Action Plan (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on 25 Aug 2016 @ 11:31pm by Lieutenant Commander Ryan Alexander & Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Commander Langdale Wiggins & Commander Allyndra illm Warraquim & Commander Luke Wyatt & Lieutenant Benice Gyce Ph.D. & Lieutenant JG Noah Khoroushi & Lieutenant JG Braxton MacKenzie & Ensign Miraj Derani
Edited on on 25 Aug 2016 @ 11:53pm

2,150 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Episode 12 - Recluse
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 1, Conference Room
Timeline: MD 01 - 1130 hrs

[ON]

Like many of the bridge officers Natalya was one of the first to arrive for the briefing, needing only to wait for a relief officer to man her station on the bridge. She was eager to take a seat at the table, as her bridge console was a standing position and often grew tiresome after hours of standing in place. She didn't mind being on her feet, but actually being on the move was far preferable.

Braxton, coffee in hand, arrived early to the briefing... or so he thought. There were a few people there. He sipped his Klingon coffee and sat quietly watching all the others arrive.

Luke entered the room, his journey short but the way his mind had been working it seemed like a life time. He hated when the department heads were called to the conference room for one reason. It usually meant bad new. Taking a seat Luke waited with anticipation.

Miraj had left it as long as possible before stepping away from the conn, then slipped in quickly to the little conference room. She saw an empty seat next to Luke, and took it.

Confirming that Ops was well-manned, Noah slipped away from the bridge to join the briefing room.

The small conference room usually reserved for senior officers was now cramped and packed full of various personnel from all departments. This was the first time Galileo had had to answer a proper distress call since she'd first been commissioned, and Lirha wanted to get it right the first time.

Allyndra took a place to the left of the seat at the head of the table. The traditional spot for the second officer while the Exec would be to the right. She had not had a lot of time nor did she figure Wiggins had a lot of time to get to know everyone.

The rear admiral waded through a small sea of bodies on her way to the large LCARS terminal at the end of the table before turning around to look over the assembled crew who were present.

"Thank you all for coming," she began. "As you have all heard by now, we recently received a signal on a low-frequency communication band. This signal, it turns out, appears to be some form of distress call. It is highly degraded and I will let you listen to it. Computer, play audio record 148-08-052."

The ship's computer acknowledged her command with a brief chirp before commencing the recording on the overhead speakers. ""This is.... Recluse to any nearb....arship, we....require assistance, our warp cor.....and all primary sys....are offline. ....We need...elp, life support and all syst.....are failing..... please help......."

The transmission ceased and cut out.

Lirha continued her thoughts and pulled a PADD from her belt clip. She briefly linked it to the monitor before turning to face it and show her crew what she had discovered. "I ran a search in the Federation database of all references to the name 'Recluse'." The results began to scroll down the screen showing various civilian and Starfleet vessels of all sizes, and then it stopped on one of the search results close to the bottom. A large bulky starship appeared.

"This is SS Recluse, an older Antares-class freighter assigned to dilithium hauling in the late 2340s. She was reported lost with all hands a year after not showing up at any Federation facilities...despite Starfleet never having recovered the vessel itself or her crew," Lirha continued. "Additional frequency scans of the distress signal we receive have verified that its transponder matches that of the one SS Recluse possessed when it was last registered."

As if not to be outdone by the strange and ancient nature of the signal Galileo had received, Lirha continued on. "We managed to track the location of this signal to the Paulson Nebula." The Orion tapped a couple buttons on her PADD and suddenly the large monitor blinked and now displayed stellar cartography data for the cosmological phenomena. She then motioned towards her new XO for him to take the floor and explain some of the challenges they might face.

Langdale Wiggins smiled at the Admiral before standing. He ran his hand through his medium lengthed hair out of habit, squeezing the ends in his hand. They flopped back down into place perfectly when his hand dropped to his sides. He leaned in a bit and placed his hands on the table in front of him. "I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with the Paulson Nebula, so I'll keep it a bit generic for now and we can move on from there as questions develop."

The First Officer straightened and motioned towards the large monitor. "The nebula is located in Federation space, about there," he said pointing, "between the Zeta Alpha II and Sentinel Minor IV trade routes. As you can see, it's an 'H II' region sixteen lightyears in diameter. She may look all pretty in pink, but she's a dense one. Composed mainly of Hydrogen, magnesium, dilithium hydroxyl..." Langdale leaned into the monitor to read out some of the others that had slipped his mind. "...uh helium, chromium, so on and so on. It's going to wreak havoc with our navigational sensors. Many types of scanners we employ may be either reduced in effectiveness or not reliable. This includes magneton scans, and many passive high-resolution series. Due to the density of the nebula we will be restricted to using impulse engines only." Langdal looked down at the Admiral to see if he'd missed anything.

Lirha nodded in agreement before helping elaborate. "Yes, sensor resolution for all of our packages will be severely limited. The nebula was used by the Enterprise-D in 2366 to evade Borg scanners...there is no doubt it will be difficult for us to navigate and find our mark once we enter it."

