The Riddled Post - Aaron Rosenberg [4]
And it was a date. Just like the old days on the Enterprise. In fact, it was almost exactly like their dates on the Enterprise, even with all the water that had gone under the bridge in the seven years since they broke up following her transfer to the Oberth. Duffy chose to view this as a good sign for the renewal of their relationship.
The Franklin soon settled in next to the da Vinci’s other shuttle, the Archimedes, and the hatch closed. Sonnie turned her attention to Corsi as soon as she exited—Duffy wasn’t surprised that the tall blond security chief had a full report ready for them.
The content of the report was a bit surprising, though, and more than a little alarming. As soon as Corsi finished, Sonnie called a meeting of all staff, excepting the good doctor.
“We’ve got a problem,” she informed the others when they’d all reached the observation lounge—Gold was there as well, but he’d deferred to her. “Apparently something took out this outpost by holing the buildings and letting the outside atmosphere leak in. But the shields themselves weren’t damaged.”
“I thought Pattie said they’d repaired part of the shield,” Carol said.
“No, we repaired a piece of the array that was damaged, “ Pattie replied. “The shield itself was fine.” The cultural expert still looked puzzled, and Pattie explained. “Usually, when a shield is hit, the shield itself absorbs the damage. It may cause feedback in the controls or the array, shorting out circuits that have been overloaded, but the shield integrity is what gets hit the most. If you reduce a shield to half its normal strength, then shut it down, when you turn it back on it’s still at only half-strength until the integrity has been fully repaired. I replaced part of the array, which had a hole in it, but when we switched the shields back on they were at full strength. No damage at all.”
Fabian cut in. “So the only thing that knocked them down was that hole.”
“Precisely.”
“Which means something got through the shield itself and then damaged the array,” Carol said. “Okay, yeah—that’s bad. What can ignore a full-strength shield and then do physical damage to things on the inside?”
“Nothing. At least, that’s what we thought.” Sonya glanced around. “Which is why we have a problem. Sure, you can tune a weapon to the same frequency as a shield, and bypass the defenses that way—if you know the frequency for that particular shield. But that only works with energy weapons, most of which wouldn’t work in this atmosphere. If someone’s got a way to physically penetrate a shield, without affecting the shield …”
“We’re talking a major impact on starship combat tactics,” Corsi said. “Shields would be functionally useless.”
“If that’s what this is,” Duffy said. “I recommend we investigate with a full team.”
“Agreed,” Sonnie said. In fact, she’d already decided on this course of action before the meeting started, but she also suggested that Duffy make the recommendation and have her agree with it to present a united front. Duffy had to admit to liking the new Sonya Gomez—after her ordeal on the planet Sarindar, she had become more sure of herself. Duffy liked the change, especially if it meant more lunches like today… .
She turned to Fabian. “Did you have any luck with those attack scenarios?”
Fabian shook his head. “None so far. I mean, there are ways to hit the outpost from space, although that atmosphere’s like a natural defense grid—it’ll dull or even stop most attacks from penetrating through to the surface. But I don’t know anything that can do what Corsi described. I’ll need to get a firsthand look at the damage.”
She nodded. “That’ll be your job. Soloman, did you have a chance to work on the computers?”
The little Bynar shook his head. “We were concentrating on the shield controls, Commander. I volunteered to remain behind to examine the rest of the station’s systems, but Lt. Commander Corsi felt the team should stick together.”