Star Trek: Starbase 777

After a bit of a kick Shane managed to kick off the hatch to the lab corridor. He flopped to the group just outside the door to catch his breath. "Need, more, cardio." He said between pants.

After having to crawl through the rather narrow tubes with a whole robo-legged man on his back, the moment he stepped into the science labs felt like a relief - not that he minded Hopps' very close company, Syrax was just glad that they actually made it. "Gods damn," he breathed, flexing his neck left and right until there was a satisfying pop, his hands once again occupied. "Might skip workout tomorrow... Okay, where do we need to go next?"

Shane heard the commotion of another person coming out of the tubes. And began to stand up. "Hey! Do you lot know what the hells going on?" He asked now with his breath caught.

Sweaty. Exhausted. Arms burning. His hair even fluffier than usual. Even being in good shape, this was too much for him. "Electric machines broke, or something like that," he said, trying to gesture to his legs with a tilt of his head, but it wasn't very clear. "Any chairs around here?"

3

Paco was not having that much fun at all, trembling a little bit as his short stacked claustrophobic self emerged out of the very narrow and dimly red-lit jeffery's tubes and onto the comforts of the much larger science labs. "I..I do not know... but I don't like it..." Paco answered Shane whilst he layed flat on the floor for a couple of moments to calm himself."The floors good."

He looked around for a chair - given that this was a lab, surely there was one by a desk. Reaching the closet one in a few long, slightly shaky strides, he maneuvered Hopps to plop him down on the sitting surface, while propping himself off of the chair's back to catch his breath. "Sorry I'm looming, gonna move in a few seconds..." he said, using his now free hand to card it through his long hair. "You guys are okay? Any news or anything?"

"Captain Tewari and Chief Five are stuck in a turbolift a deck below us we need to get the power back on to get them up here." Shane said answering Syrax's question.

"...which turbolift?" Paco asked Shane out of curiosity as he gave himself a few more moments on the floor to finish gathering up his thoughts before he sat up. "Emergency powers still on, that's good... maybe we can try getting some of the equipment running?"

"I like it when you loom!" Hopps said, before he addressed Shane. "Isn't that more of an engineering issue? I can't help with that. I'm just here to check on my animals. Anyone have a really long stick?"

5

2

To be completely honest she wasn't entirely sure just how she ended up in the labs, seeing as she didn't usually touch the jefferies tubes with a ten foot pole if she didn't have to, but she did find them... eventually. Her hair was a tangled mess that she didn't want to deal with right now and her uniform looked decidedly less neat than usual, partially because the collar of her pyjamas was peaking out from under it. She entered the science labs quietly and took a look around to see who was there. "Greetings... Has anyone attempted to check if there's any damages from the sudden power shut off?"

Having clambered up behind Shane, Quinn had ended up in quite the unceremonious pile on the ground next to the tube hatch, their arms now practically burning from the climb. They were used to lifting patients off the ground, not climbing god knows how many decks via a ladder.

"I guess, but its better to at least try anyway if we could get an answer." Paco said to Hopps with a shrug as he finally stood up. "AAH-- Uhh, Hello... I was about to start checking, Sir." He was initially startled by Evoras' sudden arrival, but very glad to see her none the less.

By the looks of it, nothing is really damaged. It's just that nothing is working..

"Nothing really looks damaged their just dead. Considering the UT is offline we should assume emergency power won't hold forever either." Shane said speaking out loud as he began to disassemble a nearby console to hook it into the weapons grid. "I'm going to try and dump energy from the nearest phaser array, if we're where I think we are it should be one of the secondary ones on the mid section of the hull into this console to get the lifts moving."

"Why would the phaser array be online? Emergency power is, like, air and gravity and stuff, right?" Hopps asked. "I wonder how long it'll last..." Having not discovered a big stick, he pushed himself along the walls with a hand. "I'm gonna go check out my enclosures."

He was feeling a bit useless in a science lab full of actually smart people, so as soon as Hopps started moving, he was sure to call out and offer help: "I could push the chair if you need? Unfortunately this place seems to be lacking in long sticks..."

"Sure, thanks." He wasn't really enjoying how much this was beginning to feel like the weeks after the accident, before he got his new legs, and after their turbulent journey all the fun of a hot man carrying him had been thoroughly deflated, and so wasn't a very good distraction from all that.

His expression pinched in concern, he pushed the chair in front of himself for a smoother journey, meanwhile lowering his voice just slightly to talk with the scientist: "Who are we checking on here? Who do you got? I never visit the labs, I only know of my brother's epohhs that he takes care of..."

"The emergency power is running... but it did shut off our PADDs that aren't connected to the power grid directly. We could attempt to use a generator that wasn't running when the power cut out and isn't directly connected to the overall system, but since we don't know what exactly caused this, I can not accurately predict whether those will work. How much power do you need?" Evoras was mentally going though the inventory of the labs trying to find things that might be useful.

