JDL | Cmdr Dahe'el, Lt Zola, LtJg Black & Ens Barnes | Reversing the Process

Posted on Mon May 4th, 2015 @ 1:01am by Lieutenant JG Teá Black & Ensign

2,347 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Agua Mala
Location: Intel Offices

Rocky sat at her terminal downloading the information from her spycorder into the main computer back that she had gleaned from the rail guns that had been on Atlantis Prime. "People always want to play with big guns without thinking of the consequences. Now the good guys want to have it reverse engineered so they can have the big guns. Why not just create a singularity generator and be done with it?" Still muttering, she tapped her combadge. =^=Barnes to Black. Can you come to Intel R&D, please?=^=

Teá was in her quarters looking over the information on the PaDD the interesting thing was it wasn't about the commodore. All it had was a DNA sequence as well what Teá assumed was a project number, 806A21. Sighing when she heard the message, "on my way." She said realizing that meant actually getting dressed. Which didn't take long grabbing her bag she made it to intelligence with relative ease and strolled in, "ensign." She said politely but still a bit cold.

Rocky looked up and nodded. "Lieutenant," she said before turning her attention back to her terminal. "We've been assigned to break down, analyze and figure out the schematics of the Atlantean railguns. The information for them has been uploaded to the ships computer and you may choose a point to begin. I have already put in the specifics of what I was able to decrypt when I was on the planet with Commodore Ivanova and Commander Archer."

"Okay," Teá said always assuming that railgun tech was outdated especially with phaser and disruptor tech. "Are we looking at using it or is this more for curiosity sake?"

"We're doing it because we were ordered to," Rocky said. "It ran off a very unusual crystal that was solar powered."

"Fair enough," Teá said smiling a bit seeing that the girl scout attitude hadn't changed. "I'l take a closer look at the scans of the crystal." With that Teá walked over to a console and started pulling up the scans.

"It's all there," Rocky told her, curious as to the smile despite her standoffish behavior. Shrugging, she turned her attention to her terminal. "We have no idea what the crystal was composed of at the moment, but it's only a matter of time."

Teá nodded as she pulled up the file that showed the molecular breakdown of the crystal, "what does or has science say about it?" Teá asked realizing that this was very very much out of her wheel house, I mean if they needed someone to locate the creator of this than yeah. She thought to herself but this was just out of her element.

"I haven't been informed of results from other departments," Rocky said as she looked up. "Our job is to find out how the gun itself worked."

"Mind if I check with engineering and science?" Teá asked closing the file realizing that she had no idea what she was looking at.

"Go ahead," Rocky said, working on separating the layers of the weapon on the terminal before her. "We could do better in the hololab in getting an idea of how this thing operates."

Tapping her badge she decided to call engineering, "intelligence to engineering do you have anyone you could spare to help with a reverse engineering report?"

"Zola here, what can I do to help?" The little Ferengi had been cleaning and reorganizing her tool kit as she was due to come on duty.

"Did you hear about the rail gun that was found on the planet powered by a crystal. We need help with reverse engineering them." Teá said tapping her finger nails on the console.

"Hear about, I poked at them remotely. I was drug into the middle of it by some bewildered engineer named Shea, and ended up speaking to a nice young woman by the name of Barnes about her well executed encryption so we didn't accidentally make things worse," Zola explained. Tool kit packed up again, she hung it over her shoulder. "Where are we working? I can be right there."

"Down in intelligence I'll let you in once you get here." Teá said nodding to Barnes, "I've got a engineer coming down."

Hearing the engineer say she was nice, Rocky smiled. "We should have met them in the hololab, but here will work for now. We can always go there once we get all these schematics in order. I believe that Commodore Ivanova had sent some information back to the ship when she first encountered them as well."

"I can send her a message and have her meet us or you in the hololab." Teá said thinking if those two were off doing that she could give another go at medical or even science regarding the bizarre data on the PaDD which she was no closer to tracking who sent it to her.

Rocky started to look up when Black spoke, then covered her ears with both hands and grimaced, nearly smacking her head into her terminal. Gasping, she closed her eyes for a long minute before she took a deep breath. "Ex...excuse me, Lieutenant?" she managed in a whisper.

"Seeing that I have no expertise in reverse engineering and truth be told I have no idea what I'm looking at and seeing as you and I'm sure the engineer would be much more effective. I mean like you said it's our orders I just believe I'll just be in the way." Teá said looking at the ensign, "if you want I can start compiling everything so it'll be easier to pull up once we or you are at the hololab."

Rocky frowned for a moment. "All we need to do is figure out how this thing works, not reverse engineer it. All the information is here, but not the how and why of it." She was a little irritated, but relieved at the same time when Black expressed no concern over her moment. Did I expect sympathy from such a cold blooded person, even if I wanted it? she mentally mumbled to herself as she made a mental note to go see Medical as soon as she was able.

Zola had been as quick as she could, coming to meet Barnes and Black. She was hesitant when she reached the entrance into the Intelligence department, but when the computer grilled her as to who she was, then ushered her inside with stern warnings not to deviate from the direct path to the R&D department, Zola moved as quick as she could to get there. She darted inside as soon as the doors opened wide enough and looked around wide eyed.

"Barnes? Black?" she asked meekly, clutching her tool kit in front of her.

Rocky looked up. "I'm Ensign Barnes."

"And I'm lieutenant Black. I'm assuming your the engineer I called?" Teá asked.

