Njessa preferred not to call staff meeting so close together but this was an unusual situation and it was important for all of the command staff and through them, the crew, to know what the situation was.  She hoped that everyone had managed to get at least a little rest but she suspected that must, like her, had only found time to snatch a hour or two of rest over the last thirty-six hours.

Water, coffee, and Andorian The was set out.  Njessa took her seat, poured a cup of The and waited for the senior staff to make their way in.

Roj Dylft arrived first, he seemed in fairly good spirits.  He gave the Captain a salute and took a seat.  He was secretly pleased to be the first one here.

Kyle Hawthorne was just a couple minutes behind Roj, strolling in with his hands behind his back, he gave a smile to the two Andorians with a slight nod of his head. 

“Greetings Captain, Lieutenant.” He walked over to the table of refreshments and grabbed a cup of water before taking his own seat.

“Welcome, Counselor,” nodded Njessa.  “I hope you are holding up well, you have rather been thrown in the deep end on this mission.”

Kyle gave a short chuckle, ‘thrown’ felt like the right word to describe it. “Well enough, certainly not the foot any of us wanted to start on, but I’d say I’ve found my footing.” 

Tomaasz strode in a moment later, still signing off on reports on a padd. An Andorian holo-engineer trailed in his wake, somehow managing to look harried. The Caitian handed the padd over with a nod and murmured “looks good, carry on.” The hologram slipped back out the still-open hatch.

“Good day Captain, Lieutenant. Hello, Kyle.” He settled into a chair, slipping another padd from a pocket and placing it on the table before him.

“Welcome, Lieutenant Tomaasz,” said Njessa.  “I am glad you are finding the holograms helpful.  Operations is looking into ways to improve the hologram’s abilities.”

“Reassign Beta Team to Deck 4, patrol” he offered walking into the room and looking at the other officers that had arrived, “Captain…” Jason acknowledged the Commanding Officer nodded and smiled towards the other senior staff that had already assembled.  He typed into the PADD assigning a few more commands to his holographic bridge officer.

“Ensign,” nodded Njessa.  “You seem to be keeping everything under control.”

Doctor En’ves took a seat at the end of the table, looking hardly worse for the evening’s wear. “Captain, colleagues.” His voice carried the bright, melodious quality that had charmed audiences from lecture halls to the high chambers of the Federation Science Council. Only a tautness at the corners of his eyes hinted at the stress bundled up within the previous night’s revelations.

“En’ves, welcome,” said Njessa.  “You seem to be holding up well.”

“Sleep is always the first casualty in the quest for knowledge,” he acknowledged with a wry smile. “But the Bolians make a methylxanthine beverage that’s a fine substitute.”

“Interesting,” says Njessa, her antennae curling slighting.  “I will have to ask our ship’s Doctor about that.

Further discussion was momentarily interrupted by the arrival of V’Rea.  “Operations reporting in, Captain,” she said.  “My apologies for my late arrival, I had become caught up in the process of improving the holographic crew.”

“It is no problem, Lieutenant, we are still gathering,” nodded Njessa.  “Additionally, it was a task I assigned you.”

V’Rea nodded curtly and took a seat.

Jordyn reviewed her padd as she snuck her way into the briefing to take her seat. She’d been keeping herself busy with her work and helping her team wherever she could, making her scarce unless she was required for an overview on a particular case. She quickly came to trust her team and their opinions, supporting most of their findings in anyone that came in for treatments.

“Let me start with some hopeful news, thanks to Ensign Savoi’s tireless effort, we have limited communications with Starfleet and Esquimalt Station,” said Njessa.  “They know where we are and have all of the information we have so far on the dilithium situation.  So, we may be far from home but we are not entirely cut off.”

Kyle found himself smiling, with a quick thump of his knuckle against the table as a makeshift applause. “Congrats to the Ensign, and here I thought we were gonna have to start writing letters before sending them out via bottle.” He teased at the end. 

“But I’m curious, how limited is… limited?” Kyle asked, not that he had any urgent calls to make but limited means it has the possibility of going back to none, and out of many things that makes him apprehensive; being stranded with no communication was high up on the list. 

Tomaasz chimed in on his friend’s heels. “And how can we help make it less limited? Boosting signal strength, improved filtering algorithms, let my department know what you’ll need and we’ll make it happen.”

“We have voice and limited data communication at the moment,” said Njessa.  “It is slow but a lifeline.”  She nodded to Tomaasz.  “I will have Ensign Savoi contact you once she is available.  She is resting now.”

“Science, I know it has not been long, but any progress on discovering the source of our dilithium problems?” asked Njessa.

At the other end of the conference table, En’ves folded his hands. “Chthit’s astrophysicists have been working around the clock to identify the connection between the rogue slipstream event that brought us here and the dilithium fragmentation phenomenon. So far, we haven’t found any. And if you ask me,” he added, a look of haunted recognition briefly flickering across his gleaming Caitian eyes, “I don’t think we’re going to.”

