==/\== Engineering section ==/\== "Terek", Cortez' voice boomed causing everyone in the room to look in his direction. Not the usual greeting that he would give to an officer, but Cortez had worked with Terek before and he remembered him not really caring too much about the formalities of rank. With a big grin on his face he continued, "Your just the man I was looking for". When the evacuation order came, Oriana started coordinating science team evacuation. She dispatched two ensigns to search the deck 6 for any useful equipment and possible injured people or some survivors. Rest of the team packed with all usable devices that they were able to salvage she sent to transport coordinates. As for the tricorders were taken away as well, she sent Terek to make his way to transporter coordinates with detour through the engineering to report XO that she will stay about ten minutes behind to wait for some calculation results. So with some effort, Terek made his way down to engineering, to pass message to commander, but as he entered the engineering and started to look around for commander, he heard the familiar voice calling him. When he turned around to see, who's calling him, he saw Cortez. When they first met, he looked better, now he looked like he had been through the tornado. "Richard, good to see you are all right... at least I hope you're all right, you don't look to good." Richard smiled some more, and getting straight to the point like usual, he cut short the pleasantry's, "Do you know anything about quantum torpedoes?" He said rather quickly. A bit surprised by the straight approach from Cortez, he looked at him for a moment before his receptors analyzed that what was just said was a question. "Uhm... Quantum torpedoes? Well, the commonly known things from the introduction to the weapon systems from the academy. You know, main difference is that they don't need to inject antimatter before launching and that they contains artificially created quantum filaments in inactive state which are activated a few milliseconds before impact, creating strong cascade effect ending with massive explosion. I know a few numbers and basic specifications, but everything just in theory. I've never worked too much with weapon systems....Why are you asking?" He looked curiously at Richard, wondering why is he asking him about quanties. "Can you manually arm one without blowing yourself up?", Cortez said impatiently. "Well, if you could provide me with some practical info than... well..." Richard interrupted him "Excellent, then I need your help", Richard began, He paused for half a second, "You're not busy are you?" {Help? ...} Confusion would be now his second name..."A..actually I was going to pass a message to commander Guzman and then my orders were to evacuate, but... I suppose it won't matter if I'll stay here to help you." "Great, then follow me, I'll explain on the way", Cortez started saying as he turned and started walking towards the open Jeffry's tube. "You know about the plan to crash the ship into the planets surface right?" He said as he ducked into the tube and began crawling through the dimly lit space. As Terek followed Cortez, he saw commander, approached him for a moment and passed him Oriana's message that she'll delay for about ten minutes and then ran to Cortez who was now some distance away. He turned to one of the Jeffry's tube and what Cortez mentioned made him go little red. "Eh... yes... in fact... ehm... It was my idea..." As he saw puzzled expression in Richard's face, he began to explain...."Please understand... we've made some calculations and this looked as the best solution, as the ship isn't repairable and there can't be even a thought about it making way through the anomaly back again....Aaaah, never mind.... I just hope it wasn't a bad idea....." He added with sight and followed Cortez into the tube." Cortez stopped and looked back at Terek, "Your idea?...hah!" he said then turned forward and kept crawling, "Perfect then you already know whats going on, because we have less than two hours to implement your idea." "No, I don't, that this plan was accepted is quite a surprise for me. It was a long shot, but all right, if we have less than two hours to do it, then, let's move." And with this he followed Cortez through the tube As the two men emerged from the tube into the cargo bay a slightly perplexed Ensign Dexter was standing in the middle of the room with a PADD in his hand. In front of him was a rack full of about a dozen torpedoes. "Sir, how many torpedoes do we have"? Cortez said loudly startling the ensign. Almost dropping the PADD the ensign quickly answered, "uhhh...there is 12 in this room, and another 15 in their", he said pointing to the adjacent storage room. "Hmm, we;ve counted with thirty, but I suppose those three won't make any great difference." mumbled Terek to himself as he was holding his smile watching confused ensign Dexter, who was surprised the way Cortez did it probably to everyone. Cortez walked over to the nearby torpedo rack and pulled out his combat knife from the side of his boot. "OK, he began, you're both gonna get a crash course