The Fish Woman Cometh.

Posted on Tue 1st Jan, 2013 @ 8:22pm by Captain Eee-eee-rie--eeee-eek Nightingale D.Sc

776 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: http://sb109.sim-station.net/index.php/sim/missions/id/3
Location: Shuttle bay

"Lieutenant Eee-" The pilot started.

"STOP. Stop. Just stop. Doctor Nightingale is sufficient, kid." The woman in the slightly shimmering field suit said.

"KID? I'm 42 years old. I run this as a-"

"When I was 42, I was 2 and a half feet tall, and chasing down crawfish for Dinner. That was Four Hundred and Fifty Seven years ago. You're a kid, by my people's terms." She said. "Now, what was it you wanted?"

"Your cargo. We've landed, and the science teams want to scan your cargo, to make sure everything made it safely." The pilot said.

"Oh right. Thanks. Have a good flight back, little Smelt." Nightingale said, as she stepped out of the shuttle.

"Is that a graviton compression field device?" An Ensign said, without preamble.

"DID YOU JUST CALL ME A BABY SALMON?" The Pilot demanded, from the cockpit.

"Yes, to both." Nightingale said, with a shrug.

"What possible use could it have?" The Ensign asked.

"Oh, how delightful. You had better be in medical, kid." Nightingale stated.

"Nope. I'm a botanist." The Ensign noted.

"Ah. Same thing. Well, it has a number of uses. This unit is part of a Starfleet testing program designed to create microsingularity power sources, similar to the Romulan variation, but safer." Nightingale said.

"I didn't think that that kind of Romulan experimentation was legal." The Ensign said.

"It's not. This isn't Romulan technology, per se, either. This is the Federation extrapolation of the basic scientific principles of them." Nightingale noted, in a slightly different sounding voice. There was also the faint sound of an odd song. "Strictly scientifically speaking, this device uses a high-compression graviton field to create a black hole, which then supplies the device with sufficient power to both contain, and continue generating, said singularity. It also generates approximately a full terrawatt of energy, equivalent to about a 20th of your Standard Matter/Antimatter intermix chamber. There is an SCE test ship out there, outfitted with these things, somewhere, but this is Version 3. More safety feaures, a bit less juice, but it doesn't require it's own power system, and it's a 30 second change from your standard EPS flow to this thing."

"That sounds very dangerous." The Ensign noted.

"To the contrary, it's safer than the warp core of a starship. If the power isn't sufficient to keep the safety protocols functioning, it's not sufficient to continue creating a graviton field, causing the microsingularity to simply disappear. Likewise, if it is damaged, dropped, ruptured, or hit with any kind of explosive, the Graviton emitters lose power, and the microsingularity disappears. The problem with Romulan technology is that they use a singular, rather large sized singularity, which could cause the entire ship to feedback, and explode. This device has no such issue, and if you don't get your hands off of those controls, I will snap them off, and put them on my morning sushi. That's multi-million credit equipment, that hasn't been finished, nevermind tested yet. Last thing I need on an underfunded project with a design team of one, is some ill-minded botanist's fingers thinking they're restarting the auto-growth rate of an Orchid on a force-clone device."

"Sorry, ma'am." The Ensign said, properly chastised.

"Get it loaded, and in a lab, along with everything but this bag," Nightingale said, picking up a duffel, "and these suitcases. I'll handle those."

"Of course ma'am. Do you hear some kind of song? It's really faint, but you keep talking over it." The Ensign said.

"Oh hell. Was I doing that again?" Nightingale said, this time in untranslated English. Her higher-pitches returned. "Sorry, that was the translator kicking in for Southern Velorian. You didn't exactly expect to be able to understand a language that evolved under an Ocean, did you?"

"Well, no, not really." The Ensign said, with a shrug.

"I sing, instead of speak, when I get into scientific detail. It's my mind shifting away from focusing on Linguistic translation, and social protocols, back into it's default settings." Nightingale said. "Now, you have tasks you were assigned, little algae-hugger. Splash to them."

"Ma'am?" The Ensign asked.

"Bags. Equipment. Laboratory. Now." Nightingale enunciated.

"Oh. Of course ma'am." The Ensign said, nodding.

"Now... where was I?" Nightingale asked, slightly confused, after the conversation. "Mental Checklist. Landed without crashing into the hull. Props to the pilot for that. Collected my personal effects. Check. Ensured that Science Staff were responsible for offloading equipment. Check. Captain. Oh. Right. That."

She walked over to the lift. "Br-" she started. "Ops." She said, after mentally reminding herself this wasn't a Starship.

----------------------

Doctor Nightingale (Just leave the rest. It's not pronouncable.)
Chief Science Officer
Starbase Protector

 

RSS Feed