Are You Up For It?

Posted on Fri Jan 11th, 2019 @ 9:14pm by Lieutenant JG Darzen Kail

Mission: Negotiations and Apothecaries
Location: USS Wolff - Chief Engineer's Office
Timeline: Current Day - 16:30

ON:

It'd been a grueling first shift as the Wolff's acting CEO and Jason and even 30 minutes into beta shift, he was just getting to the 'good' part, administration.

Stepping into the CEO's office, and gingerly avoiding Navore's things he went to the replicator ordering, "Ronaran Chai tea, hot."

The drink materialized with a little hum and he took it in hand and sat down at the desk.

It felt a little like what command officers felt slipping into the captain's chair, they'd made it, even though this was a temporary position, it had been one he'd been after since he first submitted his application to Starfleet.

Voss smiled and sipped his tea; a momentary celebration, then it was time to work.

The first thing on his list was filling the holes in his roster, specifically his old spot. Which incidentally coincided with an incident report from one of the shift supervisors.

Setting down his tea Voss, tapped his combadge =/\=Voss to Kail. Lieutenant, can I see you in the CEO's office.=/\=

Darzan tapped his badge and stood from the console he'd been staring at. =/\=On my way. Kail out.=/\= It didn't take him long to reach the office. It wasn't that far away from where he was currently.

A few moments later the Lieutenant was standing in front of the Chief Engineer's office. He was a tiny bit unsettled because he had caused a scene a few days ago and he was concerned that he might be in more trouble. He tapped the buzzer to the office anyway and waited.

"Come in," Voss called from inside the office, he'd been studying a PADD but he set it down as Kail entered. He nodded to one of the chairs in front of the desk. "Have a seat, Lieutenant. Can I get you something?' There's not a hint of sourness in Voss' expression, but he did seem to study the Lieutenant when he entered.

Darzen nodded and sat down in the chair. He stared at Voss for a moment and then realized the man had asked him a question. "Oh uh... no thank you, Sir. I'm alright. Thank you for offering." He brushed a stay lock of hair out of his face. "What can I do for you, Sir?"

The slight delay in answering earned a smile from Voss. "Actually, I wanted to talk about the incident from the other day. Get your take on it, then possibly discuss another matter."

Darzen sighed and leaned back in the chair. "I get angry when I don't eat..." he offered in the way of a conversation starter. "Very angry. I apologized to the ensign."

Voss rubbed his temples. "Noted and appreciated, but I am more concerned about your control than the niceties of the thing. Does this happen a lot with you, Lieutenant, or was the other day a special case? I ask because with the Chief sick, we're all going to need to step up, and I need to know I can count on you."

Darzen sighed again. "You can check my service record. It's not the norm. I promise and of course you can count on me. I've been in Starfleet this long without incident. Like I said. I was hungry. I should have gone to lunch when I was supposed to. It's not like I don't know these things about myself. So, it was a mistake on my part."

Voss nodded. "I am sure you're not the first officer to skip a meal, but if you're on top of things now, I'll consider the matter closed," he explained. "The reason I'm bringing it up at all is because I need someone to fill in as deputy chief while I'm doing the boss' job and thought you might want to take a crack at it. What do you say? Are you up for it?"

Darzen blinked at Voss and sat forward in his chair, one hand on the arm. Then his brows furrowed. "Yes, but are you certain? I'm sure that there are more qualified... officers..." His mind was thinking about the Engineering roster. "I guess I am the next in rank. Aren't I?" He chuckled softly and relaxed again. "I'm not doubting my ability, Sir. Just hadn't really thought about it." He smiled at Jason.

Voss smiled. "Yep, pretty sure," he says. "Like you said, you're next in rank and if nothing else it's a chance to take on a bit more responsibility, see how it feels. Chief is only out sick, it's not like any of this is going to be forever."

Darzen nodded, his face becoming more serious. "Yes, Sir. You can count on me."

"Great, you start on tomorrow's beta shift, and we'll keep going until the boss is back on his feet. Planning on letting a few of the junior officers get a crack at running gamma shift on a rotating basis, give them a chance to stretch their wings, but other than that it'll be business as usual. We've still got a lot to repair, before the mission throws the next thing at us."

Voss smiled then. "Anyhow, we'll make it through, but do you have any questions?" he asked.

"Is there anything that you would like for me to start on right away?" Darzen asked. "I've been sort of just taking on things I think need doing, but if you have more directed activities?"

Voss nodded. "Well, our main focus should be on getting the ship up and running and burning through the repair list, but, I've been giving some thought to prevention as well." He glanced over the desk until he hit upon what he was looking for a PADD. He picked it up and activated it. "The Kurai surprised us with their low-tech weaponry. The EMP from their nukes fried some of our systems. It'd be good not to let them bloody our noses again with tech from four centuries ago. I was working on some new EMP hardening measures on the affected systems for Lt. Navore, and I think I've got some solutions there, though on a wider scale. Well, how are you at shield harmonics?" he offered the PADD. "I figure if we activate some of the metaphasic elements to our shields, we should be able to filter out those effects. After all, those shields were meant to let us enter the corona of star, and what's a star really, other than a big, persistent nuclear explosion. Anyhow, have a look and let me know what you think."

"I'm pretty good at shields." He took the PADD that Jason offered him and looked at it. "Damage control is my speciality. You are correct in thinking that our metaphasic shielding could help against nuclear weapons. At least from the heat and plasma. We need to figure out if their weapons were fusion or fission. If they were fusion, then our shielding might be able to be boosted in some way and be successful. If their weapons were fission... well... that's another matter." He looked from the PADD to Jason. "The fission would rely on chemicals for their explosion and have a much higher rate of radioactivity. While fusion is mostly heat and energy."

