Here Goes Nothing

Posted on Mon May 30th, 2011 @ 11:05am by Ensign Matthew Lessly & Lieutenant JG Kell Gibson

Mission: Episode 2.2 - "Resistance"
Location: Armory, USS Pandora
Timeline: MD-03, 1317 hours

ON: [[Armory, USS Pandora, MD-03, 1317 hours]]

Matt walked along the corridor leading to the Pandora's armory. Having recalibrated the sensors, he had since turned to trying to figure a way past the Borg's defenses. There were vast libraries of research done on the subject, but with the limited contact since the return of Voyager, no one had really had the opportunity to put any of their theories into practice. It was Matt's hope that he would be able to simulate at least some of the Borgs defenses in the Pandora's armory simulator.

Walking into the room that housed the majority of the ships handheld weaponry, Matt began looking through the weapons lockers for what he wanted to test first.

"You know, generally only Security officers fiddle with the weapons in the Armoury." Kell said aloud from his spot in the corner. He was working on his rifle, a force of habit he had picked up while in the Marines. Though it didnt really need to be done while he was working as a security officer, it made him feel good.

Matt snapped his head at the sound of another's voice. He had been concentrating on his thoughts so hard that he hadn't noticed the security officer in the far corner of the room. "Oh... uh..." he started, "I was hoping to test some possible modifications for use against the Borg."

"Agh, now that is a tough one." Kell replied raking through his head to find what he knew about the Borg. "To the best of my knowledge, Modulation chips are the best bet, but even they done last for long. I have heard things about Projectile Weapons being fairly effective against them, but My rifle is the only Projectile rifle on the ship." He slapped the chasing back on the rifle and set it down. "What exactly were you thinking."

Matt's face scrunched slightly. "I'm not entirely sure, to be honest." he replied. "Like you said, modulation and projectiles have proved effective, but modulation only lasts so long and even if the captain were to approve projectile weapon replication, evidence seems to point to the idea that we'd need far more projectiles than even the captain can approve in order to take out even a small number of drones."

"Never been confirmed how many projectile shots it takes to kill a drone, so we dont know for sure." Kell replied as he opened his personal locker and grabbed some magazines. The one downside to a projectile rifle. "And depending on the Diameter of the actual bullet, it could take one, or 2 dozen really."

"Depending on the size..." Matt reiterated. "In any case, since we're probably not going to be replicating any cannon balls anytime soon, would you mind helping me set up the simulator?"

"No, not at all." Kell said putting the magazines back in his locker and then putting his rifle there aswell. Making sure it was closed and locked he moved over to the science officer. "Shall we go to the Holodeck, or do you want to just use the computer here?"

"The holodeck would give us a little more interactivity." Matt thought out loud. "I just came down here because I don't know what all we have available. If you have a weapon's inventory, then we can take it to the holodeck and work from there."

"Hahaha, your asking a Marine if he knows what guns his ship has?" Kell replied laughing, It was kind of a funny question to ask.

Matt stared at the man briefly before deciding he wasn't necessarily laughing directly at him. "I'll take that as a yes." he responded plainly. "Then after you." he said, motioning towards the door.

Kell just laughed a bit more and headed out the door.

[[Holodeck 1]]

"Computer, pull up the file 'Borg Incursion Simulator.' Access a single drone's file and activate it in experimentation mode." Matt said to the computer console embedded in the holodeck arch.

"Okay... create a Type-IIIb rifle." Kell replied as a Drone appeared in the middle of the room. "Most typically used rifle, and the one we have the most of in our Armoury."

Matt nodded and input the request into the holodeck controls. As a recreation of the rifle appeared on a stand across from the drone, he walked over to the drone and stared at it. After a moment of thinking, he nodded and walked back to where Kell was standing. "How high of a yield do these normally produce?"

"Ohh... about 1.21 Gigawatts, something like that." Kell replied walking over to pick up the rifle. Shouldering it, he made sure the rifle was at maximum and that the auto modulator was at full. "Make sure the computer records the amount of hits it takes till it adepts."

Matt nodded and began taking notes on a PADD. He had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen on this first trial, but he took them anyway for records. As Kell fired for the seventh time, the drone recreation began absorbing the shots.

"Seven shots..." Kell said aloud, more to himself then to Matt, who he was sure had recorded it.

"Mhmm." Matt said, making a few notes. "Now, try increasing the output to 1.3, there might by a limitation to how much the Borg can absorb."

"Maybe..." Kell said taking the rifle down from his shoulder and started fiddling with power settings. "Max I will be able to get from the rifle is 1.5, anything higher will but it into overload."

Matt shook his head slightly. If this was going to work, they'd likely need more than 1.5 gigawatts, but it was worth a shot anyway. "Let's step it up slowly, just to be safe."

"What, you dont trust the weapons expert?" Kell asked in a hurt voice with a faux frown on. He set the rifle to 1.35 and shouldered the rifle again. "Okay, set to 1.35."

Matt turned towards the drone and rolled his eyes. He wasn't really surprised by Kell's response, but at least he wasn't going full on to 1.5. "Go ahead." he said, watching the energy absorption rates carefully.

Kell was able to take 9 shots before the Drone adapted this time. Not really much of an improvement, but he would take it. "Okay, well, 1.5 is next, just give me a second. I suspect we will get a maximum of 15 shots if we are lucky."

Matt nodded and input some calculations to the PADD. "I've got another idea we can look at after we test 1.5."

Kell finished setting the rifles output to 1.5 and shouldered his rifle. He let loose a total of 13 shots before that dreaded shield appeared. "Well... 13 shots. And thats putting the rifle into an almost overload stat."

"Hmm." Matt said, entering the count into the PADD before setting it down. "May I?" he asked, reaching a hand out towards the rifle.

"Yeah, sure." Kell replied handing him the rifle. He was interested to see what a Science nerd could do with one of the rifles.

Taking a hold of the rifle, Matt first started by removing the power pack. He then moved to the front of the rifle and opened the pre-fire chamber assembly. "Now, let's see..." he said, taking a look around the insides. "Ah, there it is." he said to himself.

He took out the phase discriminator. "Computer, one multi-tool." he ordered. After the device appeared before him, he began tweaking the discriminator. In a few minutes, he nodded and proceeded to put the rifle back together. "There we go." he said, placing the rifle back on the stand.

"First, What did you do?" Kell asked as he looked over the rifle, but didnt touch it. "Second, should we be pulling the trigger, or firing from behind a wall or something?"

"I modified the phase discriminator so it will alternate the flow of raw energy into the emitter crystal." Matt responded. "I think we should fire it remotely for now. The safeties on the discriminators tend to be a little touchy so I had to overwrite them, it's possible I overdid it."

"Hmm... It may work... But its got just of a good chance of completely blowing up in our faces." Kell said, getting the computer to create a miniature blast shield.

"Hopefully that won't happen." Matt responded, getting behind the shield. Glancing at the man beside him, he shrugged and said, "Here goes nothing."

OFF:

A Post by:

Lieutenant (JG) Kell Gibbson
Weapons Specialist
USS Pandora

&

Ensign Matthew Lessly
Chief Science Officer
USS Pandora