Chapter 21: Chapter Seventeen Breakdown

Captain’s Log July 12, 158 CSD:

Like the day before our trip is proving fairly uneventful. Then again when you are stuck traveling at a mere ten times the speed of light it takes a while to get anywhere. The sheer boredom outside the hull is a welcome change to many, however. Its nice not having to constantly look over our shoulders worried that a pack of Cathamari attack cruisers might be lurking nearby. This has given many time to unwind, but that isn’t to say things are completely uneventful. Just this morning I received a report that Logistics misplaced some 40 tons of potatoes. We have also been receiving a large number of complaints from the civilians. The current rationing system doesn’t seem to sit well with them. It doesn’t help that supplies keep going missing. I wish that 40 tons of potatoes was an isolated thing, but its not. I suspect that we have a few thieves stealing more than their fair share of supplies.

Shipwide I have received a number of security breach reports as well. As such security is already stretched thin maintaining order on the ship. It doesn’t help that we have more people aboard than the ship was ever intended to carry. Dissatisfaction is high in most areas especially with accommodations, and the current rationing measures. The lack of things to do means that many of these unsatisfied people have little more to do than sit on their hands and complain. We’ve already put a number of them to work in the foundries turning what resources we have on hand into things we need. I have quite a few people working on filling out our inventory of X-1204 starfighters, but the factories are full right now. While plenty of other people just have nothing to do. I plan to bring up the current issues with idle hands in tomorrow's council meeting. I hope it goes well, and that we can come to an agreement on what they can do.

---

Countryman tapped a key on his console, and leaned back. He was currently in his ready room, and had just finished the daily paperwork involved with running a ship. That meant that for the moment he was free.

Greyman was currently on the bridge overseeing the officers on duty, but since they were travelling at warp there wasn’t much to do. Other than monitor the sensors, and make sure the ship stayed on course that is. The navigational computer is supposed to do that, but that didn’t mean anything. Especially since they had never gone this far at warp before. The conditions of the war had forced them to limit their testing in order to maintain the secrecy of the project. As it was they had already travelled further than any test ship, but so far they hadn’t had any issues with the drives.

He stretched, and stood up out of his chair. Perhaps it was time that he had that conversation with Richards. Then again it was probably too soon. While people had time to process what happened he knew many were still emotional. It likely played into the litany of complaints and security issues he had to deal with. Didn’t help that his security forces were undermanned, and streched thin. They needed more trained people to fill the ranks. He had a few ideas on that, and planned to bring them up in the council meeting tomorrow.

Heading for the door, he had already decided where he would go. The conversation with Richards would definitely still be premature, and since he had time he might as well go check in with Ruri. Her current projects sounded interesting, and he wanted to see what she had so far. The success of those projects may prove vital to their own survival as well. So checking in was quite important.

Stepping out into the hall, he nodded to the two guards on duty. They were standing in front of the bridge doors controlling all access. It was standard procedure for all secure areas to have guards posted, and even stretched thin he made sure that procedure was followed. There were guards posted at the lower access to the bridge as well. 

The guards acknowledged him, and he turned away from the bridge towards the lift. It required an access code to take someone to this area. Just one more security measure in place for protecting the command level. Such measures were also used with other critical areas, such as engineering, and the security stations. Even the brig had guards posted at all times.

Entering the lift, he activated it, and set his destination for the lab deck. Technically there were two decks with labs in them, but the deck he wanted was deck 23. The labs Ruri was working out of were on deck 23 that included lab 15. There were some labs on deck 102 that were also large enough for that project and arguably closer to the main hangers. Both of main hangars located port and starboard towards the rear of the ship were on deck 98. There was also a large forward cargo hanger on deck fifty. A heavy tram lift system was used to move cargo such as the Cathamari salvage from the hangers to any storage bay on the ship. The larger labs like lab 15 were also connected to the heavy cargo lift system so that large equipment could be moved in and out. So where the lab was in relation to the hangers didn’t really matter all that much.

