The .07% Solution

Posted on Tue Nov 24th, 2015 @ 9:55am by Captain Charybdis MacGregor & Commodore Raul Mizumoto & Commander Yuna Raza & Lieutenant Commander Siivas McKenzie
Edited on on Sat Apr 28th, 2018 @ 9:54pm

0 words; about a 1 minute read

Mission: Taking Chances
Location: USS Bonne Chance, Deck 8, Auxiliary Control
Timeline: 2265
Tags: mystery,engineering

The Deltan Doctor headed toward the turbolifts, but his compatriot had other ideas. She took him gently but firmly by the arm and steered him to the serviceway to climb down the ladder of the access shafts to Deck 8 as Shareen and Xian fell in behind them.

"This is a shortcut. It will be much faster, and time is of the essence," claimed the lieutenant, shouldering the strap to her tricorder and grasping the descending poles with her palms and the insteps of her boots to slide smoothly down the ladders. When her feet contacted the deck on Deck Seven she nimbly rolled through the handrails to slide down the next access-way to Deck Eight. She ended the slide in a roll that turned smoothly into a run in the direction of the last known location of the recently disappeared Petty Officer Second Class Walters, Deck eight, section starboard fore-five.

"Its been awhile since I used those," Siivas chuckled as he followed her.

Snapping open her tricorder, Charybdis paused to begin scanning their destination while she waited for the medical team to catch up. Speed and efficiency were one thing; making intelligent choices would be far more likely save her life today, and she very much wanted to live. Rushing headlong where angels feared to tread alone while a team was coming behind her and they were all working together racing the clock against an undefined phenomenon?

Way more than illogical, that was just plain stupid. She might be emotional, but stupid she most certainly was not.

"I'm not picking up anything unusual on the basic em wavelengths..." she announced clearly down the hall. "Switching to the specific electromagnetic field... wait... polarize the wavelength, create an attraction for that wavelength in subspace, thus inviting a rift... yes, perhaps... careful..."

As the medical team caught up with the science officer, one eyebrow was arched so high as to be lost in her hairline and she was humming in frustration while she tuned the controls of the tricorder's sensors.

Xian and Shareen, however, were doing something far more odd; they had their hands out and were slowly making passes with their eyes shut, as if trying to touch something but they had their eyes closed so they couldn't find it. A few moments passed in silence and Xian stiffened and caught her breath slightly and then turned to Siivas and stared at him for a moment. Shareen gently took her hand as if to comfort her and Siivas smiled and nodded.

"We have confirmation," he turned to Charybdis, "he was thinking how badly he wanted off the ship just prior to the event. Fear overrode his ability to think and in a panic, his mind was focused on 'getting away'."

"I have readings... there is still a 'soft spot' in subspace here that seems to resemble the aftermath of a... it almost looks like the residue of a warp field that is still reverberating," the science officer explained, her eyes not leaving the monitor of her tricorder as she moved it this way and that while she scanned the area with it.

"I might be able to flood the area with the specific frequency in commensurate quantity to agitate it sufficiently to reform, but that seems like a remarkably poor idea at the moment. In fact, now that I have a lock on the frequency in question it... seems to be in effect shipwide."

"I would like access to the Bridge science station to use the ship's sensors to better refine the parameters of this field... I could be mistaken but this phenomenon appears to be a permeable bubble in subspace surrounding the Bonne Chance," Charybdis added.

"Excellent idea," Siivas agreed, "though I also agree that saturating local subspace with that same frequency could be bad, such as venting us to nowhere, or if possible somewhere worse than that. I believe that the impulse to leave the ship triggers the event and the fear of the effect speeds it up, however I'm not in a mind to test that," he added. "I'm more interested in making everybody want to be on the ship and making them want the ship to be away from here and back in normal space, which, I think we can- "

+Lt. Celes to Lt. McKenzie - please respond+ was announced by the ship's speakers in the corridors of Deck Eight.

Siivas eyebrow shot up and he cocked his head at Charybdis, "I don't recognize that name from the officer rosters." She shook her head negatively and he took a grim expression.

He turned to his local people. "Xian, Shareen," Siivas got their attention verbally so he could include Charybdis in the plan, "go into stores and pull out all our anesthetize backups. There should be forty liters in cargo bay four. Then, take that to the labs and combine it with the triox and carbulamide hydroxide in a sixty to one ratio and store the resulting vapor under pressure in canisters. You'll need to get those to the main life support processor on Deck Ten then wait for my order to flood the ship, after we disable the filtration protocols. I suggest using masks and making sure the tumbleweeds and S'tal are aware as well."

