Planning a route

Posted on Wed Aug 7th, 2024 @ 12:54am by Ensign Mercy Mourne & Captain Bethsabée Leroux & Commander William Gerhard & Lieutenant Andre Rhodes & Lieutenant JG Calanthe 'Cal' Diaz & Chief Petty Officer Nish Karalo

Mission: Remnant
Location: Situation Room
1976 words - 4 OF Standard Post Measure

Mercy took a deep breath and looked around the room. She instantly regretted volunteering being the one to liaise on behalf of the science team, and it no doubt showed in her awkward manner as she got up to fiddle with the display. She should have taken a leaf out of the captains book and asked people to meet her somewhere else, but with the science lab as crammed as it was and engineering working so hard on reserving fuel, the situation room had seemed like the least disruptive option.

There was a moment where she put it on the wrong setting and everything went really small. She cleared her throat and mumbled an apology before getting up the scanning data. “Ah- there we go, sorry about that everyone. Uhm so, thank you for joining me, I will try to be brief, although we all know it’s not my forte. We have narrowed our search parameters down to a cluster of planets in this nearby system.” Mercy brings up the details from the long-range scans.

“Our current thinking is this particular M-class planet poses our greatest chance of success. As far as I can tell it has not been visited by the Releans before but has been designated Viridium in the star charts. Our long range sensors show a potential for supporting life, a decent sized continent in the northern hemisphere and at least 75% of its surface covered in water. There does appear to be some sort of atmospheric distortion, possibly from some sort of planet wide event, possibly as a result of industrial activity, which could indicate the planet is inhabited, although we won’t know more until we can get close and perform more detailed scans. The oceans, as we know, are a crucial element of the natural occurrence of Deuterium, or heavy water, so a cautious next step would be to get close enough to perform some more detailed scans in order to identify if there is enough Deuterium deposits present to refuel the ship. If the planet is inhabited we may be able to negotiate for Deuterium which would save us a great deal of effort in extracting and refining it. We will need a route that conserves as much fuel as possible. We cannot guarantee that there is deuterium there so we want to make sure that we have fuel left over to move to a second or maybe even third location if necessary.” She then halted, suddenly realising she had done the one thing she had been trying not to do, which was talk to much.

“Ah-uhm… a-any questions?”

William shook his head in response as he looked back at the image of the planet on the screen. The image itself was grainy, which was expected given the range the scan had been taken at. But, the blue sections on the planets surface were clearly large bodies of water.

Andre just offered one of his easy smiles, crisis notwithstanding. "So far so good, Ensign." He replied with a nod to go with the smile.

Diaz, who had sat with her head leaning thoughtfully to the side, straightened up enough to slowly shake it. "Just grateful we have a strong contender so early in the search." A half-smile directed at Mourne was meant as encouragement.

Mercy returned Cal's smile. "We have a handful of contenders, not many, but enough to remain optimistic at this stage. This just happens to be the closest."

Beth had been sat looking at the information that was coming across the screen and nodded. Five days into a potential disaster and they had found a potential planet where they could refuel. It made her proud to be Captain despite all the situations that they had faced to get there. "How much closer do we need to be to get better scans?" The Captain wondered.

Mercy shrugged. “Well ideally we would be in orbit, that’s the best way to get the most detailed scans and survey the kind of environment we will be facing, but if there is a civilisation down there capable of launching satellites… well we might want to approach cautiously. Chief Karalo, how close do you think you could get us without being detected if that is a concern?”

"All things considered, the Atlantis is relatively small, compared to naturally occurring astronomical phenomenon we could be a sensor blip." Nish remarked, she looked at what they could already tell about the layout of the star system, and at the very least there was an asteroid belt. "Could always knock a space rock off course and fly in its wake."

Mercy grinned and nodded, quite liking the idea of disguising themselves as a celestial body in order to get closer. "That seems like a great idea, Chief. How long do you think it would take us to get there? If you fly with fuel conservation in mind?"

Nish pulled the location data from the science report and ran it through a quick calculation. The thing with a matter/anti-matter core warp flight is that it was all very fuel efficient in that regardless of the warp factor all of the fuel was used all of the time. The warp factor was exponential in speed as well as fuel consumption. "Taking everything into account, three days for us to reach the designated coordinates."

Beth raised an eyebrow and looked at William and then the Chief Engineer. "Three days?" She wondered quietly thinking for a second she had misheard. She had not expected them to find a source as quickly as that.

