Maintenance

[Dumbass 0]

Another routine day in Engineering - at least as routine as you can get on this ship.

 

Koralev and I were maintaining the systems we deem to be most vital given our situation in H'tiss space - namely the cloak and warp and impulse drives. Koralev concentrated on impulse drive while I concentrated on warp. The cloak was already functioning at peak efficiency. It would not do well for any of these systems to fail. In fact right now these systems are more important than our weapons.and shields.

 

From what we have been able to pull together about the H'tiss we know their ships are sturdier than the standard Federation ship and can take quite a pounding. They can also span this galaxy in a matter of days, maybe a week, whereas for the Federation and the Empire it can take several years to cross a quadrant without the use of wormholes or borrowed technologies. Obviously they are a Type III civilization. The Federation and Empire are both Type IIs. The closest thing to a Type III in the Milky Way would be the Borg who have developed Transwarp, but even this is possible only through a series of "hubs". The H'tiss seem to have this ability directly because of their Hyperspace capabilities. (For more information on Type 0 to Type III galactic civilizations check out the essay The Physics of Extra-Terrestrial Civilizations by Michio Kaku.)

 

Our advantages over the T'hiss seems to be our cloak - we have one, they don't - and our maneuverability at sub-light speeds. Plus we are aware of their presence and they are probably unaware of our existence, assuming our former guest hasn't informed them of us. If so, however, our presence could have consequences for our own galaxy. If the T'hiss can cross their galaxy in a matter of days they could probably reach our own galaxy in a matter of months, maybe a year.

 

While maintaining our systems Lieutenant Random came down to Engineering to complain about our long-range sensors not working. A quick diagnostic showed our sensors to be operating within normal parameters. The only way to be absolutely sure, however, would be to measure a known body - a moon or planet or such - and compare our readings against what we know should be there. This presents obvious problems. First of all, we are strangers to this galaxy so there is no way to compare what our systems read to what we "know" should be. Second, even if we had the data to perform such a test, it would involve us dropping out of warp to perform the test. Clearly that is not an option.