Xian and Shareen nodded silently and took off at a trot; they had a lot of work to do. He turned back to the com and glanced at it before looking to the buxom Vulcan woman. "I think we need to handle our operations from engineering."

A moment of calculation took place internally for Charybdis, then she nodded her assent. "I could do what needs be done from the Bridge, but now that you mention it, I can rewire a few subsystems easier from there. I've a few ideas on how to creatively employ the hull plating and the shields to improve our odds of success... and survival."

McKenzie shot her a look, and she held up her hands in a shrug. "Just being honest... what?"

Together they headed for the turbolift at a run, to take it down to Engineering. Once in the lift she tabbed the comm panel.

"Lieutenant Celes, this is Chief Science Officer Charybdis. Can you please hold the bridge for us? The Bonne Chance is attempting some rather unusual maneuvers to extricate ourselves from our current predicament. I understand that you may be confused, but right now time is of the essence- please await our signal and stand by with helm control." With that she snapped off the comm before awaiting an answer, as they had arrived at their destination. Ideally the lockouts they had created would keep this Lieutenant Celes out harm's way for the time being.

Moving with confidence, Charybdis went straight to the matter/antimatter mixing bottle and shield controls to begin pulling open access panels as Siivas went to the life sciences control systems and patched in security controls. "Computer," Siivas ordered as he placed his hand against the contact-screen, "recognize Siivas McKenzie, Chief Medical Officer."

+Identity Recognized+

"Enable full lockdown of all personnel within the Bonne Chance," Siivas ordered. "Close all bulkheads, send no alerts, suppress all emergency verbal or text messages and disable all portals. Increase environmental circulation to all departments and sections of the ship," he added as his hands danced across the input screen overriding the complex environmental lockouts and redundancies.

+Incoming signal from deck ten, environmental substation two+ the computer informed them.

"Allow it," he responded as he worked.

+Doctor+ Shareen spoke through the com +we're ready. The twins are in environmental sacks and we're in our masks+

"Connect the canisters and let me know when you're ready," he advised.

+Already done+

"And that's why I pay you the big bucks," he chuckled.

+There's pay?+ she quipped back.

"Yes," Siivas replied drily, "you get to live to see 'later'."

+Ah+ she chuckled +that paycheck+

"Controls overridden," he announced and looked at Charybdis expectantly.

The science officer was busy earning her pay as well, rewiring the shields to emit a subharmonic frequency that would theoretically amplify the electromagnetic field that they were about to attempt to generate. She was no expert in shield technology, but she had spent a few days studying the schematics and the systems, and she was running the tolerance calculations in her head while her hands worked the hardware. Ideally it would work... or it would cause a catastrophic buckling of the shields that, coupled with the hull plating maneuver that she was about to enact, would crush them like a shuttlecraft in a gravity well.

She tapped out instructions on the dilithium chamber matter/antimatter flow regulator... she would need a controlled buildup then a burst of power to accomplish this, and they would both need to be timed precisely. She found that she was smiling as she worked... this was insanely complex, with the lives of the entire crew at stake, and one miscalculation would kill them all. She had no time to recheck her math and she had to trust that her calculations and estimations on the fly were going to work given the engineering tolerances that she had taught herself earlier this week... but oddly enough, she was having the time of her life, and she'd never felt more alive.

"Increasing environmental circulation two hundred percent," Siivas stated, "Shareen, open all the canisters now."

+Done+ came the immediate reply.

"I'm watching for saturation," he watched the counts displays as the gas permeated the entire ship. "Some of the crew may fall over and seem barely conscious," he spoke as he worked, watching for Charybdis' signal that she had made ready.

"Today, Lieutenant..." Doctor McKenzie said with a light-hearted tone that belied the actual stress of the situation.

"Nag, nag, nag..." Char wisecracked as she rerouted auxiliary power to the hull plating to electrify it, turning the entire hull into a magnetic resonator. She paused for three seconds, freezing in place as she ran through the checklist of what needed to be done, then she looked back at the expectant Doctor and nodded affirmatively.

"Ready! Raising shields, diverting power... make your play, Doctor!" The vivacious Vulcan stood by at the slider controls she had routed the process through, ready for the push to maximum power. She was grinning from ear to ear and her cheeks were flushed nearly sage.



Siivas nodded and then spoke again, "Computer, open a shipwide channel please."

+Shipwide com channel open+ the computer stated.