in how to manually arm and set the timer on this puppy". "I just hope that crash course will do, because if not, than we'll crash before reaching the planet... and fireworks of this size they would see even in the future." said young Bajoran with grin coming closer to Richard to watch what he's doing. "Its real simple, just slide this panel off like this", as he said this he slid his knife into the edge of the front panel and plopped it off revealing the heart of the torpedo. "Now normally its computer would handle this, but since were not going to move the torpedoes we have to trick it into thinking its been fired". Cortez continued, reaching his hand into the machine he unplugged a small chip from the main board and tossed it over his shoulder onto the ground. "That's the guidance system, without it, it won't know it hasn't been fired". "Now here comes the tricky part, because once you do this there is no going back", Cortez continued with the lesson. "When you press these two buttons right here simultaneously the torpedo will then be active", he then pressed the buttons and the machine suddenly came to life. A few blinking lights started flickering on the outside of the machine and a low hum began vibrating from further inside of the weapon. "Then all you have to do is plop the plate back on the top and set the timer", closing up the torpedo he then typed in the numbers :05 on the keypad. "Set them all for five seconds, once the five seconds are up it will arm itself and automatically blow, we''ll remotely start the timers once were on the Gott.", Cortez said finishing up the lesson, "Any questions?" "Well, so we know what buttons to press, but what buttons don't we press at any cost? Just for sure... to reassure we won't blow up too soon?" Richard looked up at Terek and then glanced over at Ensign Dexter, "just don't touch anything else. Dexter nodded. "Ok", Cortez began, we've got 27 torpedoes and there is three of us, so I guess that means nine apiece," he paused for a second, "And we've get a little over 90 minutes to get as many of these done as we can, so lets move". Terek nodded in agreement and moved to one of the torpedoes to try to arm it. But when he reached the panel, he realized that as he's not a marine he hasn't any handy knife hidden in shoe or anything like that. "Damn..." he murmured and run towards the door panel of the storage. Tapped a few commands to call out the cargo list here and found out that in one box are some Eng tools so then he tried to find it. He had to move some crates and with some effort he managed to recover two toolboxes. From one he took some sharp looking device used only the Prophets can tell for and the other one he handed to ensign Dexter. "Here, you could use something in this" he smiled to him and returned to his torpedo. He has done as they were told. He removed the panel, found the isolinear chip {Let's hope it's the right one}he thought as there were about ten chips in there and he couldn't exactly recall which one exactly is it, then as he was told, pressed those two buttons, torpedo started humming light turned on....{riiight... seems that it was the right chip...} with this thought he returned panel on place and set timer for :05 seconds. Then he moved to arm the next torpedoes. == About 40 minutes later == As the last torpedo was being finished Cortez stepped back and wiped the sweat from his brow. "Alright that should just about do it, lets get out of here". He said leading the way into the tunnels and towards shuttle bay one. Before he climbed into the shaft, he took last look around... it is probably the last time he's here. Well it was also a first time he was on this place, but he thought of it as the whole ship They managed to arm torpedoes in almost record time and as they crawled back to the transport coordinates Terek thought {I'm gonna feel this tomorrow, I can be sure of that...} as he felt slight aching in his back of which he knew that next day it won't be just slight one. As the three figures emerged from the Jeffry tube, four security personnel could be seen. With this thought he followed two men into the room where four security men were they were coordinatin evacuation of the rest of the remaining personnel. "Ok, you two go ahead, i'm gonna make a quick check of the surrounding areas and make sure nobodies been left behind." Cortez said nodding his head towards Terek. "Thanks for the help". "No problem, I just hope it'll work as predicted, otherwise, I'm dead man." Replied Terek to Richard and they both with Dexter stepped onto the transport position and with the one last look around he just added to Cortez standing few meters away. "Take care of her." And the blue transport beam surronded him and the environment changed from one federation ship to another. He was thinking how is it possible that even ship where he was only for a few months can stick to heart so much and he felt nostalgic about leaving it, hoping that at least his idea that was a death sentence for this beauty will do the job. ==/\== End Log ==/\== Cpl Richard Cortez ODA Weapons Spcialist USS Chimera & Ens. Terek Weranis ASCiO USS Chimera