It didn’t take long for the lift to reach deck 23, and he stepped off the lift into a busy corridor. That had become the norm for every deck on the ship. With so many people aboard there was always a few people rushing somewhere in the corridors. Some of them were just lazing about with no where to be, but that was not the case here. Everyone on this deck had something to do.

He found Ruri in lab 15, leaned over a console, and covered in grease. Her clothing torn. He sighed, it wasn’t the first time he had seen her in this state. She still looked fairly young thanks to having regular access to nano-cellular treatments. Those treatments not only helped extend life, but they kept people looking younger. It didn’t help that she was actually quite cute, not that she was aware of that. At least this time, her clothes were still covering the important bits. He had walked into the room to find that wasn’t the case before.

He sighed, “Still completely oblivious to your own state of dress, are we?”

She frowned, “huh?”

He chuckled, “never mind that. Make any progress with this?”

She nodded, “A bit. I’ve been poking around while the computer works on my latest simulation. I found something interesting.”

“Something interesting? What did you find?”

“It has to do with their drive configuration. Having only worked with partial engines before we had to fill in much of the blanks ourselves.”

“I know that. What does that have to do with their engines?”

“It seems their engines employ an extra drive core, that our own don’t have. I was actually trying to determine what purpose that extra core serves when you walked in. Every simulation I have run indicates that the extra core is entirely superfluous, and simply serves to drain extra energy to maintain the warp field. The only thing it does is improve warp field stability, but we haven’t had any problems with that in any test.”

Countryman blinked, “Improve field stability?” he glanced at the engines, “We use a dedicated computer system to constantly monitor and adjust the field as needed. Ensuring a stable warp bubble. So yes this extra core isn’t needed, not with our drive configuration. Cathamari computers are not as efficient as ours, perhaps they actually need the core.”

She gave him a look, and then her eyes widened, “I completely forgot that their computers are utter shit. I was using our own field control models.”

She quickly turned to the console and input new parameters for a simulation. Pulling data figures from the database to get a more accurate read. The simulation started and after a minute spat out the results.

She blinked, “Well imagine that. It does serve a function on their ships. Thanks to their shit computers they need it alright. Without it their warp field might destabilize and tear the ship apart.”

Countryman read the two simulations she had run. It seemed they really did need that third core, but it was also an added inefficiency in their drives. 

“Anything else we missed?”

She nodded, “It was nice finally getting a look at spatial coils that weren’t burned out. Nothing too much was missed, but a few interesting elements presented themselves. I have a few ideas now on improving our own spatial field generators. It would allow for a much denser warp field. That would allow for a higher spatial folding rate, and more speed. It will also increase the heat generation of the drive though, so we will need to upgrade the cooling systems.”

He nodded, “Any progress on that?”

She nodded, but before she could elaborate the ship suddenly shook. The familiar background hum of the main drives suddenly cut out with it. He accessed the internal comm panel, and hailed the bridge.

Greyman appeared on the console a second later, Countryman demanded, “What happened!?”

“I’m not sure yet sir. We dropped out of warp. The Coto, and the Umikaze have reversed course to join us. I was just about to contact engineering, and ask why we dropped out of warp.”

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He nodded, closed comm line, and turned towards Ruri. “I guess we will continue this conversation later. I’m going to head down to engineering to see what is going on.”

She nodded, “I’ll come with you. I would like to know as well.”

He gave her a look, “maybe you should change your outfit first.”

She scoffed, “Who cares about that!” before rushing for the door. He sighed, and followed her out.

---

The pair arrived to find engineering an exercise in chaos. Despite all the activity Richards noticed their entrance, and made her way over to them. Her gaze briefly rested on Ruri, but she didn’t comment on her state of dress. Instead she focused on Countryman, and said, “I guess you are here about us dropping out of warp?”

He nodded.

She sighed, “Remember that problem three days ago with the port engine? Well we have more trouble on the port side. This time the whole cooling system went down, and engine temps spiked well into the red.”