“No?  Why would that be?” asked Njessa.

He leaned forward. “As you know, the people in this sector don’t use dilithium as a power source. We’ve always assumed that was due to the relative scarcity of dilithium in the region. Now, I’m not so sure. When we went over the data provided by Engineering from the main reaction chamber, and compared it with the readings from stellar science, we discovered that the fragmentation phenomenon only began after we entered this sector.”

“That is troubling,” she agreed.  “While there are other ways of generating the power needed for warp drive, dilithium is the core of all current Starfleet designs,  If we cannot use dilithium safely in this sector, it will require a complete reevaluation of our exploration plans.”

“Then you’re proposing that the fragmentation phenomenon is caused by an as-yet unknown property of local subspace, rather than the slipstream event?” asked V’Rea.

“At the moment, it’s only one avenue of research,” replied En’ves. “But it would explain a few things — some that have been on my mind for a while.”

“But Federation ships have been to this sector before,” put in Roj with a note of skepticism. “If this is due to local subspace conditions, why haven’t we noticed it before now?”

Tomaasz’s ears had perked up when En’ves mentioned the spatial component of the dilithium fracturing. Connections formed and spun off branches in his thoughts. Quickly calling up stellar science’s logged notes, he nodded slowly. 

“I may be able to answer that. I’d have to access the engineering logs of other ships to pass through this sector to confirm, but I believe they did suffer similar fractures.” Holding up a hand to forestall the Andorian’s skeptical response, he continued. “Similar, but much slower. So slow they could have been written off as normal wear.”

He focused on En’ves for a moment. “We crossed an immense distance in mere minutes, traveling at speeds few ships have ever reached. Whatever effect within this sector damages dilithium crystals, I think the telescopic compression effects of our speed caused it to accumulate far faster than the normal operation of a warp field could absorb. I’ll want to get together with stellar cartography and pin down exactly where we were when each breakpoint occurred.”

“Agreed,” nodded En’ves.

Turning to Njessa, Tomaasz added “It may strain our data link to Esquimalt Station, but I’d like to get the logs from those other ships as soon as possible. Performing the same analysis might let us map out where other concentrations of the damaging effect can be found. I’ll want to get with Ensign Savoi immediately.” He caught himself, ears lowering in embarrassment. “That is, after she has had time to rest.”

“Give her another two hours, that will give you time to set the boundaries of your inquiry, Tomaasz,” said Njessa.  “But your enthusiasm is warranted.  Please coordinate with science and move forward as quickly as you can.”

“Are there any other major concerns?” she asked, scanning the assembled officers.

Jordyn tapped her padd lightly before speaking up. “Sickbay is on its way to getting itself back in order. Most of the physical damage has been either repaired or patched up for a more extensive repair when teams are available. I’ve been to lighten my team’s shifts by beginning to rotate 8 hour breaks so they can catch up for rest. I’ve run random EMH programs for one-hour cycles just to ensure they are in working order and haven’t encountered any – issues as of yet, but I trying to keep them in reserve where I can to avoid their systems from degrading or malfunctioning. I really want those to be an absolute last resort measure.”

“Doctor, If you have concerns about the hologram functionality, please work with Operations to ensure smooth performance,” said Njessa.  “We are likely to have to rely of the Tanjura’s holographic crew much more than had been intended for a shakedown cruise, so will will need people to be as comfortable with them as we can.”

“Understood,” Jordyn nodded as she tapped in more notes on her padd to remind her to have her team adjust their rotations to include an emh with each group and outreach to Ops to review their programming.

“Is there anything else?  If not, I will leave people to their tasks,” Njessa said giving the assembled officer one last chance to speak.

Kyle gently shook his head, personally feeling more hopeful than he had when he walked in. He was curious just how they’d find a suitable power source that didn’t act as a sling slot, or if they could fix the underlying issue. He knew it was something he wanted to pick apart later, even without all the technical understanding behind it, but that could be saved for a later time. 

Sitting up in his seat after assessing the issues at hand and reports from the other officers, Jason nodded to the Captain, “I think that with all of the issues aboard the ship and our vulnerable state, I think that we should continue to utilize the Security Holographic Force, currently they are stationed throughout various key parts of the ship as well as patrols through all decks” he offered tapping his PADD, “We are able to process real time data and reports through the bridge console, which I have to admit is quicker than receiving a organically typed report” he offered with a small smirk.  Even in their current state, it was interesting to see the capabilities of the holograms.

“As you think best, Williams,” said Njessa.  “It may be an excess of caution but we are still in an unknown region.”

“Thank you, Captain, I think that it will be a good test of the ship’s capabilities” he offered out, knowing that it was going to be different not relying on an organic security system.  However, if there were any issues the holographic security team was tied directly into the ship’s processing systems.

Njessa nodded.  “Good, now, let us get to work.  Connect me directly if I can help in any way.”