"Right now enough to get this turbolift running to this deck and maybe up to medical if we can squeeze enough juice out of it. The phaser array should have enough for that. As for unconnected generators the stations shuttles and fighter craft would probably work, I can't speak for the shuttles but the fighters warp cores are kept cold when their not flying." Shane spoke as he continued re-routing the console to interface with the nearest array.

Determining that everyone seemed to be okay here right now, Quinn decided to make their way back into the tubes after a little break and head to the medical bay. It'd most likely be the worst hit in terms of severe casualties, as well as where people were trying to go to get help.

"Hiya!" A breathless Andorian popped out of a hatch! "We've got an ion storm going on, AND an inversion field has hit. That's why everything's fizzed out." He pushed over a piece of paper with more information written on it. "No clue what that means, sorry."

3

Shane looked over from the console he was performing surgery on. Thank god for the astrophysics classes he took in the academy or none of that would have made sense. Unfortunately while he understood what was said his overall knowledge of science communication was lacking and he couldn't find the words to explain how and ion storm and and inversion field made an EMP. "Thanks kid, do you know what's the story on the rest of the station?"

Kid? "Aw, that's cute. You make me feel young," Terahl chuckled, catching his breath. "Engineering is working on getting the power back on, at least the turbolifts so they can run folks up to Medical. This is the word on Command, but I hear there's stuff breaking out on the Promenade. Civs gettin' restless."

"Do you know if there's more details headed our way?" Evoras asked, not waiting for an answer before she sprung into action and almost rushed from one side of the room to another collecting equipment, she also almost automatically started contemplating the situation out loud potentially confusing everyone with a bunch of science jargon.

3

"This is all I've got, Commander. Sorry." Terahl shrugged, humming as he thought to himself, listening to her science mumbo jumbo. Didn't understand a damn word of it. "My guess is try to figure out a way to, uh, combat the effects of the storm?.. Once you've got that solidified, we can see just what we need to get online, 'n all that."

"Right. Does anyone have anything I can write or rather draw with?" Evoras once again didn't stop to wait for an answer. A few seconds later she returned with a box full of equipment that she placed next to the Lieutenant Commander working on the console. Before turning back to the things she had unceremoniously dumped on a table in the middle of the room for herself to look at. "I can not do the calculations and planning I intend to do in my head, or rather I would rather not have to trust my ability to internally visualise things quite so blindly."

"Ah, here you go, Commander. It's my favorite pen, so don't lose it, okay?" Terahl winked playfully, but Evoras seemed to be in full working mode, so he dropped his silly attitude quickly. "Right then, I'm off. Good luck!" Terahl gave his signature two fingered salute and scurried back into the tubes, leaving behind the piece of paper and pen for however they needed it.

Shane looked at the pile of tools with the giddy excitement of a kid at Christmas. "Thanks commander!" Using the newfound tools he quickened his pace at his 'surgery' he hoped this would work, but with the new information of the inversion field the phasers might be totally without power, not a good situation to be in.

No dice - the only functional systems at the moment were life support. Looks like there'll have to be some other way. (edited)

Evoras raised her eyebrow, but nodded as she took the pen and started rapidly writing down stuff in... surprisingly neat handwriting given both the speed and minuscule size she was writing in. When she looked up she saw that the console was still out cold. "There should be a generator and some fuel for it in the second room down the to the right from here... I can't say with any certainty if it will work but you might as well try.

"On it, Sir." Paco said with a nod as he promptly made his way over to the second room to try to find the generator. "If we kept it around, then it should hopefully work."

As Syrax rolled him around on his wheelie chair, he checked on his Risian Rabbits, his Bolian Bees, his Talaxian Tropical Fish - lots of alliteration. It was the fish he was most worried about. It wasn't an immediate emergency, but they were without heat. The aquarium was probably doing pretty badly. Also... This was probably going to affect the results of his experiments. He'd have to try and spin it somehow. 'Fish were subjected to lower temperatures than usual due to external unexpected circumstances'. "Everyone's in their enclosures, but they're all a bit chilly at the moment. I can't really do anything about it, though. At least room temperature isn't too cold." Until the life support ran out. Then it would get very cold.

"What do you do with all these animals?" he asked, genuinely interested but also, perhaps, in an attempt to distract Hopps from the whole situation. "They're all very cool! Maybe I should visit the labs more often... dunno if I should though..."

"Do you keep Betazoid Butterflies?" Paco asked Hopps out of curiosity as he continued to search for the generator, mostly just as a nice distraction. He also wondered how Short Shorts Man and her cousin are doing, probably better than here in terms of progress.

Since it was a dilithium powered generator, it needed to be cranked to properly heat and use it!