Countryman nodded. He was well aware of that issue three days ago. The main port engine had suddenly stopped transferring energy correctly, and the warp field started to destabilize. Automated systems kicked in, and switched over to the back up engine. They hadn’t had any issues after the switch over. As he recalled the investigation into the failure was still ongoing, mainly since they couldn’t physically inspect the engine while the ship was travelling at warp. There was a catwalk in the nacelles to allow engineers to access the engines, but even with the cooling systems those nacelles could get very hot. It just wasn’t safe to enter the nacelles while the engines were running. Although as he recalled the preliminary indications were that it was a failure in the primary field generator that caused the issue.

“I take it we are already venting drive plasma in an attempt to bring the engines back down to a safe temperature?”

“We are indeed sir. The venting cycle is almost complete, but after that it will be another two hours before the engines are cool enough to allow a physical inspection. At the moment I am organizing teams to go in there as soon as they are cool enough.”

“I see. Any idea on how long it will take to fix the engines?”

“I’d rather not make any guesses without a physical inspection. It really depends on the extent of the damage. If the damage isn’t too extensive we could be underway in about two days, but it is likely worse. In the event that the engines are totaled and we have to rebuild them it will take two months to fix the damage. Hopefully they aren’t that bad.”

He agreed it would be best if they were not that bad. 

Ruri interjected, “It might not come to that. We have two perfectly good Cathamari drive assemblies sitting in my lab. Those parts aren’t too different from our own, they can be adapted easily enough as replacement components.”

“But aren’t you studying those?” inquired Richards with a frown.

Ruri nodded, “Yes, but I only really need the one. It won’t be big loss to donate one of them for ship repairs if I have to.”

Countryman interjected, “We will keep that in mind then. In the meantime it would be best to see how extensive that damage is.”

---

As the Coto came out of warp, Reynolds shifted in his seat. His gaze was immediately drawn to the Enterprise. More specifically he noted the orange-blue cloud spreading from her port nacelle. It didn’t escape his notice that the venting ports on the port nacelle were open. He sighed, and hopefully asked, “That isn’t what I think it is, is it?”

His operations officer replied, “Unfortunately it is. Sensors confirm the Enterprise is venting drive plasma.”

Reynolds stifled an urge to curse. If they were venting plasma that meant the engines overheated. He had spoken with Greyman briefly, but the commander had not known why they had dropped out of warp. That was a few minutes ago, when the Enterprise had suddenly dropped out of warp on them. They might be here a few days.

He glanced at his first officer, “Tell Mika, she can go ahead and get started on that inspection she wanted to do.”

The commander nodded, and went to do as asked. The inspection Mika wanted to do was for the warp engines. They hadn’t yet had to switch over to the back-ups, but the main warp engines have had a couple of hiccups lately. The main reason they hadn’t dropped out of warp before was that noone wanted to be just sitting here in deep space. Besides none of the issues that had cropped up had been all that serious. It seemed something had happened on the Enterprise to force the issue.

As his first officer was carrying out his orders, he told his operations officer. “Open a channel to the Enterprise.”

Greyman’s familiar face appeared on the screen moments later. It seemed Countryman still hadn’t returned to the bridge. Although Reynolds doubted he was being lazy. If his ship was experiencing a similar problem he knew where he would be, and it would not be the bridge either. He would be in the engine room. Any captain who truly cared about his ship would be there, at least in his opinion. 

“Let me guess, Countryman went down to engineering.”

Greyman nodded, “Last I checked yes. I believe he and Richards are busy organizing repair crews.”

“I noticed that your port nacelle is being vented. Any idea how bad the damage is?”

“Unfortunately not. We won’t really know until we can get in there, and we won’t be able to until the nacelles cool down enough. That is going to take awhile since the cooling arrays went down, at least two hours.”

He took note of that. It wasn’t going to take that long for his engines to cool enough for that inspection Mika wanted. By then, she would likely be done with the inspection. “I see, well contact me when you have an update.”

He closed the channel, and then turned to his officers. Ordering them to maintain active scans of the area, and begin a patrol. He doubted anyone would show up, but it was best to be cautious. Especially when they were stuck here due to an engine failure on the flagship. A glance at his screens showed that Drakes had the same idea. 

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