like jelly. After everything these cores had put the sector through – put *her* through, losing her memory, nearly having a breakdown in the med lab, the tornado in the San Francisco district, yelling at a senior officer, and then here, the experiment, putting A’Mayri in harm’s way, the way Evan had looked at her, Four above – after *all that,* they might finally have figured out how to solve this problem.
Voss: ::with a small, fragile laugh:: I think we’re going to get a publication out of this and everything. Just a few more data points to refine…
The two women quickly got to work - A’Mayri repairing, replacing, resetting, and realigning all the various equipment components that had been damaged in the previous experiment, and Lyra calculating growth rates, figuring out the best ways to compensate for obstructive radiation in their scans, and coming up with an algorithm to link the organism’s relative health with core longevity.
They fell into an easy rhythm as they worked, sharing a few words here and there, both obviously enjoying a moment where they could do the work they loved without interruption. Finally, Lyra stood back from her terminal.
Voss: All right. Now it’s just a matter of getting the data from a fresh core…
A’Maryi: I believe that part falls under your skilled jurisdiction. If you feel that this information is satisfactory enough, we should notify Kiro and Sir right away, as well as the MTF before new testing. Active repairs may take a moment on the rest. The main chamber should be functional enough for you to run your recalculation and our newly adapted scanner. Or…we could with your authority in the room run a small scale and newly regulated test. ::slow peak over the counter towards Voss:: it would be safe of course. Simply testing readability rather than power draw.
Once again, Lyra felt that little spike. Almost like pins and needles at her wrists and the back of her neck. With just the two of them in this room, she was technically the highest ranking officer, which seemed far too inexplicable to be true. And the last time A’Mayri had listened to her during an experiment, she’d almost gotten both of them killed. She could go find Evan, she could try to reach Wyn but… who knew how long that would take? And every passing moment put Four-only-knew how many more people in danger as these cores continued to run themselves into the ground around the entire Trinity Sector. Again, she could see the destructive storm from the San Francisco district in her mind’s eye - how many other systems were failing through the sector as these cores explosively degraded?
She set her jaw.
Voss: Small scale, optimal power draw. Exactly what the cores are rated for and not a single watt more. We just need to get readings at baseline conditions and then my scanning algorithm is good to go. Can we run that safely?
A’Mayri: ?
She trusted A’Mayri’s judgement of the equipment’s condition, so she went ahead and pulled a fresh core from one of the storage cases and hooked it up to the power supply within one of the containment chambers. Then she sealed the dome and stepped back.
Voss: ::looking at A’Mayri:: No one crosses the containment field this time, all right? If anything goes sideways, we call the MFT and have them beam all the equipment into the void of space.
A’Mayri: ?
Lyra tried to hide the small tremor in her hand as she pressed the button that activated the containment field and then the power cores. Thankfully, she needn’t have worried. At normal power levels with a fresh core, nothing happened other than the small, almost imperceptible humming sound of working electronics. They took the readings they needed, and then powered down the containment chamber. The cores being what they were, the fresh core didn’t stop producing power even with the chamber powered down, but that was to be expected. For the moment, it was no more dangerous than any of the other cores around them.
Lyra and A’Mayri were both standing around the same terminal, putting the finishing touches on their scanning algorithm, when Lyra suddenly heard a throat clear behind her.
Ross: Guys... ::he was almost relieved to slip back into the fake roles:: Kiro shared some data with us.
She spun around like she’d heard a ghost. She’d been so focused on the calculations in front of her that she hadn’t heard Evan and Kiro come back into the room at all. But there was the small Temurian with a small satchel in his hands and a thousand racing emotions in his mind.
Kiro: If you start moving on those records… you need to move quickly.
So Evan had convinced him to turn over the lists of who they’d sold the power cores to. With the connection between herself and A’Mayri lessening by the moment, Lyra could finally start to feel the other emotions in the room. Kiro’s mind was made up, yes, but conflict was etched clearly across his face. He knew what he was doing could drive an immoveable wedge between himself and Leda. Perhaps even himself and Clan Gaspara.
Ross: Are we... able to move? Any findings?