"Oh neat! found it!" Paco happily said as he checked to see it was plugged into anything before he began to crank it. He assumed it must be plugged into something if it were alreaedy set up (edited)

Not plugged into anything, but that can definitely be changed. Just gotta...move it.

"Yeah, as long as I escort you, you should be able to visit! I don't keep any Betaflies, but they are an interesting subject," he replied to both Syrax and Paco. "We should all take turns cranking if we're gonna be using that thing."

"It's not plugged into anything though... things just heavy" Paco said as he continued to crank that starfleet soulja boi.

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"Do you need help moving it?" Syrax perked up, standing up to his full height where he was kind of looming over Hoops again.

"Yeah! Thanks!" *Paco smiled, he was getting kinda tired of cranking it before plugging it in. It was still kinda fun though. *

"Well we can take a little break once we've no longer got anyone trapped in the turbolift. There ought to be a way to make this move them." Evoras walked over to Paco, pushing the paper and pen into the left pocket of her trousers. "We should bring it over there." She gestured with her head towards the console connected to the lift.

"Okay, let's see..." after finding the most optimal Grabbing Points, he squatted down briefly, picking the generator up and lifting it (either alone or with friends, depends), to be moved to the designated place. "I think I am going to sleep for three days in a row after this..." he noted lightly, yet Sy was glad to be alble to help at least somehow. (edited)

"If I can convince your brother(?) to do my paperwork, perhaps I will as well, Lieutenant." Evoras deadpanned with a raised eyebrow. She was joking? Or maybe she wasn't. One way or another she helped carry the generator.

When Syrax loomed, Hopps made a face that kind of looked like the :3 emoji if it was blushing. "I do wanna help with the generator too. My legs aren't working, so I've got nothing else I can do but crank it."

3

Moved! Time to get it plugged in, and get crankin'.

1

How did she manage to make (?) audible? Also oh, shit, this was Saren's boss. Syrax let out a small laugh, "You know how he is, all to willing to help out!" He decided to do a quick little warm up before The Crankening, meanwhile nodding at Hopps, "We can probably take turns with this. Uh, I could go first? Or does someone else want the honor?.."

"Crank that Soulja Boi." Paco quietly said to Syrax, before vibing and somewhat dancing from a safe distance from the generator as the sleepiness began to settle in. MangoBoi needs sleep.

2

"No sleeping now. Look at this." Evoras practically shoved the piece of paper she'd covered in tiny equations in Paco's face. "You can use the waiting time to tell me if any of this is logical or if I just wrote down a bunch of nonsense. This would be a lot easier if I had readings of what's going on or even if I knew when exactly this started and how much time has passed..."

2

"I'll start cranking when you need a rest." Shane said to Syrax after he had spent a moment napping inside the console he had disassembled.

*Paco looked up to Evoras, who probably towered over Paco to some degree, with a very blank expression for a couple of seconds as he tried to process what was being asked of him before briefly looking down to read the paper and going * "...He's dead, Jim."

5

After an exhausting effort all around, the console flickered and sparked to life. (edited)

"Huh!? Whos dead?" Shane jumped up when he heard paco speak, without context he thought one of their number had suddenly bitten the dust.

"I don't speak historical quotes, Lieutenant. Let me know if you find anything inaccurate." Evoras then proceeded to attempt to untangle the hair tie she'd put her hair up with earlier from said hair, before braiding it into something that vaguely resembled some sort of bird's nest.

The turbolift still had the doors pried open as it came up, revealing two officers seated on the floor, seemingly out of commission. A bouncy ball rolled out into the lab.

1

"... Hi?" Five managed in quiet disbelief. "Did you-- is everything working now?" One glance across the labs told them a solid "no".

"We got the lift going thats about it." Shane said as he headed toward the lift to help Five up.

Syrax, who was stretched out on one of the science lab chairs, just lifted up one of his hands in a peace sign. Man was Cranked.

Five leaned heavily on Shane, given that one of their legs were completely shut down. "Captain Tewari can't stand on her own," they nodded to her, "Can't see, either. Sir, we're in the lab!"

The turbolift suddenly moving had caught her very off guard, but the sound of other officers talking was very much welcome. "You got the turbolifts working again?" She called from the back of the lift, before making an attempt to haul herself to her feet.

The turbolift groaned to a halt, and wouldn't budge beyond that. Looks like that's out of the question for the time being.

"Okey...Dokey" Sleepy Paco wasn't wearing glasses, his writer forgot to mention this earlier as Paco quietly read through the paper Evoras gave him.

"Got the lift going is quite optimistic. We have manage to make it move enough so no one's trapped in it anymore is more like it..." Evoras went over to the generator, trying to access what else they might be able to use it for.

