Of Dongles and Coils

[Cptn Corizon 0]

The turbolift doors opened--or at least, attempted to open. Damage to the ship's computer core had caused the secondary systems--turbolifts, replicators, transporters, etc.--to go haywire. The turbolift doors opened fully, closed, then opened again halfway. Tandaris sighed and pried open the doors. He took a deep breath, then exited onto the bridge, marching dramatically over to the door to Corizon's ready room, an item in hand. He pressed the chime on the side of the door--nothing. Suppressing another sigh of annoyance, Tandaris knocked.

 

Corizon looked up from his desk. He'd been expecting Tandaris Admiran; it must have been him, or some equally disaffected crewmember. "Come," he said, louder than normal.

 

The doors opened properly this time. Tandaris marched into the room, up to Corizon's desk, whereon he dropped the item he had been holding. It was a twisted, burnt out, unrecognizable dongle. And it was still smoking. Tandaris sat down, made himself comfortable, and waited.

 

The Dameon blinked a few times, wondering if the object was going to leave a mark. "I assume," he said finally, dryly. "I shouldn't mark down the new damage on my desktop on my damage report to engineering?"

 

"I should hope that you have become used to your share of battle scars," Tandaris replied.

 

"So," he said motioning to the object. "I assume you were trying to make a point?"

 

"Naturally. I wouldn't damage a perfectly good dongle otherwise."

 

"Then make your point, Commander."

 

Tandaris leaned forward in his chair, fingers interlaced, and said, "The ship works better when it isn't damaged. My engineers work better when they don't have to spend their time repairing damage caused by pyrotechnical displays of prowess."

 

"I am sure it they do and it does," Corizon said with a toothy smile. "However, I fail to see your point."

 

"Humans have an interesting expression ... 'would you like the good news or the bad news first'?"

 

Corizon was more than familiar with the phrase. He frowned slightly, his smile fading. "The good."

 

Tandaris' expression changed to a pleasant, content smile. "Oh, well then," he said, his demeanour improving, "you'll be pleased to know that the impulse engines are fine. And we still have warp power. Most of the primary phaser arrays are undamaged, as are the torpedo tubes. The somewhat unreliable appearance of the secondary systems"--he gestured to the lights overhead, which had become crossed with the subspace transceiver and were now flickering in time to the peaks of comsic background radiation picked up by the ship--"is only temporary. Oh, and I had a delightful peanut butter and jam sandwich for lunch."

 

"Good to hear," Corizon said dubiously, "and the bad?"

 

A shadow darkened Tandaris' face. "We have warp power. Warp drive is a different matter. Five of the warp coils in the port nacelle fused during the battle. I can bypass them, but we can't exceed warp three without risking a nacelle imbalance. Also, an EPS grid overload has catastrophically damaged the shield generators for the port side of decks 2-8. We won't have any shields in that area until I can recalibrate the other generators to compensate for the hole--and that is a temporary solution that weakens the overall strength of the shields."

 

Corizon's face went flushly white. "So... what does that mean?"

 

"It means that I need the resources and staff of a spacedock to replace the coils, repair the nacelle, and install new shield generators."

 

Closing his eyes, he put his fingers to the bridge of his nose. "The nearest friendly facility is...Satarimi... but it would take us weeks at warp three...."

 

Tandaris nodded. He did not like the situation into which--as he saw it--Corizon had gotten them, nor did he enjoy having to constantly patch up the damage these conflicts caused the Excalibur. But he did not want the ship to suffer any more than it had to, and he did not want to see the mission fail. "There may be another option ... an alternative to replacing the coils. But it would be a long shot, and it's risky."

 

A little brighter. "Yes?"

 

"We would have to come to a full stop, then perform a complete shut down of the warp core and vent all of our plasma. Then, a shuttle would remove the fused coils from the port nacelle and the counterpart, undamaged coils from the starboard nacelle. This would decrease the total number of coils but keep a parity. As long as we are careful to monitor the warp field, we could probably get warp 6, maybe even warp 7 for a short time."

 

"Like... how long?"

 

Tandaris ticked off the procedures on his fingers while focusing on a corner of the ready room. "Shutdown would take about an hour and a half. We have to purge the nacelles of any plasma to avoid accidental ignition by the shuttle thrusters. Removal of the coils would take about ten hours. After that time, we could restore main power and continue moving at sublight. I would need another three to five hours to recalibrate and test the warp drive before we could use it again."

 

"And how far and how long would this last us?"

 

Adjusting his focus from the corner to Corizon himself, Tandaris smiled wryly and replied, "That depends on how much you expect to do. Theoretically we could operate with the reduced coils indefinitely, although I'd recommend against that, as there's a reason we've got so many as it is. Every system on the ship has been calibrated to operate with a certain number of coils, a warp field of a certain magnitude and geometry. So we could complete our mission in this area of space, but as soon as that is finished, I would have to insist we put in at a dock and get the coils properly replaced."

 

"That might be problematic," Corizon said, a pressure forming between his temples. "What are the chances of you finding a compatible set of coils at the base we were headed towards?"

 

"I thought about that. We can actually repair the damaged coils ourselves -- new ones would be better, but the damaged ones are salvageable. What we need is a supply of verterium cortenide and the tools offered by a starship service dock."

 

A heavy sigh escaped the Captain's lips as all the plans they'd made during the trip so far went up in smoke. "Then I don't think we have many options. Get everything ready, we'll start limping our way to port."

 

"Yes, sir." Tandaris got up and was about to leave when he stopped, turned around, and said, "You know, we used to have a cloaking device to avoid precisely this sort of situation."

 

"Yes," Corizon said. "But the Romulans didn't give us a new one. But by all means, if you want to buy one... go right ahead. I am sure you'll be able to find one of those just... laying around."

 

The sarcasm hung heavy in the air between them. But Tandaris seemed to take the advice to heart and nodded thoughtfully. "Anything else, Captain?"

 

"As a reward," Corizon said finally letting a brief smile reform on his lips. "I have a case of Altarian whisky hidden away in the cargo bays... it's labeled as bio-hazard or something like that... get yourself and your staff a bottle of it."

 

Tandaris allowed himself a smile as well. "I'll be sure to put it to good use."

 

"See that you do."