Gravity - Chapter 6, Part III
Chapter 6, Part III
Acheron Particle Fountain PFMR-1
Sandhurst exited the shuttle ahead of an automated anti-grav pallet full of specialized equipment being guided via remote by Ensign Belinda Lascomb, Gibraltar’s assistant chief engineer. The two officers paused at the bottom of the egress ramp to inspect their surroundings, a compact and cargo-filled shuttle bay brimming with activity. Pallet loaders and civilian engineering personnel scurried about in a ballet of hectic purpose.
A knot of dour looking technicians stood nearby observing the new arrivals, and giving off a decidedly unwelcome air.
Lascomb glanced up from the padd she was using to maneuver the pallet and examined the recalcitrant technical crew. “Wow,” she murmured to Sandhurst, “tough crowd, sir.”
“Looks that way,” he assessed.
One of the civilians finally stepped forward, a tall, Caucasian human with silver hair and matching goatee. His eyes tracked visibly to the rank insignia on Sandhurst’s collar as he offered a weak, damp, and thoroughly lackluster handshake to the starship commander. “Janik Ebolsarr, assistant project supervisor, Captain…”
“Donald Sandhurst.” He gave Ebolsarr’s flimsy hand a perfunctory shake before releasing the clammy appendage.
“Forgive me, Captain Sandhurst, but we were expecting some engineering assistance.”
“Yes,” Sandhurst said with a patient smile. “We’re it.”
Ebolsarr’s frown was pronounced. “One engineer? Really? This is the much-touted Starfleet help we were promised?”
It was everything Sandhurst could do not to laugh outright. His sense of tragic irony had shifted into overdrive in the face of this blatantly hostile reception, especially so soon after the happenings aboard Hades’ Apex. His smile at once grew wider and more insincere. “Two engineers, actually, and I was under the impression we were serving as technical advisers. You were expecting us to build the fountain for you, perhaps?”
“For as long as it took you to get here, we could have built three fountains!” Ebolsarr shot back.
“None of which would have worked, either, apparently,” Sandhurst countered without hesitation.
The outraged Ebolsarr raised a hand and appeared to be on the cusp of poking Sandhurst in the sternum with his index finger. “You’ve got a helluva lot of nerve—“
“I wouldn’t,” Sandhurst cautioned, his saccharine smile faltering.
“Janik, for the love of all that’s holy, will you shut your damn mouth?” an exasperated female voice called out from behind them. Sandhurst glanced over the man’s shoulder to see a dark-skinned human female clad in a utility jumpsuit approaching. A look of recognition flashed across the captain’s features as he registered the warm smile he remembered so well.
“Janik, you’re as brilliant as you are egotistical, but if you want to compete with Donald Sandhurst in engineering aptitude, you’re going to find yourself quickly humbled,” the woman announced as she stepped up to where the two men were facing off.
As he stepped deftly around Ebolsarr, Sandhurst wrapped the smaller woman in a tight hug. “Oh my God, Davra, I had no idea you were working here!”
Davra Caritas laughed, the familiar sound music to Sandhurst’s ears as the woman allowed herself to be engulfed in his embrace. “I’m the project supervisor here, actually.” She drew back to look up at him. “It’s so good to see you, Donny!”
Her laughter was joined by his. “You always were the only one I’d ever let call me that.”
After a moment, Sandhurst released her and turned back towards his young companion. “Ensign Lascomb, I’d like to introduce you to Davra Caritas. She was chief engineer on the first ship I ever served aboard. She took a green young ensign under her wing and molded him into a serviceable officer and a promising engineer.”
Lascomb smiled. “A pleasure, Ms. Caritas.”
Ebolsarr stood silently by, still visibly irritated but having decided to hold his tongue in the presence of his supervisor.
“Likewise,” Caritas said as she gestured towards the exit and summarily dismissed the headstrong Ebolsarr. “Janik, team three needs help aligning the graviton accelerators in the core.” He nodded obediently in response and retreated as she turned back to the Starfleet officers.
“I can’t tell you how pleased I am that you’re the one they sent to assist us, Donald. LaForge and I… well… you remember.”
Sandhurst smirked. “Indeed I do. The two of you are too similar for comfort, Davra.”
She grunted sourly, though the smile remained. “I’m going to ignore that, though I’m sure you meant it as a compliment. Come on, you two, let me give you the nickel tour. We’ve got a lot to accomplish in the next few days if we’re going to keep Mr. Ramirez’s schedule.”
“Lead on, Chief,” Sandhurst said lightly as he and Lascomb fell in behind the energetic older woman.
*****
USS Gibraltar
Sickbay
Issara Taiee looked up with undisguised shock as Lieutenant Ashok walked into Sickbay. The two stood mutely, staring at one another for a long moment before Taiee was finally moved to speak.
“Are you lost?”
Ashok cocked his head slightly, regarding the much smaller woman with a kind of clinical detachment usually reserved for engineers and the criminally insane. “This appears to be Sickbay,” he observed dryly. “I am where I intended to be.”
Taiee smirked and toggled the tissue analysis series she was overseeing to automatic before giving the towering Bolian her full attention. “Aside from your yearly medical workups, I can’t remember the last time I saw you wander in here.”
“Sickbay, like the Livodian flu, is something best avoided,” he replied in his deep, resonant voice, which seemed unusually loud in the quiet confines of the nearly empty compartment. Ashok gestured towards the ward’s large display screen, set into the inner bulkhead of the main examination bay. “If I may have a moment of your time, Lieutenant?”
