Modifications

Posted on Wed Jun 25th, 2025 @ 5:00pm by Lieutenant Aidan O'Connor & Lieutenant Ánderijá "Rija" Rautajärvi & Lieutenant Imik S'Niohun & Lieutenant JG James Phoenix & Senior Chief Petty Officer Cassius "Cash" Cullers

2,500 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: Wounds From the Mirror
Location: Main Engineering
Timeline: 6 Hours after "Mission Brief"

The hum of the warp core was a steady presence in the background, but here in the starboard access conduit it was the hiss of coolant regulators and the faint tick-tick of diagnostic tools that filled the space. Rija Rautajärvi lay on his back, half beneath a grated sub-panel, with his legs angled awkwardly to avoid a bundle of EPS feed lines. His uniform tunic was rumpled, one of his sleeves streaked with insulation dust.

"Hand me the isolinear tap, would you?" he asked without looking up.

"From somewhere above and behind, a deep and dry voice replied, "Tap, bypass key, coffee--hell, you want me to write you a poem while I'm at it?"

Rija smirked. "I'm partial to haikus, Cash."

Senior Chief Petty Officer Cash Cullers crouched beside him and slapped the tap into Rija's waiting hand. The grizzled noncom had a lined face, was completely bald--part of his skull having been augmented after a serious injury during the Dominion War. He always seemed to have a look of someone deeply unimpressed.

"Remind me again," Cash said, leaning in to watch the lieutenant splice the plasma flow regulator. "Why are we re-routing half the tertiary EPS manifold through a fake subspace node again?"

"To make us look like a lumbering, half-drunk freighter with shot knees," Rija replied, voice muffled by the panel. "Specifically, a retrofitted Antares-class like the ones that shipped supplies to my planet."

Cash snorted and returned to his own work nearby.

"The subspace modulation profile needs to look sloppy and asymmetric. Convincing enough to fool a long-range scan."

"Convincing enough," Cash echoed, then glanced at the chronometer on his portable diagnostic console. "We've got just under forty hours left, and that's if everything goes smooth. And it never goes smooth in Engineering."

"I know." Rija slid out from under the panel, sitting up and rubbing the back of his neck. He accepted a cloth from Cash, wiping the dust from his palms. "We still have to re-align the deflector array for that low-level distortion scatter, O'Connor's recalibrating the warp plasma signature, and then we need to cross-check with tactical for system drain thresholds."

"Not to mention Tactical wants a say in all this."

Rija blew out his cheeks. "It's going to be close."

"Too close," Cash agreed. Then he clapped a calloused hand to Rija's shoulder. "But you're doing fine, kid. I've seen worse improvisations in peacetime. And O'Connor hasn't yelled at anyone yet. So we've got that going for us."

That drew a chuckle from Rija. "Give him time."

From outside of the access conduit--as if on cue--both men reacted to an expletive with an Irish lilt.

Rija pointed the isolinear tap at Cash. "Run a partial stress test on that secondary buffer node. If it lights up like it did last cycle, we're going to need Imik's team to re-sequence the tactical relay bindings before they overdraw."

Cash nodded from his crouch and set to the task with a grunt.

"I'll log a priority flag," Rija said, already keying it into his data PADD. "With Rel in Sickbay, I need to multitask and get started on the deflector array."

He slotted the last conduit latch into place with a quiet click and rose to his feet in one smooth motion, the joints in his knees protesting after nearly an hour in the cramped access space. He ran a hand through his hair, already dusty again despite the protective wrap he'd worn earlier.

"Right," he said, glancing down at the dimmed panel. "This section's as ready as it's going to be."

With a slight sigh, Rija stepped out from behind the crawlspace and crossed into Engineering. The deck was buzzing with activity--crew moving between consoles, tools and tricorders humming softly. At the central diagnostic hub was Lieutenant Aidan O'Connor, busy at work.

"Lieutenant," he said. "The conduit rework is nearly completed--just watch that EPS load and check with Cash on the stress test."

[Rautajärvi to Lieutenants Phoenix and Imik,] he said, tapping his comm badge. [Please meet me in Deflector Control to begin calibration on the scatter overlay field. Please meet me there at your convenience.]