"Lieutenant Zola," she said, taking a hesitant step forward. She looked from Black to Barnes, then decided to take another step towards Barnes. "It's nice to finally meet you. I would say to put a face to a name, but your listing in the ship roster has your pictures... but that's never the same, right?" Zola smiled nervously, then looked at Black again. "So, what are we doing with these rail guns now?"

"It's a pleasure to meet you, also, Lieutenant Zola," Rocky said, shoving her shock at seeing a Ferengi female on the ship and in a Starfleet uniform into a small box. She was trained too well at covering her outward emotions most of the time to let them show through. "I'm glad that you contacted me when we were on the planet or we wouldn't have a chance to meet now. Commander Archer and Commodore Ivanova want us to figure out how these rail guns work and the origins of the crystals used to power them. I have the full scans from the tricorders already loaded into the computer and you can access them from any terminal here."

"The software didn't seem too complex ­— once we got past your encryption you added, of course — but I hardly had the chance to skim the other specs while working on that," Zola pointed out as she looked around and selected a terminal right next to Barnes. "Do you have the data that was sent up by the Yeoman too? I think that was information Ivanova had sent ahead before you and Commander Archer were able to retrieve her." Zola climbed up into a chair, having to sit on her tool kit in order to comfortably reach. Her fingers danced, and the tricorder scans were brought up.

"Not yet," Rocky responded. "We just started on this aspect of it and I was able to get detailed scans when we rescued Commodore Ivanova. What was the Yeoman's name?"

"Petty Officer third class Cecil duPont," Zola dutifully repeated. "I should have a copy of the data packet he sent archived, let me just pull it up..." She quickly pulled up access to the main computer database and flew through the archives to where she'd stashed the precious data. "Here we are." She helpfully put the main schematics page on a large view screen, and sent a request to the intel computers to offer access to the packet for both Barnes and Black at their terminals.

Granting the request after entering her authentication code, Rocky looked at it. "This is going to be very useful," she said. "Now to incorporate it with the data that I scanned from it and break it down. It shouldn't be too hard. The difficult part is ascertaining how the power was derived through the crystal. I assume that Engineering obtained samples of it?"

Teá sat back watching the two of them work knowing that she would get in more trouble for leaving she decided to work on going over the intelligence wire seeing what has popped up. Tapping a few buttons and adding in her own filters making it easier to see all the reports.

"I think the only people from our crew who were even physically near the crystal were yourself, the Commodore, and Commander Archer. No one asked Engineering or Science to collect a sample. We're going to have to work with the scans," Zola explained with a frown. She pulled up some of her favorite analytics programs, and started to feed the sensor readings into them and telling the programs to cross reference the data against the specs in the data packed. "Lieutenant Black, what do you think of this?" Zola called over her shoulder, noticing the spotted woman had become pretty quiet.

Standing up she walked over to the console and looked at it at first not seeing anything but than something caught her eye, "zoom in on that area," she pointed.

"Uh, sure," Zola said, flicking at her console. She was confused why the intel officer didn't just do it herself.

"No......no that can't be whoever created the crystals for use on the rail guns signed his/her work." Teá said with a smirk, "I mean hell if I designed these things I would've signed them as well."

"I wish that we had gotten a sample of the crystal to analyze," Rocky said as she looked at it. "They're highly unlikely to provide us with such at this point. I think that the schematics that we have are all Atlantean in design, and it's going to take a while to fully understand. Breaking the encryption on it was relatively easy, so the rest should follow the same path."

"Do we know if anyone else from the crew — other than you, Commander Archer, and Commodore Ivanova — had any hands on access to the rail gun?" Zola asked as she submitted a query to the computer. A chirp announced the results soon after, and Zola reached up to scratch her head. "The computer says that Commander Dahe'el acquired a sample somehow," she explained as she put in a request for access to the sample. "Do you suppose they'll bring it to us, or will we have to go collect it from the science labs?"

"There's only one way to find out," Rocky said and tapped her combadge, "Ensign Barnes to Commander Dahe'el. Do you have a sample of the crystal taken from Atlantis that you could bring to Intelligence, please?"

Almar sighed as the message came through, he picked up a padd from his desk and deposited the one he was working on and looked over towards the door of his office and then back to the padd, "The samples that were recovered from Atlantis Prime are all contained in the Science Labs for analysis, I would suggest contacting them if you need to study the samples."

Rocky sighed and closed the comm channel. "Does anyone actually know who has what?" she muttered.

"Who in science would be working on this?" Teá asked.

"I have no idea," Rocky said. "Let's just work on this while they work on that. Sound good?"

"I'll go visit the science labs, collect whatever data they have on it currently," Zola volunteered. She jumped down from her chair, collecting her tool kit after her boots hit the deck. "If they don't have anything yet, I'll run it through the standard duct tape and prayers to Saint Vidicon we all do down in engineering and send you guys the report?"

"Sounds good," Rocky said with a smile. "Thank you, Lieutenant." Turning her attention back to the schematics, she began to separate the individual component and creating layers to be sent to Commander Archer and the Command team.

Teá saw that the ensign had it under control so she decided to do some research of her own mainly on who sent her that file that contained the DNA information.

Commander Almar Dahe'el
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Vindicator

Lieutenenat Zola
Engineering Officer
USS Vindicator

Lieutenant Junior Grade Teá Black
Intelligence Officer
USS Vindicator

Ensign Catalina "Rocky" Barnes
Encryption Specialist
USS Vindicator

 

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