PNPC Lieutenant JG Rachel Morgan - Black Hole Sun
Martin Tucker
Wren: oO At this rate, we’re going to run out of probes. The best thing we could do to gather data in real-time is send out a shuttle, but that could be adding unnecessary risk. Oo Is there any way we could try to connect the probes together in a chain? If we can do that, it might be possible to maintain that connection if one of them disappears again, and we might be able to see where it went?
oO Sounds good to me… Oo
Dohna: The class four probes have small subprobes available. If we program them to deploy at intervals, we may achieve that exact goal.
Rachel's head bobbed in agreement.
Morgan: I also want to add alarms. I want one to tell immediately when time dilation starts, so we can get a better sense of just how much dilation there is. Honestly, I’m afraid of how much of a time gap there is, years? Minutes?
Rachel programmed the alarms to alert them when time dilation starts, and then again if it goes back farther; she set it for a day. The probes were then loaded into the launch tubes, it reminded Rachel of old-time submarines and how they loaded torpedoes. One of her big areas of interest is historical engineering, and she had become pretty educated on her own, taking Academy satellite classes when he wasn’t on duty.
Wren: Probes are up and ready to go. I’ve got them daisy-chained together, so if anything happens, we’ll more or less know what it is. ::standing back up, and beaming them out:: oOBye, Steven… Oo Readings should start any minute. In the meantime, if it’s alright, I’m going to take another look at the probes we have here. Maybe we can figure out a way to repair them, or at least see if we can scan them yet.
Not a second later, the probes were out of the tube and headed towards the anomaly. They’d be getting telemetry in a minute now, so they could see what's what.
Dohna: Probes are approaching the anomaly. Several sub-probes have been jettisoned. I'm happy to keep an eye on the readings.
Rachel had so many questions for Dohna, as this was the first time she’d worked with the Vulcan/Bajoran, and how do you square all that? She had a hard enough time just being human; she couldn’t imagine being human and something else at the same time.
Morgan: Fingers crossed we get some useful data.
Morgan and Wren turned to the returning probes, which looked a bit more…weathered? Which was being generous, to be honest.
Wren: So….. I have noticed something, and it’s a bit of a reach, but I wanted to notate it as a possibility?
Morgan: ::crossing her arms across her chest:: Shoot, ensign.
Dohna: Don't worry, Ensign. Neither Lt. Morgan nor myself bite.
Wren: ::uncertain:: The presence of chronitons in this area, coupled with the shape of the eddy, and the difficulties we’re having with our tricorders… is it at all possible that we witnessed some sort of temporal fracture? I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t know that much about temporal anomalies, but the tricorder readings are so wildly inconsistent, it’s almost as though I’m actually scanning multiple probes at once, all under different conditions.
Dohna: Temporal Anomalies are no one's favorite topic. However, I'm inclined to agree with your assessment.
Rachel ran a hand over her face and sighed.
oO What I need is caffeine, an energy drink, and a rocket tied to my ass, and I might stay awake.. Oo
Morgan: Temporal Mechanics is confusing at times; it was the hardest class I took at the Academy. Got a damn C in that class; the professor was a jerk.
Dohna: The real question is why it is here and how Fleet Captain Niac and Commander Raga came to come through it.
Rachel looked back down at the information coming from the returned probes. Some of it wasn’t making a lick of sense to her, and it made her pause. She’d never seen anything like it. She kept chasing a data trail, quickly, her hands flying over the LCARS like someone who'd done it a million times, the ease of use and the swiftness with which she brought up the pertinent information.
Morgan: From the information I’ve been able to extrapolate, is that they were sucked into the thing like a giant vortex that stemmed from the eddy itself. I’m starting to get ‘whatever caused this, might be a weapon.’
She pulled her tripadd out and downloaded it to the device for easier use later. She had her own theories and wanted to work them out in her free time, but time seemed to be all over the place.
Dohna: There are easier ways to travel through time. Take, for example, the "wrap around a star approach".
Morgan: Yeah, that ones been used a couple of times. Around a sun is the hard one; don’t want to irradiate the entire crew or possibly melt the hull. ::she shrugged, the items in the pockets of her lab coat jingled::
Wren: ::to herself:: Or specifically ask a Q not to do so for you…
A chirp from Wren’s combadge brought the discussion to a temporary close.
Kel: =/\= Kel to Ensign Wren. Please meet us at Shuttlebay 1. We're going on a field trip.
Wren: =/\= Oh! Okay, I’m on my way, sir =/\= ::To the others:: I’ll leave the rest to you, um…. This is my first time going on a shuttle run. Any advice?
Rachel felt a pang of feeling left out, it wasn’t often she got to go on away missions. She honestly couldn’t remember the last time she’d been off ship, except for R & R on The Farm.
Morgan: Looks like the new ensign gets picked for away team duty, have fun and try not to screw up too bad. I”ll keep my fingers crossed for you. ::she smiled::
Dohna: ::mischievously:: Balleek Ensign. May the Prophets guide you.
Morgan: ::clapping her hands:: All right, time to get back to it. These probes are the devils work, nothing is making sense right now. This probe quantum dates to 200 years ago.
Rachel and Dohna watched as the fresh out of the Academy ensign headed off for their first away mission. Rach had her first away mission while working at the Shipyards. They had to go and swap out warp cores for the USS Moldova in hostile space near the Tholian Assembly. Luckily, the Tholians decided not to come around, or if they did, they kept their distance. She had yet to have an away mission on the Ronin.
Dohna: Response
Morgan: You’re right, let's get the rest of this data collated and sent off to the science team for further analysis. I wish I had the time, but I’ve still got the warp core to worry about, and we still can’t form a warp bubble. But that’s just the tip, I need to get back down there and see what's going on.
Rachel looked down at the information coming in across her tripadd. Things were not adding up, not that she expected them to, but even stranger than she anticipated. She scratched her head in confusion and then raised a very Vulcan-like eyebrow.
Dohna: Response
Morgan: Well, if my calculations are correct, and they usually are, things are going to get gnarly. If the chronitons keep polarizing, as they are now, it's very possible they will create a temporal black hole. And I think that’s how the Kurosawa, whichever version, came through and exploded from what I’d assume was stress from going through the black hole. It might also explain why we’re getting such conflicting readings from the probes.
Dohna: Response
Her head bobbed, a red curl springing loose.
Morgan: I’m sending all that information to Stellar Cartography; they can do something with it. As for us, we should probably get back to Engineering.
She was sure there were enough things to do in engineering, like seeing how the repair teams are coming along, and not that we’re farther out from the anomaly, the less it was wreaking havoc with the Ronin.