"Fives, Captain, are you two doing alright?.." he asked, finding time and energy to be concerned for the two turbolift dwellers. (edited)

"Alright as I can be, Lieutenant," Five managed a weary smile. "My arm and leg are out of sorts, and I'm.. quite lightheaded, but beyond that, I'm okay. It was a surprisingly pleasant time in there."

Shane helped Five stand and gently manoeuvred them out of the lift and into more solid ground in the hallway. "Ion storm and an Inversion wave hit the station at the same time, anything that was turned on or wasn't hardened against an electromagnetic pulse got fried. Even the systems supposed to retain power in a scenario like this like the weapons arrays are down. The station is blind and defenceless right now." Shane said giving Rhea the rundown and a tactical analysis at the same time.

"I'm alright, but my optics and most of my spine is Borg tech. They've been offlined, so I'm... A little useless right now." That was evidenced by the struggle to even stand up, wobbling on the spot and having to lean against the wall of the turbolift. "An ion storm and an inversion wave? What space God did we annoy to warrant that?"

"Lord knows. So you've got to, ah, combat the effects of the storm, right?" Five took a seat and glanced back to Tewari, but was hardly in a state to offer her a hand, and hoped someone would take initiative. "Sorry, my head is splitting open, I might not make too much sense.."

A messenger poked her head through the opening to the tubes! "Medical has a potential fix for the XB's nanoprobes goin' haywire. We can help ya down, if you've got any in-- oh, hi!"

With five safely sitting down he moved back into the turbolift with the intention of getting Rhea out. "Okay Captain, Commander Lawson here, I'm gonna grab you just under your right arm and help you out of the lift."

With Shane helping Tewari, the messenger moved to give Five a hand into the tubes to get them properly treated. "This way, sir!" she called out to Shane.

Five waved awkwardly. "Good luck with everything. I'll try to be of more help when or if I can."

It was good to hear that something was happening to help the other Liberated Borg, but she almost laughed at the thought of her going down one of the Jefferies tubes right now. "Yeah, no; I don't have a death wish I'm afraid. Besides, my nanoprobe count is pretty low, cybernetics are the main issue. I should be fine for a good while. I'll stay here and uh - oversee." Oversee even if she couldn't see, smart! She gave a grin despite the circumstances, always doing what she could to keep up morale, and rattled Shane by the shoulder. "Isn't that right?"

4

"Absolutely sir!" Shane chirped as he gracefully manoeuvred her out of the turbo-lift, for a tall and burly man he was surprisingly graceful on his feet, a side effect of playing rugby for most of his life was good footwork, sadly he still sucked at dancing. "I'd say the best course of action here is to see if we can get some sensors online with our hand crank generator here, partial external sensors should help us take stock of whats happening outside."

1

"There should be some decently comfortable chairs around." Evoras said without looking up from the generator. "I don't disagree. I can not work off of just 'it's an ion storm and an inversion field'.... Correction, I can but not well. If we want any realistic chance of combating the effects rather than just waiting them out we need to know at least some basic information."

Talos would have been fine if Shane had straight up dragged her out of the turbolift, but he was actually pretty graceful about it. "If you can get enough power to route to the short-range sensors, then I say go for it. The more you can learn about whatever it is that's going on out there, the more you can work out how to combat it."

The messenger who'd been here before came back in. "Oops, I forgot to also say that -" they looked down at a piece of torn notebook paper with a frog doodled on the back - "there's a message from the Captain asking if any of you have an estimate for how long this'll last?"

"That would be quite a bit easier to say with literally any additional information. With what I know right now... Theoretically this could be over within the next few seconds or it'll last days, that said if the captain wants me to guess... a few hours until it's completely gone." Evoras stopped herself from sighing and raised an eyebrow instead. "The uncertainty of that statement is... quite large, but you can tell the Captain that we're trying to narrow it down and also potentially do something against the effects, if we can get some of the sensors to work..."

"Yessir!" The messenger tipped their hat and skedaddled off to deliver it.

It took quite a lot of cranking to get the short-range sensors up and running, but they definitely got there in the end! Now to turn it on and see just what's happening... Ionic Storm: a kind of magnetic storm containing ionically charged particles, moving at thousands of kilometers per hour. Ions are atoms that have gained or lost one or more electrons, and have a net electric charge as a result. Inversion fields: Energy fields that block subspace communications and short-range sensors, however, it seems the field has weakened enough to allow for a mere glimpse at what's going on outside. A kaleidoscope of greens and neon violets crackled around the station as the storm raged on outside, and just as quickly as they were online, the sensors shut down.

Maggie popped out of the tubes with a breath as she laid there for a moment before popping up. She looked dead inside, almost zombie like in a messy uniform. She hadn’t had her morning coffee. “Oh! I’m uh, I’m sorry for barging in.” She said as she adjusted her glasses to look at the sensors quickly. “Oh my, that’s not good.”

