Captain’s log, April 11th, 2401.

Overnight preparations are complete and Atlantis should be good to begin our search for the missing Cardassian science vessel Rubic. Hopefully, we’ll have a fair bit more luck than the Ta’del did. I’m cautious and concerned about taking Atlantis into the depths of a gas giant, but if any ship in the fleet can pull this off, it’s mine.

On an unrelated note, received a communique from Betazed overnight. Apparently, a cousin wants to get in contact with me at some point. I skimmed it over breakfast and need to sit down and read it properly. I’ve never been to Betazed, never met my mother’s family and now I have a message from one of them.

Think I need to talk to my mother before I respond. I do not, repeat do not, want to get involved in Betazed politics. I’d rather go back and mediate Romulan parliamentary sessions. Or at least small-world parliamentary sessions. Honestly, could do with revisiting Daloon IV.

“Said you wanted to show me something Gabs?” Tikva asked as she emerged from her ready room, a mug of tea nestled in her hands.

“Morning Captain,” Gabrielle Camargo started, but just a little off from her normal chipper self. The exhaustion was present on her face, but enthusiasm for the science before her was propelling her along at this point. “We’ve made a bit more progress with figuring out the atmosphere of Dormak VI. Including below the dilithium-chromate layer we were worried about.”

“Do tell,” Tikva said.

“Was bouncing around the idea last night with a few of the atmospheric scientists and one came up with the idea of dropping probes into the atmosphere and using them to relay each one’s findings.” Gabrielle turned back to the science station and brought up a diagram to illustrate. “The atmosphere is a mess and so laser and radio communications are right out. Subspace is distorted by all that dilithium-chromate so comms and limited, going from light-years to kilometres.”

“Unless you dump a lot of energy into pulsing something like a navigation deflector,” Tikva added, earning a series of quick nods from Gabrielle.

“Yup! But, if you keep the transmission power down, bandwidth widens up, but only to a certain distance. Basically, the louder you are, the further you can shout but the less you can say. Keep it quiet and you can say a lot, but not terribly far.”

“Wait, are we inducing the interference simply by transmitting?” Tikva asked.

“Yes and no. The crystals are energised by the planet’s magnetosphere already, but transmitting does excite them further along their multi-dimensional axis, which sets off a harmonic. They all start singing, so on and so forth, communications become a mess.” Gabrielle had started to gesticulate as she spoke, stopping herself abruptly. “Sorry ma’am, I can be more technical if you want.”

“No need, it all makes sense. The chromate has a peak power, so if you shout loud enough, you can get over it, but only by using all your bandwidth for a single note. Conversely, be quiet, say a lot, but background noise washes you out.” Tikva sipped at her tea to buy herself a moment and let what she just said sink in with Gabrielle. “I keep up with my physics,” she added. “And you gave me all the details I needed Gabs. You’re better than you think at communicating the science.”

“Uh, thank you, ma’am.” The young woman took a moment, then turned back to the display and moved the display along, showing a series of six probes in a chain at various altitudes. Three of them were bunched up in the dilithium-chromate layer, with one below and two above. “We started dropping probes at the start of gamma shift and have been adding a new one whenever we can. Each probe was set to descend then fire up its anti-gravs and ascend slowly when it lost contact with the last probe in the chain and reestablish communications. That d-c layer is about five kilometres thick and we’ve got a probe just above it, in it and just under it. The layers below are lousy with dilithium particulates as well.”

“Still don’t have a bead on the Rubic though?” Tikva asked, answered with a shake of Gabrielle’s head. “What about comms with them?”

“That’s a different matter,” Gabrielle said with a smile. “The last probe is powerful enough to transmit such that the Rubic has heard it and responded, kinda. They merely repeated the pattern we sent, but then haven’t answered when we tried any complex messages using the Cardassian equivalent of Morse code we were sent. I spoke with Commander Velan and we called Ta’del’s engineer. We’re all thinking Rubic is limited in what they can and can’t do. They can do the simple call and response loud enough to be heard, or complex but incredibly short ranged.”

