Beacon Buoys

Posted on Fri Mar 24th, 2023 @ 8:23pm by Lieutenant Commander Steve Ryan

Mission: The World We Never Knew
Location: Deck 7 - Main Engineering

[Engineering]

As the meeting with the commander finished, Steve headed straight towards engineering to get the work on the beacon buoy started. As the door of the engineering department slid open he poked his head in and glanced around. A few officers were busy here and there, checking readings, working on consoles and actually building or fixing stuff.

A blonde ensign showed up “Do you need anything, Lieutenant?” she kindly asked him.

“Yes” Steve nodded “I’ve got orders from Commander Murphy to deploy a couple of beacons at given coordinates. The beacon shall contain a warning message and should be able to withstand quite some time in space” he explained.

The blonde ensign nodded, smiling “I’m ensign Deborah O'donnell” she introduced herself “My turn just finished but I can try and help you with this thing so you can speed things up” she told him gesturing to the man to follow her inside.
Lt. Ryan stepped inside and started following her “Oh, I’m lieutenant Steve Ryan, by the way” he introduced himself while glancing here and there at the place while tailing the blonde officer.

“Glad to meet you, then” Deborah answered “Here we are” she stopped in front of a working bench with some tools on it. “Does this have to do with the current situation?” she asked while recalling from a console the parameters of a standard beacon buoy.

Ryan nodded.

“If you can’t say anything about it, it’s ok” she told him blushing a little “I’m an engineer and am used to asking lots of questions but I reckon superior officers might not be able to disclose everything with us” Deborah explained.

Steve smiled a bit trying to reassure her “Oh no, don’t worry. It’s just that I may not have a complete view of the entire thing myself” he suffocated a laugh “Science department managed to isolate the coordinates where the anomaly sucked us into this parallel reality. Our idea was to deploy a couple of buoys where the anomaly is located so as to warn passing ships and to give them instructions to get out of it in case they suffer our own very same sorts” Ryan explained watching her work “Can I help you?”

Deborah turned slowly towards the man “Do we have a way out?” she asked, her light blue eyes brightening up.
“Ehm, no… not really…well, not yet” he said trying to shield his lack of knowledge on the matter but still trying not to wind down the young female’s enthusiasm. “But we must be prepared to deploy them as we approach those coordinates” he smiled warmly trying to reassure her.

“Hmm, I understand” she turned back towards the bench with a sad expression while reaching for a battery and starting to work on it to analyze its capacity to then assemble it on the first buoy.

Steve felt uncomfortable, he gently closed his hand to her till reaching for her arm to reassure her.
“We’ll get out of this, I’m sure. We already have a couple of ideas and we just need to test them” he explained with a smile.
She smiled, reassured “Thankyou lieutenant, it’s not easy to sit here not knowing what’s going on and having only spot information here and there” she shrugged “not even knowing if those information are confirmed or not” she finished while assembling the battery on the first buoy.

“Let me help you, we’ll be faster in assembling them so you can go off duty as you’re supposed to” Ryan rolled up his sleeves and reached for a few tools laying on the working bench. “We'll need two. They will have to transmit a message…” he stopped thinking about it “...we’ll come up with something. Is it possible to have the message sent only if a ship is within a given radius? if we do so then the battery would last longer and the beacon can live longer”

Ens. O’donnel light-heartedly nodded. “Yes we can, we’ll need to work on sensors and on the programming part of it but it’s doable…let’s get to it”.

Steve smiled and started working on it while chatting a bit with the ensign getting to know each other to kill time while they worked on the buoys.

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Lt. Steve Ryan
Chief Operating Officer - USS Montana

Ens. Deborah O’donnel
Engineering Technician - USS Montana