Shahr left the meeting with his department head, armed with his first official duty onboard the Valkyrie: coordinate with engineering to find a way to to shield the ship against some subspace distortions. They were about to answer a distress call, and couldn’t risk getting caught in the same problem the civilian vessel was in. Shahr entered the turbolift.

“Engineering.”

He took the moment to recall what he knew about subspace and how it interacted with real space. Under normal circumstances, subspace distortions were just indicative of warp travel. But, he was aware that if they were rough enough, vacuoles could form, which could either let you travel vast distances, or blow up your ship. Not a great risk to run.

Stepping out of the turbolift, Shahr walked a short way down the hallway, entered engineering, and looked about. Glancing at his padd, he saw he was supposed to coordinate with a Lieutenant Morishita. He stopped a passing crewman. “Excuse me, I’m looking for Lieutenant Morishita?” The crewman pointed, and Shahr made his way to her.

“Good morning Lieutenant, I’m Ensign Th’thollar. Shahr is fine, if you’d prefer. I believe we’re working together on this subspace distortion problem.” Shahr paused, extending his hand in the typical human fashion he’d learned on Earth.

Hina bumped her head on the console she had been working under at the sound of another voice. The Valkyrie was being given its first mission and she was making sure everything was in shape. She hadn’t been in on any briefings so she was just keeping busy until someone needed her for something. That was the way she wanted it though, briefings were for department heads and she wasn’t one of those.

She hauled herself out from under the console rubbing her head, finally seeing the Andorian that had addressed her, holding his hand out. He he mentioned a name? She blinked, quickly trying to recall what he had said. Oh right, ‘Ensign Th’thollar’. And then something about subspace distortions.

“Good morning, Ensign Th’thollar.” she greeted in return, shaking his hand. “You said something about subspace distortions?” she asked, expecting the teal collared man to know a bit more than she did at this point.

“I’m more of a photonics specialist, so subspace is a bit outside my wheelhouse, but I understand the science behind its interactions with normal space. My first thought was maybe mapping the distortions and somehow generating an inversion to cancel them out?” Shahr upturned the last part to make it into a question. Even if the lieutenant said yes, Shahr didn’t have the slightest clue how to make that happen. Yet. “If we knew the cause of the distortions, it might help too. What are you thinking, ma’am?”

She paused, holding up a hand.

“First… I’m much to young for “ma’am”. ‘Lieutenant’ is fine. Second… back up for a moment and bring me up to speed. What subspace distortions?” she asked

“Yes lieutenant. Ah, first, we picked up a distress call from some civilian ship. They aren’t answering hails, and there are no life signs that we can detect from here. But they seem to be caught in some sort of subspace distortion field.” Shahr paused a moment to collect his thoughts. “You probably recall a few months ago there was that galaxy-wide opening of random, subspace apertures? The ones that led to a massive labyrinth of tunnels? Well, I believe those have closed, but this may be an echo of that event. I came straight from my department briefing, so I haven’t had a chance to review the fleet reports yet. We can do that together if you’d like.” Shahr gestured to an empty console nearby. ”We can compare sensor logs from other ships to what we’ve collected of this event. If there’s a correlation, that will be of considerable help.”

She nodded, reaching over to the console to bring up whatever data had been sent for her to look at. She brought up the sensor scans, frowning. The Captain wanted them to go in there and rescue a civilian ship? She was going to have to have a talk with Saffiya, this was not what she was promised.

“I see I see…” she said. “Your idea is a good one… but that field is much too dense to be able to cancel out all of them… and they’re quite large distortions.” she commented, bringing up an individual scan of one of them.

“We might need to find a way to modulate the shields to deflect them out of the way as well. Literally push them aside.” she explained.

Shahr rubbed the back of his neck as he read through the sensor data in front of him. “Right, ok. Push them… What about overlapping the shields with some kind of inverse warp bubble? Instead of contracting space around us, we could stretch it out? I think that would give us some breathing room to maneuver, if we can find the right modulation.”

Hina considered for a momented, tapping a finger on the base of the console.

“Yea that should be something we can accomplish.” she agreed.

“I’m glad to hear that at least. I had a small fear that ‘inverse warp bubble’ was a joke some of the engineers were playing on me back at OCS.” Shahr breathed a small sigh of relief. “Another problem we’ll have to deal with is reaction time. I don’t think I can relay sensor data to you fast enough to modulate the shields unless we’re on like, maneuvering thrusters. Maybe we can set up a sensor input directly into the shield modulation?”

“Nope… not a joke… just not always applicable.” she said, smiling.

“No, I probably couldn’t modulate the shields fast enough even if you could relay the data fast enough. So yea we’ll have to tie directly into the sensor readouts and let the computer handle it.” she agreed.

“Ok, cool cool. This sounds good.” Shahr snapped his fingers awkwardly, wondering if an order was coming. This was kind of his first official duty on a Federation starship, and he was about to see how they do business…

Hina tapped her chin.

“Well we’ll need to set up the inverse warp bubble and link the shield modulation to the sensor systems. Then we should be good to go for when we arrive.” she said.

“Right.” Shahr’s stress level dropped once he realized the Lieutenant wasn’t about to order him to perform some maintenance he had no idea how to do. “I, uh, actually I’m pretty sure I can write that subroutine. But, I have no idea how to handle warp bubbles. Unless they’re holographic warp bubbles.” Shahr clapped his mouth shut. Apparently he was a nervous talker? This new job was bringing out an interesting side of him.

Hina raised an eyebrow shrugging.

“I can handle the warp bubble no problem.

“Ok great. I am going to get to work. Also, I’m going to put in a data request for sensor logs regarding the subspace tunneling. Just in case there’s something strange to be found.” Shahr nodded.

“Sounds good… that should be useful.” Hina commented, accessing the warp subsystems from her console.

Shahr took a moment to orient himself to the console layouts here in Engineering, then generated a new script to start building the communication subroutine.

“Did you happen to be told how long we have until all this is needed?” she asked.

Shahr opened his mouth to answer, then realized he didn’t have an answer. “Actually, no. I mean, probably before we reach the civilian ship, but I don’t think we need it ready before then. Unless…” Shahr remembered he wasn’t in the IG anymore. Seemed like he was reminded of this multiple times daily. “How often do the senior officers like to review our work? Or, are we just trusted to have completed the job?”

Hina paused, considering. She didn’t really know how Commander Lorra would be but she knew Saffiya would probably be ok with things as long as they were finished by the time the ship arrived at the location of the distress call.

“So long as we’re ready by the time our solution is needed, that should be fine.” she said, shrugging. She turned her attention back to the console.

Shahr breathed a small sigh of relief. “Ok, that’s nice to hear. I appreciate the tacit trust.” That seemed like the end of the conversation, and he had some work to do. Turning back to the console, he smiled inwardly and started programming.