Emperor's New Clothes

Posted on Sun Aug 28, 2016 @ 5:58pm by Master Chief Petty Officer Thomas Barnes & Lieutenant Lukiz Smyth
Edited on on Sun Aug 28, 2016 @ 6:12pm

Mission: An Orion to Die For
Location: Main Engineering
Timeline: MD 1 || 1700 hours

After the mission briefing, Tom didn't waste any time getting back to his office to take a look at the uniform patterns the Captain had handed to him. It was an interesting concept, and seemed to be not much thicker or heavier than the uniform he currently wore, probably thanks to the intriguing combination of the silk from a Darwin Bark spider and Graphene.

Looking the source material, Tom read aloud, "The drag line of an orb-weaving spider, while weighing far less, can be three times more flexible than Kevlar and five times stronger than steel. Contrary to its size and weight, spider silk is naturally capable of absorbing a huge amount of energy.

"Dragline silk from both Caerostris webs and forcibly pulled silk, exhibits an extraordinary combination of high tensile strength and elasticity previously unknown for spider silk. The toughness of forcibly silked fibers averages 350 Megajoules per meter cubed, with some samples reaching 400 Megajoules per meter cubed. Thus, C. darwini silk is more than twice tougher than any previously described silk, and over 10 times better than ancient Earth's Kevlar. Caerostris capture spiral silk is similarly exceptionally tough.

"By bonding the graphene on the dragline silk of synthetic dragline silk of the Darwin Bark Spider, this allowed researchers to create a supercapacitor cloth which was both resistant to physical and was able to store energy, thus able to withstand even the highest settings of a phaser for a maximum of sixteen seconds.

"Still in the test stages, a select group of starships, the USS Triumphant among them, have been sent the replicator codes via courier so that all personnel would effectively have uniforms which were both resistant to physical and energy-based attacks for a short time and opened a new area in armor for Starfleet personnel which is both lighter and far more flexible than current standards."

Tom smiled and hummed an interesting note as he read further into the details. Already, he knew he was going to need a lot of power and replicator time to create thousands of uniforms, not to mention the raw resources he'd need. To complete this task, he was going to have to enlist the help of the Chief Engineer. He picked up a spare PADD, copied the information to it, and left the Operations office bound for Engineering.

Smyth was busy in the massive engineering facility, looking over the shoulder of one of his crewmen who was working on a diagnostic of the power transfer systems. Any error would make the change over from warp drive to slipstream impossible. So far everything checked out, in fact, all the ships systems were checking out fine. The team he had inherited were well drilled and worked their socks off. He was incredibly impressed by them.

The Senior Chief entered Engineering and was momentarily taken aback by its size. He'd tinkered with a few things over the years, mainly the transporters, but he was nowhere near qualified to work on a warp core. Tom could still appreciate the beauty and sheer magnificence of the room. But, that was not why he was here. He started looking around the room, and in a few moments, he'd spotted Lieutenant Smyth. "Lieutenant?" Tom called out, approaching the engineer.

Lukiz glanced over at the voice and identified him as the Chief of Operations. "Chief, what brings you down here?"

"Need a little help, Lieutenant," Tom said, sticking with rank until told otherwise. He handed over a PADD with the schematics on the new uniforms. "I've got to create thousands of these uniforms. It's going to take a few days, which is nothing I can't handle, but I'm going to need some resources I simply can't procure without cooperation."

"What exactly are we talking about here?" The Trill queried. He didn't need to look at the schematics as he had already acquired them but he needed to know what the Chief was requesting.

"For starters," Tom said with a deep breath, "dedicated time with the industrial replicators. That's going to mean several departments, including Engineering to go without replicator ability for a while. Is that something you can handle for now?"

"These uniforms are a mission priority so they jump to the head of the queue," Lukiz countered, "the replicators are yours until something more important comes up."

He nodded. That was a pretty simple and expected answer. Now, for the fun one. "This is also going to exhaust our supply of graphene. We use graphene in quite a bit of conduits, relays, PADDs, and more. I'm going to have to requisition more as soon as I can, but I need to know if you have any immediate or foreseeable needs that I need to consider. I don't want to leave engineering in a lurch."

This indeed posed a problem. Graphemes could be synthesised through the replicators, but just like with the uniforms, it would take time. "Catch twenty-two," Lukiz responded. "We have to hope that we don't get into a situation where we need to replace any of the components that require large amounts of the stuff. If we do, I'll have to earn my reputation as a miracle worker and improvise," he concluded with a smirk.

Tom chuckled. He was extremely thankful with the Lieutenant's cooperation. "Thank you," he verbalized to the Chief Engineer. "Here I was hoping I'd have to barter or trade to get things done. If there's anything I can do for you, let me know."

"I'm fairly easy going," the Trill smiled. His time on the Nogura and Scorpio had taught him to be as supportive as possible and render whatever assistance others needed. Without Engineering, the ship would fall apart, but Engineering had to support everyone else too. "Anything else you can think of?"

"Not at the moment, Lieutenant," Tom replied. "Thanks again."

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