"Don't you feel good?" Siivas asked, his voice purring like warm honey dripping all over someone's body. It was the voice that made the goose pimples rise up on anyone with even a shred of libido, the voice that got grannies in a flush and put the pep back in the step of old men. "Aren't you glad we're here together, all warm and comfortable, where you're surrounded by shipmates you love? Don't you just love our crew here on the Bonne Chance? Yessss, you do don't you? We love you, we really do. How about join together now in fellowship, celebrate the love of your fellows and the strength of your friendships, that deep well of caring you have for yourselves and our ship."

He made a face and stuck out his tongue at Charybdis, rolling his eyes. The things one did to save people, really!

However, his speech was working just fine on the excitable and emotional luscious lieutenant. She was not just hearing his speech over the com system, she was in the very same room. While normally Siivas worked overtime to control both his pheromones and his seductive skills, right now he was turning it on full force to save the ship. She was gnawing her bottom lip, and it was taking all of her self control to stay at her post, forget about keeping her hands on the controls, rather than roaming elsewhere.

In short, the science officer was most definitely feeling the love.

+Doctor+ Shareen spoke into the channel +I'm feeling a huge upswell of positive emotions from a lot of drunk people all over the ship+

"Good," he looked at the science officer and asked, "is the subspace field destabilizing?"

Actually being asked a critical question snapped Charybdis back to reality, and she slid one of the sliders up to full, intensely magnetizing the hull, then began slowly increasing the power to the shield harmonics to resonate and amplify the EM field the crew was generating. "It's starting to, but if I am interpreting these readings correctly it's still unstable."

"In the analogy of Mister Scott 'we need more powah'," he chuckled and bent back to the shipwide channel. "Think about your best times with your best friends, all the fun you've had. Think about the great times you've had at home, or out in the Federation. Wouldn't it be great to take the Bonne Chance there? Wouldn't it be great for the Bonne Chance to take us all flying free out into space so we could go have those good times again?"

Power was rerouted, safeties were overridden and the energizer was lit up like a christmas tree as the ship began to vibrate. "We're breaking free... " Charybdis flipped the comm on the engineering panel. "Lieutenant Celes, all ahead full impulse power!" It dawned on her that she had no idea if Celes knew how to drive the ship, but she felt the hum of the impulse engines and breathed a happy sigh. They had no way of knowing what obstacles may have awaited them in 'real' space outside the subspace distortion. But there was no way to predict and it was far more important for them to break free... besides, space was more often than not more empty than filled with hazards.

She hoped.

This time Siivas staggered a bit as the upswell of emotion, even from their sparse crew, nearly washed him away. He felt dizzy for a moment and realized that part of what he was feeling was space getting wobbly again. It got worse, as his sight blurred and darkened and he blindly fumbled for his hypo, releasing the ship-wide com as his eyes rolled up.

"Oh shittt-" he gasped and slumped to the floor, riding a crest of euphoric positive emotions swelling about the ship and the crew and how happy they were to be together flying free in space. His mind shut down just as the subspace field around them popped, sending them sailing into open space again.

The crew cheered, as they could somehow feel the great ship's emergence into space once more, and Charybdis was torn between monitoring her station and tending to the fallen Doctor. Duty won out, as she could still destroy the ship if she was incautious, and she slowly dialed down the electrical power to the hull plating and then a moment later lowered the shields, rediverting the auxiliary power back to recharging the ship's batteries once more. She had just shut it all down and scooped up the unconscious physician in her arms when Xian and Shareen arrived, their gasmasks still on, as if they had already known of his distress.

"Will he be all right?" she asked, and Xian smiled at her. "He will be... a little rest will do him good, and while I'm sure he would prefer we wake him, he's been pushing himself hard through this entire endeavor. He's exhausted... we'll take him to sickbay and tend to him."

"If we're in the clear, then Doctor McKenzie's in good hands with us," added Shareen. "Maybe you'd best tend to the Bonne Chance... after all, even with the air scrubbers working overtime, we're going to have the happiest ship in the fleet for a few hours, and someone should probably make sure we don't fly into a star or something."

With that the curvaceous officer rose somewhat unsteadily with a giggle, straightened her uniform and held up her chin. "Off to the Bridge, then, to see if all of our shipmates came free of the distortion with us, or if I officially have my first chance to command a ship of the line for a few hours."

Charybdis grinned, then knelt down and kissed the doctor on his hairless pate. "My hero."

Meanwhile back on the bridge - Lt Celes was wondering A) - how the heck she ended up on another ship, B) - who the heck was in charge, and C) - what the heck was going on.

Apparently soon she was about to find the answer to at least some of those questions.

 

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