Alert Inferno

Posted on Wed Jul 18th, 2018 @ 10:13pm by Lieutenant Renee Salchin & Ensign Felicie Rivero

Mission: https://wellington.pegasusfleet.site/index.php/sim/missions/id/4
Location: Main Engineering

Renee looked over the small transmitter in her fingers through the ocular piece she'd fitted over her right eye, then flipped it up to her forehead and smiled over at the ensign across the panel from her, "I think it's ready!" She'd been cryptic over the last few hours as she'd intermittently requested Felicie's help with designing the small device. Holographic emitters were commonly small, but this one was was even smaller than most. She especially wanted it to work, but almost really needed it so she didn't have to ask the Boss if she could cut a hole in his ceiling without having to tell him why.

Felicie nodded slightly, not sure if she should reply or not. Even if she did reply, what was she going to say? She had less than no idea what was going on, all she knew was that she had started getting request for help earlier in her shift, requests that had gotten stranger and stranger as the day went on. Now, hours after her shift was meant to be over she was still no closer to a clue of what was going on, but silently hoping that she would get to hang around for the reveal.

"Mmmkay... so what next?" the younger engineer asked simply.

Renee glanced at the ceiling and at the transmitter and made a motion with a grin, "Well, this needs to get up there and stuck. It'll virtually vanish, but getting it up there..." She bent one leg up at the knee, showing the inch and a half heels, "I could do it, but it would be a bit tricky... Can I con you into putting it up?"

"So long as I'm not gonna get shot out an airlock by the big blue guy when he finds out, sure! Any particular angle you want it on? Or just 'stuck' up there?" Felicie looked at her surroundings, weighing up her options.

"Ohhh, Cor'll just yell at me if he doesn't like it." Renee waved it away, very gingerly handing the device to Felicie, "But like that, really preferably straight down. for the effect." She giggled, excited about what was about to happen and acting just like a little girl, "But we'll test it out after it's up!"

With a nod, Felicie grabbed a stool from nearby, balancing it precariously atop a console before taking the small device and climbing up, balancing awkwardly on the stool as she fixed the device into the ceiling. Jumping down and grabbing the stool before it fell to the ground, Felicie grinned at Renee. "There you go, try that!"

Renee took the step towards another console and tapped a pair of buttons on it, a double beep over the engineering comm to get the attention of the handful of people still in engineering at that time, "Attention, this is going to just be a test, I repeat, just a test. Red Alert." She said softly, tensing slightly.

Without any warning whatsoever, the transmitter flashed and a bright silver disco ball materialized above the main console, each facet flashing red in turn, throwing the glints of red light into relief on the walls before fading and another taking its place. Instead of the strident alarm, music started playing and Renee sang along, dancing in an old form of dance, "Burrrrn baby burn, disco inferno, burrrrn baby burn, burn the mother down..." Her eyes were closed as she danced.

As the music started to play and the disco lights started flashing red around the room, Felicie doubled over in laughter until she was gasping for breath with tears running down her cheeks. "Oh.. My.. GOD!" she exclaimed through gasps. "That is bloody awesome!!!"

Renee's blue eyes flashed open again and sparkled at Felicie, still dancing, "And here you were probably thinking it was a waste of time?" She did an expert 360 degree turn on the back of her right heel, completely in time with the music, "If we're gonna be going to an alert status, best to be stylish!"

Still laughing, Felicie started moving to the music. "Can you jazz it up to provide cocktails for everyone on duty?" she asked with a grin.

"That one might be a bit more difficult to pull off." Renee admitted, "Because if we have cocktails during a real alert, the consoles are just gonna get messy and sticky! Ship shaking and all. And some people get drunk a lot quicker than others, can't risk that sorta thing."

"Meh, people suck," Felicie shot back quickly. "They ruin all the fun don't they?"

