Stargazing

Posted on Sat Oct 31st, 2009 @ 3:03pm by Captain Vorn Krace & Lieutenant Commander Abigail Valera

Mission: Into a Devil's Heart
Location: Stellar Cartography
Timeline: MD06 0330hrs

Bonnie rolled over in bed as she tried to get back to sleep, before realising that the sound which had awoken her was her chirping combadge. As she rolled back over to face it, she stared at it for a moment, waiting for her sleepy mind to catch up and tell her body what to do. Eventually she reached over and tapped the surface of the small device. "Bonnie here, who is it?" she asked, her voice layered with tiredness.

=/=Sorry to wake you Bonnie, but I need your help in Stellar Cartography. We need to scan the nearby nebulae.=/= Abigail said through her end of the communications. She could hear the sleepiness in her Stellar Cartographer's voice and immediately regretted disturbing her, but the nebula needed both Bonnie's and Abigail's expertise and knowledge to get the information needed to the captain and the rest of the senior staff.

"Alright, I'll be there in ten," Bonnie replied, closing the channel before climbing out of bed to get washed up and get into her uniform.

<< 10 Minutes Later >>

As Bonnie walked through the doors to Stellar Cartography, she tapped the controls on the panels as she passed, bringing the lab into full working order. The spherical room came alive with the glowing holographic image of the surrounding space.

Bonnie turned around as the Lieutenant walked in through the doors to the lab, and tried to put a warm smile on her face, despite her tiredness. "Is there any specific nebula we're looking at ma'am, or is that what we're here to find out?" she asked.

"We're looking for anything that would help the captain out. Maybe some kind of defence for storms in one of the nebulae, or a way to cut through interference so we can communicate. Anything and everything that might be considered important." Abigail smiled at Bonnie.

Bonnie nodded. "I'll get right on it."

As she manipulated the controls on the central console in the spherical shaped room, and the hologram around them shifted and zoomed, until the two officers were standing inside a pale representation of the colony with the Iapetus in orbit. She then shrank it down so that the planet was a fist-sized ball, and disappeared within their torsos. At this magnification there were three nebulae clearly visible; two blue, one purple.

"These are the nebulae within an easily-reachable radius," the Cartographer reported, pointing at each. "The Devil's Nebula, Epsilon Theta Nebula, and one that is only catalogued as SGN-39822675." She ran a few commands, and the hologram of the space surrounding them disappeared, with the three nebulae not floating freely. She moved them each into a line in front of the two, and overlaid readings of each next to them.

"Are there any specific readings on this one here?" Abigail pointed to the Devil's Nebula.

Bonnie brought the nebula front-and-centre, and brought up some extra readings on it, he hands dancing at the controls, while she barely glanced down twice. "It's class D, roughly one thousand kilometres in diameter. Composed of various gases, but the most prominent is a compound called Tyvrillian-A, which is highly corrosive to starship hulls, and is capable of passing straight through most standard force fields."

Abigail thought for a moment and then said, "Is there anyway we can try and defend ourselves against the Tyvrillian-A? We might have have to enter that nebula."

Bonnie pulled up a search filter next to the display of the readout from the nebula. "No known method has been logged in the science or engineering records," she reported, scrolling through the data presented to her. "The nebula doesn't seem to be of high enough importance for any dedicated efforts to go into developing a defence, but I would assume it would require a pretty heavy recalibration of the shield grid, to keep the gas from passing through."

Abigail didn't like the fact that there hadn't been a defense for the gas before. She turned to Bonnie, "Can you come up with a solution? As I said before we might have to go into that nebula."

"I'm no engineer," Bonnie replied. "I wouldn't know where to start to modify the shields."

Abigail nodded, "Can you give these specs to the CEO? Maybe together we can figure this out. Thanks Bonnie."

"I'll download the readings onto a PADD," Bonnie replied, before performing her aforementioned task.

------------------
Lieutenant Abigail Valera
Chief Science Officer
USS Iapetus

&

Ensign Bonnie Myers (NPC)
Stellar Cartographer
Played by: Capt. Krace