Target Practice
Posted on Fri Nov 27th, 2020 @ 11:05pm by Captain Maia Sterling & Lieutenant Commander Sheena Toran-Blake & Commander Ryan Blake & Lieutenant Commander Havri Belbre & Lieutenant JG Nishu Yalet
Mission:
The Thorion Conundrum Mission Brief
Location: Beyhridhe asteroid field
Timeline: 239411.01
The USS Leto came out of warp just outside of the Beyhridhe Asteroid field. The security chief wanted to test the ships weapons and the captain concurred.
It also gave engineering a chance to check the engines for anomalies. Though Maia didn't expect them to find any adjustments were periodically required.
"Number one, Lets check the Tractor/Pressor beam generators as well". Maia ordered.
"Agreed, but after the weapons test Captain," Sheena said.
"Lt. Brannon, I think now would be a good time to execute a security drill take us to read alert and target some asteroids" The Captain said.
"All hands this is a drill I say again All hands this is a drill."
"Aye Captain". responded Brannon, "Shields up Red Alert. All hands to battle stations. I am scanning targets now for good ones and make sure there are no miners on them. This allows us to test our shields as well too Captain."
"We are at red alert the shields are up..." The captain replied.
"Mr. Blake scan the asteroid field. I don't want to fire if there are miners in there."
Ryan ran a sensor sweep of the asteroid field. "Scan are negative for ships, artificial habitats and lifeforms." He turned to Angela at the Tactical Station. "Clear to proceed with weapons test at your discretion."
"You may indulge yourself Lieutenant". The captain said.
"Helm switch to impulse power and prepare for evasive maneuvers". the Captain ordered.
Sam’s hands tapped over his console like he was using an old typewriter, firing up the impulse engines and navigating toward the asteroid field. The lumps of natural debris ranged in mass from the size of a regular person to that of a Galaxy-class starship.
Moving the Leto closer in at one-quarter impulse, pitching and tilting the ship to avoid the outermost small obstacles, James turned in his seat to Lieutenant Brannon.
“We have a wide selection of asteroids for your destruction needs today. Would you care to look at our menu? We have enormous space boulders, medium-sized intergalactic rocks, and small but impressive cosmic gravel.” The helmsman recited, in an unusual attempt at workplace humour for him.
Lt Brannon looks at 3 medium sizes coming straight towards the ship. She takes aim with the phasers and fires, nailing 2 of them almost dead center as they explode in pieces so small they bounce helplessly off the shields and go around them. She sees an extremely large one off the port beam. "Photon Torpedo's s locked. Firing full spread." and it totally vaporizes into dust. She smiles and looks at Captain Sterling, Looks like weapons are online and calibrated. She activates the deflector beam and pushes another large asteroid of to the starboard side of the Leto causing it to go by without being a threat. She spots a small asteroid. " Captain the small one there actually has some Dilithium crystals on it. May I suggest we pull it into the cargo bay and let Engineering harvest them in case we need some extra ones at a later time. Once the finish we can dump it back into space."
"Make it so Lieutenant Brannon" Maia replied.
LT Brannon smiled, "Will place the asteroid in shuttle bay 3. It is the largest of our cargo bays so they have plenty of room to work." She activated the tractor beam and pulled it into cargo bay 3 and then replied," Asteroid is in cargo bay 3 and we are ready to continue on our way when you wish. Unless you have some other things you wish to try out.
"How much Dilithium is in the asteroid?" The captain asked.
"Approximately 5 Kilo's Captain". Brannon relied.
--Engineering--
"So, just a little target practice, huh?" Jamie said as she duplicated the main viewer and watched the fireworks as a few asteroids got obliterated. "Nothing wrong with stretching our legs a little out here."
She watched the power flow, and saw the software transferring through various plasma transfer conduits, attempting to balance shield power and phaser power.
"Well, since we're not in real combat, we can shift shield strength forward in case of asteroid debris," Jamie said as she redirected the shield emitters to place more power forward. "Though in actual combat, we might want a tracking algorithm to balance shield power towards the enemy's firing arc. Hmm....that actually might save some power overall for phasers...."
She made some notes for discussion with the captain later. As the phasers fired, she noted a few inefficiencies in a few conduits and some of the power management subroutines, thinking about what that would mean in actual combat. "Another place to make some changes," she said to herself, leaning over the pool table in engineering on her elbows, which unknowingly squeezed her endowments together, and let her curtain of red curls fall forward onto the display. She couldn't really cut it, since it grew so fast, so she just left it long.
"And damnit," she said looking through the computer routines that were firing phasers. "I told them to upgrade those stupid things to 24.81 zeta! We're still on 22.96 gamma! Damn bureaucracies. They screw everything up. Mark that down to fix too. Not going to kill us, but in a very particular set of circumstances in combat our phasers could give out or just not have enough power in their recharge cycle to damage the enemy. That's why the fleet ordered upgrades!"
"Impulse engines..." she said, drifting off, as she watch the ship bank and turn during the maneuvers. "I think the venting system needs some EVA work. I can improve our turn radius by about 3.5% with the stuff I learned on the USS Utopia. The reactors need a slight adjustment to the subspace coils...that'll give us another 4.9%..."
Off to the side, two of the engineering officers, Tira Tjillin and Arlen Richards, watched Jamie muttering and cursing about all the things she was going to fix and what was going wrong.
"Is she always mad like that?" Tira asked, with a cute, worried expression on her face.
"She's actually really happy right now," Arlen said with a knowing smile. "I knew her before she became her, and well, this is her element, fixing things. Keeping busy is what she does, and more so now, she loves working the ship, tweaking it, upgrading it. When she'd done we'll be running rings around the Tomcat. Just wait till she gets her hands on a Galaxy or Odyssey Class."
Jamie was now waving her hands about, occasionally smacking the pool table, but all the while making notes on stuff to upgrade or fix.
Nisha was walking amongst the corridor of the Leto wondering what was going on for security. Nisha kept walking on till she saw the nearest turbo lift and headed towards Security moving back and forth till someone else got in then the turbo lift stopped and one other person goy on and nodded to her, and Nisha nodded back. So the 2 rode the lift as Nisha was going to Security to find Lt Brannon, and tapped her com badge,” Lt Brannon this is Ltjg Yalet looking for you sir.” Nisha was off the lift and letting the other person go to where ever they went.
[End]