The abbreviated song came to an end, which caused Renee to slowly stop the dancing, but the ball continued to flicker-flash and Renee tapped the comm control again, "This concludes our test." She said quietly, then tapped another button and the ball itself flickered and vanished, "Now, I have to contrive a reason to set us at red alert during the day!"

"Simulated risk of warp core breach?" Felice replied easily. "There was that stupid holodeck program that they used to run through emitters in engineering on the Academy ships, they were supposed to be used as practice drills. I imagine they aren't exactly commonly used out here in reality, but protocols do dictate that simulation drills can be run intermittently for training exercises..." She smiled sweetly at Renee. "Would that work?"

"I think it will!" The Lieutenant bubbled, fingers dancing again over the console, "And if I make it an unscheduled drill, it'll just make it that much more interesting! The Boss won't mind, I'm sure, I'll let him know it's a drill beforehand, but I'm not going to tell him about our little surprise. I wonder... Is there anything we need to do to refine the effects? It might be difficult to add streamers and glitter and that really would make a mess."

"You're right, they would be messy.." Felicie stopped, her expression becoming thoughtful. "The premise of this whole thing is based around one stand alone holo emitter that runs independently of the other emitters based in engineering, yes?"

"Yup, this one is centralized because well... It's where I'm most likely to be in an emergency and I've gotten so bored with the normal' on-off-on-off blinking reds. They're just so dull. Of course, half the fun of this thing is the challenge of getting the transmitter and power supply into something the size of a pea."

Felicie thought for a moment. "Streamers and glitter would be okay if they were holographic, they wouldn't be able to create mess then... otherwise, maybe holographic fireworks?"

"All right, that's your mission, then!" Renee giggled, "You are on detached assignment, well, not really detached, but your primary assignment is to arrange a set of emitters specifically to provide effects." She patted each shoulder of the younger woman as if dubbing her into a knight for this quest, "We'll run another test when you've accomplished your mission."

"ME?!" Felicie gulped with surprise. "But I know almost nothing about holo emitter programming!"

"Excellent!" The Lieutenant brightened even more, "It's always good to learn something new. Now, I'm pretty good with programming, even good with holo-programming, but I'm not the best on the ship. So, I'm going to point you at one of the people who IS better than me and I have no doubt he'll help you with it. The Boss actually has a minor degree in holo-programming whereas mine is just trial and error. And hijinks as well." Renee gave a slightly wry grin, "And an expert in the subject on the side. But, talk to the Boss about learning more about the subject and between me and him? We'll get you up to snuff."

"I guess I could do that..." she replied hesitantly. "But he's kind of... well... scary... you know?"

"That arm of his?" Renee made a waving away motion, "He's just a teddy bear. Well, a warm, fuzzy blue weasel-looking sort of guy. He'll be more than happy to help you, just... Be a bit vague as to why you want to learn it? I really want this to be a complete surprise when we hit a red alert.. I think he'll get a bigger kick out of it if he doesn't see it coming." Her eyes glittered.

Felicie grimaced slightly. "Alright, so I'll talk to the big blue guy about helping me to get it sorted. How soon do you want it done?"

"As soon as you can, but." Renee stopped momentarily, "Don't put speed before confidence. Yes, fireworks, glitter and streamers would be wonderful and yes, I could probably do them myself, but the point is I want to help others be the best they can be, too. I owe it to my own former boss to pass on learning and opportunities."

Felicie nodded. "Alright, I can do that. Really, how hard can it be?" she asked with a quick grin. "It's just few photons, electrons and forcefields!"

"But is it just a few photons, electrons and forcefields?" It wasn't a trick question, just to make Felicie think, but Renee reached into a pocket, pulled out a flat disk and tapped button, little holographic bag appearing and reached in, pulling out a handful of holographic confetti and tossed it in the air. As it drifted down, pieces of it began to fall onto the table, but didn't vanish like the rest. "Sore wa, himitsu desu." She said with a grin.