She tapped away at her PADD and zoomed in on a small section of the nebula's outer-to-middle perimeter. "This is where we believe the distress signal is coming from but long-range scans are making it difficult to identify the exact coordinates. I suspect that as we approach the nebula at closer range, our scan resolutions will increase. We can use probes to assist us if necessary once we have reached the vicinity."

"Admiral this ship is decades old" Luke said pointing out before he continued "I'm no ship engineer but even if we find the ship there's almost no chance of survivors or any recoverable data if it hasn't be maintained, further more why now? It's between two busy trade routes and as you mentioned ships have been into the nebula so why is this transmission being found out now. I don't like it and from a tactical view we're essentially going in blind to a distress signal decades old. This is also a method used by Maquis raiders during the war" It wasn't so much as random shots in the dark but Luke spoke firmly and from experience.

Miraj looked at all the people here. She had grown up helping with her father's salvage operations, so she had some experience with recovery operations. "Sir, even if there's no one alive, they left people behind, people who'd want closure. Going to bring them home would be the kind thing to do." She turned to face the Admiral, "Ma'am, I've flown into nebulas before. And i think we can do it blind, I mean, no sensors, visuals only, if we have to."

"Even if this distress call is recent, we should expect the Recluse to have suffered heavy structural damage in the time it will take us to reach them." Natalya said, her expression not optimistic. "Without propulsion, navigational deflectors or defensive weaponry, hull breaches are almost guaranteed within a few hours. The chemical composition of the nebula will only exacerbate problems maintaining structural integrity." She imagined the oxygen from depressurized cabins combining with the native hydrogen, and being ignited by any spark or flame. Once structural integrity failed, the path to total destruction would likely be swift, and violent.

"I know I'm being pessimistic and i'm the first to admit that" Luke sighed before sitting back in his seat "No matter how we spin this it doesn't matter, we all know we're heading into that nebula and we're going to find that ship" Luke wasn't usually pessimistic but since the death of Abbey he learned the hard way. "So instead of saying whats going to be wrong with the ship lets say what we can do and how"

Ryan raised his hand. "I might have a few ideas for that." He said before standing up, moving into his briefing voice. "In order to expand out senor range within the nebula, we can easily and quickly rig up small cube sats that are slaved to the Galileo. Essentially they are 1x.5x.25 metre sensors that we can easily create and send out in a shell formation, say 30 of them. That should extend our sensor range, they wont last long, maybe a couple of hours and they will not show as much data as what we are used to, but depending on what is required when we reach the Recluse, it shouldn't matter. It would be more of a an early warning system anyways." Ryan said, pausing for a moment.

"Once we get to the Recluse we have a few options for entry." He tapped his screen bring up the schismatics that he had sent to the senior staff. "The Antares Class is approximately 210 meters long, with a beam of 75 meters, a draft of 32, and a max speed of about warp 6, depending on how good there engineer is." He said, knowing that this was info that anyone could pull up."The ship is armed by two phaser banks that are more for asteroid and meteor defense than anything else. There are two primary airlocks, one located on the stern-port side, and one located aft and starboard. There is a hanger located on the bow, and various hatches located throughout the cargo hold, however that is dependent upon what it was being transported." He said, pausing. Hoping that he was adding something to the discussion. "That allows us several methods of entry. I need someone more familiar with the nebula and transporter to check my numbers, but it should be possible to beam aboard, though we will need to be close. Even if it is tumbling, that shouldn't be a problem. Another option would be to board externally, via airlock, whether we make our own or use one theirs is dependent upon the damage."

He brought a visual of the best locations depending upon the damage. There were 3 likely scenarios that were displayed. With one entry through the hanger, one through one of the cargo holds, and another through the airlock aft. "If we are able to use the transporter, the most likely places that would have structural integrity would be the cargo holds and the bridge. Usually that would be engineering, however, the distress call indicated warp core damage, so it might not be the best location, however I am sure Lieutenant Kirilova might have some better ideas. We can also cut our way through, essentially create our own airlock, through an area located here." He said pointing at a section near the bridge. "We can easily set up a temporary airlock there, which should hold against the nebula gases for several hours. I was apart of an operation that did that a few years ago, and it worked very well. However, I would recommend that as the last option as that would mean we would have to evacuate the ship, and we would most likely have to go EVA in order to do it." He said pausing for another moment, replaying the various places that he recommended for boarding. He looked over his notes, wondering if he had anything. "Since we are the closest ship, we are legally obligated to help them. I can answer any questions or concerns." Ryan said, before sitting down, hoping that he hadn't just made a fool of himself. He was fairly certain that his ideas would be ripped apart.

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

RADM Lirha Saalm
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo

LTJG Natalya Kirilova
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Galileo

LTJG Noah Khoroushi
Assistant Chief Operations Officer
USS Galileo

ENS Miraj Derani
Chief Flight Control Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant Luke Wyatt
Chief Strategic Operations Office
USS Galileo

Cmdr Allyndra illm Warraquim
Chief Medical and Second Officer
USS Galileo

Commander Langdale Wiggins
First Officer
USS Galileo

Lt. JG Braxton MacKenzie
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

Ensign Ryan Alexander
Operations
USS Galileo

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