[Phoenix here. I'm on my way.] Phoenix reported just as he got to his quarters after his rounds. He wasn't bothered by the call. He knew it would happen eventually, and he also knew that it wouldn't take very long. He turned on his heel and made his way to Main Engineering.

Aidan looked up from the console, "Captain has us doing a job that it would take a starbase team a week to do, at least for them to get it right, and all for some secret mission that none of us can talk about. I swear by all that is holy, when we finally get this all done, I'm going to the officer's lounge for pints, maybe even a shot or two of the finer stuff." He wiped the sweat from his brow with a gold rag he kept in his back pocket and then quickly returned it to its keeping place.

"You be careful when you go working with Lt Imik. Fine officer, but she doesn't always understand how things are meant to be done here. She seems to fall back to that default of her people and how they do things. No time for that sort of craic right now" Aidan said with a typical Irish smile but absolute seriousness in his eyes. Suddenly he saw something going on that needed his attention and he quickly walked away, beginning to mumble something in Gaelic that was likely best not translated.

Rija watched O'Connor retreat with the intensity of a man preparing to beat a malfunction into submission. He respected the lieutenant's brilliance--less so the volume--but there was no doubting his grip on the propulsion system's heartbeat. That kind of expertise, even when irritable, was worth its weight in latinum.

He shifted his toolkit against one hip, and stepped into the turbolift. "Deflector Control," he said aloud. The car began to hum beneath his boots, and he took a the brief moment of solitude to check the overlay schematics one more time. Phase tolerances. Coolant bleed. Plasma degradation over time. All of it would need to be just flawed enough to make it seem unintentional.

The lift doors opened, revealing a dimmer corridor, quieter than Engineering. Here, things whispered--not roared.

Console lights blinked in calm sequence. He keyed in his clearance and stepped toward the main field interface, laying out his PADD beside it it. Almost like some ancient ritual. There was a kind of reverence in it, he thought. He didn't worship machines, but he respected their logic.

Rija began initializing the scaffold for the scatter field. The system responded in pulses--green, then amber. He'd need to tune this manually. No surprise there.

He heard the nearby turbolift again but didn't react. He had work to do and no time to complete it.

Still alone for the moment, he returned to work, muttering quietly to himself in his native tongue. "Bargga muinna, áinnas," he breathed, barely a whisper. ("Work with me, please.")

This modification, this deception--they were just wires and mathematics. But what they concealed could kill. And if he did it right, no one would know until it was too late.

Imik appeared and glanced about, she had a rough idea what this was all about. Make the Washington something it wasn't, a trick her people had been doing for years. But she had said nothing in the briefing and now kept quiet until asked, for some reason Federation Star Fleet didn't like it if alien races knew nore than them. "My presence was requested, how may I assist?"

Rija looked up from the field modulation graph. "We're calibrating a low-yield scatter field around the deflector dish," he said. "Enough to throw off long-range pings without drawing suspicion. I've got the scaffold initialized, but we'll need tactical alignment for field bleed and timing."

He gestured toward the auxiliary station. "That console's yours, if you're comfortable with it. Otherwise, I'll patch it through your PADD."

Lieutenant Phoenix entered a short time later with haste. "Apologies for my tardiness. Where do you need me sirs?"

Rija didn't look up right away. He finished adjusting the modulation index, let the display settle into a pale green hum, and only then turned toward Phoenix. "No apology needed," he said. "Take the secondary console--Imik's feeding in tactical overlays from her station. I'll need you to monitor phase bleed as we adjust for interference drift. If it spikes over point-zero-seven, we start getting visible distortions on passive sensors."

He stepped aside carefully, one hand resting lightly on the edge of the console. He didn't feel the need to explain more than was needed. Time was already eating away at their margin, and everyone in the room was trained to make seconds count. "This won't be precise," he added. "It just has to look like no one tried."

"Copy" James said as he approached the console and began monitoring the readouts.

Stepping up to the console, Imik quickly scanned and read the readouts. "I think you will find the scaffold you have will fail on two points, the first is the phase variants. They will not refract those long range scans as you require, they need to be tighter in band width than you have used. The second point is easier to remedy, you will need to create a electronic bulge in front of the deflector dish. This aides the phase variations as they react to sensor probes, I hope you do not take offence at my observations Lieutenant."

Rija didn't bristle. He just nodded, eyes following the readings Imik had just flagged. "No offense taken," he said. "You're right about the band compression--I'd widened it to compensate for the EPS resonance, but that may've overcorrected."

