From Bad to Worse
Posted on Fri Nov 2nd, 2018 @ 3:06pm by Captain Liarra Von & Colonel S'er'in'e & Commander Walter Prescott
Edited on on Fri Nov 2nd, 2018 @ 3:12pm
Mission:
Weathering the Storm
Location: Station Operations
Timeline: After "The Hardest Part"
Liarra shivered while studying her console, her arms wrapped around her to try and stay warm. While trying to save power to keep structural integrity and life support online, as well as sensors and internal comm channels, other sacrifices had to be made. Long range sensors and communications were among the first to go. With the current emergency literally surrounding them, what was happening lightyears away didn’t seem all that important. Next lighting was lowered all over the station. Even ops was bathed in shade, with emergency lighting and the glow of their displays providing the only illumination. Von had even turned off the holographic displaying of the station, relying on the simple two-dimensional graphic on her screen to provide status updates. Since that still didn’t prove to be enough, environmental controls had to be adjusted. To keep oxygen flowing to the inhabited areas, life support could not be fully shut down. But heating and cooling systems had to be powered down. Because of this, temperature had been fluctuating all over the station. Towards the center of the station, nearest to the core, the temperature had risen due to what power generation they still had available. Critical systems that hadn’t been shut down still generated heat. But near the outside of the hull, against the vacuum of space, much of the heat was already lost to radiation. Ops wasn’t quite to the point of ice crystals forming, but the room was certainly colder than Von would have preferred.
Von stepped away from her display, rubbing her arms to keep warm. She knew it was a fruitless effort, just like it had been the last several dozen times she tried it, but it was at least giving her something to do. Over the last few hours, it seemed that there was little that she could do. Her crew knew their jobs, and were on top of things as best as anyone could be expected in these circumstances. But it didn’t help make her feel any less useless for the time being. All that she was good for at the moment was watching her station slowly die. Although she knew it couldn’t possibly be good news, she was almost relieved to hear a status update from her chief of operations. At least it was something else to keep her mind off of the cold and the feeling of crowded isolation.
"We may have a problem, captain."
Captain Von stepped over to Prescott’s console to get a better look at the situation. “You mean one that’s bigger than our current problem?” she asked. As soon as the words left her lips she started to wish she had laid off the sarcasm, but she was sure she wasn’t alone in her frustration. “What’s the problem, Commander?”
Walter tried not to take the captain's tone too seriously. They were several hours into the storm and it was clear many of them were already quite anxious about their situation. Even he wasn't immune, given that it was his responsibility to see the station continued to function in the midst of everything around them. The last thing anyone wanted to be thinking about was how their situation could possibly get worse.
"I hate to be the bearer of bad news, ma'am," Walter said, lowering his voice so that it hopefully wouldn't carry across the entire room, "but that drain on our power systems we were monitoring earlier has gotten worse." He pointed to one of the displays in front of him where a simple graph showed the amount of power being relayed across the entire system. With his other hand, he keyed in a command sequence and caused a portion of the graph to expand. "Sensors recorded a sudden drop-off...right here."
Liarra squinted as she studied the display in the low light of ops. Sure enough, there was a disconcerting drop in power. "What's the cause of that? Emergency batteries failing?"
"An emergency generator, actually."
That didn't sound good, Liarra thought to herself. Normally the emergency generators were kept in reserve for, well, emergencies. But there was no doubt that the current situation qualified. "So what's causing this drop in power? Is that generator not active?"
Walter frowned. It was difficult to say exactly what was causing the problem without more information. Unfortunately, the steps they'd taken to limit power consumption combined with interference from the storm was impacting their ability to monitor some systems. "If I had to guess, I'd say the generator has been damaged somehow," he told her.
Another keystroke caused the display to shift again, bringing up a schematic of the generator in question along with the nearby batteries. "Under normal circumstances, these batteries draw a little power from the primary generators and store it away for various uses," Walter explained, "We've been using the emergency generator to compensate for how the storm has been affecting our systems. As you can see, we're still drawing power faster than it's being replenished."
Leo had overheard snippets of the conversation and walked over to see what was going on and if possible how he might be able to help.
It was a lot for Liarra to take in. The cold must have been getting to her more than she wanted to admit. “What’s that mean?” she asked. “Were our estimates off?”
"Not by that much."
The engineer's response was quick and perhaps a bit sharper than he'd intended. He took a breath and let it out slowly, reminding himself as he did so this wasn't an inquisition. "There were certain factors we weren't able to account for with this storm," Walter admitted, his voice calm again, "but this is definitely something else. Someone is going to have physically go to the generator and repair it, otherwise this power drain is going to get a lot worse. Then we'll really be in trouble."
Leo listened in to the grizzly details of the situation that was thrust upon then, hardly how he expected his new assignment to shape up.
Liarra gave Leo a glance, almost as if to say “Of course.” The situation was already bad enough. Why not let it be worse. “Can you get someone to the reactor to make repairs?”
There was another brief pause as Walter consulted the readouts in front of him. Even under the best conditions, he knew it would take time to dispatch a maintenance crew to investigate the situation. They'd have to collect the right equipment, travel up from the nearest operations center, and then physically inspect the generator before they could even begin working to fix it. Based on what he was seeing right then, there simply wasn't enough time.
"I'm afraid not, ma'am," he replied, "My teams are spread too thin right now. I'm going to have to go myself."
Von shook her head. “I need you here. Someone needs to continue to monitor our status and direct our repair efforts.” She took a deep breath and waited out a long, lengthy pause. “I’ll go. You can walk me through the repairs from here.”
"No, I'll go. You are needed here." Leo was not about to let the Captain remove herself from where she was needed most. "The station needs you here most of all, I can go, I used to work at the UP yards I can handle this." Drawing light to his recent experience. More over, there was no way he would let the Captain endanger herself as he didn't believe in the age old traditions of Captains dying to save the ship or going down with it.
Liarra knew that she wasn't going to win the argument. The thought of ordering her first officer to go into a potentially dangerous situation did not sit well with her, but she needed to send someone that she could trust. She didn't argue, but simply nodded. "Once you get there, keep an open comm channel so we know what's going on. And be careful." She mustered up a slight grin. "I don't need Doctor Varen on my bad side."
"Probably for the best." Then Leo left and headed for where he was needed trying to suppress the trauma's of his past. On his way he came across Colonel S'er'in'e who seemed to be returning after sheltering the Admiral. "Colonel, I could use some help, come with me please."
"As you wish." S'er'in'e answered following the Commander.
Captain Liarra Von
Commanding Officer
Commander Leonardo Luciano [P: S'er'in'e]
Executive Officer
Lt. Commander Walter Prescott [P: Rutilius]
Chief of Operations
