Star Trek Lost Destiny

By Hemaccabe

Book I: Race of Death

Chapter 4: Food Synthesizer Victory

So did my time on Dreadnought pass. Mostly I worked in Engineering.

Our Engineering FPPSA team won an all ship match, in which my performance did not let the team down.

I played three-dimensional chess against the computer. After doing terrible for some time, I actually read some instructional manuals and took some tutorials. After that, my performance finally started to improve. I still found three-dimensional chess deadly dull, but I began to appreciate how it was a mental challenge in defeating one's opponent not based on power or speed, but rather through thought and position. I realized how readily the skills one mastered in chess would apply in many real-world situations.

Our small crew poker games went very well. I studied poker a bit too and realized how much Human perception and strategy were part of the game. I know a key component in Admiral Kirk's abilities was the way he could size up a person and modify his approach on that basis. It was one of the reasons I had rarely seen him go home alone when we were out somewhere for the evening, that he had been so successful in diplomatic negotiations and in combat on many occasions.

I know my limited ability to empathize with someone else was a significant hole in my fitness to Command. Luckily, poker seemed to improve it. It didn't hurt that I found poker fascinating. I mastered the probability and rules portion of the game quickly and then applied myself to being able to read my small command and make game decisions on that basis. As we approached the end of my assignment on Dreadnought, I was winning more often than I was losing.

One small activity I did just for silly fun was figure out which of my crew I would assign to bridge positions were we to have to take control of the ship. It was a foolish waste of time as the odds that we would have to take over from the highly experienced bridge crew were inconceivably small. Still, a little daydreaming was pleasant diversion.

As we approached the end of my tour on Dreadnought, two issues were taking up more and more of my attention.

The first was that I thought I had finally found the answer to the food synthesizers. In many fictional accounts, I have seen characters solve such technical problems by developing a magical holistic understanding of the system and then having a mystical moment of insight.

My solution had come from endless hours of work and study. By dint of hard work, I had made myself an expert on the food synthesizer system. I had studied endless reports looking for an anomaly that would explain the failure.

I started to narrow down the cause by looking for a reason why the Excelsiors should be different from other ship classes. The elephant in the mess hall was the drive change.

Eventually, I determined that the food synthesizer system, to save on hardware requirements, had been depending on the transwarp drive's computer to reset their pattern buffers on a particular schedule. When the change had been made to warp drive, the new system had been given the same responsibility. However, this was not something the warp drive computers normally handled, so a kludgey solution had been created on short notice to get the ships flying.

I found that transwarp system, to save compute cycles, had been scheduled to reset the food synthesizer pattern buffers at the very lowest possible frequency. The original transwarp computer system contractor had built an elegant and efficient system for this task. The kludge solution on the other hand, was not resetting nearly as regularly. Further, as often as not, was taking longer between resets than the transwarp system would have. Each time the pattern buffers got overloaded, synthesizers failed.

The failure couldn't be detected because, by the time someone looked after the system had failed, the kludge system would have caught up and wiped the pattern buffers. This realization had not come from mystical insight, but by staring for hours at schedules for pattern buffer resets.

I had two solutions proposed. I had created a very basic modification to the kludge solution that would simply have them reset the pattern buffers twenty percent more frequently than the current system did. This solution would eat a few more compute cycles but the ship currently had a substantial surplus in compute cycles.

The second was that the elegant system from the contractor for the transwarp drive could be re-implemented with the new warp drive computer control system.

I made my presentation to senior Engineering staff, including Commander Witlin. I was incredibly nervous and assumed it would be rejected soundly. Instead, they stood up and clapped!

"Immediately institute your first solution." Commander Witlin ordered.

With a few key presses, I changed, at a fundamental level, the way the ship operated. For a moment, I felt the power that must be the appeal of a career in Engineering. I knew I would always have a greater appreciation for the discipline.

After the change, there was a four day "test period." The synthesizer failures stopped. The three-man cleaning crew caught up on all soiled synthesizers and then got a well-deserved day of leisure.

Once again over the Engineering public announcement system came, "Lieutenant Saavik to Commander Witlin's office."

Once again, I made my way to Commander Witlin's office, this time to find a genuinely smiling Commander Witlin.

"Please sit." He began gesturing to one of his office seats.

I sat.

"At this point we believe you have solved the food synthesizer conundrum. You should know your solution has been transmitted to all other Excelsior class vessels where it has been implemented. They are experiencing results similar to ours. Good work.