He keyed in a few adjustments, narrowing the modulation arc until it rode just above baseline noise. "Electronic bulge is a good call, too. I was hoping the lateral node scatter would give us enough deflection, but your method's cleaner. And less detectable." He paused, then glanced at Imik. "Appreciate the precision. Let's integrate it."

"My people have done this many times in the past, now we have electronic means to both shield and hide our vessels from our enemies." Imik moved her hands and assisted as her suggestions were put in place, "This should ensure confusion in the enemy vessel, as our vessel appears to be no more than an unarmed freighter."

Rija watched the field shift in response to the modified parameters. The overlay looked much cleaner now, less jagged along the carrier wave. "That's better," he murmured.

He glanced toward Imik. "Your world is near Tholian space, isn't it?"

Suddenly a voice came over the comm, =^=Rija, this is Aidan. Whatever you are doing with the deflector, I am reading a buildup of omicron particles. You have about two minutes before they reach a point that they create feedback into the warpcore and start a breach. =^=

Imik heard the message and began a diagnostic check, "I believe the phase compensator is out of alignment and the resonance between that and our modifications is causing the feedback. We may have a problem keeping the compensator aligned, it does not appear capable of handling the extra load placed upon it."

As she worked, the question of her home world made Imik remember the short war she took part in. "My world was part of Tholian space for three thousand Earth years, after their invasion of our republic. My people wandered the galaxy without a home, but the young decided to take back that which was ours. The Federation and indeed this very vessel helped end the war and the occupation of seven of our systems, much had changed in those three thousand years."

Rija listened to Imik's explanation, the history behind her calm voice, and filed it away--something to be honoured later, when they weren't on a ticking clock. "Hold that thought," he said gently. His hand immediately went for his combadge.

"Rautajärvi to Cullers."

[Go ahead,] came the gravelly reply.

"Kill the secondary EPS junction feeding the deflector--it's in section five-seven-alpha. I need a three-second shutdown, then reroute through six-eight-gamma. It'll give us a pressure buffer long enough to stall the omicron spike."

[You're gambling with sequence lag, Lieutenant,] Cullers warned.

"I know. Do it anyway."

There was a pause followed by a grunt from Cash. [Three seconds. On your mark.]

Rija glanced at the rising curve being displayed on his console. It was far too fast. He ran the numbers again. "Mark."

The panel flickered briefly, then shot-up in a surge. He caught the relay timing just in time, keying in the new pathway before the field could destabilize.

"Bought us maybe a minute," he said. "If we don't find an outlet, the deflector's going to take the full brunt." He turned to Lieutenant Phoenix. "Check the secondary navigational emitter array. If it's clean, we can dump some excess load through it at a low-frequency bleed. Run a fast diagnostic--don't wait for full readouts. Just make sure it won't rupture under stress." He turned to Imik next. "Can your field modifications survive a low-frequency dump? I don't care if it rattles--just if it holds."

Imik just smiled, "Those field modifications as you call them, have survived a direct hit from Tholian weapons. I have simply modified Federation technology to Ojnas specifications. They will not only survive, but it may even incorporate their systems further into the deflector sub systems."

James tapped quickly and a few seconds later the console beeped. "It's clean. It won't rupture if we use it to take off the excess load sir."

Rija blew out his cheeks, letting the air escape slowly. "That's what I call teamwork," he said with a slight smile. He pulled up a layout of the Washington's power grid inlaid over a live reading of omicron particles which were now dropping to baseline levels.

Glancing at Imik, he said, "My planet is on the edge of Federation space. Less than a half light-year from Tholian territory. Any technology that can resist Tholian aggression is technology worth having." Rija tapped his comm badge. "Aidan, how is everyone's blood pressure?"

Aidan responded, =^= Well done lad. I definitely owe you a pint when your shift is up. It appears everything is running as hoped for. Captain ought to be good and happy, especially since we managed to not blow up the ship. =^=

Rija smiled and it was tinged with more than a little relief. "Thanks, Aidan. I'd add that Imik and Phoenix are due pints as well."

The comm closed and Rija was left looking from James to Imik. "Normally, I'd suggest we take a break--it's not like we don't deserve one. But there's always more work to be done and very little time to accomplish it."

 

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