Elementary, my dear Daynah

Posted on Thu Feb 6th, 2020 @ 9:48pm by Lieutenant Day Smith & Commander Daynah Ral

1,117 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Aftermath and Downtime
Location: Science lab, Deck 2

The science lab was humming happily with activity. Day had made her way over to meet with the Chief Scientist, there hadn't been a meeting planned or anything, the computer just told her that the Lieutenant Commander was present in the science bay and she had made her way over, "Lieutenant Commander Ral, do you have a moment?" Her hands were gripping the PADD a bit more tightly than she intended.

Daynah had been multi-tasking with the best of them. She believed she was good at this because essentially she had two brains. As such Daynah was evaluating a binary star that they had passed a few moments ago, and Ral was reading up on the ship that had gotten away. The part of her that was Alaryc would not let the idea of the Captain's wife being kidnapped and returned go. The arrival of the ship's Ops Officer brought Daynah from her thoughts and her brooding. "Sure... What can I do ya for?" She said with a smile.

"I was taking a look at the scans we made of the ship that attacked us," Day waved the PADD at the science officer, "It is not anywhere near the reported design of the ambassadorial vessel." She stepped into the room and handed the PADD over to Daynah, "These are the sensor readouts from the encounter. Maybe there is something there that will help us find it."

Now this was something Daynah could sink her teeth into, a true scientific mystery of sorts. "You are definitely on to something. These readings are way beyond standard. Is there any way to tell who would be capable of changes of this magnitude? If we can figure out the who it may be possible to pick up their trail again."

"Well, this was not done by any registered shipyard, which makes it more difficult." Day took the PADD back and put in a few commands to call up some other readings, "but the materials used in the construction and modification are... unorthodox. Is there any way to deduce the materials? Perhaps that would narrow down our search grid." She shrugged, it was a long shot. With the freighter lanes and open economy within the Federation and the quadrant as a whole, they could've gotten the materials from halfway across the milky-way and there'd be no way to tell. She was banking on the perpetrators using what was easily available to them.

"Perhaps..." Daynah replied as she examined the data. Her first thought was to look at the hull, however, she realized that would be too obvious. No one would use large swathes of unknown materials it would be too easily tracked. "Look here... The weapons systems. It seems that the phasers were augmented to double their output. The quickest and perhaps easiest way is to introduce kyber crystals into the firing chambers. This is a rare crystal. So I guess the first step would be to see where these crystals could be mined and sold."

"Are those crystals not volatile?" For Day this was coming into familiar territory, power distribution, logistics, all of the good stuff, "We can probably narrow it down more by taking the specialised needs for transport and storage into account." She stepped up to a console in the lab, "do you mind?" She pointed at it to ask for permission to access.

"They are indeed volatile. The slightest fracture they will explode. It is why the idea of using them on Starfleet vessels was turned down. It is too risky." Daynah said and then stepped aside from the terminal. "Please..." She motioned to the terminal with a smile.

Day her hands flew across the controls as she fed the computer with line after line of parameters, with every single one she entered they narrowed down their search area. She took the crystals into account, and then the metals for hull alterations were added to that equation and it narrowed down even further. Only a few small blots now covered the map of known space, some of them unfeasibly far away. She added another parameter to remove these outliers from the overview, "I think that would be enough to go on." Three possible sectors that they could be operating out of. Perhaps with some more narrowing down, or information available from the other departments, they'd be able to pin it to one of the three.

"Exactly, and we have only looked at one system. What about the engines? There had to be some major alterations there. If not that ship has to be burning dilithium like it is going out of style. Out of your three possibilities. Is there a place where one could acquire the parts necessary to change the warp core as they have. If there is I would wager that is your place." Daynah replied excitedly. She rather enjoyed solving a mystery

"What type of alterations would've been made to the warp core?" Day couldn't really tell from the readings what they would've done to the warp core to compensate for the new energy requirements. She usually left such ruminations to scientists and engineers, "any of the regular updates and improvements would usually be possible with relatively common materials."

Daynah stroked her chin for a moment as she looked at the readouts from the Valiant's encounter with the vessel. "Hmmm... It would be possible to create a secondary power core, this way you had a standard warp core powering the engines and this new power source for everything else. Either that or they are using the Romulan method of a collapsed singularity. If it is the first method they would need trilithium which is only available these days from the Klingons. The singularity is a uniquely Romulan design so you would either have to have a Romulan aboard or have someone with Romulan knowledge."

"Perhaps it's something we can run by Lieutenant Repatha," Day wasn't comfortable making these kinds of logical leaps with more to go on. If they were wrong they could be halfway across the quadrant chasing their tails. "I will compile what we have gotten so far and share it with her and the first officer."

"Sounds good Lieutenant. If there is anything else that I can do to help I would be glad to." Daynah replied with a smile.

"Thank you, Lieutenant Commander," Day gave a crisp salute before stepping back and turning on her heels to exit the lab. It had given them a lot of food for thought and hopefully, it would help them narrow in on the culprits.

[OFF]

Lieutenant Commander Daynah Ral
Chief Science Officer/Second Officer
USS Valiant

Lieutenant Day Smith
Chief Operations Officer
USS Valiant

 

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