Sensational Shielding Solutions

Posted on Sat Nov 27th, 2021 @ 10:34pm by Lieutenant Commander Evelyn Rozia & Chief Petty Officer Lisa Terrix & Lieutenant JG Alistair Fletcher

Mission: Double Bind
Location: Main Engineering

Evelyn waved over the two people that she'd decided on to help her plan out the defense of Sihdon Province, the primary population center on the Northern hemisphere of the planet of Caetov. It was a rather large main city area surrounded by a suburban area of smaller cities and more and further out rural villages and such. And the holographic representation of that entire region was in front of Evelyn in the center of engineering. She'd been busy the entire time, whether working to 'childproof' the ship, as she called it, then on the trip down to the surface where they'd come up with the basic plan.

Now it was up to her to devise a way to implement that plan and she needed a couple more heads to go along with her own. "Alistair, Lisa, here's what we need to do.." She waved her hands and the rural areas vanished from the hologram, "We've been directed by the Pelator of Caetov and the Captain to use portable shield generators to protect the people of this area. They've already either evacuated the rural and suburban areas into the central section of the city, those who are willing to go, and it's still a heckuva large area."

Alistair grimaced at the description, "Portable shield generators? That sounds like what they did on Bersallis 3 with that fire storm... They lost a few good people there, ma'am."

"Maybe, sir, but the basic idea has to be a sound one." Lisa pointed out, tapping a few keys while deep in concentration, finally bringing up another hologram of one of the thermal deflectors that had been used in that incident, "These aren't actual shielding units, they're more absorption units used to draw in heat and dissipate it and still use the energy they draw to deflect the heat, but we're looking at something that's different."

Evelyn nodded and brought up the schematic of the generator she'd chosen to utilize for this project, "We're dealing with extreme cold and electrical discharges. The cold itself we can't do much about, but we can configure the shielding units to deflect the ice and snow away from the center of the city. By setting some of them for particle dispersion rather than energy absorption and dispersal, we can prevent an accumulation of ice and snow in the populated area."

"But we're not just dealing with cold and ice, ma'am." Lisa pointed out, removing the thermal deflection system from the central area, "Those are the long term problems that they're facing if I read the briefing correctly, what's really going to kill these people is that electrical storm. I saw what happened to that one archipelago."

"That's why I said only some of them, Chief." Evelyn agreed, tapping the image, "The rest are going to be networked into a hemispherical shield dome for that energy absorption. We can allow for a greater power usage, because I believe we can utilize the power of the storm itself to reinforce the generation we'll need to protect them. We aren't going to plan for it with our layout, but I believe we can use it."

"Layout?" Alistair questioned, eying the hologram in front of him and seeking out the ratio information and whistled, "This is a big one, isn't it?" He had to remark, looking at the edges again, "We're going to need a lot of generators... How much of an overlap are we looking at?"

"I want double coverage all the way around." Evelyn was adamant, already tapping her way around the circumference of the city layout, turning it on edge, the hazy edges of the shield perimeter a light blue where it was just a single coverage, a dark blue where the double coverage occurred, "Not counting the particle deflection, with a large central generator for the 'roof' coverage, that would take roughly forty-four generators, with an additional ten for particle deflection."

"Too many, Evie." Lisa shook her head, "I know that the energy strikes are going to hit hard, but we can't MAKE fifty-four generators and get them sited in time. Even if we started right now, it would take the industrial replicators too much time, these are complicated and sensitive bits of equipment. We have to test them with a fine-toothed comb before we can put them to this use."

"Then how many do you think we can do?" Evelyn ask quietly, looking at the hologram and wondering what they'd have to skimp on and where, "We have to protect as far out as we can, for the sake of saving lives and livelihoods."

"The central generator aside, I believe we can arrange for twenty-eight of the energy deflector variety and eight of the particle. Grand total of thirty-six, which is doable." Lisa pulled the perimeter in from the suburban area, reducing the edge coverage by twenty percent and ending up nearly halfway into the suburbs, selecting sixteen of the generators and removing them, spreading the rest out so that while most of the perimeter was under the double coverage, there was still about fifteen percent that was the light blue of single coverage, most of it in the part of the city that was estimated to be the last hit. "This should reduce the risk to the population, but keep the ice buildup off the main city."

Evelyn didn't like it, not one bit, but she nodded, seeing the Senior Chief's logic and still not liking it. "Can we set them as standalone?" This time she saw Alistair shaking his head, "Why not?"

"The particle deflectors, sure, those are easy, it's the energy strikes we can't predict. We hit the wrong settings and we could end up amplifying the hits and do more damage than we stop." He waved a hand in a so-so gesture, "That's unlikely, ma'am, but possible. But we're going to need teams on the ground with the shield generators to adjust them as we get data in from the leading edge of the storm. If we don't react fast enough, the generators explode, and we lose it all. In the double coverage areas, we'll still have some protection, but we lose any sort of coverage and who knows."

Evelyn remained quiet as she moved the generators around virtually, leaving the single coverage back down towards the bottom, with smaller gaps between the other generators, "That is about the best we can do then.." She twisted the hologram again so that it was flat, then ran a simulation based on their best guess of what the storm was going to look like. Yellow flashes of stressed shields, then a couple of orange areas as individual generators failed, then came back up, but no red of complete failure. "I'll get this to the Captain. Alistair, Lisa, get as many of them put together as you can and let the engineers know that we're going to be going down to the surface for hazardous duty. We'll leave a skeleton watch up here, but the rest of us are going down. I'll give them their assignments personally when we have them."

Lisa nodded and smiled slightly at Alistair, "We'll get it done, ma'am. At least we're doing something, right?"

"At least... We're doing something." Evie agreed, "Now to see if it's something good."