Thani does a double take, and then again, swallows hard, sweat beads on her forehead. Then looks at the nearest commanding officer still present,
This message was last edited by the GM at 05:37, Mon 17 Feb 2020.

In reply to Thani sh'Elliaph (msg # 31):

Jerking his head up from his task to comprehend what was just said, speaking in Romulan he exclaims "Fuck!"  Getting up from his station not sure if the computer will allow for the turbo lift to work, he heads for the ladders and slides down it.

"Chief Laurant, kill the core now!  We're heading towards a black hole and have about 40 seconds until the event horizon!"
This message was last edited by the player at 05:54, Mon 17 Feb 2020.

No sooner had they said that, the ship lurched almost unnaturally... indicating they had dropped out of warp.

Then power cycled from warpcore to auxilary power, causing a flux  in power as it quickly regulated the shift in level and managed the adjust surge of power.

In reply to Jessica Laurent (msg # 33):

The adrenalin was still flowing though his veins when he realized that he hadn’t taken a breath in the last few seconds.  There was no smoke, no debris, nothing to suggest there was a crisis less a minute ago.  Not even a tool had fallen to the floor. Slowly the realization that they were not going to added to the cosmic particles in the universe.  Regaining his composure as he looked around for any visible damage.  Turing to the betazoid he stated, “Well done, Chief Laurent.  That was… a bit anti-climactic.”  Looking back at the access ladder, “I need to get back to shutting down the computer core.  Take care of what you need to down here.  If you have spare personnel, send them to help take the computer core down. Also send a messenger up to the bridge and let commander Malko know our status.”

He turned to head back up the ladder.  Stopping at the first rung, he turned back to the engineer, “By the way, I’m Lt. Commander Deckar Geary. Nice to meet you”  He gave her a little wave and headed up to deck 4.

In reply to Decker Geary (msg # 34):

Istala could feel the warp bubble begin to collapse and steadied herself for the lurch that would follow, despite the inertial dampeners working in overdrive to keep them from feeling the deceleration more than they did.  She checked the helm.  "We're out of warp, sir," she reported to Malko, feeling a bit odd for him to be sitting in the chair behind her as they had arranged different shifts to avoid just this situation.  "At half impulse, though, and still headed in whatever direction we're in."

She glanced to Vanna at Ops.  "Get sensors back yet?  Can you tell where we are?"

Vanna pales as she stares at the console and then looks up at Malko and Istala. "We're.....We're on a descending orbit around a stellar-mass black hole.  ETA to the event horizon is seven hours, we're at half impulse.  And of course the console just erased all that information, what is going on with these systems today?" She stammers out her mind panicking as she realizes with the ship resisting them they might very well fall into the black hole.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:44, Wed 19 Feb 2020.

Thani is happy they're not dead. She does some quick calculations, and then leaps up to rush to the hatch Geary had dropped down. Poking her head over and seeing him, "Commander, immediate crisis averted, but we only have 7 hours to regain control before we enter the event horizon. We need to get the Impulse engines and navigation working correctly to escape the gravitational pull."

For some reason, it miffed Jessica to have LT Commander Deckar give orders to her while he was in engineering... Feeling this also felt foreign to the young engineer, almost even shocking herself at realizing it. Likely, her mouth was even slightly agap and her gaze would drift down as it subconsciously showed she was thinking.

The convolution of emotions quickly flashed on her face as she turned towards the exiting officer. However, her sense of duty quickly drew her back to the situation at hand and she snapped herself back into a neutral expression.

Just as she seemed to be about to speak, Thani gave an estimate of the situation, "I appreciate the praise, the situation is now stable here and both my command and presence is needed in main engineering at this time. As our science officer has said, it's not over yet." Drawing a smile, she nodded to the two while stepping closer to them. "I think we are all headed to the same location now," then turning to address the warp core room in a more stern voice "Since Communications are strained, I am putting Lieutenant Blatt in charge of this room, unless I or someone of higher rank comes in here and gives you an order then you are to look to him with the same authority of chief engineer."

Then, turning to Officer Blatt and quickly switching to a more respecting tone "please send whoever you don't need to main engineering, so that we can distribute them across the ship for a system reset. Also, manage the reset of the warp cores systems."

If Thani and Decker were still at the Jeffries tube leading to main engineering, she would step up behind them to follow while maintaining a respectful smile to regard them with. As the situation calmed, she was starting to feel her sense of social concern and anxiety slowly start to creep in, no longer overpowered by stress and adrenaline... she could already tell she was mentally fussing and fidgeting over the right thing to say and this likely was starting to show a little in her demeanor as concern crept into her face as well. Not an 'omg we are going to die' concern, but a distinct 'did i say the right thing' concern.

