Rebooting an Impulse Engine

Posted on 15 Oct 2024 @ 7:11pm by Lieutenant Commander Stovek & Lieutenant JG Dylan McConnor

864 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Stranded
Timeline: Immediately following The Bast of Time

"Captain, the news is obviously not good," began Stovek. "The lower saucer and the secondary hull took the brunt of the damage. Life support has failed on eighteen decks. Emergency batteries are at seventy-two percent and falling. The current decks with life support will only sustain the remaining crew for four hours and nine minutes. However, structural integrity will fail in three hours and seventeen minutes."

Stovek allowed the gravity of their situation to hang in the air for a long moment before proceeding. "There is a possibility, however. The saucer's starboard impulse engine on deck ten is intact, merely severed from the Deuterium supply. If I could get there and execute the restart sequence, we would have partial auxiliary power. enough to sustain us and replicate medical supplies."

The situation was much more dire than Bane had expected. With main power, auxiliary power and life support down, the surviving members of the crew couldn't even abandon ship, not that Bane could even give that order right now, with communications down. They would find a way to salvage the ship. They had to. "That seems to be our only option right now, Commander. Make it so," he said, not realizing he was parroting a rather famous starship Captain of yesteryear.


McConnor turned to Stovek. "Do you need a hand, Sir?" he asked. "The turboshafts can be a bit tricky, adn I know my way around an Impulse engine."

"Under normal circumstances I would refuse," said the Vulcan tersely. "However, since the situation on the bridge is as controlled as it can be and this is a matter of the entire crew's survival...your assistance is most welcome, Mister McConnor."

The Jeffries Tubes entrance point was in the wall directly fore of the main turbo lift car. Stovek pulled the small handle that engaged the manual release and giving a pull backwards to open the small meter and a half height door. "Be certain that you have several emergency beacons with you. Air will be thin since the environmental controls are offline; also, since we are unable to vent plasma, the tubes will likely be in excess of thirty-eight degrees celsius. Prepare yourself."

McConnor made a quick run to the supply stash and clipped three more beacons to his belt, and made a mental note to add a free breath masks to the emergency supplies for just such an occasion, while also wishing that no such occasion ever repeated itself. The prospect of crawling through a Jeffries tube at temperatures of nearly forty degrees was also none too appealing.

He got down on all fours by the access port and nodded to Stovek. "Shall I lead the way, Sir?"

“Please do,” said the Vulcan with a nod. “We must proceed with all deliberate speed. As an old colleague would have said, don’t spare the horses.”

The pair crawled through the vast Jeffries Tube network for what seemed like an eternity; in actuality, less than fifteen minutes had passed since they had left the Cygnus bridge. Although his younger colleague was having some difficulty with the heat, to Stovek it was like being on Vulcan’s Geloxan Plateau in early spring. They had each depleted the power supply of one emergency light beacon, meaning that there two left for each of them.

The final door to the impulse reactor bay on deck ten was less than a meter in front of them. Quickly, efficiently, Stovek opened the emergency panel on the door’s right hand side and pulled the manual release lever downward. With a loud hiss, the pneumatic cylinders that secured the door released themselves and the door popped open. The Vulcan pushed brusquely past the door, nearly tripping on the protruding corner of a deck plate that was warped.

“Verify that the deuterium pods are intact,” said Stovek to the young engineer as he flipped open his tricorder. “I will assess the condition of the connecting valves.”

"Aye," breathed McConnor, the air burning in his lungs. Some sections of the Jeffries tubes had been unbearably hot - even more so than his three-month internship in Kuala Lumpur, when he'd discovered he could sweat in places he hadn't thought possible.

He used his sleeve to wipe the sweat from his brow before it could run into his eyes, and pushed himself up to his feet. He flipped open his own tricorder.

"Primary deuterium pod is at thirty-six percent integrity. Secondary pod..."

He tapped the screen on his tricorder to relaunch the scan, to double-check. "The secondary pod is gone. There's a massive hull breach in that section, the pod reads as though half of it was torn away."

“That should be sufficient for a reboot,” said Stovek, flipping open his tricorder. The device hummed and made soft chirrups for a long moment. “The connecting valves are intact; however, they have deviated over five degrees and will need to be repositioned in order to function.” He flipped the scanner shut. “I am not certain the two of us can accomplish that.”


To be continued…..

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Lieutenant Commander Stovek
Chief Operations Officer/2XO
USS Cygnus


Lieutenant JG Dylan McConnor
Engineering Officer
USS Cygnus

 

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