2. Meeting the Refugees

Posted on Tue Jan 31st, 2023 @ 9:09pm by Captain Dirk Taggart & Lieutenant Jennifer Matthews & Lieutenant JG Vespa Kale & Lieutenant JG Camille Lévesque PhD

Mission: Cost of Survival
Location: Chitlari Starbase

The Starbase grew larger in the viewscreen, it was cylindrical in shape with large solar panels branching outwards. At the base of the end of the cylinder was an exhaust port that reminded Dirk of the old Saturn V rockets. It appeared that there was some heat shielding panels missing from a few places, as well as electrical sparks lighting up like small fireworks where the open panels revealed faulty wiring. "We're going to have our hands full," Dirk said aloud. "If the inside of that thing is as damaged as the outside, it's a wonder anyone is surviving over there. Levesque, can you give me a full readout of what we're looking at?"

Camille sent their sensor data to the main viewscreen. “It’s an impressive station, Capitaine. I’m reading it as two-point-six kilometres long, five hundred and ten meters in diameter at its widest. It is spinning fast enough to generate gravity; I’m reading zero-point-eight gee at the outermost deck.”

She set the display to highlight different parts. “I’m reading an arboretum and an extensive hydroponics setup along the centre column, where gravity is lighter. High concentrations of people here, and here. This one,” she added, highlighting a specific concentration of humanoid life signs, “appears to be their medical area. It’s receiving the most power, but I’m reading fluctuations in their entire power grid.”

The image changed, now highlighting the solar panels. “Their energy collection system is very efficient. We are nowhere near a star but they’re still collecting energy. It isn’t getting to the station though.” She hoped the engineers would figure that one out quickly.

“Internal atmosphere is consistent with Class M. Temperature is thirty-six degrees Celsius and humidity is seventy-two percent. Uncomfortable but tolerable.”

"A bit warm, but the humidity is the clincher." Vespa contributed to the complain'fest. "The lighter gravity is going to bother me to no end." she turned to the others. "Sorry, I'm barely used to the standard..."

"...One Gravity you keep the ship at It's so... light." she offered. The Dalacari was more accustomed to 1.3 G's, her native environment. "Might need to visit medical to make sure that the gravity difference won't..."

"... throw me off." she considered, "Might even wear a few limb weights to simulate more pull." she decided to stop complaining and start contributing to the discussion. "Sorry, I'm done. It is an..."

"... impressive design. I imagine the interior is a collection of retreating repairs and reinforcements to preserve as much power and atmo as possible."

"Make sure you take care of yourself Kale, good work both of you," the Captain replied before addressing the Bridge. "Open the hailing frequencies let's try to make contact."

Moments later a masked face filled the screen in a clean white uniform of an unknown fabric. The head was round with large green areas where Dirk assumed the eyes were. When she spoke it was with a deep gravely sounding voice.
"This is SheNang-Tow, leader of the Chitlari people on Starbase Prime."

"This is Captain Taggart of the USS Pennsylvania,, a representative of Starfleet, we received your distress call SheNang-Tow and are here to offer aid however we can."

"You are Starfleet?" She asked with her S's sounded close to a hiss. "We have had heard stories of Starfleet." She paused again before continuing as if making up her mind. "We have nearly 1500 sick here, and our systems are failing. We are unable to reward you for your assistance, but we will forever be in the debt of the Starfleet."

"We didn't come here for a reward, SheNang-Tow, we came to offer assistance. I will be sending multiple teams to assist if that is ok."

SheNang-Tow replied, "It is acceptable, we have an area for new arrivals, I will send a blueprint with the area marked. I will view you shortly Captain," she said as she signed off after sending the blueprint.

Jenni called up the newly received blueprint at her station. "Whoa," she remarked immediately, noting an absense of several key systems. "There's no evidence of a warp drive, or even impulse or sublight engines. There are some station keeping thrusters, and some stronger engines, but it seems like this thing wasn't meant to move far. That said..." she began to compare the blueprints against the scans they'd taken so far. "The station is in an extreme state of disrepair. Several systems don't quite match the blueprints, which leads me to believe there's been a fair amount of maintenance or reworking."

"A station with warp drives? What an interesting concept." Vespa considered. "Wouldn't that just truly make it a colossal ship?" a pause, then she shook her heads. "Questions for later. The multiple divergences from the blueprints..."

"... would support a retreating maintenance policy, abandoning regions that were too resource expensive to maintain while keeping as many of the station's populace..."

"... safe and alive." Kale's forms padded over, and motioned to a few interconnecting bulkheads after a few moments of study. "Here, here, and here would effectively isolate their medical center, using recreation as a ..."

"... buffer against any loss of atmo. We might want to prep for sudden pressure changes if we're going aboard. EVA suits, at the least." she paused, gathering her thoughts. Odd to watch a Dalacari do it.

"We don't want to risk being a bigger threat to their atmospheric integrity."

“Plus, with that many people, we don’t want to risk contaminating them with our own normal microbiomes,” Camille added. “Thousands of sick or immunocompromised people? They wouldn’t do well if a microbe we’re used to but they’ve never encountered colonizes the station’s population. The biofilters clear pathogens from being transported but not the benign microorganisms that live on and in us.” She turned to look at the Captain. “I agree with the EVA recommendation, sir.”

"Let's get those suits and see how we can help them. I'd like each of you to lead a team of three, stay together and let's assess things. This is going to be a triage so we can determine how we can help them out," Taggart replied to his senior officers. "Meet in the Transporter room in 30 minutes."