How Heavy is Gravity?

Posted on Sat 6th Jul, 2019 @ 12:10am by Lieutenant Commander Alora Baro & Lieutenant JG Artyom Mikhailov

1,328 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: A Diplomatic Affair
Location: Engineering
Timeline: MD-2, 0800

Chief Petty Officer Smagded was a Damage Control Specialist, so it wasn't all that odd to find him in Damage Control Central, his moss-green eyes pointed at a holographic blueprint of the station's tramway. The size of the gleaming ivory tusks which protruded from his lower jaw made it difficult for him to pronounce some Terranglo words, but he made do, and had for eighteen years as a Damage Control Specialist. "Dere," he said, pointing at the three-dimensional blueprint. "Dass where da brek happen."

Petty Officer Quinn leaned down slightly, to see the blueprint better. "Ah, that makes sense," she nodded. "Have you been down there yourself, yet? That isn't within the area I was checking."

The Chief nodded, and rubbed one blunt finger along the side of his wide, green nose. "Took a pack," he said. "Anna trikorter." He shifted his finger and pointed again into the blueprint. "Widness say spark. Power line. Rail break. BANG." He made an exploding gesture with his hands, fingers spread wide. "Why? Dunno."

Quinn frowned. "There shouldn't have been a spark, unless ... " she looked up at Spurlock, trying to draw him into the conversation in spite of the look of bored-with-it-all on his face. "Could something in the computer system have sparked when the power went out?"

Annoyed, Spurlock looked at the group with disgust. "You mean to tell me, the finest minds Starfleet put together in this room can't see what is right in front of them?" he asked as he threw his hands up for dramatic flair.

"Suppose you enlighten us, Mr. Spurlock." Alora observed mildly, having walked up behind him quietly, watching the proceedings from the side. She'd meant to be here sooner, but had to wait on information they needed to flesh out the details.

Rolling his eyes, Spurlock walked over and stood in the middle of the group. "Oooookkkkkk. Has anyone had the forethought to run scans of the gravity in this area? Wait, let me answer for you all, No!" Spurlock then walked over to the closest engineering console and began to scan the area of the damaged tram. "Alora, would you mind reading the results of the scan?" Spurlock sarcastically asked.

Lt. Baro Alora, Chief of Operations looked at the Petty Officer Second Class who worked for her and blinked. Saying nothing, she called up the scan he just ran and then, without being asked called up one of the scans she'd just manually run at the site, hence why she'd been late to the meeting. Comparing them side by side, one could see they were the same. She then tapped another key and the screen broke into a set of three. It was a scan of how it should have looked from a prior check, a few more keys highlighted the differences. "Would you like a shovel for the hole you are digging Mr. Spurlock?" she asked him mildly, "Or do you have something concrete to add?" Her tone kept its even level.

Jin-Kyung managed to keep the smile off her face, but only just. She didn't mind Spurlock ... except when he opened his mouth. Chief Smegded was turning an intriguing shade of forest-green, and his jaw was clenched so tightly, Jin-Kyung fancied she could hear his teeth grinding.

"It's right there in front of you, LIEUTENANT!" Spurlock cried with contempt in his voice. "Ughh, has no one noticed the gravitational reading of the busted portion of the tracks?"

"Control yourself, if you please, Petty Officer." Her voice was colder now, but still calm. "I was giving you a chance to finish your point, not berate those around you. It's called courtesy. And we will be discussing it later."

She cut herself off before she could degrade into berating him for his lack thereof and changed tack, mostly to keep a professional face and keep focus on the meeting. Her voice returned to normal, "For now let's focus on the task at hand." Again, she tapped keys, and again, the differences between how it should be and how it was were highlighted, which included differences in gravitational readings. She studied it a moment, not having had proper time before. "I think we can see they are unusual, does anyone wish to put forth an idea why?" She glanced at the others, she considered her own theories as she waited for replies.

An idea was forming in Quinn's mind, but she didn't have enough data to be sure. "Lieutenant Mikhailov, what's on the other side of that bulkhead?" she asked, pointing toward the spot where there seemed to be more pressure points and bowing. Something tickled her memory, but wouldn't come to the surface. "It looks like something is causing extra stress along there."

Artyom had been passing his time looking at several things at once; hyper-focus and the ability to bounce easily from one task to the next was one small advantage of not letting the doctors alter his brain-chemistry, therefore removing the condition that for centuries had been termed one way or another as ADD. Unfortunately, sometimes it was too easy to bounce from one thing to the next a bit prematurely. When he heard Quinn's request, he stopped studying his tricorder and pulled up a PaDD. "One moment."

After a bit Alora leaned forward and called up that part of the 3D map, then using her hands blew it up and separated the data in neat lines of text next to it. "Looks like the Besm Enclave.". She called up the data on the enclave, telling the computer to ignore anything unchanging. Then they were left with what had changed in the area. She glanced at Quinn, "You seeing what I'm seeing?" she asked.

The Russian glanced sideways at Alora, having gotten the information before he could. He peered around at the 3D diagram and studied the alpha-numerics that stretched across various sections identifying every change. Most of these changes could immediately be dismissed, but one stuck out in particular. "The power draw in that section there," he began, pointing into the air where the suspicious readings resided. "Increased by almost 32% over the last week." Stretching his arm across the space between Alora and the readings, he thumbed at a few commands. He hoped she didn't mind too much.

"Eh, it looks as though the gravity plates in this section, what you call the Besm Enclave, are drawing more power than they should be." To be honest, Artyom wasn't sure what the Enclave even was as there was a lot to the station that he hadn't seen. That curiosity took his train of though off the topic at hand long enough for him to miss out on recognizing how the increased field density of the gravity plating would impact a tram designed *mostly* for zero-g environments.

"Yes," said Quinn. "I think that's the cause of the problem, right there." She tapped her finger on a line of figures. "The Besm needed the heavier gravitational pull, but no one thought to add shielding around the tram passages. The tram's system is in microgravity, and here," she pointed to the diagram where the tram corridor ran above the new heavier gravity, "it's going right next to ... I guess for comparison, you could call it macrogravity. That stress caused the tramway to buckle above the gravity-increased plates. I strongly suspect that caused one of the power transfer conduits to give way. Do you agree?" she asked the others.

Chief Smagded nodded. "Take string. Tie on plate. Holds straight. Put on anudder plate? Maybe tree? String break." He moved to the controls of the display, his blunt fingers moving with surprising nimbleness. The holo image shifted, showing the rail as a line which ran vertically. Setting the width of the line to vary in proportion to how much weight it was supporting, he ran the readings from the last month. Just above where the Besm decks stopped, a knot began to swell, then burst. "Bang."

 

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