OOC: fixed some syntax, ignore the edit.
This message was last edited by the player at 05:49, Wed 19 Feb 2020.

As he was climbing the ladder he looked up at the Andorian, "Understood commander.  Do you have any idea how long it will take us to bring the computer core down and back up and in working order again, making sure this virus or whatever has been cleaned from the system?"

Hearing a noise beneath him, he spots the engineer following him up.  Continuing up the tube, "Chief, if need be, how quick can we get auxiliary control back up and isolated from the rest of the computer system?" He reached the top of the ladder and stepped aside to allow her access to Deck 4, offering his hand as she emerged.
This message was last edited by the player at 05:52, Wed 19 Feb 2020.

Before Malko's speech: 

Receiving a revelation from Vana's whispers, Malko blinked, then blinked again.  He shook his head and responded in similar fashion.

  Despite the announcement about the Black Hole, Malko gave a fierce nod. "Excellent. I will co mend engineering when the funeral ends."

  He made a gesture upwards to vaguely indicate the Vulcan dirge.

  He turned to Ops.  "Ms. Keyes.  The comms systems aren't of any use right now and need to go off line before they can be restored.  Let's have that ready for the engineering team when they get to it.  Get ship communications shut down."

  Then he stepped up to his fellow trill--the petite and lovely pilot.  At a glance, the touch on the shoulder wasn't different from the sincere gestured he'd offered many others today, but there was deep tenderness in his eyes when they met hers.  "Istala," it was also telling that he - without quite thinking about it -used the pilot's persona name.  "There should be a manual control for the maneuver thrusters down in the shuttle bay I believe.  See if you can get automated control for those disconnected, then use manual control to fire the port maneuvering thrusters.  Keep it going in any way you can.  We should have computer control back long before we reach the event horizon, but let's see if we can adjust course to pass around it."
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:10, Thu 20 Feb 2020.

Cut loose from visiting the Sewards, Jason turned and made his way back to Engineering. Paying little mind to the rest he made a beeline to Naoko.

"What is the situation," he asked but let the woman work. Glancing around, he noticed the frantic activity going on and he frowned, leaning closer. "Hey, what's going on? Why tha' rushin' 'bout? He had the sinking feeling that something was off just from the hurried pace going on around him.

Jess glanced up to better hear the question but when his butt immediately came into view, she glanced back down at the bars. "generally, it shouldn't take more than a half an hour, definitely no more than an hour, to shut everything down and make sure its all down. Another half an hour for the extra running around, it's not hard to flip some switches but we have a smaller crew and the lifts are a risk right now. Maybe another hour to scrub the code, and half an hour to get it all back on. We can probably focus on sensors and navigations to get those fully cleaned, up, and running without an hour and a half to two hours from now and then do the rest of the ship's systems after. Just rough estimates, it only took me most of a shift to do a thorough check of most of the ship by myself and we do have a competent crew."

Walking back to his terminal, he made sure the logs had finished downloading, he sat down and started to download more files.

"Commander Laurent, since you are more familiar with the ship, would you kindly direct us as to which computers to bring up first?"

Then looking at the Andorian, "And commander sh'Elliaph, please keep tabs of the event horizon to the best of your capabilities with the instruments at hand."

He went back to work on the computer systems and looked back up.

"Alos, Commander sh'Elliaph, start thinking about sending a couple of probes out while we have this chance.  If the torpedo bays are not functioning, we may need to use a shuttle to launch them."  Turning back to his screen he added a little jest, "Or we could just have Roscoe and Jenner from maintenance just give them the ol' heave-oh out the shuttle bay door."

Thani could only think of the adage, garbage in, garbage out. The virus was feeding them garbage, she wasn't sure if there would be more she could glean till they cut the virus out of the systems.

Responding to Geary, "Commander, do we have anyone to run or relay messages to the XO? The bridge might not be aware of the situation with the comms down. I'll prep the probes for launch but I'll need those systems clean otherwise we'll be be getting false data from the virus."

She works to get probes set up.

Jessica's eyes furrowed in thought as she moved into engineering, listening to her fellow Lt Commanders "its a computer code, perhaps we can decrypt what its feeding us to get whats real?"

Turning to the room and speaking sternly, "I am acting chief Engineer Laurant, taking command of the room. Who has been in charge? I need a status report." trying to make it seem like an afterthought, "Also who has good endurance."

In reply to Jessica Laurent (msg # 46):

Working on the terminal, he didn't even bother to look up as he responded, "I guess that would be me.  Was in the process of saving the logs before shutting down the core when Commander sh'Elliaph discovered the black hole." Then he tured to face the betazoid, "Unless someone else has anything to add, thats where we are."

