Subject: Grail: "Unexplored Spaces"; "The MK4 Quotient"

<<Main Engineering>>

<<Stardate 47307.18, 9:45>>

Lt. Brennan stood outside of Main Engineering for a brief moment so that

she

could straighten her uniform and run her fingers through her hair again.

Unlike most people, Kait chose not to pull her hair back most of the time.

It was only when she was working intensely on something that she did so i

n

order to get rid of one less distraction.

The doors to Main Engineering opened, and in walked Lt. Brennan.

Lt. Eve Mallory could be seen manning the center console where the cloaki

ng

device was laid out. From behind, Eve Mallory looked like she could be

related to Lt. Brennan. She was focused intensely on some readouts that

the

computer was displaying. The readouts were undefinable, since from a

distance, they were quite a blur. As she moved closer, the readouts beca

me

no clearer. The information was just skimming by. Lt. Brennan could onl

y

assume that the information was of little relevance and that Mallory was

simply looking for a specific thing. She never considered what was a

reality: that Mallory was, indeed, looking at everything.

Brennan chose to watch her, in wonder of how she managed to channel the r

oom

out. After a few minutes of this, she gave up her apathy and was curious

about what exactly what Mallory was doing.

Lt. Brennan walked up to Mallory. She had to stifle a giggle at how

oblivious this woman was to her.

"Excuse me. Ms. Mallory?" Brennan started.

Not even a budge. She was in her own little world.

"Earth to Mallory!" Brennan said in a tone barely below a shout.

Lt. Mallory jerked her head up at this, and asked, not bothering to conce

al

her annoyance, "What?" =20

Lt. Brennan was taken a bit off guard. Kait Brennan decided that Eve

Mallory, from her facial features, looked nothing like any of her relativ

es,

close or distant. But the thought had been interesting earlier.

Recomposing herself, she asked, "I just wanted to ask you if you needed a

ny

help."

Brennan was almost certain that Mallory would insist that she was doing f

ine

on her own, since she seemed to be such a solitary worker, but instead

Mallory smiled at Lt. Brennan and said, "Sure, what ideas do you have?"

Eve was looking for a fresh mind, since none of her simulations were

bringing anything close to positive results. There was nothing that Mall

ory

could do about the power induction problem.

Brennan's mind blanked at Mallory's sudden attention to her. What had sh

e

been thinking?

Then she remembered. Downgrade the cloaking device so that it wouldn't n

eed

so much power. Those field actuators were a big improvement, but they to

ok

most of the extra power. =20

Lt. Brennan proposed this idea to Mallory, but after Mallory ran the

simulation, they soon found that the cloaking device didn't work. It cut

a

necessary connection. So they designed a connector that would simply car

ry

the impulses uninhibited to the rest of the cloaking device. After

perfecting that, the cloaking device ran, but it didn't cloak.

Janice Hargen entered Engineering, and they soon approached her to ask if

they could pick her mind. Hargen agreed with the strange comment, "Why

not, everyone else has."

Brennan was tempted to suggest that she let her brain heal, but such a

remark would likely not be greeted warmly!

They worked on it for hours. Brennan felt she was barely contributing, b

ut

when Hargen brought up the idea of altering the actuators to act as an

impulse amplifier in conjunction with the device's internal generator,

Brennan had to interject an idea of a way to design it. It was at this o

ne

point where the simulation succeeded. Brennan could hardly believe it.

They were about ready to cheer, when after a duration of time, the cloaki

ng

device shut down again, permanently. The generator coils had been damage

d

over time from the transfer of energy.

When this simulation failed, after spending so long developing it, Hargen

gave it up.

"I'm sorry to leave you guys, but I have to oversee the rest of

engineering," she had said.

Brennan tried building more 'insulation' around the generator coils, but

it

muted down the energy transfer and only prolonged the destruction of the

cloaking device. As it was, if they ever used the cloaking device, it wo

uld

only be once. Mallory suggested that they forget using the field actuato

rs

for a purpose so off the mark from what it was intended. They had to fin

d a

way to get more energy into this cloaking device than they had.

The computer was of little help in this matter. Brennan was so tempted t

o

feed raw antimatter into the thing, but the result of that was well known.

Perhaps if they could design a antimatter converter for the cloaking devi

ce

they could feed power into it directly from the warp drives. But the str

ain

that would put on the warp drives, would make them barely able to move pa

st

warp 2 while the device was activated. At least that was what she had

thought. According to the simulation, the warp drives could not run at a

ll.

"This is impossible. How can a little thing like this eat so much power?

"

Brennan only shrugged at Mallory's inquiry.

"Hey, cheer up. The impulse drives are unaffected," Brennan offered.

And, at least the cloaking device finally worked. At least according to

the

simulation. The simulation had the standard power converter, plus a

converter working in conjunction with that took power directly from the w

arp

drive. They had to place an inertial dampening field around the latter

converter so that the power would not travel uncontrolled. But there was

one thing unaccounted for in the simulation. The commands fed into the

actuator were assumed to be able to accept Federation commands.

However, a Romulan device, it could safely be assumed, would only accept

commands written in the Romulan language and format. This, Eve Mallory

assured the 'burned-out' engineer, that she would be able to handle on he

r

own. So Brennan left Mallory alone to deal with the coding problem.

Brennan guarded herself from feeling any satisfaction from their apparent

success. What went well in a simulation, could very well fail in real li

fe.

Brennan worked on some of the repairs to the remaining minor systems. It

occupied her time, and working on the holodeck was almost like being on y

our

own time. Almost being the key word. She had assigned the other engineer

s

to other tasks, leaving this one for herself. No one seemed to suspect a

ny

manipulation in this. It was fun testing the holodecks out once she was

finished, but she never did get to finish a program so it wasn't like i

t was

her own time.

Once the alpha shift was over, Brennan made sure to sign off not a minute

too late. Instead of continuing with the holodecks, even though there we

re

a couple that needed to be finished, she simply put warnings on the contr

ol

consoles in front of the holodecks, telling people not to use this holode

ck

because it was 'out of order'.

Brennan returned to her quarters, and after almost literally dropping dow

n

onto her cot, she quickly fell asleep.

Kaitlyn Brennan, Asst. Chief Engineer, USS Grail

Lynne Baillie, "Chief Engineer", USS Trailblazer

ICQ #6664187, IRC Nick (Undernet)--Kestra