The problem wasn't really that she didn't know how to theoretically reverse the effects of either or even both of these things, the problem was that they practically didn't have any expandable power. And also no working communications, but mostly no power. The lack of communications was far from optimal, but as far as Evoras was concerned the Ionic storm took priority right now, at least in principle, unless the Inversion field intervened with their capability of combating the Ionic storm.... She'd have tried to record the data coming from the sensors, for the short period that they were working, as well as possible and would, try to let the generator power up a computers well enough that she could potentially run basic analysis and do some calculations. "Lieutenant. If you don't mind..." Evoras gestured to the data they had. "I could definitely use a second opinion."

One of the officers who'd been on duty when everything took place, Serro also took a peek, whistling low. "That's not good," she unhelpfully parroted, though piped down while she waited for Maggie to take a look. (edited)

Maggie nodded as she quickly looked over the data. “The fields are certainly less important, communications and short range sensors aren’t going to be a priority in this situation. The ionic storm is ah, very bad. Especially given the sheer number and speed they are moving, with us a prime target. If we could get a probe working I could see us being able to create a dispersal wave to cancel the effects or something, but that’s off the cuff sir.”

"We could always pass off a message to Engineering and see what they can cook up, but I imagine they're up to their necks trying to keep up support." Serro rubbed the back of her own neck. "A probe seems out of the question.. Is there any way we could get that out? Or, maybe...somehow harness the energy of that field?"

Evoras nodded, she agreed both with Serro's statement as well as the things Maggie had said. "I don't know how long engineering can keep the life support up, but even if they're optimistic we definitely don't want to sit this out, it doesn't look like it will end fast enough..." Tilting her head she considered Serro's idea. "Maybe... it is a storm of electrically charged particles outside, I'm not certain we'll be able to get anything stable enough to actually use, but we certainly can try. If we could reverse some of the machinery leading outside so the charges outside can put power into the system, without completely frying everything of course... We'd have to somehow make sure we don't get any of the high voltage spikes..."

"Like a, a...!" Sero snapped her fingers a few times, searching for the right word. "Space vacuum! Just sucking all the energy in the air out so we can use it for ourselves. Should I shoot a message to Engineering, sir?"

Maggie nodded as she looked to Serro. “Yes I like that! That could work. Almost like a Bussard collector!”

A messenger arrived, and after a glance at the message they carried, said, "This just says progress update with a question mark. I assume Mo wants to know where you're all at?"

Talos had casually sat at one of the workstations for the duration, listening to the scientists do their jobs. Long ago she had worked out that it was best to leave the scientists to it; she didn't have the brains to be one, and a lot of the time the conversation was far beyond her. Regardless, she did her best to keep up with the ideas and weigh in. Maybe being a helmsman had given her at least a bit of an understanding of science and engineering - and perhaps scrutinising the station's schematics for the past few weeks had done some good. She let someone else answer the messenger given that they had a better understanding of what was going on, and for now she opted to contribute before she forgot what she wanted to say. "To send a probe out you'd have to come up with a way to power it - including while it's away from the station - the launch bays, the spacedock doors where it's ejected from... Unless you can scrounge up that much power and keep it going while the probe is outside of the station, I don't think it's viable. But... The idea of a space vacuum using existing technology? That might work. All of the station's technology is already integrated into our own power grid. If we have enough power to spare from the emergency systems then you could reroute it to something like... The shield generators, say. Or - there are different parts of the station that collect energy, right? It'd be sat there existing, but offline. Maybe those could be kickstarted. The station is equipped with a graviton shield that's used to repel kinetic energy... If you could reverse it, maybe it could harness energy instead and become your space vacuum. Everything depends on producing enough power from somewhere, though."

"We can definitely ask engineering if they think they can make that happen..." Evoras looked through the pile of messages to find a piece of paper that still had sufficient place for her to detail their idea in a way that would make sense. When the messenger arrived she looked up raising an eyebrow at him. "Give me a few minutes, I'll come back to you, you can take a seat in the meantime." Then she turned to nod at the Captain, only to remember that she was currently blind. "You're not wrong, Captain. We'd need a, considering our current situation, relatively large amount of energy to kickstart the process if we intend to do it with a system so extensive as the shield generators, which in turn would be the only system both viable by it's functionality and capable of potentially supplying the station with an amount of energy that would make a notable difference." She crossed out the message on one of the messages that she definitely wouldn't need any more and started writing down explanations, equations and small sketches of what she would like for the engineering department to try. "Before we think about how we kickstart this we need to know if we can reasonably safely reverse the shield generators functionality from a engineering point of view. I'm not familiar enough with how they are build and integrated into the station to judge that." Then she turned back to the messenger, taking Mo's message and started to write on that one. 'We managed to get minimal readings of the situation outside and have an idea to return power to the station that we need to run past engineering before I'm able to estimate a chance for its viability.' For good measure she then added a condensed version of what she had written down on the message for engineering, covering the entire backside of the piece of paper in small writing. Then she held out the two messages to the messages. "This one's for engineering and this one's for command. Got it?"

