Bug Zapper

Posted on Mon Jul 8th, 2019 @ 11:10am by Lieutenant Commander Buck Ducati & Lieutenant JG Holt Tyson

Mission: Starbase 332, Where Are You?
Location: Maintenance Corridor 546

Holt was getting tired of the rumor mill. Known of it could be true, there was no way. Ship eating bugs? It had to be madness from people not dealing with the Carthage being destroyed. But... what if it wasn't? His mind had been racing, but he figured the Chief would know, if anyone did.

"Hey, Commander," He called, stepping into a maintenance corridor where the computer told him his boss was. "You got a sec?"

Buck was working on re-routing while replacing damaged and or old conduits, relays, and circuits in an effort to both repair the station's sensors in order to boost the range. He had just come from making sure Jayne, Dominic, Kade and Hogan were okay after the bloody wormhole sucked the station to their new location.

He was about to activate the relay when he heard someone call out to him, he jumped and nearly stabbed the relay's parts with the tool he held. He grunted with annoyance then turned to whoever bothered him. "Can you please make some noise before you sneak up on me!"

Holt blinked and smirked a little bit, "I mean... I stopped up with all the silent grace of a gut shot elephant... but I can sing a song or something next time?... Sir," He said, trying hard to keep his grin at bay.

"Please do," Buck smiled. "What's up?" He asked.

Holt snickered, "Boss... you been hearing anything of the rumors about... bugs? Like... space bugs," he seemed to consider his description one more time, then added, "Like... space station eatin' space bugs?"

"Now now, you should know better then to believe rumours Lieutenant." Buck said though he knew eventually the bugs may follow the Yucatan's warp trail straight to 332 but it was doubtful the bugs had warp speed. He smiled thinking that he should give something for Holt to focus on. "What did you come to me about?"

Holt sort of gave the man a face, "I don't need you to treat me like a kid, sir. I've heard enough to know that the bugs are real, and they're on their way here. Can't tell what's exaggerated beyond that, but I was thinking about it... had an idea I wanted to run by you," He said, seriously.

"What is it?" Buck asked again.

"Bug zapper, sir," Holt offered. "If these things do show up before we can figure out how to get the station back through whatever anomaly got us here, I was thinking about it... if we polarized our structural integrity field, and re-calibrated the reverse plasma conduits, we could could potentially electrify the outer hull of the station... basically making us a giant bug zapper. There'd be a limit to the power output, like, after a while the plasma conduits would burn out, but it might buy us some really essential time," He offered.

Buck went full thinking expression as he went over the idea in his mind. "We could add the shields to the plan but pull in the bubble to hug the station. What about shockwave torpedoes? Mobile bug zappers?" He smiled.

Holt nodded slowly, his gears turning too, "The shield could enhance the zap, for sure... And I think if we reverse polarized the casing on some of the photon torpedoes, and lowered the yield, we could get a nice wide EMP blast... that might work to fry them as well," He said, grinning a bit. "Want me to get started, boss?" He asked.

"There's just one problem, maybe more, what if the bugs adapt?" Buck asked, he had a few solutions in mind but wanted to see what Holt came up with.

Holt shrugged, "We adapt too, sir. Hard to answer that, depending on how they adapt, but we can change polarity, change frequency, change wattage... lots of options that we can do on the fly," He explained. "We won't know what we need to do until we need to do it," He explained.

"And do you have any contingency plans?" Buck asked.

Holt chuckled and shrugged, "Big can of bug spray, sir?"

Buck had chuckled for a second or two before glancing around in thought. "You know that's not a bad idea. Though we'd have to talk to Medical, and maybe Sciences, but if a substance can immobilise the bugs like what bug spray did we can then secure them in a 'net' as it were and safely tractor them away." He said, "without killing any," he added.

Holt rubbed his chin for a second, "That's not a bad idea... want me to reach out to Science and Medical and see if there's any chance to do that?" He asked, raising his eyebrows.

Buck nodded. "Yes and I'll look into using the tractor beam emitters as a weapon or defense." He said before gathering his toolkit and made his way out to the corridor. Looking back at Holt. "Any other ideas, I suggest you go to the Chief of Operations with them as I'm only Chief of Station Maintenance." He added, maybe one day he'll be Operations Chief of a starbase.

Holt waved, "Nah, I know, Chief, I just wanted to run it by you first since I'd be electrifying your stuff," Holt said with a grin. "I'll go have a talk with the Chief Ops and we'll get everything going. Thanks!" He said, heading off in the other direction.

"Good man," Buck called after Holt then headed to the Maintenance office to organise reports for his senior officers to start work on the ideas the two just discussed. He'd check on his kids next but they should be with their uncle.

off

Lieutenant Commander Buck Ducati
Chief of Station Maintenance

Lieutenant JG Holt Tyson
Engineer