A Gathering of Minds
Posted on Thu Jan 9th, 2020 @ 6:22pm by Lieutenant Commander Arianna Sky Kamar & Lieutenant Thegog Grun
Mission:
Delta Operations
Location: Science Lab 1
Science lab 1 was a state of the art facility on the Pennsylvania, it was a large space filled with as much dedicated Scientific equipment as possible. The room was never quiet or dark, various consoles flashed with new inputs of data or beeped with ever completed calculation, it was an orchestra of knowledge waiting to happen.
Sat in the centre of the room, conducting that orchestra was Chief, he was reviewing all of the sensor data that was taken during the recent battle with the Hirogen. The goal was to determine how they were able to fool the ship's sensors, making them look like a dead Hulk in space. Despite the vast resources and knowledge at his virtual fingertips, Chief was unable to crack the mystery, after all if it wasn't known by the computer, he didn't know it either.
Remembering back to the discussion on the bridge earlier, Chief was told that he could bring in the support of his fellow officers, he decided that now was the time. The hologram opened up a channel to Ops, Engineering and Science before calling out "Commander Sky and Lieutenants Grun and Xanth, please come to Science lab 1. I would appreciate some assistance with a problem" he asked, since Chief couldn't actually order them to do anything.
Arianna heard the summons, "Chief, I'll be there", she answered. Now what could he possibly want. He was the next best thing to a computer and all of Voyagers records were available so what was left? Thinking about it she made her way to Science lab 1.
Cyrin met Arianna in the corridor on the way, and flashed the Klingon woman a quick grin, "I take it you received a polite summons as well?" Their C&S hologram was proving to have quite a lot of personality, especially compared to the previous models, but he'd never actually been called like this by one before. A novel experience!
"Well, to be honest I am still shocked by all of this but so far it has proved that it is worth giving Chief a chance", Arianna said. She was willing to concede on this one. Not often did she give in to something being tried on in engineering but giving this a chance was worth it.
"I don't agree." Thegog said as he caught up to them from behind. "I never trusted the holograms before. I once had an EMH operate on me, and I still have missing feeling in my right hip."
As they approached the door, Cyrin gestured for the Lieutenant Commander to precede him, "I did a bit of testing of my own the other day, and I gotta say I'm impressed so far, sir." He specifically did not say out loud what he was talking about as he saw the holodeck avatar waiting for them. No need to give the program a big ego if it could be avoided.
As they entered the room, Thegog spoke up. "It's a good thing I was only in my quarters relaxing after my double shift, and not actually working. So I had no reason at all to not show up." He said just dripping with sarcasm and disdain.
Looking at both Lieutenant's, "Both of you behave yourselves. We don't want to make a bad impression", Arianna said looking at Thegog with a raised eyebrow.
"It's Ok Commander Sky, I am not sure if Lieutenant Grun could ever make a good impression for him to be able to make a bad impression" Chief said to the Engineer, knowing how Tellarites love to have a good argument and insult challenge. Turning to face Xanth, Chief smiled slightly "It's good to see you again Lieutenant Xanth, congratulations on your promotion and transfer. How are you finding your new role?"
With a big grin on his face from the interaction between Thegog and Chief, Cyrin replied, "Thanks! It feels...good. Don't get me wrong, I love being a pilot, but I think this is going to work out a whole lot better." He rubbed his hands together with expectation, "So, you said you had a problem you wanted help with, Chief?" The idea of putting his brains to work on a problem of that magnitude was more than a little appealing.
"Indeed I do, well we do" Chief said as he pointed to the vast array of screens around them "I have been studying the sensor logs from our interaction with the Hirogen vessel, trying to determine how they managed to hide from us and also escape so easily. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get very far" he turned back and faced the group "I was hoping that all of us could work on the problem together and come up with some answers"
"Well sure Chief, I see no reason we all can't come up with a reasonable answer or two", Arianna said.
"I hope so Commander Sky, we don't want a repeat of our first encounter" Chief recounted, with a hint of sadness in his voice. The moment of sadness passed quickly, returning back to his usual happy self "Now, I have set up the lab to breakdown every nano second of our time with the Hirogen. I have tried every analysis available to me but have turned up very little. If anyone has any ideas, I'm all audio sensors" he added, twisting the usual phrase since Chief didn't hear with ears after all
"Have you tried running a multi-phasic scan of the surrounding area. To see if they left any phase residue that we could use to lock onto them?" Thegog asked.
"Well if they went to warp, they would leave a trail but, if they were lying in wait, we could possibly find their ion trail and trace it backwards to their previous coordinates", Arianna said.
"Unfortunately, that's where we're going to run into a problem," Cyrin chimed in. "With the antimatter burst they left in their wake we'd have to establish a search grid to pick up their warp trail again outside of the range of the interference. They could have easily stayed at warp for just a few seconds while our sensors were blinded, changed course, and jumped back to warp again. That's what I would do to throw off pursuit."
