A Watched Tetrahertz Wave Never Stabilizes

[Caelan Fletcher 0]

A Watched Tetrahertz Wave Never Stabilizes

A Log by Sr. Lt. Caelan Fletcher

Stardate 10.07.28

'Engineering. Status of the hull.' The Commander's voice called over the comm system, barely audible over the sounds of a dozen engineers having mild panic attacks. Between maintaining the structural integrity fields to keep the station intact, and maintaining the transporters to get the non-essential (lucky) crewmen on to escape vessels, there was little time to maintain anything else, including one's own sanity. Like the eleven others in main engineering, Fletcher tried to ignore all of the voices, internal and external, that kept him from the task at hand. Someone else could answer the bridge.

 

'Report!' Apparently, someone else couldn't.

 

Fletcher groaned, tapping his badge since no one else seemed inclined to do so. 'It sucks...' he reported accurately, but dryly. Caelan didn't bother with the niceties when there wasn't a mob of nom-noming aliens chewing at the infrastructure - why would he bother now? 'Can I push the button now?'

 

'Do it. NOW!'

'...About freakin' time.' And with a simple press, the wave generator was activated. 'Thirty seconds until wave formation.' Hopefully.

 

'Twenty seconds.' The button, officially named 'Top Button', was engineering's current effort to curb the damage done by Aegis' new friends. By using the structural integrity fields as the medium for a tetrahertz wave generator, engineering hoped to change the wave patterns the ship naturally gave off. The aliens seemed to be attracted to the metals in the station's hull, but were avoiding glass like it was a Nickelback concert. Change the metallic waves the ship produces to looks more like silica wave patterns, and you've salted the proverbial beer.

 

'Ten...' It was far from fullproof, however. The suckers might not even pay attention to tetrahertz waves. Humans certainly didn't, unless they were of the pale-as-sin engineering variety. For all Caelan and the other engineers knew, they might be trying to hide the station with a saran wrap mask. It also didn't change the fact that the station was truly made out of metal. They could make the hull smell like glass, chicken, or even Fletcher's gym locker (a potentially more effective solution), but they couldn't stop it from tasting like Grade A Angus Iron. And considering that the wave generator might blow the structural integrity fields out on any deck of the station for as long as its producing waves, the Lieutenant couldn't help but hope that the scientists had come up with a better plan.

'Three...' Hopefully the folks in Pylon B have been evacuated.

 

'Two...' If not, they might be in for a hull of a bad time.

 

'One...' Sometimes life's a breach.