Project... START!

Posted on Wed Aug 21st, 2013 @ 12:44pm by Lieutenant JG Laura Wildner & Ensign Maximillian Cobyassa PhD

1,362 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Episode 2 - Whispers in the Clouds
Location: Science Lab
Timeline: Day 2 - 1000

As Max left the mess hall, stuffing his face with the last few chicken fingers he had snatched on a quick raid for food, he checked his PADD for the time. When he realized it was already early afternoon, he grumbled under his breath as he picked up his pace towards the science lab on deck 5. He had spent far longer chatting and helping the Chief than he had expected. And while the captain hadn't exactly specified an exact time that he was to report to the Lieutenant, he didn't know if she may have been waiting for him either. As he arrived at his destination, the door opened, revealing the Lieutenant working in the science lab.

Laura turned as the door opened. "Oh, you are the new guy to help me with the sensors? Give me a second while I finish up this test. I heard the commander asked for you specifically? Must be a pretty smart boy."

Max blushed a little at the compliment, "I guess...?" he replied, a bit embarrassed. "So how can I assist?"

"Well im a sensor specialist. So I can get a sensor to do what I need it to do. But this new nebula, type 8 or 9 or whatever it is, scatters sensor scans. That's where you come in. Between us we need to be able to at least counter act some of the nebulas properties." She finished the test she was performing and turned to the Ensign standing before her. "So, got any ideas?"

Max moved over to one of the consoles, transferring the files he had received from the captain to it. "Well, there are three parts to this equation."

He brought up the star chart of the Moray nebula on the main viewer and highlighted the entire thing. "Trying to search all of this for one ship is not feasible. It'd take way too long, even with normal sensors. If we can figure out what happened with the other ship, we can estimate approximate flight paths through the nebula and scan those areas instead, kind of like following a trail of crumbs."

Max zoomed in on the left part of the nebula. "The first thing we need to determine and confirm is where exactly our ship entered the nebula. Based on the flightpath data provided by the captain, the computer estimates that under normal circumstances our ship would have entered here." He highlighted the area in white. "To be sure we may want to get the Chief Flight Officer to double check those estimates."

"Now what I'd like to do is confirm that. We need to know if something happened to the ship before it entered, or after it entered the nebula. If they were under fire when they entered the nebula, their point of entry could well be different then our estimates."

Max looked over at the Lieutenant, "While most of my knowledge is more theoretical then practical, given that the other federation ship would have entered the nebula 2 days ago, would it be possible to scan the areas outside of the nebula along their expected point of entry to see if they were under fire before they entered the nebula? Would energy and photon weapons leave residuals that can be detected?"

"Yes, most energy weapons leave residual traces. At the very least, there would be minute traces of hull plates, from impacts." She looked to Max as he considered her words.

Max nodded and looked back at the display, "Excellent, the second part would be to confirm that our ship did indeed enter there, and also to check if other ships went in after them. I somehow doubt that this area of space would be a main travel route, so if there are other ships that entered recently, well, it'd be a bit too much of a coincidence." Max brought up the specs on class 9 nebulas, "Now what I wonder, is that a class 9 nebula, regardless of its special properties, is still in essence a nebula. That means the gases on the edge of the nebula would still be displaced by the ship's warp field when it entered the nebula. And while searching the entire edge of the nebula wouldn't be feasible, if our flight path estimates are accurate, we'd have a much narrower area to search. And this would also allow us to determine if other ships came in with, or after them."

"Well the Finnean corridor itself is well traveled. But the areas within a few hundred kilometres of the nebula, well they are practically a dead zone. So we should at least pick up traces of the Cassiopeia's warp core emissions. If we can narrow down a rough area, say 100 kilometres we should be able to find traces of them. Inside the nebula, that becomes tricky though. Class 9's play havoc with sensors. They reflect back, bounce them in opposite directions, generally a pain in the ass."

Max thought it over a bit as he looked over the system chart. After a few moments of silence he finally spoke up. "Well, if we can determine whether or not our target ship was under attack or not, that will aid things greatly." He leaned back against one of the consoles, his mind lost in thought. "The distortion with our sensors caused by the nebula is the effect the nebula gases have on the subspace energies inherent within our sensors. This means that no matter what we use our sensors to scan for, because its all using the same basic energy, the results will always be skewered. What I'm wondering is if we might be able to get away without having to even use our sensors.. at least in the traditional sense." Max looked over at the Lieutenant's intent expression.

Bringing up a sample diagram of the nebula, he explained, "If we look at it carefully, the nebula looks like its littered with an awful lot of tiny space debris. If we zoom in enough, their typical movement patterns would be something close to this.." Max tapped a few commands into the console and the diagram zoomed into a large cluster of smaller particles moving and swaying like the eddies in an ocean. "Now what happens if we apply the gravitational field from a warp engine or the disturbance of the energy discharge of some disrupter fire?" he entered a few more commands into the console and watched as the calm movement of the debris became erratic and scattered everywhere.

"If we could take high resolution time-lapsed pictures and feed it through the system to parse, we could extrapolate where the ship passed. Kind of like following tiny footprints in the sand. And because we are just taking pictures, the distortion doesn't apply to the visual spectrum, so no interference."

"Yeh," she nodded with approval. "I see where you are going with this. And with the time-lapsed pictures, we can build a more or less accurate model of current activity within the nebula, thus further being able to extrapolate exactly what's going on in the nebula. You are very good at this. I can see why the Captain asked you to be involved with this.

"Thanks." Max said flashing her a grin. As he updated the diagram again, the random particle debris slowed down considerably. He gave a bit of a frown. "The hard part is if there isn't any weapons fire. It looks like the displacement is considerably smaller. We could increase the timelapse, but the variance would still be considerably smaller and hence harder to detect. Think tightening the tolerance would help?"

"Wouldn't hurt to try. I can run a simulation on the computer, and input sensor logs recorded from ships as they passed," she was tapping her computer console as she was talking. "Which should...no, what are you doing," she said out loud, still tapping away. "There we go. The simulation should react exactly how our sensors react when they scan a type 9 nebula, specifically the Moray nebula which we are heading to."

"Alright then." Max said, rolling up his sleeves, "Looks like we've got our work cut out for us then! Lets get to it!"

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