"Okay, now that is officially awesome! How did you make that work? Tie the holo emitters and the holoprogram back into replicators and transporters?" Felicie looked genuinely intrigued as she scooped some of the confetti up in her hand, rubbing it between her fingers.

"Microtransporters, yes. nanites are transported into the holograms, create the physical stuff and then self-destruct." Renee waved her hand, "It's easier for them to manufacture paper than what they were originally designed to make. Starship armor."

"That is still seriously impressive though," Felicie replied with a grin. "Can it work with bigger things?"

Renee grinned widely and punched up a few buttons, glanced at Felicie, then took several seconds to input a really long encryption key, "Uranium and tungsten molecule, collapse it by removing the electrons, atom by atom basically. Link each of them together on a proton bonding and you get an armor that can absorb about six, seven times the energy of your standard armor. Gives a lot of protection if you ever lose your shields. Same base nanite."

"Interesting concept... would be good in the field I imagine, for hand to hand combat moments." Felicie shook her head slightly. "Where do you come up with these ideas?"

"It's what I do!" Renee bubbled, "I don't have an actual specialty, call me a super-specialist, but I've been working in Research and Development for the last five years on a secret base in the Sol system. I've always been the troubleshooter of the group and so when the option came up to come out to the Delta Quadrant to play with some of the new toys, I jumped. But sorry, no... It's energy resistant, but kinetic-susceptible."

"Research and development would have to be an incredibly fascinating field," Felicie replied honestly. "Though I suspect it may also be incredibly frustrating as well."

"As a wise man once told me, 'We don't fail, we've just found out a thousand ways not to do it right so far.'" Renee smiled fondly, "But when you get to that one time it works? There's no feeling better. Then it takes forever to reproduce what we did, find out what we did right, and track down all of the bugs and side effects before we can even really begin proper testing on it. Then, once we stabilize things so we get the same result every time, we send it out into the real world for some actual testing and Ta-Da!" She waved her hands, "Someone like me goes out with it just in case it doesn't work right."

Felicie laughed. "For someone like me, that's the kind of thing we aspire to," she replied with a grin. "Seriously, it would be so awesome."

Pursing her lips and studying Felicie, Renee seemed to bore into the younger woman's brain and thoughts and finally leaned forward onto the central console and bit her lower lip, "Do you have an engineering specialty in mind yet?"

Colour flooded Felicie's cheeks as she turned away, looking down at the deck instead. "Honestly, no... I didn't think I would even graduate let alone have a chance to choose a specialty. According to most of my academy lecturers it's a wonder I even graduated."

"Still did better than me." Renee waggled her eyebrows, "Of course, I did it to myself, getting kicked out of the Academy after a few months. So, I enlisted and after screwing up a lot, found a boss who knocked some sense into me and took me under his wing and took me with him when he went to an R and D facility. So, you're a step ahead of where I was right now. What interests you, though? Engines, weapons, computers, everything?"

There was a very long moment of silence before Felicie finally replied. "Honestly, I have always loved the main computer core... if you can control that you can control most anything on the entire ship. Even engineering is gravy if you can control the main computer! That's why I almost failed out of the academy."

Renee's right eye seemed to defocus as she turned her physical attention inwards and pursed her lips again, chewing on her upper lip this time, "Give me a day and I'll want you to look at a couple things, see what you think of them... I just need to figure out which of these I want you to try to figure out." Her eye refocused again.

Felicie smiled, almost vaguely. "Sure, you know where I am. It's not like my address is going to change any time soon." She laughed slightly.

"It could, it could..." Renee said, vaguely, "But, you have your homework! Go get some sleep, Felicie, you've earned it, I think."

"You don't need to tell me twice!" Felicie replied with a laugh. "Night Lieutenant, have a good one!" Without waiting for a reply, the younger officer spun on her heel and walked away.



OFF

Ensign Felicie Rivero
Engineering NPC
USS Wellington

Lieutenant Renee Salchin
R&D Engineer
USS Wellington