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warp_corinthJehan turned in his chair, panic seeping into his tone and bewilderment in his eyes.
"Starfleet-- isn't responding, Captain."
He sounded calm, but he was on the edge of anxiety; weren't they all? The spacial anomaly had just... appeared, as if out of nowhere. Anyone's best guess was that it was a black hole... and that was a best-guest, best-situation scenario. Which wasn't saying much for their odds.
Jehan had called in to report their status, and to ask for aid the moment they'd discovered it, but the comm lines were dead. When he was ordered to compensate the frequency (he was already on it, the Captain barely had the words out of his mouth before his fingers were making music against his conn, dancing at speeds that showed he was intimate with the task at hand... but no amount of intimacy with the way it worked was making it work), he'd done his very best. He'd tried every trick he knew, even tried to patch in an echo-recording on a radio frequency, which... admittedly, probably wouldn't reach Starfleet until a week from now, at best.
...He was totally out of options.
"I put our bearings on the radio-echo, as... as a warning." He gave, tone faltering a little as he turned back to his conn. "For any other ships in the area." As it didn't seem they could do much for themselves, at this point, so citing their location for help would be a fruitless effort.
Well... maybe they could still help themselves, and Jehan wasn't giving up. But his part in this was over. There wasn't much more he could do.
"The distortion is messing with all lines of communication. Permission to tap all remaining power into ship-wide communication? So we don't risk fall-out with Engineering."
He passed a look at Courfeyrac, fretting, but nodded his head slightly, to show he had faith in him. Then looked at Enjolras, and waited for his okay.
"Starfleet-- isn't responding, Captain."
He sounded calm, but he was on the edge of anxiety; weren't they all? The spacial anomaly had just... appeared, as if out of nowhere. Anyone's best guess was that it was a black hole... and that was a best-guest, best-situation scenario. Which wasn't saying much for their odds.
Jehan had called in to report their status, and to ask for aid the moment they'd discovered it, but the comm lines were dead. When he was ordered to compensate the frequency (he was already on it, the Captain barely had the words out of his mouth before his fingers were making music against his conn, dancing at speeds that showed he was intimate with the task at hand... but no amount of intimacy with the way it worked was making it work), he'd done his very best. He'd tried every trick he knew, even tried to patch in an echo-recording on a radio frequency, which... admittedly, probably wouldn't reach Starfleet until a week from now, at best.
...He was totally out of options.
"I put our bearings on the radio-echo, as... as a warning." He gave, tone faltering a little as he turned back to his conn. "For any other ships in the area." As it didn't seem they could do much for themselves, at this point, so citing their location for help would be a fruitless effort.
Well... maybe they could still help themselves, and Jehan wasn't giving up. But his part in this was over. There wasn't much more he could do.
"The distortion is messing with all lines of communication. Permission to tap all remaining power into ship-wide communication? So we don't risk fall-out with Engineering."
He passed a look at Courfeyrac, fretting, but nodded his head slightly, to show he had faith in him. Then looked at Enjolras, and waited for his okay.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-12 06:56 pm (UTC)He'd let the Captain know location as soon as he did.
Jehan all but gasped when he heard his name, fingers flattening against his screen a little and eyes warily moving backwards to observe Enjolras, to prepare himself for orders he may not want to hear, possibly couldn't accomplish. So when their eyes locked and Lexi's own gaze softened, he settled a little, in his own heart. He knew what was coming before it did (or hoped) and was out of his seat with a gawky nod before Enjolras had begun to walk towards him.
"Yes, Sir."
He had the fortitude to remember to say that, on his way out. A shadow of words, the way 'they will be all right' was. Well... they just had to be.
He had wanted to smile his thanks at his friend for this leeway, this allowance... but found that his mouth only knew how to fret right now, over two very dear lives.
He loaded himself directly into the turbolift, and was off.
Which was a blessing; if there were any such thing, today, right now; as far as Combeferre observed. Because he had their location up, at long last, gathered by ejecting radiation overloads on other decks and in engineering against nearby planets and stars, and matcing the geography it brought to life against star maps.
35,000 light years away from home.
Warp 10 was 1,721 times the speed of light. Maximum warp would mean 5.4 light years per day. 1971 light years in a year. 18 years. They were 18 years away from home at top speeds, which would be impossible to maintain securely. The nacelle coils and intermix chamber couldn't deal with that kind of plasma output for more than a day, much less eighteen years.
It was not something he would have wanted Prouvaire (or even Marcel...) to hear.
Looking up from his console, he informed:
"Captain. We are 35,000 light years from Federation Space. No other ships in the area. I have uploaded our current Star Chart and locale to your console. Permission to head to engineering?" Due to the mission he was supposed to have been on, he'd been expanding his knowledge of Warp Core technology and experimental plasma science at an overbearing rate over the past few months. "If they're fixing the warp core, I might have a few modifications to suggest." Should he tell the truth, or no? Top secret information, but... only for the next two weeks.
They wouldn't be home by then.
He bowed his head slightly.
"I think I can fit it with experimental apparatus that may allow us to breach Warp 11 or 12, once the ship is stable."
no subject
Date: 2013-11-15 11:43 am (UTC)He stared at the console with a tightened jaw, not wanting to believe what he was looking at, unfamiliar star systems, so far from whence they had come, but the scanners wouldn't lie. They couldn't have…
But it would explain why they weren't able to get through to Starfleet; that signal would take a very long time to make it back home, let alone provide them with a return call. Enjolras cut it immediately, for there was no use wasting the effort and instead putting up a signal flare for who knew what lurked amongst these stars.
Something tugged at him, a ping of déjà vu or nostalgia, even, to pair with the sudden sense of foreboding. It wasn't right -- on more than one level. Enjolras did not believe in coincidences, yet it would be absurd to think that this was supposed to be the ditch in the road, the flat tire; that they had enough provisions on board to last their small crew for at least a few months, if not longer when well-rationed; that this was so close to that first set of stress tests where he and Marcel had met in prep school, which they had both failed to complete the first and second times.
But it had happened once before, the events of which even that test had been fashioned after, so perhaps there was nothing more beyond the superficial similarity to the disappearance of the USS Voyager. It was unlikely, but it wasn't impossible, after all.
Besides, to claim that there was motive behind this mission would be mutiny -- treason, even.
Marcel would not take to that well at all, and Rene would be furious. Perhaps Jehan or Bahorel or even Feuilly would be willing to bat the idea around, but he would require far more proof before he would try such infantile hypotheticals.
Closing the door on those ideas would have to settle his thoughts for now. Hopefully he would not have to dwell upon them again any time soon.
Enjolras looked back up at Combeferre, ready to give the affirmative, when he saw it. He recognized that expression, the following head tilt downward, the shifting of his gaze, the subtle admission; Alexis had grown to identify it over the past few years, had called him out on it on more than one occasion, so he knew there was more to this story than Rene seemed willing to let on.
But now was not the time to be suspicious of the reading habits of his Commander, especially if those extra study sessions would help them get home just a little bit faster. Every moment counted.
Enjolras pulled his own expression from the trace of a friend's curious frown to a professional's sharper one.
"Permission granted, Commander. You have full clearance to do what you must; I trust both your and Lt. Feuilly's judgment on this one."
no subject
Date: 2013-11-15 11:51 am (UTC)For what it was worth, he was grateful that crises came before questioning.