"A wise course of action. Long range sensors didn't show much of interest in the surrounding area, so they're either operating in a small base or came a long way to get here" Chief paused for a few moments, considering a number of options "It is possible they may have been using an Ultra-Low frequency communications with another ship or base, those frequencies would appear as normal background radiation unless we specifically knew what to look for, it's how races such as the Klingons contact cloaked vessels" he said, looking towards Sky "Maybe if we can figure out if they're working with someone else, we can figure out where they went?" Chief offered
"Very true" Arianna said thinking heavily and fell silent. A scan of the surrounding system might turn up something if she could figure out what the exact fuel they were using and if by some strange quirk had a cloaking device.
"If we realign the Deflector dish to produce a low varying frequency modulation just outside of what we know to be background noise, then once the frequency lines up with with something, regardless of how low, it will end up creating dead zones. With that, we can extrapolate what data we need." Thegog suggested.
"Good idea, then maybe we could trace the dead zones and maybe even then scan the path to see what type of fuel they were useing so we could maybe find them again", Arianna stopped short. She was thinking revenge and that was no good.
"In the meantime, I'd like to work with Engineering and Ops," Cyrin grew animated as they started to put together a plan. "We need to find a way to shield our sensors in case they want to pull that antimatter burst trick again. That's a lot of radiation to screen out but if we can figure that part out, next time we find them they won't get away so easily."
"Maybe we could rig up a radiation scattering device or maybe generate a field that would disperse the radiation as it is emitted?" Arianna said.
"Or...a shuttle." Cyrin said. He made a box out of his hands as he described it, then gestured more broadly to make the point. "We fly one tandem with the ship, inside our defensive shields. It uses it's own shields, reconfigured to handle that kind of radioactive bombardment. Chief - are there any records of past attempts similar to this to protect scanner arrays in the computer?"
Taking on a thoughtful look, Chief consulted the databanks for any similar records "Not that I can find, that doesn't mean it won't work though. We could even add some extra redundancy by launching a series of probes, we'd be able to use them to track the Hirogen vessel as it left" He paused, considering his own plan but also seeing the flaws in it straight away "Though, that would require us to know when our next encounter would be. We could always potentially engineer our next meeting, give the Hirogen something to look for?" He suggested, thinking outloud.
"Bait! We need to find the proper bait! What are the Hirohen most noted for hmm?," she asked. Looking at all of them she smiled, "Prey! They live for the hunt!," she said smiling. "We give them the proper bait and they will return. They know this ship is put here and they know we are willing to fight to stay alive. I believe that these same Hirogen did not go far and are around just waiting for another chance for the hunt. However before that happens we have to find a way of scattering their radiation burst that fooled our sensors," Arianna said.
"You know," Thegog said while scratching his chin. "the normal everyday scans done by the ship, are just with the standard issue sensors. If we can shield a few probes, and configure them to detect the dead zones, we can then send them out in front of us and create a tunnel link between them and the sensor pod. It overload the probes after a few hours, but it might give us the information we need. It's not a good plan to hunt for them, but, if we bait them, and launch the probes as soon as they take the bait, we will be able to track them for quite some time, and potentially find where they are hiding."
Chief nodded as he followed along with the building plan, he turned to look at Sky once again "Is there anything we can do to help shield the sensors, or at least the computer core? I can't protect the core during the burst as I am tied into it, the burst still effects my systems but just not as much" The last radiation burst just disrupted Chief's access to the sensor data, a more powerful burst could be a lot worse "It may be worth us increasing the rate in which the shields rotate frequencies, they may be able to filter out more of the effect"
"That is possible but I would have to go back in the archives to see what Janeway reported about her skirmish with the Hirogen. What ever it is, I'm sure it would be in there. You must realize we are in new territory and it has to have been recorded by Janeway", Arianna said.
Chief nodded at Arianna's statement, they were indeed charting new territory "I know, that's part of the reason why I gathered everyone here. Since the data isn't in the computer, I don't have the answer so we have to come up with one together"
Arianna looked up quickly, "That's it, actnides and thalium both mess Federation sensors and scanners. Not sure about delta radiation but the other two for sure. Plus if the Hirogen had access to Voyagers computers it would be there and they would know," she said.
Thegog suddenly had a moment of inspiration. "If we funnel the sensors and scanners through the deflector array and then add a multiphasic cyclical algorithm to it, that might be enough to compensate for any interference we are experiencing."
"Great idea! That just might just work. Let's get to work on it. We can do it in the engineering lab and run the simulations", Arianna said with a wide grin.
Arianna headed for the engineerin lab to begin working on their new inspiration hoping it would work!
Lt. Cmdr. Arianna Sky Kamar
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Pennsylvania
Lt. Thegog Grun
Chief Operations Officer
USS Pennsylvania