Salvage Operation

Posted on Sun Sep 29th, 2024 @ 9:04pm by Captain Aisling Banerjee & Lieutenant Damian Leath & Lieutenant JG Dorian Duranik

2,258 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Crew Shakedown
Location: Secret Alpha Centauri station
Timeline: 79461.94

As trips went a jaunt to Alpha Centauri was relatively short. It was a busy port of call since it was so close to Earth and traffic control quickly picked up on the vessel's arrival. It did not take long for the shuttle to be directed to the right place.

Said right place being a space station that looked a bit, well, odd. It resembled the Starbase orbiting Earth, which was almost nine thousand meters in diameter. But where that facility had a long "stalk" beneath it, this one simply had the upper portion. Also the exterior had virtually no lights. In fact much of the surface was solid black.

A pair of huge doors slowly cycled open, revealing a dimly lit interior and a voice spoke over the comm.

"Welcome to the black hole. You will not take any sensor readings while inside. Sensor readings will get you immediately court martialed. You will guide your ship to the assigned berth and no other. Deviating from your course will earn you an immediate court martial. You will stay no longer than twelve hours. Staying longer will earn you a court martial. By order of the Admiralty you have permission to remove equipment from the vessel. Enjoy your stay."

And the voice abruptly cut off.

Damian clicked a button on the panel in front of him. "Black Hole this is Lieutenant Leath" he says in the most professional sounding voice he can muster. "I was given minimal information before being assigned to this mission and am unaware of what equipment I am removing. What am I to do if this would take me more than twelve hours? Additionally am I expected to work on delicate equipment without the use of tricorder scans?"

"...Ah," the voice replied after a moment, "When I said 'scans' I meant of the interior of the bay. You may, of course, employ your tricorders and other equipment in the ship you have been assigned. Speaking of which, it is there to your right."

The ship in question could be called such by only the absolute most generous of terms. It was an Akira class. Or at least it had been. The "roll bar" torpedo launcher had been violently torn free as had the port warp nacelle and spar. The hull was pitted and scarred and there were no lights from within. Or at least there hadn't been. Life support and power umbilicals were attached to various parts of the ship and now lights began to slowly come on. The ship's name and registry could now be seen.

USS Lionheart, NCC-73058-A...

Damian stood up from the passenger seat and started going through the Engineering gear in the back. "Ready to go? he says calling across the shuttle. "You're here as the pilot technically but I wouldn't mind some help on the deflector dish. You clearly made the ship you arrived to the Kepler in so I assume you know your way around a deflector."

Duke smiled, "Can I have the whole ship? I can get her moved. That is fixable...." Duke was moving , Making scrap fly was great fun... " I am not engineer but I am handy with a spanner and making or removing things... " Duke paused, "And 12 hours we could pull lots of treasure...."

Damian lets out a deep breath and says "Orions" while half smiling. "Your culture is facinating. You have kleptocratic goverment that hasn't collapsed which is suffice it to say, incredible. How the Orion goverment hasn't fallen apart is beyond me. Anyway, I would let you loot a scraped ship if we weren't in a secure facility. Personally I would rather not get a court martial".

Duke followed along, “Kleptocracy does not translate correctly. Rigid government systems often fail to stand the test of time. Orions government is a living fluid system. When a branch gets sick it is pruned off and sprouts a new bud. It lives through time as a living growing life.”

Duke smiled “Look to rigid rules, prime directive, time rules, and such. How often have the famous Captains violated the unbreakable rules. Too rigid. The base concepts are good tho impossible to live by.” Duke smiled.

"Agreed, I follow protocol until I find it impeds with whatever I am trying to achieve at the time. With that said I only apply this to victimless crimes, I won't go murder someone because they have something I want."

"On a related note, I've been on the Kepler since it's original shakedown and I was modifying a delta shuttle in my free time. I have drastically increased it's sublight speed and maximum warp factor but the modifications are not regulation. I'm also not confidant in my ability to fly the delta with the engine modifications. I was going to ask Fitzroy a few months back but I don't know how he would feel about me breaking regulation. Would you like to fly it?"

Duke smiled, "We should have used it today!"

"It doesn't have big enough cargo space for the device we're transporting" says Damian as he begins to exit the craft. "You coming?"



The air was cold, as if there hadn't been any environmental systems functioning until five minutes ago. The starboard rear shuttle bay was connected by a tunnel to the forward starboard shuttle bay, on Akiras the idea was during extended combat a fighter craft would land in the fore, reload and re-launch down the length of the vessel and out aft. But that tunnel had been crushed in as if some angry god had punched the vessel so hard the impact had driven entire decks upward. The bay was devoid of any craft but neatly stacked along the wall, secured for possible zero-g environments were space suits, grav sleds, engineering equipment, a first aid kit. The ship was a mess but whomever was in charge seemed to take their job seriously. There were also portable power units as well, the sort that could be used to activate local systems.

The turbolift had to be manually operated, it seemed computer functions were minimal on board. A handle had been installed that allowed a person to shift along the vertical and horizontal shaft, an interactive map showed which were still functional. It took a few minutes but the turbolift was able to deposit them into main deflector control. Except for the lights things seemed to be pretty much dead, like most of the ship...

