Sabotage

Posted on Fri Feb 13th, 2015 @ 7:16pm by Captain Christina Curtis

Mission: Begin with a Bang
Location: Port-side Forward Armoury, F-Deck, Discovery NX-04, At Warp
Timeline: May 15th, 2155 - 0900 hours

Cayne had risen early on Discovery's second day out of spacedock, intent on working on the ship's weapons and targeting systems to have them ready well before their arrival at Deneva. He didn't expect this Mosstaff character to have gotten his hands on an armed starship for his mission, and he didn't know how willing they were to use alien mercenaries for the purposes of getting the job done, but in either case, he wanted to be ready to blow out of the sky anything that tried to come against them in orbit. They only had a few days until they arrived, and these systems were supposed to have gone through weeks of testing before they were to originally leave Earth.

"Morning Ensign," he said as he stepped through the hatch into the port-side forward armoury. Ensign Mark Wilson was one of the most certified armoury officers on Discovery aside from himself, and Cayne had enlisted him to help with setting up the first of the armoury stations. There were four in total on the ship, servicing the six torpedo launchers - four fore and two aft. The console in each armoury also provided direct access to the systems that controlled the phase cannons that were recessed into the ship's hull at various points, as well as the older plasma cannons that were still incorporated into the design of the NX starships - the direct predecessors of the phase cannons. The armoury console on the bridge could also perform many of the same functions, but it was equipped with far superior maintenance and diagnostic algorithms. Cayne also found it easier to focus away from all of the distractions on the bridge.

"G'day, Sir," the Australian responded, glancing around from where he stood in front of the main control console.

"Ready to make a start on these calibrations?"

"Too right I am, sir. I've been itchin' to get to work since we came aboard."

"Then let's get started. Have you got the torpedo targetting algorithms loaded?" Cayne asked, stepping up to share the console with his subordinate.

"I have sir. The calibration's way out of alignment; these targetting sensors are about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike," Wilson replied.

"As in not at all?" Cayne responded, wanting to make sure he had translated the Australian turn of phrase correctly. He was no stranger to motorbikes, and although tobacco smoking hadn't been widespread on earth for a century, the act of smoking was still very much in the public consciousness - not least from all of the twentieth century movies digitised for public consumption. Since the act usually meant tapping the ashes of the buring tobacco leaves into an ashtray, the task was mutually exclusive with the the two-handed task of riding a motorcycle. "Well let's try and fix that. Pull up the files on the configuration of the targetting sensors on Enterprise and Columbia. We'll try each of their setups first, to see which is closest and work from there." Due to the unavoidable, yet minute, differences in the materials and components used in each of the NX-class starships, each needed the targetting sensors to be set up with a unique individual configuration. However using the configuration of the first two starships as a baseline would help them along the road.

As Wilson manipulated the controls, the configuration files for both ships came up from the databanks stored in the ship's library. The values for the different settings of the sensors were way off the initial setups on Discovery's weapons, which hadn't gone beyond anything more than a simple powerup test so far. Importing the configuration file from Enterprise's files first, the two saw the figures on the main display shift drastically, followed by the report of the automatic analysis of the computer to the new configuration.

"Targetting accuracy up to eighty percent," Cayne remarked, nodding his head at the fourty-seven point increase from the initial value. "Now let's try importing Columbia's setup."

As the second file was imported to override the values of the first import, the analysis ran again. This time the accuracy was up to 86%.

"OK, let's use that as a base and work from there. What's showing the greatest variance?"

"The port and starboard proximity sensors seem to be out of alignment with eachother. Their combined reading is giving an off-centre final target coordinate. Looks like the port sensor beam is coming up short."

Turning away from the main console, Cayne headed over to one of the wall panels over on the port-side wall of the armoury and removed it, revealing access to the systems running behind the bulkhead. With the armoury being so close to the sensor arrays at the front of the ship, any of them that required an interface with the targetting systems ran nearby, and so could be directly accessed without having to leave the room.

"Looks like there's some interference on the junction here," he said, as he looked at the small read-out linked in to the port-side forward proximity sensor. He frowned, knowing that all of these conduits should be quite well shielded to prevent any stray signals from affecting them in that way. "Hang on a minute..." his eyes had just caught sight of something that didn't match the rest of the components inside the wall panel, and it was fixed to the conduit for the proximity sensor. It looked like something cobbled together from spare parts - perhaps it was some sort of improvised fix or something that the engineering team had put in place to patch the system on their rushed schedule. As he reached out to touch it though, it began to emit a loud whine.

"What the-"

With a blinding flash, the device exploded, throwing the commander back across the room - thankfully empty of any live torpedoes, which were all still stored in the ship's magazine - and onto the deck.


-------------------

The ship shook violently, and the water from Curtis' shower sputtered for a moment before returning to a full flow. The distruption the captain felt was less quickly over came, as the unexpected movement of the decking beneath her caused her to slip on the wet floor and she fell into an unceremonial mess on the floor. Pulling herself to her feet, she reached past the shower's glass privacy screen and pressed the putton on the comm. system attached to the wall to open a line to the bridge. "Report! What the hell was that?"

"An explosion in the armoury, Captain," came the response after a short hesitation. Christina's heart sank as the implications of that statement set in. "Damage is too minor to have been a torpedo malfunction. We're sending engineering and medical teams to investigate."

"Drop us out of warp, full stop. I'm on my way to the armoury!" Curtis answered, turning off the water on the shower and reaching for a towel.