Lyra briefly met Evan’s gaze, but quickly looked back at A’Mayri instead. She could still feel the memory of his previous frustration with her too keenly.
Voss: There’s a layer of rapidly reproducing microorganisms inside the cores that are feeding the black holes and keeping it alive so the core can draw power from its rotational energy. The cores fail when the rate of reproduction can’t keep up with the black hole’s pull. We’ve come up with an algorithm that can scan for cores and determine the approximate time left before they fail. It necessitated activating another core for additional readings but…
A'Mayri: ?
Kiro hesitated, just for a fraction longer than was comfortable, then continued.
Kiro: Some of the destinations on that list… are already in use. If the pattern holds, then you may already be behind.
Lyra pursed her lips tightly. Of course they were already in use. There had been almost twenty of these things active on 118 alone. Kiro had waited an awfully long time to find his conscience.
Ross: If what you say holds - we should be able to trace these coordinates and scan for any of the anomalies you're describing, no? What kind of scanner would you need? Will the long range ones back on the base be enough?
Voss: Yes, we should. We’ll need calibrated bioscanners. As to the range…
She looked at A’Mayri and her engineering expertise to answer the other part of that question.
A'Mayri: ?
Kiro’s grip tightened once on the satchel again, but he didn’t step back.
Kiro: And one more thing. ::A pause.:: If you find something tied to Gaspara logistics… you come to me first.
Evan looked at Kiro and she could see the flash of exasperation in his eyes. Asking them to keep anything hush-hush for this group who had knowingly sold deadly cores throughout the sector? It was a bold move on Kiro’s part. Still, Evan managed to wrestle down his annoyance when he spoke.
Ross: Our priority right now is to see where the cores are posing acute danger. Not pointing fingers.
Voss: We’re happy to share our methodology for tracing the cores and measuring their remaining lifespan. You can track some of these down yourself as well. Save a few lives you might otherwise have cost.
She was not as capable of wrestling down her own emotions.
A'Mayri: ?
As soon as they got hold of the data module from Kiro's satchel, Evan inserted it into the main panel and watched as selling information, time stamps, and coordinates rolled over their monitors. He leaned in slightly.
Ross: We won't have much other choice than to follow up on all of these eventually. But we'll have to try and figure out first where we're dealing with the biggest danger right now. If we trace all of these locations - will you be able to make out where they are failing right now?
Lyra bit her lip as she tapped a few buttons to put the coordinates on a map with their current position at the center. Every single dot was a failure waiting to happen. Her heart sank.
Voss: We can definitely find the most imminent failure in our area, but our scanners here won’t be enough to reach all of these. There’s just too many, and they’re too scattered…
A'Mayri/Kiro: ?
Ross: ::turning towards Kiro:: You had a way of destroying them, right? A certain wavelength, or what are we talking about? Is there any way to disable them remotely?
She looked at Kiro expectantly.
Kiro: ?
Voss: Okay, we can work with that. A pulse like that would at least pause the system long enough to disconnect it. Once the cores are disconnected, then… I don’t know. We could advise them to beam the cores into space and safely destroy them there? Or… huh, maybe put the cores in a containment field and then kill off the microorganism so the black hole evaporates? We’d have to make sure they could create a strong enough containment field though.
A'Mayri: ?
Ross: ::scrolling through the selling data:: Let's start with the biggest transactions. Where there are the most cores they will have the biggest potential for an interfering effect, right?
Voss: Yes. The black holes are all created in the same environment, and it creates a connection between them that makes them… well, it’s almost like it makes them hungrier. They outpace the microorganism even faster than they would on their own. Looks like this ::pointing to the screen:: is the largest purchase that’s within range of our current scanners. It’s a Klingon military base in the H'Atoria system.
A'Mayri/Kiro: ?
She nodded and initiated a scan based on the algorithm she and A’Mayri had created. It only took a few minutes for data to begin streaming back. What she saw immediately filled her with concern.
Voss: By all the Four… sixteen cores and *nine* have dangerously low microorganism populations. At normal power draw rates, they have a day or two left at most. If they’re being taxed at all, that could go down to hours.
A’Mayri/Kiro/Ross: ?