Have We Been Here Before?
Chapter Ten - Electricity
Enterprise
Mid October 2268
Spock
He noticed something very strange on the internal scanners, and turned to ask Nyota a question, just as she jumped and pushed herself back from her console. He was at her side in a second, checking to be sure she was not injured. She waved her hands at her console, and squeaked "Shocked me!"
Jim hit the panic button and summoned Bones to the bridge immediately. He came on the run and ran his scanners over her, pronouncing her to have no lasting injury, although her heartrate was slightly elevated. He ran the dermal regenerator over several of her fingertips, where they were slightly reddened. Not real burns, but the skin there was delicate, and necessary to her work. Before leaving the bridge, he looked right at Spock, and said if she noticed anything at all unusual, to come right to sick bay.
Spock and Nyota spent the next two hours taking her console apart and checking it thoroughly, while one of his subordinates sat at his console, and message traffic was all routed to her lab. They could find nothing.
While the senior staff was eating lunch, there was a sudden commotion in the serving line. Several shrieks and what sounded like things being thrown against the wall. All heads turned in that direction, and Kirk and Sulu went running to see what was going on. When Kirk hollered, Bones went after them. When they all returned to the table, shaking their heads, Kirk explained that somehow, a surge of electricity seemed to have run down the rails that the trays traveled along. Spock looked very puzzled at that - the material the rails were made of was non-conducting. Nyota looked at him, wondering. Two incidents involving electricity in odd ways in one morning?
That afternoon, in the gym, some of the floor mats suddenly were charged, sending people scattering in all directions, hair standing on end. No one was injured, but they were all jittery for a couple of hours.
All the biobeds in the sick bay started sounding alarms at once, and none of them were occupied. The nurses ran around, trying to shut them off, until McCoy found the master switch and reset the whole mess. He stood there, in the center of sick bay, and cursed a blue streak, but it didn't help much.
After the sixth incident, Spock and Scotty began to patrol the ship, tricorders in hand, seeking to find the source of these anomalies. The internal scanners did not seem to have registered anything much abnormal during any of them. Only slight increases in the electrical energy in the areas. And when the next incident occurred, they were not anywhere near it, pounding down the corridors as fast as they could to reach the area, only to find the excess energy already discharged.
Kirk prowled the ship, looking for anything at all out of the ordinary. General announcements warned all the crew to report anything at all strange. But it wasn't until the light were dimmed that the faint patterns of static on the ceilings became visible. At once, Spock and Scotty were called to the scene, and began to analyze what they were seeing. Spock spoke into his communicator, directing staff on the level above to conduct various readings. Scotty had his staff erecting temporary force fields around the area they were in, trying to contain whatever it was.
At length, they had the special equipment they had requested set up and ready, and Spock and Scotty, in insulated suits, pushed special probes at that static, attempting to neutralize it. There were violent sparks then, driving them back. That method was not going to work. But they did seem to have confined whatever it was to this one section of ceiling.
They conferred again. And then they lined the walls and floor in this section with special baffles, which would absorb almost any form of energy. And then they used long poles, with special hooks and clamps on the ends, to disengage the affected ceiling tiles and drop them down to the floor. There were violent arcs of light discharges, spatterings of cinders, metallic shrieking. The special goggles they were wearing darkened to protect their eyes, but they jumped back, just the same. They didn't want to be touched by any of that.
When everything was quiet once more, they looked at the mass of charred tile laying on the baffles. Whatever that had been, it seemed to have been disabled. The clean-up crew came and dumped the whole mess out into space, and then began to install new ceiling tiles. Spock and Scotty went back to their normal duties, the Enterprise safe once more. Kirk gave them a high-five when they got to the bridge to report, grinning widely. Scotty grinned back, and Spock even quirked up his lips.