Thani shakes her head and answers Jessica, "It's not encrypting the data, it's factually altering the data. There is a big difference. Lord help us if it begins encrypting data, decryption would be a nightmare. No, how I'm getting any information is seeing an aberrant spike or change in data before it compensates and alters the information stream. Think of it as a Man-In-The-Middle attack." Feeling useful in at least explaining computers and science felt good.

Looking at the command officer, "If I may recommend sir, how about personnel unable to assist with the essential functions of isolate, systems wipe and reboot handle the communications relay to the bridge. Have them in shouting range of the tubes so we have fast information flow instead of winded command officers." Thani was all about efficient use of resources. Men wanted to run, but that would take precious time to relay vital information that frankly they needed.

In reply to Jason Walker (msg # 42):

"Where've you been?" Naoko asked Jason, both literally and rhetorically, as she stood up from her terminal.  "We had to initiate an emergency shutdown of the core because we were less than a minute away from a black hole.  We're on impulse now, but we're still headed towards it.  So now we've got to shut down every single computer system, wipe them and get them back up before we get too close.  Oh, did I mention comms are down too?"

Jason froze up, his mouth open and he couldn't even spit out one joke about it. Furrowing his brows up. "Was in the medbay, Cat dragged me along and then Lt. Idrani caught me at the door here and started dragging me off to the Sewards. I think I've been dun pulled every which way but right," he added.
"Was that why the ship lurched a bit ago?" He started to ask then shook his head. "Never y'mind. I'm not techy n'all thumbs here." He looked around in thought. "Comms are down huh? So I can take a big guess that the one hand doesnt know what the other is doing."
He gave a nod, now having a game plan. "Well, do what ever y'be doing, guessin' i'm gonna go see that the Bridge knows we ya'll are going to shut down and wipe. Or at least make sure they know. But if'n you happen to find who's hand started this mess, let me know, ya?"
The lifts were out of the question so he started towards the other voices he could hear(Thani, Decker, Jess ect.). Since the loudest voices seemed in one area he moved over. "Sir, ma'ams? Specialist Walker. I can organize Security t'help. What'cha need done?"

In reply to Decker Geary (msg # 44):

Shoes.  Farah should've have stopped by her quarters to get shoes on before making the descent down the ladder to Deck 4.  Then her feet wouldn't be quite so sore as she stepped into Main Engineering.  She would have gone to the bridge had a crewman not informed her of Malko taking the bridge instead of the person she needed to talk to.  The announcement of her presence there would be made by a simple request that couldn't be interpreted as anything but a command.  "Mr. Geary.  If I may have a moment of your time?"

In reply to Decker Geary (msg # 47):

"No, sir," Tzerak replied, more or less speaking for the e, engineers.  Jessica hadn't designated anyone in charge of the deck when she had taken Bart with her and Geary wasn't an engineer, though he did outrank him.  Thankfully, Chief Matheson had given the team an order of succession and one glance at her in the chaos had been enough to move him forward on it.

Jessica almost felt a lump form in her throat, almost audibly croaking, as she saw Catrina in engineering and realized she just declared herself in command over her peer. It was technically true, but still felt wrong and overstepping to the young engineer. She made a hard glance over to LT Commander Matheson in an almost questioning expression... ready to bow to the side if socially addressed to. And then again, yet more readily so, when Farah came into the room, Jess almost had the afterthought about how upper command seemed to be wherever she was.

As her questions got addressed by an engineer already in the room, and as Jason offered to meet her demand for personal of criteria, she felt a small sense of relief that perhaps she hadn't overstepped herself. Though, the solid no could also have been to tell her no she wasn't taking command as well.

Now taking to err on the side of caution, her voice now one a bit more meek, "Room, the Warp Core is being handled and managed by Lieutenant Blatt," she looked in Catrina's direction to address her more than the room despite saying she was speaking to the room. "All runners should be sent to look for him until comms are back up." Now recovering a little composure, catching her own sense of cadence and turning to Jason "We need to have some kind of communication with the bridge, a technically competent runner that won't injure themselves or tire out too much."

Turning to Catrina and moving closer so as to more clearly be speaking to her, Jessica spoke this almost in a whisper to try and not draw it around the room "I've done enough, are you ready to fix your ship?"

In reply to Farah Greene (msg # 51):

Looking up from the screen he was a bit shocked to see the captain standing there. "Aye Captain, of course." A few more buttons pushed, he stood up facing her, standing at attention.

In reply to Decker Geary (msg # 54):

"With me," Farah told Geary and moved to an area where they could speak in private.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:55, Sat 22 Feb 2020.