A little extra help Pt. 2

Posted on Wed Jun 17th, 2015 @ 5:32am by Lieutenant Rianna DiMarco & Lieutenant David Windsor & Ensign Wesley Scott

Mission: The Belle of Bellatrix
Location: Science Lab II
Timeline: 2278.49: 0900hrs.

"It's so clean up here.." DiMarco groused as she walked through the science labs with an oddly lanky, pock marked man trailing after her. Even the air smelled disturbingly sterile and dry. It as a wonder that all of science didn't have continuous nosebleeds. "They need a potted plant or something. Something with soul to break up all the.. the blankitude."

"I don't think that's a word.." Ensign Jeffrey Alteman chuckled as he followed after her. "You keep making up words lately."

"If there's not a word that does what I need, I make a new one.." she told him with a shrug.

He lengthened his already ambling stride to keep pace with the shorter woman, who had the tendency to power walk instead of stroll during work hours. "I believe that there's most certainly a word to fit what you're trying to say, it's just not familiar to you."

"Hey- you say toma-tooooe, I say burny not-fruit. There's Windsor there. I brought the genius, the magnificent, the one and only Jeffrey to help us pop this thing!" Ri called ahead after doing a little showcase shuffle for the older man accompanying her. He grinned sheepishly, but seemed used to her antics.

"I thought I was the genius here," David said, puffing his chest out. "We'll have no choice but to resort to fisticuffs to resolve this," He said, in his most indignant manner.

"This is why women don't talk to you, boss. This is why," Wesley quipped from across the room. "All that jealousy and violence... it's very off putting."

"I believe that using the term 'fisticuffs' automatically reduces your threat level.." Jeffrey sighed, amused, as the group pulled together, placing his elbow on DiMarco's shoulder
so he could lightly lean.

Ri just raised her eyebrow. "Lady troubles, huh? Who'd have thunk. It had to be the salad.."

"I haven't been able to find a lady of ill repute since that night," David replied, walking behind Wesley and smoothly slapping him on the back of the head as he went. "It was damn good fruit salad though," He added with a laugh.

Finally, he gestured toward the red vacuum-looking device on the table between them, "This little gem, ladies and gentlemen, is why we are here. We haven't been able to find any seams, access panels, pressure release valves, air vents, maintenance ports, nothing... it's like it's solid plastic molded around everything. If at all possible, I'd like to avoid breaking the case if that's at all possible, but I'm not entirely sure it is. There's some sort of emitter here toward the top," Windsor said, pointing at a narrow transparent section with what appeared to be a round lens behind it, "that rotates and emits a low grade beam of... I don't know of a better way to say it at this time than agitated radiation that seems to scrub away any foreign residue. How they managed that bit of fine tuning I don't know."

He sighed and crossed his arms, "Any ideas that don't involve hammers?"

Ri took a close look at the device, looking for groove or deformation that might indicate a hidden catch, but as Windsor said, it seemed to be seamless. The surface was so smooth and uniform that she'd have mistaken it for vacuum sealed plastic at first glance. It wasn't, though, though it wasn't a material that she was familiar with either. The wrong texture for aluminum even if it was coated, too strong for plastics, too dull for steel, too rigid for an enamel. She touched it briefly along the side and frowned, noting the slickness that she'd associate with a man-made resin, though it clearly wasn't. As a materials expert, she was clueless at first glance.

"Have you gotten any kind of identification on the material composition? Density? Rigidity? Is it scannable at all?" the engineer began a line of questions that her companion finished with a second string of his thoughts.

Jeffrey laid out a collection of fine tools first, then looked over the red device as well, making thoughtful noises as he looked it over. "Barring the use of micro-manufacturing utilizing a layered threaded screw-in face, I don't see how else this could have been created. Even if it was made for one purpose, one time use, there would be some way to pry into it. Pocket niches or a seam to subvert.."

"I can't scan what's inside, no," David replied, leaning on the edge of the table while Jeffrey set to work. "The composite is some sort of tritanium composite or alloy. It's denser than anything short of hull plating, and very rigid. But still light enough to be carried about easily enough. I'm hoping once we get it open we can analyze the material more and figure out how to make it... but we still can't get it open," He replied with a sigh. "I also can't tell how thick the casing is, so I'm concerned about damaging what's inside if we try to use any sort of cutting laser."

"Understandable," Jeffrey said with a sigh. He turned it over a few more times in search of any telltales, but there weren't any. Even the lip of the inset where the light rested was perfectly level- as if one material simply bled into the other. "Rianna, if you were to try a bore-"

DiMarco shook her head, frowning. She ran her fingers over it again and frowned even deeper. When she thumped a knuckle against the thing, it barely resounded. "Without an idea of the density, you're risking me damaging whatever's inside. Could I pop through that sucker? Oh, you bet that I could. Without breaking all of your fun stuff inside it though? No guarantee, bud. If I knew the metal better- if we could get a scratch on the metal to study it- if we could get a scan then I could start giving you better guesses. Until then it comes down to this: what are you willing to risk with Jeffy and I getting it open? If it's nada, then we're at a standstill right now."

David sighed and nodded, "Standstill it is, then. I can configure the sub-atomic scanners for a deep scan and set it in there for a week or two. Maybe we can get a clearer idea of what we're dealing with if I start looking at this blood thing from a molecular level."

"It really doesn't make sense," Wesley said, shaking his head. "I still say it's hopeless, we either bore a hole in it, or we don't get in it," He told David, not quite grumpily.

David raised a finger at him, "Not until we've exhausted every other option. We all want to capture Gunning's killer, but rushing this could cost us more time, instead of getting us there quicker," He said with a nod.

"I wouldn't suggest more formal stress tests not knowing how thick the shell is," Ri drummed her nails on the exterior now, still not getting a hint in the small noise that answered back. "What if you're thinking too high tech about this? we've got a self-contained construct of some kind. unknown fabrication.. Unknown purpose. Currently it has one action that it commits: it scans.. What is it scanning for? I'm thinking that it's looking for a trigger of some kind. An answering code maybe? A certain presence? Of all of the things that we saw at the crime scene, what was missing? What was there? What wasn't? Maybe instead of scanning it, we need to coax it into revealing it's nature. Let's run some trials.."

Windsor arched an eyebrow, "What's have you got in mind?" He asked with a devious grin.

"Recreate the scene," the engineer suggested with a shrug of her shoulders. "Then let's alter variables. Maybe we can trick it into thinking that its job isn't done yet. So long as it isn't looking for an answering ping of some kind, it might respond to some kind of external stimuli."

"Rianna.." Jeffrey coughed, looking at his department head as if she'd sprouted a second head.

DiMarco set her hands on her hips as she looked over at Alteman. "What? Yeah, I'm rough around the edges- that doesn't mean I can't talk the talk, J. I got this job somehow. Trust me: it wasn't because of my tact."

"I wisely withdraw the unspoken question.." Jeffrey sighed.

"I like her," Wesley said, grinning wildly. "She's got spunk."

(TBC)

--------------------

Lt. David Windsor
Science Chief

Ensign Wesley Scott (PNPC - David)
Science Officer

Lt. Rianna DiMarco
Chief Engineer

Ensign Jeffry Alteman (PNPC - Rianna)
Engineering Officer