“How short?”

“Thirty, maybe forty kilometres,” Gabrielle answered.

“So right on top of them.” Tikva sipped at her tea again as she thought, studying the admittedly not to scale diagram before her. “Actually, you do have a bead on Rubic. What’s the expected range on that last probe’s subspace comms? In, let’s call it, dumb mode?”

“Dumb mode versus smart mode?” Gabrielle said out loud, then shrugged while nodding her head. “Works for me.” Fingers flew over her console for a moment, bringing up figures for the probe and atmosphere composition as reported back by the very same probe. “From the probe, a sphere measuring two thousand kilometres, terminating early at the d-c layer above it naturally.”

“Naturally,” Tikva agreed.

“I should have seen that,” Gabrielle then said, shaking her head. “That was a rookie mistake.”

“No, that was a sleep-deprived mistake,” Tikva cut in. “Which a fresh set of eyes, a well-rested mind and a cup of tea spotted.”

“Still I –“

“No,” Tikva interrupted. “No self-blaming. You and your team have done an impressive job overnight just getting us this. Call up your relief, then go get some sleep. It’s going to take quite a few hours to sink Atlantis down that far safely anyway and searching a sphere that big with sensors barely better than ordering everyone to look out the windows is going to take time as well.”

Gabrielle looked like she was about to argue, then thought better of it, nodding in agreement after a new heartbeat. “Aye, captain.”

“Again, good job Commander,” Tikva said, then scanned the bridge, eyes settling on the engineering station and Lieutenant Eric Jamieson, who she admittedly hadn’t had much to do with so far. She paced her approach, then cleared her throat to get the young man’s attention. “How we looking, Jamieson?”

“Oh captain, morning,” he answered promptly. “Impulse engines check out; driver coils are ready. We’re just making final preparations with the warp drive before giving the all-clear.”

“Ah, yes, dumping all the drive plasma. That should have been done already though, yes?” the captain asked.

“Yes ma’am, but Commander Velan ordered visual confirmation all the vents are closed. No one wants to be sucking up all those volatiles and have to clean them all out before we can reengage the warp drive.” Jamieson flicked his display over to show the confirmation status of the nacelles. All the vents showed closed, but the last two on either nacelle were outlined in red, indicating that they hadn’t been visually confirmed just yet. “Should be about ten minutes. We’ll beam the crews back inside and we’ll be good to go ma’am.”

“Very good Mr Jamieson, keep me appraised.”

There was nothing to do but wait. Pacing would just put everyone on edge, expecting their captain to be looking over their shoulder at any moment. And so, she settled herself into the centre seat, a padd procured to handle paperwork. Anything to keep her busy and let her people work uninterrupted.

“All done,” Jamieson finally announced, an eternity and only one situational update from task force command later.

“Fantastic!” Tikva announced, launching herself to her feet with a spring in her step. “Lieutenant T’Val, break orbit and begin our descent. Lieutenant Kurtwell,” she turned to face the man at tactical instead of Adelinde, “shields up and configured for atmospheric flight please.”

“Aye ma’am,” came the responses as Atlantis started her dive.

“How long are we going to take to get below that chromate layer and start searching properly?” Tikva asked as the purple and peach clouds of Dormak VI filled the viewscreen, gone was the black of space.

“We could do it in an hour,” T’Val answered immediately. “But Commander Velan’s recommended descent profile takes ten hours. He is still concerned about the repairs made after Deneb.”

“Well let’s not stress our baby girl then Lieutenant,” Tikva said as she sat back down. “Take her down nice and easy.”

Just how much pressure can the hull take?

Well, it’s a spaceship, not a submarine.

But it’s also designed to be shot at. Unfortunately

Yarrr! We be fine!

No. No no no no no.