Projects for everyone!

Posted on 17 Sep 2016 @ 8:14am by Gunnery Sergeant Kris Danger & Lieutenant Commander Alexei Joran

1,206 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Errand of Mercy
Location: Main Engineering
Timeline: ED 4 1330

ON:

Kris walked through the corridors of the ship and crossed the threshold to Main Engineering, his eyes glancing up from the PADD which had schematics for upgrading the Marine fighter's communication systems to help with the increased activity the Captain's idea would create. The scribbles on the margins of the PADD's display were in Kris' own frantic hand and was smudged with a liberal amount of grease. He had after all be called out of the hangerbay by the Major and had this dropped into his lap. He would have to have his crews working overtime to make sure the fighters were ready by the time they had to be pushed into rotation since the Skipper wanted a CAP all all times after dropping out of warp. Now you throw the issue of linking not just the fighters with the fighters, which was an idea he had been toying with for a while now but also securing the feed and piping it into the AI on the ship and then sending it back out to the fighers. He was so deep in thought he almost bumped into a woman in the mustard uniform of engineering or ops.

"Pardon Ma'am, but where might the Chief be?" he asked drawling slightly as he side stepped her and followed her finger as she pointed to the office on the far side of main engineering.

"Commander Joran's office is right over there," Lieutenant Kerre Daxit, the Assistant CEO answered, pointing to a door on the other side of engineering.

"Thank you Ma'am." he said as he headed that way and prepared to ask for help. He got to the door and waited for the chime and the subsequent "Come" that would unlock the door and let him call on some assistance, if nothing else he might be able to pull some of the Engineer's engineers into Marine country and get them to assist with the overhaul.

"Come in..." Alexei called when he'd heard the chime. He looked up to see a Marine sergeant standing in the doorway. Motioning him in, Joran said "Have a seat, sergeant," indicating one of the chairs in front of his desk. "What can I do for you?"

Kris walked in and nodded to the commander. "Commander, Im Gunnery Sargent Kris Danger the chief mechanic for the marine detachment here on the Redemption. I've just been given a brain teaser by the XO which came from the skipper. He wants the Redemption to be linked to the fighters. As I understand it he wants to use the Redemption's PALLAS system to take the incoming sensor input and merge it with the Redemption's then spit it back out to the fighters and internal stations. He also wants the fighters deployed as soon as were at destination. Ive pulled three fighters from rotation so we have test subjects." He paused realizing that he was rambling "Sorry I tend to wax eloquent at times. I'm here to get your help designing and then incorporating the systems into the fighters and the Redemption's own systems."

"I'm glad to help you in any way I can," Joran said. "And I understand that we will have three fighters to use for testing, but I have to ask how many fighters in total will be used on this project?"

"At current the XO was saying all the fighters. I think we may need to test it to see what the limits are on the hardware and try to then figure out how many fighters we will link to the ship. From there we can possibly set up a way to link the fighters themselves. Though we might be able to set up the 'lead' fighter as a hub, beef up it's receiver/transmitter and use it as a repeater to back to the ship."

"Setting up the system as you've explained it will be pretty straightforward," Alexei said after a moment of thought. "The problem will be the amount of bandwidth needed for the telemetry. If it takes x amount of bandwidth for one ship, a second ship will increase the needed bandwitdth exponentially, and so on for each additional ship. And that could cause problems not only for the fighters, but also for the Redemption's on-board sensors as well."

"Indeed, that's the part that I'm having issues with. We need to figure out how to link all the fighters together so they can benefit from the link and wont overtax the fighter or the ships systems."

"So any idea how we do it?" Alexei asked. "And anything you need from engineering, either material or personnel--it's yours."

He snorted "No clue at all but I think the key is to work small and build up."

"I agree," Alexei said. "So let's start with the simplest issue and from where I see it that would be linking the fighters together."

Kris nodded "That should be easier than it appears. They already have a rudimentary connection. I could build on that, or figure out a way to add a new system to the fighter that will be dedicated to just this purpose."

"Which would be easiest to do?"

Kris tapped his chin contemplatively , the thought. A bit of grease smudging on his chin as he did so.

"Short term would be easier to work with what we have. Long term it would be easier going forward to just slap a module into it. If the old man," he paused and looked at the commander "begging your pardon, if the captain wants to utilize this for all fighters on the ship from now on starting from the ground up would be best."

"I agree - so what can my department do to help?" Alexei asked.

"Well im just a wrench turner, you're the idea guys do you think you could work on a modular system that we can build on ship for our purposes?"

"I thnk we can," Alexei agreed. "In fact, Lieutenant Daxit, my assistant CEO loves to tinker with projects like that. I'll get with her and see what we can come up with."

Kris grinned "Good I'll go by the holodeck and load the schematics for the fighters and the shuttles. Hopefully we can bang out the incidentals there instead of in the air. Have her run 'program Danger Close'." Kiris snorted at his own joke.

"I'm assuming that the captain wants this done by yesterday at the latest?" Alexei asked.

Kris nodded "I didnt get to hear it from the old man's mouth but that's the impression I got from the XO."

Alexei thought for a moment. "Since this is not only a hardware issue but also software as well, we may need to get OPS involved in this as well. What do you think, Gunny?" he asked, involuntarily using the military nickname of the man's rank.

Kris nodded "That sounds like a plan Commander, I'm sure they would be able to give us a hand as well. Spread it across a few departments and we might be able to get it done sooner."

"I'll get with Kerre and we'll get right on it."

OFF:

LtCommander Alexei Joran
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Redemption

&

Kris Danger
Gunnery Sergeant
Chief Mechanic
USS Redemption

 

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