by Rada Dengar
81120.2330
Concurrent with And So It Begins
-=Engineering Research and Development Laboratory, Deck 6: USS Serendipity=-
81120.2330
Concurrent with And So It Begins
-=Engineering Research and Development Laboratory, Deck 6: USS Serendipity=-
“Well, that’s as ready as we’ll ever be,” Rada said as he finished calibration of the scanner they’d constructed for examination of this Hugreti device.
They’d been forced to rush and so they’d basically ended up hooking together a series of existing scanning technologies and linking them through a central control. It was about as pretty as a Targ and had just as much going for it in regards to energy efficiency.
It reminded Rada just how far he’d come from the Engineering projects he’d worked on at the Academy in which the first requirement was that always they obeyed the three ‘E’s of Engineering which he was told were Efficiency, Efficiency, and never repeating yourself more than once.
He had one professor that he was sure would retrospectively fail him if he saw what he’d done here. A bureaucrat in another life, the man always insisted on the strictest of power allocation limits in whatever subject he taught. He once famously failed an entire class when not one of their projects could operate under the limit, looking back there were probably better choices for teaching high- energy physics. Last Rada heard he’d been reassigned after the dean had gotten somewhat offended when he’d asked, purely in the interests of saving power, if there were anyway he could turn his artificial heart off for a while.
They were working in Kellyn’s lab because this was to be kept on a need to know basis and away from the prying eyes in Engineering; especially those of Jamie Halliday. Halliday’s honesty made him the type of man that people trusted with everything, except their secrets.
It wasn’t that he’d intentionally say anything but it was just that if he were allowed to work on this then there’s a chance that he’d duck out for lunch and run into one of his fellow Engineers.
If they commented that they hadn’t seen him recently and happened to casually ask what he’d been up to he’d almost certainly freeze up and reply as sternly as he could 'I’m sorry but I can’t tell you anything about the Hugreti box'. Perhaps he wasn’t the best choice to work on something like the Alchemy Project but then again if they were ever captured by the enemy he’d have a much easier time convincing them that he didn’t know anything than the rest of them would.
The basic concept behind what they’d built was that each of the different types of scanner was to focus a beam onto a single point and that they would be then be refocused as a single beam which could scan beyond the normally attainable frequencies. The slight problem was coordinating these scanners to get even slightly meaningful results.
At first combining even two beams had been like putting a Nausicaan and a Klingon in a room together with no Universal Translator; they didn’t speak the same language and just ended up damaging each other.
Finally he’d thought he’d made some headway when he had them all working together until he attempted to scan a chair and the computer reported back with a picture of a misshapen banana. To be fair, it was actually a complex collection of data points formulated into an interpretable image but he still couldn’t explain why it reported such a high potassium content.
Finally it seemed as though he had it working. Now when he scanned that chair he got an image which looked a lot like an orange, which according to Dabin Reece was exactly what it should.
“Good work Danger,” Dabin Reece said as he clapped a hand on Rada’s shoulder “Now we’re ready to kick some incredibly old box ass!”
“I just hope it works” said Rada. In reality he wasn’t sure that he did hope it worked. If it worked then the potential knowledge gained was incredible. As an engineer the idea of learning about that new kind of technology was very exciting indeed but it was also very scary.
Compared to some of the legends about Hugreti technology it seemed that Federation technology was little more advanced than a pointed stick. The problem was that Rada was by definition a stick sharpener and he had to wonder if he could even comprehend anything more. If he didn’t keep up then in a few years time all his knowledge could be so outdated that they’d send him back to the Academy to learn how to be an Engineer. He was amazed that he passed the first time and couldn’t believe that the professors would make that many marking errors again.
He’d wash out and in his desperation he’d be left to search the galaxy for somewhere to belong. Tam and Wren would adapt where he couldn’t and they’d leave him. Of course, with no skills he’d never be able to get on one of the new ships that the Federation would build. They’d probably sell off the obsolete starships and Rada would be able to buy an old Intrepid class ship for a song. Still, since no one would want to stoop to such a primitive way to travel there’d be no crew.
He’d float through space for years aimlessly until a new generation began to rebel. They’d reject modern technology and seek a simpler way of life by seeking out a pre Hugreti existence on ships like his. He might even be able to talk one of them into taking the role of captain so he could play Chief Engineer just like the good old days. It wouldn’t last though.
He’d be too old, too out of touch. He’d keep ‘missing the point’ of what they’re all about by doing things like improving engine efficiency and ruining the low-tech feel of the place. He’d be cast off the ship, they would have heard of how in primitive times people were made to walk the plank and so they’d force him to walk one straight out of an airlock and then he’d been dead.
Of course that was just the best case scenario. There’s also the possibility that the box offered no new technology for them. It may contain someone’s shopping list and be of absolutely no use to them whatsoever. At first glance that might not seem to change the Federation a whole lot, but Rada always glanced twice. If they managed to scan through technology as advanced as the Hugreti then people might start to think that they could scan through anything.
The Romulans might start to think that they would soon be able to scan through their cloaking devices. The Klingons might think the same. The Romulans would have to attack the Federation before that had a chance to render their advantage void. The Klingons might not worry about losing their advantage but they would worry that the Federation would stop fearing them and so like a vicious dog when a meeker one dared look them in the eye they’d attack too.
The Federation has so many enemies, all of whom would be just waiting for a chance when they’re vulnerable and boy, would they be vulnerable. They’d be attacked from all sides and they’d lose. The Klingons and the Romulans would each claim to control the former Federation territories and a war would ensue between them and one would emerge victorious but so weakened from the continuous warfare that the remaining major powers would all start to attack while they can. The winners would take the Federation space and would end up being attacked themselves and the cycle would just keep repeating until eventually all life in the quadrant would be wiped out.
That shopping list would spell doom for them all.
Of course that was assuming that this device wasn’t simply a bomb.
Strangely enough Rada feared that by exposing it to a scan at every frequency in existence they may just find the activation frequency. That would be very bad as logically a hundred layers of Federation shielding against a Hugreti bomb could about as effective as a hundred pointed sticks against a Quantum Torpedo. They could theoretically manage to destroy the galaxy with technology this powerful but Rada doubted that. The fact that the Hugreti managed to wipe themselves out while leaving the galaxy in tact indicated that at most one of their bombs was likely to destroy a planet. Rada took some comfort in that.
“Well you won’t have to wait long to find out.” Dabin excitedly announced “We’re here.”
Lt. SG Rada Dengar
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012