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"Got it!" And with a tip of their hat, the messenger nyoomed away.

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Maggie nodded as she looked over the plan. “I think the concern would be power drain, I’m no engineer but we need to protect the life support systems if possible.”

"So... we're going to try to jumpstart the station with the storm?" Paco chimed in after making he spent a good chunk of waiting time trying to read what Evoras had written in the piece of paper she had handed to him earlier before he approached the CSO to hand the paper back.

"Unless anyone has a better idea... it looks like it. The most critical steps are powering up the shield generator and feeding the energy from the storm into the station's system. The second part is critical because if we make any mistakes we can very easily 'deep fry' the entire system so we have to make sure we calculate the sensitivity to which we can tune the shield generators and what filters we might need correctly. Once we have that figured out we also need to get quite a bit energy from somewhere and I believe we would all prefer if that somewhere was not the emergency power that is currently keeping the life support running." She took the piece of paper back. and began looking through the pile of paper that had begun to pile up on the desk in front of her for all the free space that there was for potentially writing on.

5

"I'm no scientist, but I think it sounds like a plan. At least - it's the most viable thing I've heard here so far." Having been a ship captain, she had done lots of wacky things in her time. She was no stranger to messing around with shields and reversing polarity and what-not to do... Whatever. Get them out of whatever daft scrape they were in this time. "Would it be worth trying to make the trip down to Engineering to work on this together with them? I know that's one heck of a climb, but so is sending a messenger back and forth. Being together in the same room might be easier."

Paco heard the part about going back to climb down the tubes again and just blankly stared at the general direction of where the entrance of the tubes was. The image of climbing back down a seemingly endless narrow tube seems to get tighter and tighter the lower you go along the way was not a pleasant thought for anthropologist to think about at the moment. "H-how about we.. uh.. split the party... y'know, some of you go down a-and Paco stays here to.. uhh... monitor the sensors in case something happens..." (edited)

2

Things seemed to be underway in Science and Engineering to get things fixed. That meant that it was the perfect time for other things to un fix, right? Without warning, a sudden feeling of weightlessness swept over everyone here. Objects began floating. People began floating. It would appear that the gravity had turned off: a sign that the life support system was losing more power.

This was terrible, of course. An alarming sign of things to come. But also, he was mobile! His legs may not work, but he could swim through the air! Kind of. He launched himself off a wall with his hand, sailing over the science gang. "Is this what it feels like to be a space whale?"

1

“AHHHH! WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIEEEEEE! LIFE IS GONEEEEE.” Maggie screamed out loudly as she floated in the air.

1

"I-I have probably said the wrong things!I am sorry!" Paco very quietly said the moment the weightlessness started, addressed both his superiors and to the Prophets as he prayed to himself to not fucking die a floaty death in space.

With her being unable to see it was kind of difficult to tell what was going on, but the feeling like she was floating coupled with the statements from the other officers made her work it out quite quickly. "You two, whoever you are, calm down," she stated in a blend of being both firm and reassuring. "Life support isn't offline. It's a smart system, it's programmed to cut off non-essential things so there's enough power for other things. Oxygen is more important than keeping your feet on the ground, y'know? No fixing a problem when you can't breathe, but you can still fix things while you can float." She still couldn't see anything, but like Hopps, the ability to move again was quite nice.

"We are definitely not all going down to engineering. I have no interest in leaving all the labs unattended, so you may stay here Lieutenant..." Then the gravity stopped working and Evoras frantically grabbed all the calculations on paper and shoved them into her pockets. "Well... looks like no one is going down to engineering... and I don't know Lieutenant, perhaps. Also Lieutenant Roode calm down, floating is not what will kill us, now let's make sure the things that will kill us wont happen. Everyone make sure you hold onto something so you don't break your necks when the gravity comes back on, I don't want to file all those accident reports." Evoras then tried to manoeuvre herself towards the direction of the tubes. "I suppose, I will float down to engineering. Do not destroy the labs while I'm gone. Anyone who wants to come can..."

Maggie took a few deep breaths, remembering the feeling of gravity leaving her feet when her mother and father’s ship went down, she had been saved then, at least. “Right, right right right sorry!” Maggie said as she soon moved to hold onto a console.

"Commander Evoras, I'll stay here with your officers and keep an eye on them." Poor wording. She'd keep an ear on them. "Anyone who's going to engineering, you might as well go now: at least you're not going to have to climb. But this is a sign that we're losing power, so the sooner we sort it all out, the better."

