Eye of the Needle
Posted on Wed Nov 2nd, 2022 @ 8:12am by Rear Admiral Yoshi Minawara & Commander Jonathan Mantell & Lieutenant Commander Nolan Marc & Lieutenant Jek'Lar Son of Thrawn & Lieutenant Njalia Sayffier
Mission:
Between Realities
Location: Bridge
Timeline: After "Its Getting Worse"
1506 words - 3 OF Standard Post Measure
As Commodore Minawara stepped off the bridge to speak with the alt-history future version of whatever pimple monster was passing himself off as Jack Mantell, the crew on the bridge were left to try and orchestrate the questionable physics surrounding the proposals devised by Njalia and Nolan.
One thing was clear, whatever was happening to or around the ship was not anything contemplated by any of the theoretical temporal mechanics courses taught by Starfleet Academy. Given that the reality they were in flew in the face of all known logic and reason, what they were left with was Andorian boldness and an Only's imagination. Either one of which, by itself, had doomed many a starship. Thus, this plan was either going to be genius or madness. Provided any of them survived it, history could be the judge.
Transferring the equations that he had been working on from the science console to a padd, the small boy hopped down from his chair and proceeded to make his way around the bridge to the Operations station. There were no computer models for what they were attempting to do, so Nolan was devising the equations on the fly. A lot of which was sheer guesswork -- such as particle weight in slipstream when space and time were separate variables -- but Nolan was nothing if not creative.
"The distortion will need to generate a gravimetric flux density with an energy coefficient of, like..." the boy began, talking out loud as his head bobbed from side to side as he debated the math and tried to make the equations work in his head. "Three..? No, four hundred millicochranes," Nolan supplied, making a few final notations and then passing the padd over to Njalia.
"But, not more than four hundred twelve millicochranes, or the distortion might be more like an explosion," the boy warned. And if there was one thing Nolan knew, it was explosions.
Crossing his arms in front of his chest, the boy swayed back and forth as he allowed time for the Andorian to digest Nolan's scrawl. "So..." the boy began after another minute. "How do we do it?"
He knew the theory.
He just had no idea how to translate theory into a practical solution.
Njalia had at least a dozen holograms up of ship schematics, four-dimensional math and, inexplicably, a projection of an everchanging snowflake . . . She took the datapad and feed its information into her system.
"The problem as I see it," said Njalia, highlighting one of the holographic images of the ship, is that we need to radiate the initial pulse through the interior of the Vesta, suffusing it and preventing further splintering, and then outward to keep the echos from returning." The holographic ship glowed and then a field expanded out from it.
She paused and then snapped her fingers. "If we cut off ship's artificial gravity for the millisecond needed and use those projectors to jumpstart the gravimetric reaction, everyone will feel a push outward but it should not be significant enough to cause harm or serious stress to the ship, hopefully," she gestures to the image. "Then as the burst radiates out from the Vesta, we fed in additional power through the deflector field grid to create a field that should extend," she looks at the calculations, "6.2 kilometers out before rapidly fading. That should be enough of a safety zone. The downside is that it is going to light up the sensors of anyone looking for impulse traces like a nova."
Jek'Lar sat and listened to the information as it came rapid fire from his crewmates. He was not a scientific mind so a lot of it was lost on him. However, his pride refused to allow him to state that. "The loss of gravity would have to be even less than a millisecond. If any of the ship's weaponry collides with something while in zero gravity we will have a problem. Is it possible to take the power from weapons to jumpstart your reaction. Weapons would not be needed on this mission."
"Good point, Lieutenant Jek'lar," nodded Njalia. "We can give the torpedoes a stabilizing cacoon from their own systems to insure they are not disrupted by the pulse."
Jack rubbed his hands together as he stepped out of the ready room and back onto the bridge. He breathed in a renewed sense of purpose in this era, eager for a chance to meet himself as planned. The earlier sense of tension was gone from the teenager's body, he moved easily across the bridge until a murmur of struggling voices caught his ear. No. The Only set his foot in front of him, his hands still sticky from the bargain struck with the Commodore. Himself first, then help.
The shaggy-haired engineer groaned as curiosity got the better of him, pivoting on his heels toward the tense voices discussing the problem. Jack could overhear enough of it, his cogment playing back what the teen had tried to ignore earlier. It was a simple matter to get caught up, he struggled to remember how much work it took to share information before technology made it easy. "Gravimetric pulses are super fun for joyrides, we've got a whole racing series where you try to cross The Void in a single pulse. Well, you'd better, 'cause there's no help for a thousand lightyears in any direction." Jack chuckled until he realized no one else got the joke. "Yeah, anyway, someone built a ship-mounted graviton gun to sabotage other teams. Turns out when the two collide, they cancel each other out, including any sensor traces." He grinned at that discovery. "Took a few dead racing crews for new rules to spoil all the fun."
"So, you are saying generating a second gravitational pulse around the first will create a sensor blank?" asks Njalia, looking up gravimetical burst distortion on her datapad. "How close in strength do the two pulses need to be?"
"Oh, it's just an irregular lissajous curve, so all you need is an asymmetrical vector to the tailing edge. It's easier with fifth dimensional hierarchies, but I hate the way those leave wiggling remainders." Jack said it so casually, his hands brushing off the long words like dust. He leaned up close to the Andorian woman, peering over her hands into the device she carried. Two-dimensional infodisplays, really? The future teen didn't remember those hanging on for that long. "Yeah, see the little squigglies at the end of its displacement graph? That's what you can exploit with the right aim." He glanced up and grinned, unhindered by the woman's stony face. "Trust me, you'll feel like a Q when you pull it off."
"That should be possible," said Njalia. "The timing will have to be precise. How do you measure the lissajous curve when it is irregular? Is it predictably irregular?"
"Probably." The teenager shrugged slender shoulders, frowning at the squiggly bits a little more. He stepped back, regarding the fellow Only that had seeded doubts about him earlier. Jack wasn't about to prove Blondie right here, no way. "Toldja I hated that math. It's more in the feel of it, gotta get right...on..." He lifted his hands, one palm supporting fingers shaped into a crude weapon, and Jack mimicked firing it as it reached his imaginary target. "Took mine down on the first shot. Felt goooood, they cheated my team out of the cup three times in a row." He looked back at the Starfleet officers, "Take your best shot, you'll know when it's right."
"Well, that was almost helpful," said Njalia. "Jek'lar, you had best assume that we will be spotted but better than being torn apart by this dimensional splintering and make what tactical plans you can. Commander, your best guess on when to activate a counter gravetic pulse? If . . . our visitor is correct, being temporarily blank to sensors would be extremely useful."
The Klingon grumbled in response to all that had been said. "While I agree being invisible to sensors would be extremely useful. I am not sure if this plan is worth the risk. If I understand this correctly one mistake and we are all in danger. I do not believe it to be worth the risk." It was Jek'Lar's job to protect everyone aboard. Even if it means arguing against a plan. He posed his words more to Captain Darrow more than anyone else, the choice to move forward or not would ultimately lay with the Executive Officer.
Having caugh the last half of the conversation, Yoshi appeared behind Ewan a moment later and nodded. "Whatever it is you have my blessing. Rufus, I need to talk to you," he said nodding to the helmsmen. "I might have worked out a fallback plan, should we have issues with yours. It's not as refined, but it's an option, inspired by our transdimentional guest here," he added nodding to Jack. "But let's get going, we are running short on time."