Taiee fell into step behind him like an errant asteroid drawn into the gravity well of a star. “I’ll try not to take that personally,” she laughed easily, “and yes, you may. What can I do for you?”
Ashok’s fingers danced across the display with what Taiee thought to be surprising deftness for so large an individual. As he called up a sensor log from the shuttle Kon-Tiki, he explained, “Lieutenant Trumbley’s assertions appear to be accurate. One crew member from their scout remains missing, though according to the survivors, he was on the flight deck when the ship experienced its inexplicable power failure.”
In response, Taiee nodded thoughtfully. “But no sign of him when you and the captain beamed the crew off.”
“No,” Ashok confirmed, “nor any indication of where he may have gone, or by what means.”
“Couldn’t someone have beamed him off?” Taiee offered.
“Possible, but unlikely,” he replied. “Harrier was in sensor range of both Hades’ Apex and Gibraltar from the moment the ship lost attitude control until it had descended to approximately fifteen-hundred meters into Acheron’s upper-most ammonia cloud layer. Unless there was an undetected craft pre-positioned below our sensor range, and in extremely close proximity to Harrier, a successful transport would have been nearly impossible.”
Taiee bobbed her head reluctantly. “Sounds a bit far-fetched to me, too.” She looked momentarily thoughtful. “Perhaps something happened to him onboard? Hell, I suppose if he thought he was facing a death dive into the heart of a gas giant, he might have vaporized himself with a phaser?”
Ashok appeared dubious. “During their descent the crew of Harrier was subject to in excess of five g’s of centrifugal force. Even if a person could get to a phaser housed under one of the cockpit consoles, adjusting the phaser’s default stun setting into the lethal range and aiming it while being spun like an Orion dervish simply isn’t feasible.”
Taiee blushed and shrugged her shoulders. “Uh… fair point. I’m just spit-balling here, Ashok.”
The engineer hesitated, seemingly on the cusp of saying something. Having been shipmates with Ashok for the past year and a half, Taiee knew to wait rather than trying to coax whatever it was out of the notoriously introverted man. After what seemed to be an agonizingly long moment of indecision for Ashok, he finally blurted, “I… I have an idea.” The bifurcated ridge dividing the Bolian’s face grew a shade darker with his evident discomfort.
The weight of Taiee’s comparatively tiny hand coming to rest on his shoulder caused Ashok to stiffen as if startled. “It’s okay,” she said. “Whatever it is, however crazy you think it might be… if your idea doesn’t pan out, nobody but me will know.” She leaned into his line of sight until Ashok’s eyes broke their thousand-meter stare and found focus on her. “I promise.”
His nod was so subtle as to be almost unnoticeable to the untrained eye. With slow deliberation he extended a finger to touch the image recall icon on the LCARS display. The screen flared to life and presented the image of a spherical, reddish object set against the murky backdrop of Acheron’s turbulent atmosphere.
“We scanned this object passing the shuttle as we pursued the falling scout ship. It didn’t seem relevant at the time, especially given the hyper-electrical activity common to the planet’s outer layers.”
He reached out again to touch a series of controls that prompted a cascade of analytical data on the seemingly energized orb. “I cross-referenced the phenomenon with the corporation’s atmospheric database, and found that it does not correspond to any known naturally occurring meteorological activity on Acheron.” Ashok glanced sidelong at Taiee as he enlarged a specific set of equations. “When I expanded my search parameters, I found something interesting. Does any of this look… familiar, Lieutenant?”
Taiee stepped forward, arms folded across her chest as she absorbed the information. A minute ticked past, then two. The nurse practitioner’s eyes widened fractionally as she began to piece together the associative values. “No - that can’t be right…” She extended a hand, tapping fluidly at the interface to power through a series of subroutines that pared the volumes of displayed information down to a single, seemingly insignificant statistical footnote.
Finally, she opened another display window and expanded it to overlay the graphical representation she’d created of the energy pattern in question. The peaks and valleys charted on the two graphs were not identical by any means, but they were very similar… similar enough to suggest something that both officers had difficulty grasping.
“That,” Taiee announced in a subdued voice thick with wonder, “is the energy pattern generated by humanoid neural activity.”
Ashok let out a sigh that seemed a release of pent up angst, pure relief that his musings hadn’t been a work of baseless fiction. “And this pattern here,” he added in an equally somber tone as he called up a third display window, “shares a ninety-two percent match with a matter/energy transport signature.”
“But there’s no transporter beam indicated…” Taiee’s voice trailed off.
“No,” he agreed. “The data suggests total matter-energy conversion at the subatomic level, independent of any obvious transitional matrix.”
“Gods,” Taiee murmured, turning and resting her back against the wall. “You think that sphere was our missing crewman?”
Ashok turned to face her, a surge of confidence now unmistakable in his voice for the first time since entering Sickbay. “I think that it’s a strong possibility.”
*****
Keyboard. You almost owed me one. 
The limp, flimsy handshake, the whiny attitude ... we all know people like that. You are so good with characters. And now we meet one of Sandhurst's early influences. Should be interesting. LOVED Sandhurst's handling of Janik, by the way.
Ashok's definitely an overly-sensitive sort, as terrified of his theory being seen as preposterous as he is of being wrong. After all, he's just the engineer, right? Sandhurst, Ramirez, Lar'ragos, Shanthi... those have always been the idea people.
