A Concerning Discovery
Posted on Mon Feb 19th, 2018 @ 1:17am by Cadet Junior Grade Emma Phelps & Lieutenant Erin Whitlam PhD
Mission:
Weathering the Storm
Location: Sensor Control Room
Hundreds of petabytes of data were collected every hour by Starbase 332’s vast sensor arrays. While a lot of it was tracking local spacecraft traffic, most of the data was astronomical in nature; it tracked orbits of bodies in the local system, nearby solar systems and phenomena even further afield of that.
All this data needed to be quickly processed, prioritised and parcelled out to whichever department on the Starbase required it. The spacecraft traffic was prioritised first and quickly processed before being sent up to Ops. Any other vital information was also sent up to Ops. Things like nearby asteroids, meteor showers or phenomena likely to impact on the immediate safety or functioning of the Starbase. Most of the rest went to the Science Department and an awful lot of it was processed by Astrophysics.
This process was coordinated through the expansive Sensor Control Room, which was located on Deck 15, only a few decks below Ops. Lieutenant Erin Whitlam entered the room in mid conversation with the cadet who walked quietly at her side. “ … after being processed and prioritised here in Sensor Control,” Whitlam extended her right arm out to highlight the vast chamber of consoles and blue-shirted science personnel. “This is the place to see the raw data come in. I’ll have you doing plenty of work down in the lab, but you’ll pull several watches here in the SCR.”
Emma was a bit overwhelmed, but was trying desperately not to let it show. She had her classes here at the adjunct Academy, and she had been on a few training crews with her fellow cadets on the Wainwright. But now her internship was really getting started. She was getting into the trenches, finally ready to get her hands dirty with some real science. And she was starting to realize that her mind was starting to wander. She forced herself back into the situation at hand. "Aye, sir. I'm looking forward to it, sir." In reality, pouring over incoming data didn't sound as glamorous to the cadet as working in the lab and running experiments, but she supposed she had to start somewhere. "What kind of things would we be looking for in here?" she asked, worried that staring at a monitor was going to be as boring as she was afraid it sounded.
"Anything and everything," Whitlam responded as she cast her eye over the nearby consoles. She pointed to the nearest one. "This one's tracking outbound traffic from Archa IV." She peered over the shoulder of the next operator along the bank of consoles. "That looks like a scan of local background magnetic and particulate activity." She kept moving to the third console. "And this is a deep space scan of the Solialan Expanse. That's vital data right there; Starfleet will be sending ships into that region soon, so it would be good for them to know what they might expect to find there."
The cadet turned towards the second console as they walked along. She had to badly stifle a yawn, and was afraid of Whitlam seeing her while she did. So her natural instinct was to try and look like she was interested in the screen while she expressed her boredom. Whitlam continued on her way, but something caught Emma's eye on the display. "Uh, Lieutenant?"
"Yeah?" Erin asked, stopping in her track and turning back, thinking that she'd finally managed to stoke a question out of the cadet.
"Do background fields tend to swirl? Emma asked, gesturing towards the screen. "I ask because most of the magnetic fields that I've seen in class were static. Or at least more stable than this one."
Erin peered at the console to which Phelps was gesturing and her brow instantly furrowed in alarm. "No," she said, moving closer. "Only when ..." she cut herself off and tapped the console operator on the shoulder. "Send this up to Ops immediately!" She turned and spoke up to the comm. "Whitlam to Commander Drusus. Sir, we've got a serious situation developing."
Lt. JG Erin Whitlam
Science Officer
Cadet Junior Grade Emma Phelps
Science Intern
