"The Other Computer Core"

[Shane 0]

The gradually building sounds of heavy boots were heard outside of the Captain's ready room, followed by the harsh sliding sound of the doors opening. Shane squeezed his broad shoulders through the doorway and stepped up to Joe's desk, a look of annoyance on his face. He tossed down an old Klingon data pad, which landed with a clatter on the desk.

 

 

The ready room was a small affair nestled between the Bridge and the Captain's quarters (the room being an extension of the latter more than anything). The desk and a small shelf to the side, which held two bottles of bourbon and assorted souvenirs of memorable jobs past, were the only notable features. Brackets for swords hung emptily on the wall behind the desk and a leash for a pet targ coiled motionlessly beside it. Joe was leaning over the desk poring over a diagram of the Verbistul.

 

 

Without looking up at pad or visitor, he asked, "Something I can do for you, Shane?"

 

 

"Yeah," Shane snapped, "there is. You wanna confirm that the thing on that pad is what I think it is? And why the hell I wasn't told we had one?"

 

 

Joe glanced up at Shane and grabbed the data device. He looked quickly over the scans that were displayed. "I'm no engineer, but this looks an awful lot like a cloaking device ... disguised as a secondary computer core. Well, I'll be. Something like this oughta come in handy." Looking less than surprised, he tossed the pad back across the desk and returned his attention to the ship schematics.

 

 

"Where did you get yer hands on one?" The cyborg grabbed the PADD back up held it close to his ace, pouring over the scans, "This can't be the original issue, it would have given out years ago. Does it still work?"

 

 

"It works," Joe answered without looking up from the diagram. "I've no idea if it's the same one that Qob was built with. I just know it was on board when I bought the ship. Obviously, it would not have been concealed originally in any case. Someone was trying to keep it a secret from the Federation, no doubt."

 

 

Joe looked up then and fixed his gaze on Shane. "Chris, Pher, and Troy are the only other crew who know about it. Word about it's gotten spread around by a few former crew, o' course, but I downplay that as rumor and insist that we can't cloak. I like to keep the knowledge of it limited to as few as possible. If it were to become common knowledge, we'd become targets for every piratin' mercenary in the Head and the Federation would probably make shuttin' us down a priority."

 

 

Shane replied dismissively, "Secrets I can handle. What I need to know is how much power the jyking thing takes. It's set up with enough EPS conduits to power three disruptor cannons and then some! These," he said, waving the data pad around, "didn't give me squat, as whoever set the device made it indistinguishable from a core in even high level scans. And there are no schematics for it in the records. I hope you're not planning on using it anytime soon, cause I can't finish re-wiring until I know what it needs."

 

 

While Shane spoke, Joe raised his arm and set up an interface between his ODRI and the data pad. "You'll find that the core frame that surrounds the device parts rather easily ... provided you send it a signal of the exact right frequency. I'm sending you that frequency now. We change it every month or so." The data was quickly encrypted, streamed directly to Shane's data pad, then decrypted at its destination. "You can have a better look at it and perform any maintenance you need to. Then just hit the core frame with the signal again."

 

 

The data pad was stared down by Shane for a moment before he cleared his throat, "Uh, right. I'll get on that."