Evoras would have nodded at Rhea, but once again she remembered that that wasn't exactly the optimal form of communication currently. "Thank you Captain. And I suppose, good luck." With that she left the labs.

4

5

"A-aye, Sir!" Paco said as she 'swam'? over to a console and gave some thought on what to do. "While we're here... doing the science time, if we are going to use shields to force the station online, Let's try to get an estimate on what frequency we need to not boom ourselves since we're essentially going to become a giant lightning rod... in space. We probably have more data about the outside than in Engineering at the moment."

"Not to run the risk of sounding completely daft in a room full of some of the station's brightest minds, but how do you go about doing that?" She enquired, looking in Paco's general direction from where she had opted to float on her back in the middle of the air. Her gaze was probably a meter past the officer's head however. The question may or may not have been more to prompt the scientist more than anything; the more they were focused on the work, the less they'd worry about the current situation.

Maggie nodded as she pulled herself down to get to one of the consoles. “If we had better power we could scan. Do we have anything on file we could access?”

Oh what the fuck. He scrambled for one of the consoles, "Nobody float under me, I will never forgive myself if I fall and break your neck! In the meantime, does anyone need my help?"

5

"I'm an Anthropologist, not an engineer! the best thing I could say is probably with the power SCIENCE AND MATH!" Paco said as he thought over both the Captain's question and also Maggie's question. "Ionic storms are pretty commonplace, so looking up other encounters with similar ones could be a good start on at least getting a good estimate, even without scanning the one around us... We also have our own schematics on file, so that could also be useful."

Maggie swore under her breath as she floated around. “Did anyone take physical notes?”

"You know, there is a failsafe for this sort of thing built into most Starfleet installations for this sort of situation. It's called a backup guardian. It operates separately to the normal LCARS and Computer system, and it's always taking note of things like the latest sensor scans and ship positions and such. Only issue is that in this case, everything has gone down, not just the primary system... And normally you'd use a replicator or an old-style printer to spit out the back-up's information, and those are offline right now too." That information was zero percent userful in this scenario. Thank you, Talos.

"Commander Evoras left her notes here, thats a start. Maybe we still have some physical textbooks that could give more information? I'mma try to find those" Paco suggested before he floated away to try to find books. When he heard the captain say something about the backup guardian needing more power to spit things out, a bit of a lightbulb popped up. "We can crank the soulja bo-- I MEAN the generator again! Plug it in to one of the replicators, maybe that'll work?"

Maggie floated around. “I guess! But who knows.” She said as she tried to follow Pacos path. “I’m good with space shit, not power!”

"The power is literally coming from space shit! You got this!" Paco said as he went over to the generator and lifted it up. Probably the only fun bit about less gravity was that you can be super strong. "The only thing I know about space shit, is that people live in space! We both don't know what we're doing, but we got this either way."

"I'm not sure if the backup system is even operational, but if it's gone down too then at best there might be scan readouts from just before everything went down. There might be some information on your this ion storm and inversion field there, although I'm not too sure if it'd be any different to what you got using the short-range sensors and your generator." Talos personally had no idea, but if the science officers thought it could be of some use then she certainly wouldn't object. "And of course you've got this - you're scientists. You wouldn't be in the division if you didn't got this."

Maggie sighed as she tried to swim over to a console and try to see if any scan readouts were around. “Ionic storms are stupid, not as cool as wormholes.” She muttered.

"Okey Dokey! time to pray for back up thingy to turn on... and give us more detailed info to work with hopefully. " Paco said as he began the work of attempting to plug it into whatever might be needed to bring the back up system online, at least long enough to get something useful as he cranked the generator again.

Cranking the generator up felt weird this time due to it being in an anti-gravity situation. The fallback guardian kicked in for a few seconds, spat three pages of old-style paper out of the replicator that it was linked to, and then it all subsequently went offline again.

Maggie floated over quickly and took the paper. “Ah! Gotcha! Someone take it down!”

"WE MADE THE SCIENCE HAPPEN!" Paco celebrated as the paper's printed. "Get it down to engineering!"

7

3

Serro snatched it up with a determined nod. "You've got it!" The Lieutenant stumbled over herself a little bit before dashing off for the tubes.

"Told you you could do it. Congrats on making the science happen, you lot," she said... Once again trying to look in the direction of the officers involved, but ending up with her gaze fixed on a wall behind them instead.

“Oh uh, captain! Do you want me to lead you to somewhere to hold onto so you don’t smash into that wall?” She asked as she doggy paddled over.

"Am I close to a wall?" She asked, having literally no idea. To be honest she was quite content simply floating on her back. It was like being on an inflatable thingimajig at a swimming pool. Hell, she hadn't been swimming in like... A year. Might go some time soon. "I think I'm fine, but if it looks like I'm going to crash into anything then let me know."

