Retrospective

Chief Engineer’s Personal Log
Stardate 915.9

I do not know where to even begin.

Thuln.

My original concerns over what we would find here were without substance. But I suspect that the consequences of the last day will linger for much longer.

The Zenians, their origin, the strange circumstances that left them stranded here, all things that need attention, need investigation, analysis, understanding, but I cannot focus. I keep seeing the ships exploding in space, keep seeing a phaser pointed at me, by someone that I trusted, someone I looked up to.

It’s almost as bad as after the events at the Academy.

Why? Why, and how, could someone willingly do such a thing? I know what anger can drive someone to do, all too well. Is it that? Is that all that separates us from savagery?

 

Ancient cities

Chief Engineer’s Personal Log
Stardate 897.6

70 million years ago. At that time, Vulcan was mostly ocean dominated by amphibians, Earth was covered in shallow seas and dense forests with reptiles being the major animal type, and the original inhabitants of Silik were building towering structures that we could not reproduce today.

What is most unexpected though, is that there is no other trace of the race that once lived there. No remnants of machinery, no debris inside the buildings, no biological remains of any kind. A single, worn statue and the buildings are all that remain. Certainly 70 million years grinds very fine, but of a race that was technologically advanced enough to have built skyscrapers that still stand today, I would have expected there to be some trace, some evidence.

Did they leave Silik? Pack up everything and depart? Did some sudden disaster wipe them out and the passage of time then erased all the evidence?

I wish we could spend more time here. The study of Silik’s past is a lifetime project. Not a couple of days.

A close call

Chief Engineer’s Personal Log
Stardate 891.7

That was a closer call than I would have wanted to experience. I checked the reports from the structural integrity fields, once we were out of the subspace rupture. If we’d been travelling even 0.2 faster there would have been only an expanding debris field stretching approximately 3 light-hours from the boundary to show that a ship had ever been here.

The navigational sensors should have picked up some trace of the rupture, but the sensor logs showed nothing, right up until the point that we hit the edge. There must be some way to detect anomalies like this. Perhaps some of the higher frequencies would reflect off the boundary. It is not something I can test, but we should be able to model the boundary with sufficient accuracy based on the readings we took.

My initial concerns regarding the combined reactor design were confirmed. With the two reactors sharing shielding, containment systems and cooling, a problem with one becomes a problem with both. With a containment failure, as happened when we hit the rupture, the safest approach is to scram both reactors and leave the ship on battery power, rather than scramming the primary and running on auxiliary, as would happen with other engine designs. On paper, emergency power should last 7 days, however I have found that reality seldom agrees with the design documents. I would not like to have to rebuild any major part of the reactor in such a short time.