Pointing, Voss said, "Good point," before he turned to his console and brought up the sensor readings from the battle. "It'll take a second, but I think we can figure it out by the readings," he said as he worked. "I got to admit, I kind of hope we can work things out with these guys. I'd pay real latinum to see how they rigged up those solar sails."

Darzen snorted in humor. "I agree. It's amazing to me that they managed to fire nuclear weapons from such a short distance. I'd like to know how they compensate for the heat and pressure. I mean, even by having those kinds of weapons onboard they are endangering themselves. How do you do that with the confidence required to fire the weapons?"

Voss brought up the readings and turned the screen towards Darzen. "Based on these radiation levels that's got to be a fission device. Which makes these guys an extra level of crazy to fly around with those things," he paused then considering. "Or desperate. I guess if I was a pre-warp culture fighting a warp capable one for centuries, I'd be willing to do just about anything to survive too. But you're right, it takes a lot of confidence to ship those weapons let alone fire them, as for how they manage it, they've got to have some decently advanced rad shielding to avoid being fried. Decent structural integrity fields too, to deal with the pressures involved as well." Voss breathed a 'heh', "You know what Kail the more I look at these guys the more I like them, the crazy bastards."

Darzan laughed. A real laugh and not his normal sarcastic snort. "I do have to admit that it's pretty impressive what they've managed to do with what they have. I mean, I know they talk a lot about space faring people that weren't warp capable, but many of those vessels were exploratory in nature. The ancient Bajorians weren't building warships, but these guys..." he shook his head, chuckling again. "To be honest I don't even know what one of those guys looks like. Do you?"

"I think reptilian? With a humid climate, at least according to guys from environmental control who did the quarters that we set up for when their ambassador arrives, if they arrive. Not sure what's going on with any of it at this point, but would be good to have some first hand info on them and their ships rather than getting everything from their enemies," Voss fished a coin out of his belt, and begun flipping it between his fingers as he thought things over. "Wonder if the Captain might let sciences send a probe to the Kurai's system, if we know where that is, and see what we can see," he mused aloud.

"Well, one thing I can say about them is that if they're using fission weapons they're considerably more complicated than we are giving them credit for," Darzen speculated. "They've also got enriched uranium or plutonium somewhere on their planet or nearby that they can use to build those bombs. My vote is plutonium... because it's isotopes don't have to be seperated like the uranium. Plutonium will have a reaction with the addition of carbon... so that science isn't hard. The fission part though... that's pretty complicated work. Fission doesn't just produce one explosion. It's like a cascade effect. One after the other until all the resources are burned up."

"Plutonium seems likely, though, they do build ships and navigate through the stars so, refining uranium shouldn't be beyond their capabilities either. But you're right, they're cleverer than they seem. Really, wish I knew what their deal was though, why did they attack us..." Voss wondered, his coin flipping between his fingers idly.

"Well..." Darzen started, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair again. "Sometimes when there are peace talks going on... not everyone wants peace. There can be groups inside the cultures that don't want anything to do with peace. Maybe we got hit by one of those groups? I'm not honestly sure what the conflict even is."

"Yeah, dissidents are always an option, or maybe the Yatal are stringing us along and forgot to mention to the Kurai that our big scary starship was here on a peace mission," Voss frowned at the thought. This mission was such a tangle and one hand it was easy to want to bury his head in his engines on the other, he had to admit it was a mystery begging to be solved. "And no clue what they're fighting about, from the briefing materials I found in Navore's files it sounds like one of those ancient nobody remembers why we're doing this type feuds, so, you know, extra pointless."

Darzen chuckled. "Right?" He was looking at the PADD in his hands again. "So according to the ship's specs log we have Auto-Modulating shields, metaphasic shielding and regenerative shielding. So what went wrong? Most of those should have adapted to the first strike, but that was pretty bad damage. Is the auto-modulator malfunctioning?"

Voss shook his head. "Metaphasic shielding isn't part of the regular rotation the auto-modulator runs through, they work best when they're run as a distinct sub-system rather than in tandem with our conventional shields. Running both for too long overworks the emitters and causes them to short out." He paused a moment, thinking. "Though that's full metaphasic shielding, we could probably adjust our standard shields to assume the needed metaphasic properties, that would let the auto-modulator engage them when needed and not tax the emitters." Voss, looked to Kail to see if what he said had made sense to the other man.

Darzen nodded. "I think that could work. Do you want to me to start on making that happen?"

"Definitely. Loop in tactical and get started right away, who knows when we might be running into more Kurai ships," he said then, paused a moment. "Speaking of tactical, word is Commander Vaz is putting her people through some intensive physical training, a bunch of us are going to try and join in, if that's your thing, you're welcome to join in."

Darzen wrinkled his nose. "Thanks for asking, but I'm not a real workout kind of guy." He brushed a stray lock of sandy blond hair out of his eyes. "I'll get a team together and get started right away." He stood. "That is if I'm dismissed, Sir."

"Understood. I wasn't much of one either," Voss said trailing off, he'd meant to say 'before the incident' but thought better of it. He picked up again with, "Anyhow, you're dismissed, keep me posted and I'll see you at the start of beta tomorrow."

Darzen nodded and headed for the door. "Yes, Sir. I will let you know the minute I have the team assembled and who is on it."

"Great," Voss said. "Have a good one lieutenant."

Then it was on to the rest of the work waiting for him.

OFF:

Lieutenant JG Darzen Kail
Damage Control Specialist

&

Lieutenant Jason Voss
Acting Chief Engineer