[Galaxy] 2161.09.18 - Creative Engineering

[Ethan Armstrong]

[ Oregonian ]

In engineering, Yearly had finished pulling on the emergency
enviro-suit and set about checking the connections that she and
Bolenski had made to the cargo. "Frak!" She said as she was thrown
hard against on of the bulkheads during a particularly harsh round of
shudders. All around her red lights began to flash and warning sirens
started to peal. "Bastards must have knocked out the inertial
dampers."

After a moment, the plucky CPO managed to scrape herself off the
bulkhead and move forward. The connections were still intact. She
wondered how Armstrong was doing up on the bridge, and hoped he still
had the presence of mind to get into some protective gear. "This is
getting hella ugly hella quick." She said aloud to the empty room.

The increasing number of decompressed sections meant progress through
the decks of the freighter was slow. Twice already Ethan had nearly
opened doors which would have resulted in him being sucked into space.
The ship rumbled unhappily under fire and he wondered how long they'd
retain sufficient structural integrity to still be considered a
spaceship. He had rigged up the communications console to his
communicator so heard the call come in from Intrepid.

"Armstrong here. Report Commander?" he said between breaths as he
threw on a enviro-suit. He was only a few minutes away from
engineering now where he could monitor their distance from the
shipyard and prepare, with Yearly, to pull the trigger. He found it
harder to get around now as each hit impacted and assumed the inertial
dampeners must have taken a hit. "Report?" he repeated, but the comm
channel remained silent. "Damn, the link must have blown out" he said
aloud. He hoped Intrepid wouldn't therefore assume he was dead.

[Yorktown Engineering]

Thing's seemed quiet, serene even, the room was dark and peaceful.
Wait there is a light? It's getting bigger? And Louder, but why
everything is so peacefull. ".... Valorum, are you ok?" Came the
muffled voice of a familiar face.

"Ensign?... Alert medical" the voice continued then the world cleared
up. She was in engineering. She remembered this place well and with
fondness, but it was hurt. There were sparks flying and a fallen
support beam infront of her.

"Wha.. wha what happened?" Dax managed to say.

"You were hit by the fallen beam when the ship was last hit."

Finding her feet Dax stood and had a look around, there appeared to be
no other injuries, but her head felt like a big enough injury for the
entire engineering room.

Checking the situation on the engineering screen which was half
shattered, she managed to see a hull breach on C Deck and Hull Plating
at 20%. There is nothing we can do about the breach till the fight is
over. "Crewman, make sure those emergency bulkheads stay shut around
that breach. I am going to work some magic to get more power to the
hull plating" With a nod the crewman left to carry out his orders.

"Crewman Foster!" Dax called out to a blond haired male standing on
the core platform. "Yes Ma'am?"
"I want you to redirect the plasma flow from the warp coils to the EPS
taps on E Deck" the crewman looked utterly befuddled. "Ma'am?" Dax
shook her head trying to regaine her senses. "Look we need more power,
by cutting the flow before it hits the nacelles and shunting it to the
EPS grid, we can put the warp core to Warp 1 output and shunt that
power into the main grid, now I know the EPS grid wont hold that kinda
energy and stress for long but it might be all the time we need. Also
have another Crewman working the emergency plasma vents, that way we
can moderate the flow of energy going through and hopefully get an
extra 30% power to the hull plating" Dax breathed heavily realising
that she barely took a breath for that. The crewman now in
understanding of what crazy scheme she had going through her mind got
straight to work.

Dax tapped the comm button to relay her plan to the bridge.

"Engineering to bridge, Commander I got a plan to get you some more
power to the hull plating, but it won't last for very long!"

[Intrepid Bridge]

Without a reply, Katrina enacted her plan to make sure the Intrepid
survived with her warp drive at least operational in some capacity.
"Commander! This entire little fleet needs to be at warp before that
detonation goes off! The explosion is the killer but the sub-space
shockwave of all that dilithium is going to blow out everyone's warp
drive and no impulse engine is going to outrun the explosion!" While
letting know that, Katrina had issued a few commands to the
Engineering computer that she as Chief Engineer was capable of doing.
Intrepid's hits had so far been light, compared to the other ships. A
science lab had been blown open to the vacuum of space, luckily no one
had been in there. A series of enlisted bunkrooms had been breached as
well, with only a few minor injuries. It was the warp nacelles that
the Romulan's seemed to be landing most of their hits on, be it on
purpose or luck.

With the final sequence of commands given to the Engineering computer,
Intrepid's warp drive ramped up in power, not enough to go to warp,
but just enough to generate more warp plasma, which became apparent
soon enough as the ship started to stream green ribbons of the gas
from the length of the nacelles as she continued to fight. A shot from
a Romulan warship that would would have only been a glancing blow was
attenuated by the plasma and did next to no damage. The effect was
isolated only to the nacelles and would limit Intrepid's immediate
available speed, she'd perhaps make warp 2 straight away, but she
would get to warp and the plasma was providing some extra shielding to
the nacelle.

Oh the mess that it was creating. Someone, somewhere would want to
have cross words for the number of operational hours on numerous
components Katrina had just written off, but it was better then
writing off a starship and it's crew.

"Booyah!" Katrina announced from her console as she saw the deflected
shot on her monitor and only after she said it looked up. "Sorry."

Case double checked the damage display. That last shot had
miraculously not further damaged his warp nacelles, something he
suspected was related to the engineering officer's outburst. There
would be time to investigate what had happened later. For now, things
were getting entirely too hairy for the good guys. "Coms, patch me
through to the Oregonian."

"Intrepid to Oregonian. If y'all are done playing kamikaze pilot, we'd
really like to get going while the going is good. You know, before
we're unable to get going at all."

Without waiting for a response, Case turned to the Armoury station.
"Ensign Wun, the second those two are transported aboard the Intrepid,
I want you fire a full spread of torpedoes as we discussed before. Run
'em slow."

"Helm, the very /second/ that the last torpedo is launched, take us to
warp and bring us to the rendezvous point. We're not sticking around
for the fireworks on this one."

Cmdr Ethan Armstrong
Commanding Officer
ESS Intrepid

Lt. Cmdr Petr Case
XO/Science Officer
ESS Intrepid

Lieutenant Katrina Merrick
Chief Engineering Officer
ESS Intrepid

Ensign Dax Valorum
Engineering Officer
ESS Yorktown

CPO Michelle Yearly
Warp Core Reactor Chief
NX-05 Yorktown
apb Cmdr Ca'daar