Systems Down
Posted on 25 May 2023 @ 5:44am by Commander Kristiana Petrova & Captain Easton Lawe & Lieutenant Commander Thex sh'Zoarhi & Lieutenant Callisi Veera
852 words; about a 4 minute read
Mission: Deus ex Machina
The sound of a buzz echoed through Thex quarters pulling her out of her peaceful sleep. Drowsley her hand reached for the badge and pressed it. =^= Cheif the third backup life support just failed. =^= One of her officers called through the coms.
=^= I'll get on it.=^= Thex replied as she pulled herself from her bed and began looking for her uniform. It was rather odd that the third backup would just fail like that, but stranger things happened onboard a starship.
=^= Yeah, I'm not sure what's wrong here, Ma'am. It just shut down on me, =^= Ensign Waterman replied, his voice sounding puzzled.
The severity of the issue prompted the summons of the chief of operations on the ship, one Callisi Veera. Drowsy, but coffee in hand as she began her investigation, she started calling people who were awake at the time of the failure. Starting up her diagnostics, she reached out across the proverbial aisle, tapping her own comm badge, "This is Veera to sh'Zoarhi." she started, "Commander I'm starting up a diagnostic on my end, getting caught up on the what's and when's. Anything you can catch me up to while I'm waiting for the results?"
Thex had just arrived at the backup and had started getting the casing of the machine. " No idea I'm afraid. No sign of damage on the casing so I'm going to take a look in it's guts. Can you check the secondary and primary life support while your at it." She added.
"Starting up the checks on secondary and primary shortly. Hmmm, nothing yet." Callisi responded, taking a quick coffee sip, "Nothing like an invisible problem to start the shift." she complained, though kept at her task. "Diagnostics on the third backup report that the system is AWARE of the fault but not the CAUSE of the fault. I'm starting a full sweep from that timestamp back. Same on your end? Record of the fault but not the cause?" she inquired across departments.
" Same at my end. Everything looking all right...." Thex said as she began to take the life support apart. She pushed as she picked up one of the power cables. The fiberoptic cable looked like it had rotten away leaving it a dirty brown colour. " Now what happened here."
"Uh, chief?" It was Waterman. "We just lost thruster control. It's all red on my panel," he sounded semi panicked. "We're adrift."
Callisi said something that the universal translator didn't quite catch. "This is Callisi to the helm. You've got three seconds of helm control left before we lose everything. Maneuvering thrusters are all you're going to have and then we're adrift fully." a pause, another tap. "This is Callisi to the Captain, we have an emergency situatio. We're losing system after system down here. Advise we impliment loss of atmo procedures and prep for the worst. I'll have a full report of the up to now compiled and sent your way in five minutes." she advised, and began to compile the report. "Engineering is in coop but they might be too busy to eavesdrop." she furthered. "Affected systems currently are tertiary life support and thruster control. RCS and maneuver thrusters are, as of this point, a maybe. Situation unknown, cause unknown. Investigation continues."
"I'm isolating sections thirteen through thirty five of the computer core under a sequential orthanx key. You'll be given the passphrase in person. Prepping two-sequence purge of sensitive information, keyed to you and the captain only." a pause, "Just in case this is an attack."
Thex was starting to worry. " I'd start locking down the ship and implementing quarantine process in case this is being carried by some of the crew. " She said as she hauled one of the cables onto the floor before she started cutting into it. " I have no idea what's going on it's like the fibre cable been rooted away. This should be happening for several centuries at the very least."
The voice of the captain came back to them immediately, sounding--naturally--terse and concerned. "Implement all emergency and predictive procedures that you feel are necessary, and report immediately if we lose any further systems."
"Hai." Callisi responded, "Commander Thex, I'm implementing a firewall around the core systems of the computer core. There *may* be a slight slowdown in responsiveness while the system gets set up. Once the wall is in place that latency should vanish." a pause, "Fiber Cable being rotted away, you said? Once I'm done setting up the defenses here, I'd like to inspect the cables personally."
She turned to her crew, comm badge still hot, "We cannot afford to lose any of the vital systems. Air and gravity are vital, but in that order. I can swim, but I can't not breath." and there was a response of affirmative.
" On it lieutenant. " Thex said as she fished around in her kit for a sample holder. Something was very very fishy with this mess.
And it proved even more fishy as slowly, one by one, various systems started misbehaving. No rhyme or reason, no faults found, just systems acting up, ceasing to respond.
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