William shared the look with Beth before he looked back the image on the screen. Three days did seem pretty lucky. Space was a pretty barren place when you really got down to it, but luck seemed to be favoring them at the moment.

Eyebrows raised, Cal was likewise as surprised. Finding a potential source had been one thing, getting to it had seemed more in the ballpark of a few weeks. That was probably why she wasn't flying the ship though. "I'll see what I can do with the information we have to prepare a baseline for communication." It would involve spending some time with the power-chugging translation circuits back online, if only to make picking Hera's brains easier.

"Three days is doable at the moment. We're keeping our fuel consumption more or less in the range we want to right now." Andre replied, "Assuming we don't run into any situations that somehow up our fuel consumption, we should be good. Once we're there, that consumption's going to lower a bit. We're on a tight schedule but if you've found this much this soon, we're on the right track." The Chief Engineer just hoped his positive outlook would be more infectious than the fear that was seeping through the ship like a slow water leak.

“Once we are there what is going to be the process the fuel?” Beth wondered wanting to get the process 100% in her head as she had never been on a ship where they had, had to extract fuel from alternative means.

"That's sort of a wait and see question, Captain. Namely, wait and see what we need to do to get and refine it. Once deuterium is in its useable state, that's it. There's no grade or specific purity level needed when it comes to deuterium, it either is in a useable state or it isn't. So that'll simplify matters. The problem is more in how we get it to a useable state." Andre replied, "As I've said before, even the Vulcans will say it's a difficult process and they've had a heck of a lot more time than us to figure out a better way."

Beth closed her eyes for a second to stop the overwhelming needing to comment on how typical it was for the ship. But she knew like the rest of the crew was trying to stay positive. “I was hoping for answers that the future will need to handle.” She finally decided.

Mercy gave the Captain a sympathetic look, her need to please the woman warring with her duty to give accurate information, even if that meant sometimes being honest about the gaps. “I am sorry we can’t offer more assurance at this stage. Honestly, until we are closer and can complete more detailed scans. Even then we may still need to go down to the planet's surface to know for sure since environmental factors may play a key factor in whether we can or cannot extract what we need.”

Nish felt like they had come to a point where her services were no longer required, "By your leave, ma'am, I'll go set the new course." She gave a respectful nod towards the Captain and awaited a dismissal.

William thought for a moment before speaking up. "Hold on a moment. If this system is inhabited, how can we be sure what stage of development any civilization we find might be at," William asked the group as all eyes turned to him. He then indicated to the image on the screen. "If that planet's inhabited, but they haven't yet discovered warp drive, it makes our job of finding deuterium more difficult." William then looked towards Mercy, "How close before we can run a technological scan of the planet to ascertain if they even have the refining ability to help us?"

“Honestly? We aren’t able to confirm at the moment if there is a sentiment species inhabiting it for certain, or if there is a civilisation, what stage of development they are in. What we can tell is that from this distance there are some indicators we would associate with signs of a post-industrial civilisation.” Mercy tilted her head to one side, trying to think about how to explain it.

“You see every society as it progresses through an industrial period leaves an indelible marker on the atmosphere of a planet. Using the same kind of information that enabled us to identify the atmospheric composition of planets in our own solar system at the birth of space travel, we are able to look for these markers. Except now we are a little more sophisticated and can take these readings from much further away and with significantly more accuracy.” Mercy started to grin as she continued to talk about the science behind it, oblivious as to whether she was boring the others in the room.

“Believe it or not we actually measure the speed and colour of the light passing through the atmosphere which changes its refraction based on the chemical composition. What we are reading here is the chemical breakdown of those pollutants we would typically expect from a civilisation, but they could be naturally occurring. We will need to get much closer to verify for sure. But my best guess at the moment from these early readings is that this planet may possibly host, or has hosted, a post-industrial civilisation at some point in the last century.”

She winced. “I appreciate at this stage that is a pretty broad assessment. If the civilisation is pre-warp, but post-industrial, getting within orbit should allow us to intercept radio and communication signals. If the technology is more advanced then we should be able to pick up the chatter sooner. What I would recommend is we approach with ears open and assuming we could be spotted, just in case.”

Beth nodded. It was a very much a wait and find out situation it seemed to the woman and that pained her in ways she hated. She wanted firm control of the situation was it was unlikely to happen right now. “Understood Ensign. Everyone can get back to their duties and if anything changes let me Commander Gerhard know as soon as possible as he is coordinating.”