Damian takes out his tricorder and begins a scan, checking to see what systems are still operational. "This place is barren but we should have what we need to get working."

Systems were hardly functioning at all. Oh, lights and basic life support functioned, the turbolift worked as did the doors. He could tell right away the problem was much of the computer core had been either damaged or stripped. That being said it looked like elements like internal sensors were still in place, there just wasn't a fully functioning computer with which to operate them...


Duke was busy, pulling off access panels in moments every panel that normally need to be open was... Each panel Duke turned over and looked for notes, if he found one he left it displayed. Duke opened panels that no one would ever open.... (Places that crew tended to hide things they did not want found) Plus he opened a very smart grouping of you might need in here also where open. Duke looked in each area with care for left items as well anything out of place for what they where working with.


Duke looked carefully for non SF wiring or any hack repair jobs that would not show on the schematics

Such notes were not Starfleet regulation. No normal crew or officer would write notes like that.

And yet...there it was. It was the sort of thing technicians might have put in place to remember how a jury-rigged system worked, or how a foreign piece of equipment was tied into a system where it had no place being. Duke was able to figure out well enough that whatever this device was, it was somewhere under the plates beneath the deflector array's power conduits, like perhaps the device had power shunted to it.

"Got it" Duke called out , "Note to how power was jury-rigged..." Duke pointed the the notes, "If I find who left they I will buy them a drink!"


Damian strode across the room to the main compute, examining the room as he walked. "Nothing looks out of place here, I'm not sure what the device is." Reaching the computer core he began checking what systems, if any other than life support and sensors, were functional.

The control boards were active but largely showed a great deal of nothing. This was a dead ship. And then Damien noticed something. On Starfleet vessel control systems the most common colors were blue and amber/orange. Red naturally showed up when things got Bad, but those other two colors were what you normally saw on ships of this era.

And yet there was a control board lit up here that was predominantly green.

Romulan green...

"Orion come here." said Damian. "This equipment's lights are Romulan green. It appears to be entirely Starfleet though. The problem is Starfleet doesn't use green lights. Take a look at this, see if I'm missing anything."

Duke moved over and looked on the top and started looking below. "Not Romulan, tho the green is odd ....What in the world does this control? Did one of the mirror universes use a different color in there displays?" Duke rolled under and was looking to how it was built. Making sure it was standard SF tech.

Duke was able to remove a panel and look under the control surface. The ship was old enough to still principally use a 2D control system. Beneath it appeared to be a standard Starfleet control unit, which could be easily reconfigured to control any ship system if the person had the proper system permissions and skills. In theory Deflector Control's panels could be reconfigured to act as a ship's bridge (i.e. DS9's Starship Down, when Defiant's crew had to use Engineering as an emergency bridge). Duke rose to his feet.

"What does the tricorder show it is connected to ?" Duke asked as he tried to read the displays.

Both men saw the readouts in garish green and it took them a moment to read what it said. At the moment it revealed the system this control panel was responsible for was powered down, which came as no surprise considering the ship's state.

In quiet flashing words they read "cloaking device status: inactive"...

Duke started speaking "Holy mother of all that is living and free..." Duke looked of his shoulder, was he being taped? The holy grail of salvage. "We need to get this and get out fast... This thing is worth a whole starship of the holders life...."

"In hindsight this isn't suprising, the Defient had cloaking device, presumably they have tested them on other ships too like this Akira" says Damian as his tension eases. "Let's just get what we came for, we don't have much time here. Also if you try to salvage this I'll stun you. I'm not getting arrested over your kleptomania."

"Hey Kleptomania is a non controlled impulse... this is life changing business venture." Duke chuckled... "SO no rich for life... back to SF work." Duke rolled under and started working . Taking the less important stuff for himself leaving the tricky parts for Damien.

"The Federation is post scarcity, we have replicators. What would you even use the latinum for?" says Damian as he begins to remove the cloaking device. He takes a deep breath and turns to Dorian "Sorry for being an asshole again."

Dorian chuckled, "Oh so much of life is outside of what replicators are allowed to make and what the Federation allows us to buy...."

Lionheart's engineers had done a respectable job of incorporating the cloaking device into the deflector array. It was also big and likely had been designed originally for a much larger vessel. Modifications could be seen in order for the device to be incorporated into Starfleet hardware. Between the two Starfleet officers they were able to disengage the device from the array...

"You did good Dorian, your better at this than most of my engineering staff. If I took any of them bar my assistant instead of you this would of take at least two more hours. I'll probably call on you in the future."

Dorian chuckled, "Removing things is far simpler then some of your tasks."
Duke looked for the grav handles to attach to heavy object to help move. "We should find something to cover this... Eyes seeing this could get attention."

Duke kept working getting removed items ready to move.

"Yes, that is a good idea for once we get back to the Kepler. I don't think it really matters while we're still on Blackhole and regardless we don't have a tarp." says Damian before clicking his comlink. "Lieutenant Damian Leath to ops, what do you need from us down here before we leave?"

"Thanks for the update, lieutenant," the Operations officer replied, "Once you are ready to depart Lionheart we will open the front door for you and let you out." There was a pause, then a smile could be heard in the Operations officer's voice, "That was easy; I'm sure the trip home will be uneventful..."

 

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