=/\= PERSONAL LOG =/\=

[rosetto 0]

"Okay cadets! Listen up! Today's lesson is going to be quite different", shouted the lieutenant as Rosetto and Cloverdale met each other walking into the SIM lab. They were all on a deck of a huge vessel and there were more than the usual four. The lieutenant guided each member to a separate helm control that lined the interior wall and all were handed specialized visors and seated into their positions. As she continued to explain the mission all eyes were attended. "There are times when sending personnel into an area or onto a vessel may be too hazardous. In these times we send drones and tonite, each of you will be piloting one."

 

She continued to explain the details of the drone interface and flying in formation. She would take 'point' in this maneuver. Their task was a simple mission of salvage. There was a derelict vessel whose orbit was decaying. Part of the group would be attempting to correct this in larger drones equipped with tractor beams. The others would be piloting much smaller craft and exploring and scanning the interiors.

 

"Any questions?"

 

Rosetto donned his visor unit and noted that it provided a holographic view of the control panel in front of him and a much finer view of open space. He quickly assessed that the target vessel was at 136 degrees mark 17; 400,000 kilometers away. The lieutenant explained that they would launch and fly in a "Y" formation until they were on target and then split off into their functional groups. Nashwa and he would be piloting smaller investigators. He was very excited because the target vessel was an antique tanker/transport of the late 21^st century, one that may have been used in the colonization of Mars.

 

The rest of the class donned their visors as the instructor took her position at a centralized control panel. "Computer? Begin Simulation", she commanded

 

As she did the aural sensations of the holodeck changed. He could now only hear her voice over his comms and all other sounds echoed on the drone control deck. He listened for the dock master's signaling as he checked the status of his drone. His view was tunnel-like and dark now. In the upper left of his field, he could see the small indicators light up one by one as the other drones came on line and chimed in their status. The mission clock was also visible and counting. T -00:00:17, 16, 15…

 

They were launched and flying formation as instructed. Nashwa was on his port side trailing him by only 100 meters and there was a tractor drone ahead and to the right at about the same distance. Seven vessels in all; they followed the lead craft being piloted by the lieutenant.

 

With drones there were no preprogrammed flight plans and navigational deflectors were all manually controlled. All that was available was a proximity alert service which was pretty much useless while they flew in tight formation. Rosetto, as did many others, muted his.

 

Once everyone was in position and we had distanced ourselves from the mothership, the lieutenant instructed us to increase speed to 1/2 Impulse Power. That was the top speed of these craft however, due to their size it seemed to be very fast. They all increased our speeds gradually trying to keep our formation and distance relatively constant. There were only a couple minor slips and briefly they looked more like a sigma shape rather than a ‘Y’ but it didn’t last long. The lieutenant had never expected perfection, simply consistency. They were on sight in twenty minutes and the lieutenant split the tractors off giving them separate instructions on a different comm. Channel.

 

The vessel was an elongated cylindrical shape; bow to stern approximately 300 meters with a diameter of scarcely 3 meters over the majority of its length. This main corridor section of rigid frame construction was used to separate the C&C and propulsion sections as well as serve to facilitate cargo and/or passenger holds of various sizes and shapes. This particular derelict did have one cargo hold still attached. The investigator team was instructed to split as well; two entering the command & control module and the other two scanning the propulsion sections.

 

Maneuvering inside the ghostly silent vessel had proved to be quite interesting for Rosetto. There was no power anywhere and so objects not affixed were in freefall and everything seemed to move in slow motion. Rooms and passageways were very dark and the external lighting of the drones created deep shadows and high contrasts. This made it difficult for Rosetto to see his holographic displays. His biggest concern had been keeping tabs on the location of the other drones but he also had other monitors that he could recall, system status, fuel consumption, navigation, etc.

 

Nashwa’s drone, also assigned to the investigator team, was two decks up using a tricorder device to scan the main control center for historical records. Rosetto had been tasked with recovering the flightlog records from the primary computer core. As the storage media differed dramatically from Federation standards these records had to be physically extracted. The hardest part of this task was lining up the interface adapter. It required slow and precise positioning even with the facility of a retractable arm. It ‘clicked’ into position and the LOCK indicator flashed on his display. He was quite pleased that it had only taken three tries.

 

Then Rosetto’s displays started to shake violently. Not physically there made it difficult to determine exactly what was going on and he flipped through his monitor modes as his main view jittered back and forth. Stopping on the navigation monitor he noticed that the orbit was suddenly decaying very rapidly. His comm. Channel lit up and the lieutenant was barking at the tractor pilots who had apparently misgauged their assessment and slowed the vessel down considerably. Everyone was instructed to pull out immediately. He hardly hesitated however his interface adapter did not want to cooperate. Rosetto decided it was best to save the drone and ‘to hell’ with the adapter and data. He spun the drone around on its axis, located the nearest open portal and applied a jolting thrust that literally ripped the retractable arm off of the drone as it exited the vessel.

 

No drones were lost however the vessel burned in the atmosphere within a matter of seconds. It was a long trip back with the lieutenant rehashing the mission over and over again....

Edited May 20, 2010 by rosetto

[TKAR 0]

interesting logs- will you write my logs you are better then me....