"A commendation signed by Captain Bacon and myself has been entered into your permanent record. There are additional notes on the commendation from every other Excelsior class vessel Captain and Chief of Engineering. Well done."

At that moment a yeoman came in.

We stood. Then we posed, Commander Witlin handing me a framed certificate of my commendation while shaking my hand. The yeoman used a camera to take a picture which would later be published in the ship's online gazette.

Then we sat again, with me holding the certificate. The yeoman left to go about his duties.

Commander Witlin continued speaking. "The three-man team that had been cleaning the synthesizers will now be assigned to your command. You will still have responsibility for resetting any faulty synthesizers, but I don't expect that will happen often. You are to use the additional manpower to cover your current duties. I want you and your team to prepare an option to resume the original contractor's solution."

I had considered trying to reinstitute the original solution immediately. It would have clearly been the better way to go. However, it would have taken substantially more time, which I didn't have. It would also have delayed having any solution. It was clearly logical to have some solution now, freeing up three valuable crew on each Excelsior, than wait for perfect and keep wasting that valuable resource. Commander Witlin's response could be interpreted as an endorsement of my judgement and recognition that the second solution would require additional hours of crew/duty time to resolve. It could also be thought of as a very small promotion.

I sent copies of the picture and the commendation along with a letter to Captain Spock and Admiral Kirk. They both replied with short congratulations notes.

We welcomed the three new crew to our little group. Chief Chimu, the ranking member of the three immediately announced, "We are so grateful for the transfer of duty. That synthesizer detail was one bad duty draw."

I was gratified. Not every rescue comes from an exploding planet.

I reorganized our duties so that most of my duties and some of Ensign Korf's were assigned to our new team members.

I had a brief private sit down with Ensign Korf and explained, "I have removed some of your duties. This is because I want you to take a greater role in supervision and organization."

"Aye Aye, Sir." Ensign Korf replied with a salute.

Essentially, I was giving Ensign Korf a small promotion as well. This would be good as it would give him the opportunity to demonstrate he was ready for more responsibility and a real promotion at the end of his tour.

I went to work on the coding exercise that would be necessary to reinstitute the original synthesizer control solution with our warp drive management computer. It would be a small improvement but should be more reliable overall than the kludge solution that had been used. It would also use fewer computer resources, which were in abundance now, but which might be necessary someday down the road. In the short run, should the computer resource be diminished or under strain, say in combat, those computer resources could be necessary, and the kludge could still fail, possibly catastrophically.

We also had to consider the future of these ships. Which was an even more compelling reason to do it. These ships might be in service for twenty, thirty, forty or more years down the road. While they had surplus computer resources now, as the desire to upgrade in the future with heavy computer demand upgrades came, they might not. Further, it was relatively easy for an Engineer to see what had happened to the system now, in twenty years, as upgrades and bypasses and a hundred other things had been done with the systems and the greasy fingerprints of generations of engineers had been left all over the ship's systems, having the simplest and most efficient base now would be critical.

I spent my days standing at a Com station near my crew in Engineering, available for questions and help as needed. At times, I would borrow time from one of my people to use their expertise to solve a thorny problem, at others, when they got behind, I might jump in and help them.

Of course, now with three new crew, my daydreaming about who would take what station on the bridge became that much more satisfying.

The other issue that came up as I was ending my time on the Dreadnought, was that the ship had been dispatched to Cestus III for a "Peace Celebration." The Federation and the Gorn had miraculously avoided all-out war at our first mutual encounter do to the actions of Captain Kirk during his legendary Five-Year Mission.

That had been the last moment of simple and clear diplomacy. At times, the Gorn Hegemony had refused all contact and at others, were reluctant to make any meaningful agreements.

Since first contact with the Gorn by Enterprise, the Federation and the Gorn Hegemony had managed an unclear Armistice. Among the few matters that had been agreed was that Cestus III would be a "Peace Planet," upon which both governments would be allowed to set up colonies and "Peace Pavilions." Functionally, Cestus III was fairly cold and dry, at the very edge of M class. Cestus III also didn't have much in the way of valuable resources. That meant that while both governments had built their pavilions, not much else had gone with them. The Federation had put down a small colony, mostly focused on servicing transiting ships. The Gorn had put down almost nothing. The Federation was now trying very hard to convince the Gorn to agree to some sort of trade agreement. The Gorn did not seem eager.