Maggie nodded as she doggy paddled over to a nearby pillar and grabbed hold of it like a koala. “Yep! On it!”

"I wanna take the day off..." Paco tiredly said as he floated aimlessly around the labs. "Paco wanna sleep and eat spicy hasperat while watching starfleet holonovels..."

“I need coffee.” She muttered from the safety of the pillar.

4

Out of nowhere the entire station went dark. There was no more emergency lighting, an absent void inside; nothing but the view from the windows displaying the swirl of the combined ion storm and inversion field outside. It was almost peaceful - until suddenly, everything lit up. Any external windows were suddenly illuminated in hues of greens, blues, and purples as the station's shields onlined, inverted, and interacted with the storm. Up and down the station a mini-aurora had formed, giving everyone the view of a truly awe-inspiring, once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon. The aurora was also accompanied by another source of light. A familiar hum suddenly kicked to life; the usual background noise of the station's engines powering on once more. Consoles lit up with a blue 'backup LCARS' screen, monitors began to chime, and both objects and people fell down to the ground as the gravity came back online again. If anyone's cybernetics had been made non-functional they now powered back on - as did any Androids who had been completely oblivious of the situation! For Liberated Borg officers, it was like a surge of energy as nanoprobes started to work at their usual rate and implants worked once more. It would appear that whatever had happened, the station was now shielded from the storm. Somewhere on 777, some rather brilliant minds had fixed things.

2

Maggie screamed as she fell to the ground, before standing up to race towards the captain and catch her if she fell. “I gotcha captain! Coffee can wait!”

Talos did, in fact, fall straight down just like everyone else - but then Maggie caught her. They had come full circle. Earlier on it had been Talos catching someone, now it was someone catching her. She blinked a couple of times, winced, and shielded her eyes. "Damn that's bright... But I won't complain." It was just nice to be able to see again.

Paco's brain was too tired. Paco didn't bother to get up. Paco was just on ground now. Paco and floor are one.

4

3

Maggie took a breath as she caught the captain, before letting her down. “Oh my god my weak little nerd arms..” She muttered as she moved to the replicator and smiled as she got the greatest prize of them all. Coffee. “Sweet victory.”

3

2

He had a glance of that heroic rescue just before he faceplanted into the ground. Should have followed zero-g safety procedures!

5

"HOPPS!" that yell was accompanied by the sound of a 6'8ft dense-boned body crashing down on one of the desks, rolling off of it on a floor, and then scrambling closer to the fallen scientist, "Are you okay??"

1

Evoras entered some time later looking slightly more like she usually did than she had been when she had left. She walked right over to the replicator, replicated herself a tea, downed said tea, replicated herself another tea and then turned to look at the room with a raised eyebrow. "I thought I told all of you to hold onto something... Never mind, is anyone hurt?"

There was no response. only Paco; only floor; only floor Paco. Paco and floor are one. all in a blue t-shirt and short shorts (edited)

Hopps rolled over and gave Syrax a bloody-nosed thumbs up and a grin. "I'm fine!"

Maggie had replicated herself a blankie and was now sleeping at a work station, her coffee not even having been drank, “Zzzzz…” She was snoring, loudly. She should have had that coffee.

"I'm.. gunna... blow up.. da turbolift..." Paco groaned to himself as he went unconsious, the MangoBoi finally getting the rest he deserves.

"Right... Anyone else who's about to fall asleep, just go back to your quarters. Don't blow up the turbolift, we do not need another red alert. If anyone needs anything, I will be around here cleaning up and checking what got damaged for the forseeable future." Evoras began collecting all of the pieces of paper that were still lying around.

"You need a hand?" She asked to Commander Evoras, now able to actually lay eyes on the CSO for the first time. Her appearance matched the one that Talos had conjured up in her head: a very pretty, erudite-looking Vulcan who looked a little less pristine than they normally did, given the wake-up call at stupid o'clock. "The command deck has survived without me so far. I don't mind helping to clean up."

"No." Sleep talky Paco says in response to Evoras. One with floor.

“Mmmm, but this chair is soooo niceeeeeee. Sleepoverrrr.” She mumbled.

"I am not going to decline help, Captain. So if it is no trouble..." Evoras nodded at Talos in gratitude, then she looked down at Paco on the floor and couldn't stop herself from shaking her head. "At least there is no dangerous chemicals in this lab... I'll comm command that the labs are still standing..." The music that was playing sounded vaguely familiar. She had definitely heard that song before, but she couldn't be bothered to figure out where.

"You're bleeding," he said, sounding borderline heartbroken. "Now that things are online and... I think working well, I could replicate you a dermal regenerator? It doesn't look too serious, but kissing it better won't help! "