Meeting Day

Posted on Tue Sep 29th, 2020 @ 1:54pm by Commander Jamie O'Connell

Mission: By Odin!
Location: Various
Timeline: Enroute to Pyxis

::ON::

After the briefing had concluded Jamie and his Command Staff in Engineering had drawn up the Mission Proposal concerning how they would aide the O-D-K in traveling from their home planet to Starbase 10. T'Sol and the other Engineering Officer were running the simulations necessary to make sure that the Proposal was viable presently.

Meanwhile Jamie was making some last minute notes for his meeting, at sixteen hundred hours, with the Ambassador's Engineering Advisor when his Comm chirped "Lieutenant this is Ensign Ferron, I just wanted to give you a heads-up about your meeting with the Ambassador's Advisor. I'm have been hearing rumors that she's is...to say the least difficult to deal with; I didn't want to see you get blind-sided." "Thank-you Ensign for the information; I appreciate it. O'Connell out."

A few minutes his Comm chirped once again "Lieutenant, the Ambassador's Engineering Attaché is in Main Engineering." the crewman advised.

Grabbing his PADD "On my way" Jamie answered leaving his Quarters and quickly making his way to the Main Engineering.

"I sure hope that this is going to be a productive meeting and not just some bureaucratic nonsense" Jamie thought as he entered the engine room.

There were three civilians amongst Jamie's engineering team in the room. Two were working with the Warp Systems Specialist at the large holo table in the center of the room. The third, a tall woman with platinum blonde hair braided in a pony tail that reached the middle of her back, stood with her hands clasped behind her looking at the ship's warp core. The watch duty officer gave Jamie a pleading "Help Me!" look.

"Welcome aboard," Jamie said, approaching the Attaché with his hand extended, "I am Lieutenant Jamie O'Connell, Chief Engineer."

The attaché turned her head to look at Jamie and he could see the distinctive spots starting at the temple and extending down the neck and under the collar of her tunic. The Attaché looked down her nose at Jamie's extended hand then turned back to the her visual examination of the warp core. "Desmora Keti," was her only verbal acknowledgement of Jamie's greeting.

"Ms Keti, if you would be so kind and follow me we'll go across the hallway to my office; I'm sure we'll be more comfortable there with less distractions" Jamie replied wondering how this meeting was going to go.

"I've worked in engine rooms for most of my lives," the attaché replied coldly, "But if you need a quieter environment to concentrate, I have no objections."

The Lieutenant led the way to his office with the attache following. Upon entering his office, Jamie deliberately left the door wide open as per Starfleet protocol concerning a man and a women alone together in a room. Have a seat Ms Keti and we'll get started.

"Let me start by saying that what I'm about to show you is my Engineering Team's best estimation of what the O-D-K ship will be like. Searching records from the Federation Database we have determined that their Ship may look something like this" Jamie put up an artist's rendering. "From what we know the Ship navigates their own system by the use of Solar Sails which are attached to the side of the ship like bird's wings. When they need it, it opens into a large sail on both sides of the vessel. We've determined in order to gather enough solar power that the sails must be massive." Jamie explained while thinking that she could probably care less.

"We got that much from the images captured by the reconnaissance satellites around Pyxis," the attaché replied with a rather bored tone in her voice.

"Well...this what the Engineering Team have theorized about their vessel. Being their first attempt at warp propulsion, we believe that the Ship employs a single core Warp Drive coupled with short burst mass drivers to accelerate; as these are the easiest to construct and maintain. The notion of thrusters and impulse engines, like the Independence uses, would seem to be too complex given their state of development. During the use of warp we believe that the Solar Sails are flat against the side of the Ship much like a bird's wings when diving for it's prey. As far as the size of the Ship is concerned, it must be lite enough to make good use of the Warp Drive and the short burst mass drivers. The Ship is estimated to be no more than two hundred meters long and no more than one hundred meters wide. It may have more than one deck, but would be limited to only two or three at the most due to the weight concerns. We're projecting a capability of Warp three and certainly no more than Warp four on a good day." the Lieutenant explained the theories as well as anyone could.

A cloud of irritation crossed the attaché's face, "The First Attaché told us that you had some ideas about shortening the time to return to Starbase 10. Do you actually have anything new to contribute?"

Jamie was slowly becoming more and more irritated with this women to the point of loosing his temper. He just stared at the attache for a moment; but thought better of it. After taking a breath, he cleared his mind and relaxed.

"If you would allow me to finish I was about to present our plans to shorten the amount of time that it will take for the O-D-K to travel from Pyxis to Starbase 10." Jamie replied not trying to sound vexed.

He put up the route that the O-D-K was going to follow "As you can see here they were going to twist and turn all over this sector in order to pick up warp currents necessary to navigate their vessel to Starbase 10; this route would have taken almost three months to complete. However we have come up with a solution to cut their time in half or better. We theorize by extending our own warp stream in front of the Independence we can provide a stable warp stream, or current if you will, for them to navigate in a straight line to the Starbase 10 which will shorten their travel time. This would provide a safe distance between our two ships and also we would be able to monitor their ship's performance as well. We would, in conjunction with this approach, use our Ship's ram deflector to protect both ships. My two Engineering Officers are presently running the necessary simulations to ensure this Proposal's viability which we should have by days end. This information will then be sent to our Commander for his approval. Upon his approval this information will be sent on to your Ambassador. I realize that this is a lot of theory, but without seeing their ship first hand, this is our best educated prediction. Finally at warp five, which is our cruising speed, we will make it to Pyxis in about 6.8 days. Even at warp three, it should take no longer than 14 days to make the return trip. So there you have it." O'Connell said to his irritating guest.

Desmora Keti consider what Jamie had said, "If I had wanted a recitation of the diplomatic and intelligence briefs, I would have attended your ship's mission briefing. And your calculations are off. At Warp 3, it would take 31.5 days to travel 17 light years."

O'Connell was becoming more and more frustrated with this women "Begging your pardon, but what I'm attempting to show you is the information that the Senior Officers of this Ship and my Engineering Department have come up with to shorten the travel time of the O-D-K from Pyxis to Starbase 10 which you were not privy too since you were not in attendance at the Briefing. I was under the impression that this was what our meeting was to be about." Jamie answered matter of factly.

Desmora remained placidly quiet, her steel blue eyes never wavering. After a few tense moments "And yes you are correct, my calculations seem to have been off. By cutting the time of travel from 90 days to 31.5 days we are increasing the time saved by almost two-thirds; which by my calculations is quite a substantial savings."

"Your officers are relying on quite a few assumptions in formulating this plan," Desmora said as she stood and straighten her dress, "Why don't we see if you can turn some of them into facts, hmm?" And without another word, the attaché departed Jamie's office.

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