Needle in a Haystack

Posted on Tue Jan 2nd, 2024 @ 7:41pm by Lieutenant Commander Kevin Lance

Mission: The Avenger
Location: USS Chuck Norris
Timeline: Current

on:
{Deck 2, Emergency Bridge}

Kevin and his assembled team stood over the flight control station on the ship’s Emergency Bridge. The team was much smaller and less experienced than it would have been on a larger ship, composed only of himself, an engineering ensign who doubled as the third watch flight control officer, and an enlisted scientist who could be spared from the ongoing analysis of the debris from the USS Avenger. Still Kevin felt uncomfortable with the two junior crewmember crowded over his shoulder peering at the tiny navigational displace and not for the first team he longed for his days aboard larger ships with dedicated facilities for Flight Control and Tactical.

“The stellar emissions from Rolor will compromise our sensor reading, making it difficult to differentiate between the Avenger’s debris and other heavy elements in the ejection,“ the science crewmember stated, more to demonstrate his knowledge rather than provide any meaningful contribution.

Kevin nodded sagely to acknowledge the crewman’s efforts, “Both the derogated sensors and the interference of naturally occurring matter will make long range scans ineffectual. We will need to rely on detailed short range scans.”

“That will take forever,” the female ensign objected, “The edge of the nebula is a little over one light year from Rolor. That means the total volume of the nebula is,” she typed on her PADD, ”only a little less than 4.2 light years!”

“Then we are lucky that it is only a planetary nebula and not a diffused one,” Kevin replied as he programmed navigational plots into the computer. “Crewmen Perez, what was the recorded velocity and course of the fragment that was discovered by the Faraday?”

Perez consulted his PADD and read of the requested information which Kevin also programmed into the computer. The velocity of the fragment was such that he would have expected it to be much further away from Rolor had it been travelling at the same velocity for over 220 years. Something must have imparted additional velocity recently.

Satisfied with the programming, Kevin ran the computer simulation to play backwards the path that the debris would have travelled had if been travelling the same velocity and been affected by the gravitational pull from Rolor for 223 years. As expected, the projected origin made little sense.
Without knowing the changes to velocity and direction over the past two centuries, the search would have to use the location where the fragment was discovered and work back from there. Kevin, with the assistance to the two crewmembers, programmed flight coordinates into the ship’s computer and when he was satisfied, he dismissed the team and headed to meet with the Captain.

{Captain’s Ready Room}

“We are proceeding under the assumption that the fragment discovered by the Faraday is at the leading edge of any debris field and start our search pattern at that point,” Kevin explained to the Captain, “We recommend employing an expanding spiral technique that will follow the path that the debris travelled most recently. As we find additional debris, we will refine the search pattern that will reduce the total search time required.”

“How long do you project it will take to complete the search pattern?” the Captain asked.

“Eight point four days at most assuming we are unlucky and don’t find any additional debris,” Kevin replied, “The task is, of course, complicated by the nebula interfering with our sensors. We will essentially need to sift through the short range sensor readings to find heavy elements that would not be a by-product of the star’s end of life. Anything higher up the periodic table than iron.

:off

Lieutenant Kevin Lance
Chief Flight Control Officer
USS Chuck Norris