The Black Box

Posted on Sat May 3rd, 2014 @ 10:17am by Commander Jordan Gunning & Lieutenant Augustus Deakin & Lieutenant JG Allison Price

Mission: Fate of the Angels
Location: Main Engineering [USS Seraphim]

[ON]

Engineering Computer Core

It was a dusty, claustrophobic mess that reminded Gus of the inside of one of the large industrial waste bins at the back of his warehouse back on Hesperia. At least two support beams had sheered off during impact and smashed into the core itself, sending duotronic components, memory cards and interface consoles scattering throughout the small compartment.

Finding where the black box was stored was easy enough, but getting to it was another matter. It was locked away in a secure locker at deck level beneath one of the interface consoles on the other side of the room. Trouble was, that console was about four metres away and, thanks to the ship's crash-induced tilted axis, up a sheer fifty degree incline with no hand or foot holds to assist.

Thinking on his feet, Gus pulled a tube of superadhesive polymer from the repair kit on his belt and a handful of debris from near his feet. He held shattered metal fragment about the size of his fist against the deck in front of him and affixed it to the surface with a thick glop of the adhesive. Using the newly created foothold, he lifted himself up and stuck some more debris to the deck, using them in turn as handholds to gradually pull himself up the deck.

He felt rather pleased with himself by the time he reached the console and, leaning against the deck, opened up the locker door, which pleasingly sprung open with ease, and grabbed the handle of the black box pulling it free. Holding the half-metre long bright orange box against his chest like a football, he slid down the deck and out into the corridor to make his way back to the engine room.

"I'm surprised there isn't anything anything tangible lying around." Gunning said to no-one in particular as he kicked his way through a pile of debris like they were Autumn leaves. "A tricorder, a PADD? Anything that could help us piece together what happened."

Suddenly he dropped to his knees and began rooting through a pile of sand, emerging triumphantly with an old-style tricorder. "Bingo!" He shouted, before shaking it and dropping it. "It's dead an' all."

"Most of the ship seems to be dead, sir," Allie called out from under a console. Most of her was hidden from view because she was inside of an access panel, but her legs still stuck enough to create a tripping hazard. "From what I can tell, they had a major power failure before crashing." The tell-tale whirr of her instruments made it clear that she was working on something in there, even if she couldn't be seen. After a moment, emergency lights flickered on.

She crawled out of the access panel, nearly hitting her head on the console above her. "An impact like this would have surely tripped some of the fail safe systems, but evidence suggests that they were already offline. I might be able to tell you more if we can get to the fusion reactors, but hopefully the ship's flight recorder will give us a better idea. For now though, I've been able to pull enough power from the backup batteries to give us some light, though not much."

Price made her way towards Gunning and picked up the dropped tricorder. "Yep, definitely busted. I was hoping that I could hook it up to my power supply and get it working." She picked it up and gave it another shake next to her head. "But it sounds like the internal circuitry has broken loose. Let's hang on to it though. I might be able to take it back to our ship and reconstruct it there."

"Here's something we shouldn't need to reconstruct," Deakin said as he appeared nearby with the bright orange box held out triumphantly before him. "I found it!" he said with a pleased grin.

Gunning glared at the box. Everything on this ship was festooned in such bright colours that they assaulted the senses. "Ah, yes. The black box. It's amazing how quickly a ship decorated like an elementary school started to grate on you. How do we hook it up?"

"Actually, sir, the black box is actually a misnomer. It's came from a phrase used on Earth back in the 20th century. The flight recorders were painted bright orange for a reason, so that they would be easier to find in the wreckage of a crash site. The term black box came from the fact that the outer casing was usually charred by fire, and thus black." It was then that Allie realized that her two senior officers were staring at her. "But of course you knew that already, sir, and I'll shut up now."

Deakin carefully placed the box down on the deck, resting it against a step so it wouldn't slide away. He pulled his tricorder from his belt and opened it up as he replied, "It should have an onboard power source that we can activate. Then it's just a matter of connecting wirelessly with a PADD or a tricorder and downloading the data. Our equipment is backward compatible, so it shouldn't be a problem."

The operations officer was tapping away at his tricorder with a furrowed brow. After a pause, he said, "Hmm ... that's ... odd ..."

Gunning appeared over Deakin's shoulder, blocking the dull emergency light. "What's odd?"

"I'm detecting residual traces of chronitons," Deakin replied, holding up the tricorder for the Commander to see. "You don't see them everyday and it suggests that this thing has been near some kind of temporal anomaly. It might have even traveled through time."

Gunning was about to respond when he was suddenly greeted with the notion that they weren't alone in the room. Out of the corner of his eye he could make out shapes, glimmering and flickering in and out. "What the hell are they?" He hissed, reaching for his phaser.

In a swift movement that he wasn't even sure he could do anymore, Gus holstered his tricorder and pulled out his phaser, leveling it in the area the commander was focused on. "I'm assuming you don't mean the bulkhead," he said, seeing nothing out of the ordinary. "What did you see?"

"Didn't you see it?" Gunning asked, stricken by the thought that he might be going mad. "There's people all around us."

Ensign Price pulled out her tricorder and quickly started scanning the room. "I'm detecting an excess of chronitons all through the room, but I'm not reading any other life signs besides us."

"Screw what you're detecting!" Gunning wheeled around on his heel, overwhelmed by the non-corporeal bodies around him. "Look!"

Price looks around, but sees nothing. She continues scanning. "I don't see anything sir. The air is pretty still around us. Other than the excess chronitons..." She trailed off, focusing on something else. "Wait, do you hear voices?"

Jordan was still spinning around trying to catch the eye of the apparitions forming around them. "No- no voices. I just see them."

Deakin rose from his prone position over the black box and squinted as he looked around the chamber, failing to see anything. He strained to hear, but all he could hear was his colleagues moving and speaking frantically. "I don't see or hear anything," he said as he held up his tricorder and took his own scans of the room. As he did, he started to feel a dull throbbing behind his eyes. He shook his head - making the ache worse - and caught a glimpse of a blinking light on the black box at his feet. Did I turn that on?

As soon as they had come, the voices and the images disappeared, replaced by completely solid, completely real people. Gunning felt the rest of the team at his back. He whispered, "I think we should probably get out of here."

"Agreed," Allison whispered back. She grabbed her late 24th century toolkit and started for the corridor. She couldn't help but notice the sudden change in gravity. The deck was no longer slanted.

[OFF]