Quiet

Posted on 14 Dec 2018 @ 5:43am by Petty Officer 2nd Class Mofrich Torg

464 words; about a 2 minute read

Mission: The Kalisa Conundrum
Location: Intelligence Complex
Timeline: MD 1 || 1245 hours

For the last several months, the Black Hawk had suffered uneasiness after uneasiness, temporal and subspace distortions, and moments of mental ambiguity.

And now the only word Torg could use to describe the mood in the Intelligence Complex… was quiet.

Sure, there were sounds of consoles beeping, programs processing, air filters circulating, even the low hum of the EPS taps fueling the lighting elements recessed in the ceiling. But Torg was alone. The Intelligence Department contained only ten personnel, including Lieutenant Geisler and himself, with only three or four maintaining the complex at a time per each shift. With the Chief not in the office at the moment, and his other compatriots out for a meal, Torg had been left to continue the analysis of the weapons platform that separated them from their destination.

The probe runs conducted by Lieutenant Parks and Ensign Khan had been both enlightening and futile. Anyone could easily tell that the minefield adapted to whatever was thrown at it. The multi-adaptive shielding appeared to trick the platforms, but it was hard to tell whether or not it would work on the way out. Nor could the shielding be adapted to the Black Hawk herself. It was designed to avoid detection, but protect from phaser or polaron fire.

Strangely, Torg found the field fascinating, a chance to finally put his analyst skills to actual work. It had been a long few weeks since their departure from Alpha Trios. It’d only taken a few days, since the incident in the nebula, to dissect what little data the away teams had collected. Even the scans of the destroyed planets hadn’t revealed much. For now, all Torg could do was process simulation after simulation with the minefield, hoping to find some way for the ship itself to circumvent it. He knew Commander Djinx, Lieutenant Geisler, and Ensign Khan were working on similar angles, and this research would only supplement their findings and theories, not take the place of it.

What bothered him was that the simulations themselves, now numbering into the hundreds, seemed to be slowing down. Not by much, but the difference between the first and the thousandth had an increased processing time of three hundred percent, or close to a full second. Perhaps the multitude of projections was starting to wear on the bio-neural circuitry. Or, perhaps, Torg found himself feeling a bit tired and sluggish as well.

The Tellarite shook it off, thinking that this would all be over soon anyway. For now, he rose from his station, letting the simulations to continue without his monitoring. A small bit of Raktajino would do him nicely, and give him that much needed pickup for the rest of the shift.

Or so he hoped.

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