Vascular Collapse

Posted on Fri 21st Oct, 2016 @ 7:43am by Lieutenant Ricardo Shepard & Lieutenant Commander Lanis Dhuro MD

1,420 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Cloak & Dagger
Location: Surgical Suites

Chlamydia Addams, the Chief Medical Officer of the starbase, folded her arms under her meager breasts. The long fingers of her right hand tapped irritably on her left elbow. "And this has been going on since you initialized the system?" she asked her chief of surgery. Without waiting for a response, she went on, "Computer, initiate circulatory support fields mimicking a human vascular system. Tint fields red for arterial, blue for venous."

The computer complied, projecting semi-permeable forcefields in the air over the surgical biobed. The fields held for several seconds, then glitched, fizzed, and vanished for several seconds, only to reappear.

=^= '"Shepard to Addams, are you having some issues with power fluctuations right now?" =^=

"Yes, we are," Lanis answered before Addams could. "Surgical holosimulators are flickering off and on, and I'm leery of authorizing any kind of real surgical procedure when even the back-up OR systems are not reliable." Then he caught himself and glanced at Chlamydia. "Er, sorry."

Addams smiled briefly to show that no offense was taken. "These are supposed to be uninterruptible circuits, Mr. Shepard," she said aloud.

"I know. I know." Rico responded with a little frustration in his voice. "We have been chasing fluctuations like this for a while now. Give me a minute and I will be right there. I'm down the corridor. I'll run some diagnostics on the backup generators you have in the surgical suites.

Shepard packed up his work gear and placed everything he had into the standard Starfleet engineers toolbox. He then began making his way to the surgical suites.

When Shepard entered the room, Addams turned to regard him. "Generators?" she asked, sounding confused. "Are these backups not run off batteries? That is the standard set-up on Starships."

Rico smiled as he saw his friend Addams. He was glad that she had recovered from the thought of the return of the U.S.S Archimedes. He also gave a smile and nod to Dr. Dhuro before speaking.

"For a starship you would be correct, Doctor. But starbases are built differently." Rico walked over to one of the wall panels of the surgical suite that had multiple display screens on it. He entered a code and the panel opened to reveal an area about the size of a small walk-in closet. He then continued talking.

"Starbases have different redundancy systems for emergency shelter areas of the starbase. While starships have the battery systems, starbases have the generators on separate power supplies along with battery systems."

Rico stuck his head out of the closet to see if he was making sense to the Doctors.

"Starbase, with power plants. Bigger vessel than a starship, so it uses generators to power the back-up batteries. Got it," Lanis said.

"The batteries power the equipment, and the generators recharge the batteries?" Addams asked. "And there was I, thinking the bridge officer exam was complicated." Addams froze. Why had she said that? She was a staff officer; she'd never taken, or even studied for the bridge officer exam. Had she?

Rico laughed a Addams. "Ha ha. I know that it sounds complicated but it's not too bad. But...." Rico stopped in mid sentence. "Wow, this is weird." He said to himself, not realizing he verbalized it so that everyone could hear.

"Oh, Prophets, you had to take that thing, too?" Lanis said to Addams. "I had to allow my best friend to sacrifice himself for the sake of the mission--and had to order a crewman to do the same. I couldn't look my friend in the eye for weeks afterward. I kept hearing him dying over the comm unit." He grimaced.

"What's weird?" Addams asked, sounding distracted. She reached into the thigh pocket of her trousers, pulled out a PADD. Her service record was just a few finger-flicks away, and she frowned at it. She was a staff officer, she confirmed, glancing through it. No record of ever having taken the bridge officer exam. She couldn't recall ever having been even remotely interested in the command path, and given how slowly promotions had come in her career, there seemed no hurry to qualify for the rank of Commander.

Rico stepped out of the little alcove and walked over to where Addams and Dhuro were standing. "Commander Addams, we need to shut off the power to this area immediately. Come take a look at this." Rico walked both Doctors back over to the alcove. It was there he pointed out what he saw. He still could not believe what he saw.

"It looks as if something has eaten through the couplings here in the backup generators and the emergency batteries." Rico stated.

Lanis' eyes went wide. "Yes, that needs to be shut down now, or you'll blow a hole into half of Sickbay. What could do that? It's got to be chemical; we don't have any loose rodents onboard, do we?"

Shepard took out his tricorder and scaled the couplings and the generators. "Even now they are losing power, but I'm afraid that the exposed wires could cause some severe damage if not turned off."

Shepard looked over to Addams and Lanis. "I take it this isn't the only surgical suite on the starbase right?"

"It is not," Addams answered. "Yes, by all means, shut it down." She put her PADD away in the thigh pocket of her uniform trousers and pulled out a penlight. With a twist, she activated the lamp. She shone light on the damaged equipment and leaned close, sniffing. "I don't smell any acid or other chemical cause." She played the light over the deck in front of the equipment, and went on, "on the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any biological detritus." After a moment, she stepped back. "Most of the CDA and Colonial Office activity which remained active was much further down-station," she mused. "This may not have been opened in quite some time. Can you tell if the damage is recent, Mr. Shepard?"

The Chief Operations officer walked back over to the alcove and scanned the frayed couplings with his tricorder. "Well Doctors, there are two answers to your question. And that answer is yes and no. The fraying is very recent. Like in the last 20 minutes recent. But the tricorder is showing more extensive damage which suggests a passage of time."

Rico closed the tricorder and made his way back over to Addams. "I'll make my way back to the operations center and shutdown this area until we can figure out what's going on."

Lanis too sniffed the alcove and frowned. "I don't see rodent droppings, and I don't smell them," he said, agreeing with Addams, "and the smell from that amount of rodent damage would be overpowering. But that does look like it's been going on a long time, and it doesn't exactly look chemical to me." He stepped away from the alcove and frowned at it. "It doesn't look like deliberate sabotage, either. If I were going to sabotage the power supply, I'd cut these connections here and here," he said, pointing, "and there would be none of this frayed mess. If I wanted it to look like natural wear and tear...This amount of damage is too much."

"Well," Addams said with a sigh, "close it up until station operations can schedule time to repair and replace." She shook her head, and looked at Lanis. "There's a CDA health center on deck 1400. Check with them and see if they're amenable to our using their surgical suite in an emergency situation."

"I'll do that and tell you what they say," Lanis replied. "I'll send out a memo alerting staff that our surgical suites are shut down until further notice." He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "We'll need to send something out over the base newsfeed, also, for Starfleet personnel. Do you want to do that, or shall I?"

"I'll take care of it," Addams answered. "You just work on redirecting patients."

"All right." Lanis picked up the PADD he'd been working on before informing Addams of the power problems and began dancing his fingers over the screen. "I've requested a brief meeting to discuss matters and find out if their surgical suites are experiencing any similar problems. I think this would be best done in person, Ma'am." He glanced at Addams. "Permission to pay the CDA clinic a visit?"

"Yes, yes," Addams said. "Not just permission, but encouragement. Grease the little wheels, and let us be moving before anyone urgently needs attention."

 

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