The Federation desperately wanted good relations with the Gorn. After all, the Federation, as a matter of principle, always seeks peace. The Federation's clearly stated end goal was that the Gorn might eventually choose to join the Federation. Further, the Federation was already surrounded by enemies, a whole new enemy in a whole new corner of space would be a real problem.

Gorn, whatever their reasons, were more reticent. Most expert commentators opined that the Gorn Hegemony might feel like the Federation was trying to conquer them by diplomacy. The Gorn were a small power. Apparently, the Gorn Hegemony was composed of a homeworld and four substantial colonies. Beyond their five core worlds, they had a number of small colonies and outposts, mostly close to home. Beyond those inhabited locations, they claimed an unusually large region of empty, uninhabited territory as Gorn space.

The Gorn were also in an isolated portion of the galaxy and the commentators also thought they might fear too much cultural dilution from the far larger and more cosmopolitan Federation. There was also the simple fact that the Gorn were a "Hegemony," which was at odds with the Federation's democratic values.

I, more cynically, thought that those Gorn Hegemons might fear their subjects would become "infected" with ideas like democracy and didn't want to lose their cushy privileges.

Despite my cynical feelings, I still also wanted peaceful relations. I'm sure there were members of Star Fleet eager for action and swift wartime promotions. However, as one of those members of Star Fleet who would likely find herself on the line should that war break out, I was not eager for it. I had already been given two first-person introductions to war, first by Khan, then the Klingons. I remembered the blood, screaming and seeing friends permanently maimed and buried.

In addition, Gorn was on a bad vector for unpeaceful relations. Star Fleet had a pretty good idea of the size and capabilities of the Gorn military. If Star Fleet could mass all her ships and resources on the Gorn border, we could probably roll right over them. However, the Federation had a variety of other un-quiet borders including the Klingons, Romulans and Tholians. A war with the Gorn would mean we would have to strip those borders of ships and resources. One had to remember, measuring the size of available forces also included time. It could take months to traverse the distance from one side of the Federation to the other. The time those ships were en route, in terms of strategic military value, it was like they didn't exist. Even then, the forces Star Fleet might be able to mass could result in a long, bloody war, particularly as they dribbled and drabbled in from different parts of the Federation. Then one would also have to remember the danger of those other greatly weakened borders. The Federation's enemies were nothing if not opportunistic.

Considering all of the Gorn reticence and the high stakes involved, it was considered very good news that the Gorn had agreed to a "Peace Celebration."

Both governments would put up additional temporary pavilions and attractions on Cestus III. This would hopefully attract a substantial number of civilians to come and meet. These meetings would hopefully encourage exchanges in culture and increased trade. Each government would also send in a Starship as a "Display of Peace."

Star Fleet had chosen Dreadnought as her ambassador.

I was very nervous about this event. I had already had a good tour on Dreadnought. It would take Dreadnought two months to get to Cestus III, we would be there for two weeks, and then we were expected to turn back toward a more central Federation location. I didn't have exit orders yet from Dreadnought, but it would be logical to assume that I would debark at Starbase 18 as that would be just over three years for me.

Still, this would be the first port call in some time. My almost three years on Dreadnought hadn't been very eventful. Even with her powerful engines and the incredible speeds she could achieve, it often took months for us to proceed from one assignment to the next. Further, a great deal of a Starship's time was spent just being in a given area so that she would be available to respond should something happen. During that time, the ships would try to keep busy mapping, surveying previously unvisited systems and studying galactic anomalies. During my time aboard, Dreadnought had not been in battle, made first contact with a new sapient species or discovered some new amazingly unusual galactic phenomena. This was typical duty for a Starship which was part of why Enterprise and Kirk's Five-Year Mission had been so dazzling. It seemed like each month something completely unprecedented happened to them.

I had a lot to lose if something went wrong. Should my tour end without further incident, my successful performance would be a feather in my cap. Should something happen during this diplomatic event, and my performance be deemed inadequate, a commendation for improved synthesizer performance would not save my career.

(Author's Note: I've reviewed a lot of Star Maps of the Star Trek galaxy. Mostly, they don't agree and frequently leave important things out. I'm going to do the best I can. My apologies to anyone who feels I make a continuity error.

There are also a lot of versions of what the relationship between the Federation and the Gorn are. I think Saavik has given a pretty good version of mine.)

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