Echoes in the Harmonics

Posted on 12 Dec 2025 @ 9:41pm by Ensign Veenak

500 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Shakedown
Location: Ops Systems Annex, Deck 9
Timeline: Current

ON:

The hum and vibrations of the warp core pulsed through the deck plates, a low, insistent vibration that rattled, not quite terrible, but certainly annoyingly, right through Ensign Veenak's boots and up to her knees. The newly installed starboard warp nacelle, along with the extensively repaired port nacelle, obviously weren't in tune yet with the warp field dynamics. The vibrations were still pronounced, a reminder that she ship was alive, but unsettled. She didn't know who was recalibrating that particular part of the ships systems, or really even care; that was out of her station; the vibrations was just part of the background, a subtle punctuation of the work of the shakedown that Lieutenant Commander Stovek informed them of during their last department meeting.

Veenak leaned over the telemetry interface at the Ops station she was manning in the Ops Systems Annex, scanning scrolling waveforms of subspace resonance and warp-field harmonics. Her eyes narrowed. Ops' predictive algorithms were lagging just enough behind the actual warp field to catch someone's attention, three milliseconds, according to what she was seeing, barely perceptible, but noticeable to an officer who lived in these small discrepancies.

"Hmm," she muttered to the screen. "Not catastrophic. Just....charmingly un-Romulan," she said to the display, and, if she had to admit it to someone, to the empty room.

She initiated a diagnostic protocol, watching streams of alphanumeric sequences cascade across the display. A faint oscillation in the subspace telemetry carrier hinted at a minor desync between the adaptive warp field sensors and Ops' navigational projections

With practiced precision, Veenak recalibrated the telemetry interlink, reindexing the subspace buffers and apply a compensatory phase lock to the warp harmonics. The graphs on the display aligned, the subtle drift neutralized.

She leaned back from the display on her stool, crossed her arms, feeling the vibration through her boots still. Her eyes flicked to the residual patterns in the telemetry logs, tiny residual echoes that didn't trigger alarms, almost insignificant, but just enough to suggest that adaptive systems might eventually override the fix she just implanted in the programming. She filed the thought away, not something to fret over just yet.

"The phase drift has been dampened. Stovek will be happy. Maybe Ahmad as well. The warp field is happy too. All is well," she said aloud again.

She quickly logged the adjustment in the computer, adding a dry note for the next person who might stumble upon it. 'Minor Ops-Engineering synchronization issue. Corrected. Adaptability per Starfleet Regulation OPS 191.6-C (Post-Refit Harmonization Allowances). Note: Romulan Fleet Systems Codex IV-17.3.2 would have forbidden the drift outright.'

Veenak straightened and gave the console a final glance. The hum of the warp core, the deck vibrations, the quiet satisfaction of a problem identified and neutralized, it was all part of time well spent. The ship was still settling in, still learning herself, and Veenak wouldn't have it any other way.


OFF
Ensign Veenak
Operations Officer
USS Cygnus


as written by

Captain Bane Plase

 

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