With the blackout in full motion, alternative ways were being found across the galaxy to travel or communicate. The Himalaya had set out to do the task they were given, create a repeater/communication grid that would enable limited communication between the Grim Wall region and Archanis region. The Himalaya would navigate a designated route that would lead to meeting their partners in engineering, USS Pacific Palisades. This was a slow and perhaps a tedious job, warp was limited, the array system had a limited reach, and communication with Hecate Station would be fading away by the static of the blackout, until the grid was put on.

The industrial workspace was the beating heart of the operations, connected to four cargo bays and a hatch enforced with force fields, it made some advances in the given task. Not much, but it was something. The assigned crew to this task were T’Fal the Structural Integrity Technician, Brel Delvar the Advanced Fabrication Engineer, H’ulish the Security Systems Engineer with support of Teb Mar the Deflector Systems & Sensor Array Specialist. The team was under lead of Marisol Ortiz as the Special Projects Engineer, with routine support of Petty Officer Giv Kresh.

Industrial machines were not so loud, as many would presume. The workspace was rather clean as the officers work at their designated areas at the key components for the communication array. Scratching behind his ear,  “We can also just blueprint the shit of this and let the computer do what needs to be done. Why do need to be here, Lieutenant?” Brel looked in the direction of Marisol.

“Because if we do that, then the possibility for resource relocation, adaptation to the space conditions and deployment alignments would come in danger” Marisol taps on the console to make the report up for Commander Valerio. The array’s task was somewhat redundant, but a required need for the given situation. So Marisol could understand the question to a degree.

T’Fal shrugs, “The lieutenant is correct, hull in integrity is different in certain locations. We are depended on the data that science provides us while en route to Archanis. The wrong configuration, would mean a failure of the communication grid, Ensign”.

Rolling his eyes as Brel looked back down on his console, “Got it, got it…” He repeated getting back to his work. He then spoke up again, “What could the cause be of this blackout? I mean, command has not heard anything from Fourth Fleet command?”

A sniffle came from Teb “I bet this whole thing is a hoax, someone at Starfleet or even Fourth Fleet Communication did something to mess up the communication. I heard that rumor that direct personnel of Vice Admiral Dowd sent out a data package of tribble pictures as a bad joke to Starbase Bravo, but sent it accidentally to the communication array, overloading the system on a galaxy wide scale.” He swipes the latest deflector updates to the blueprint as Teb shook his head.

“You do know that is utter nonsense, right?” Marisol pointed out looking over her shoulder “Thought if we are on the communication, it would be funny if that rumor from Starbase Bravo was actually true” She looked back at her console “I heard it at Hecate that some Fleet Captain send a subspace booty call to Q after three Andorian ales. If that is the case, then this blackout makes much more sense that we are paying the price for it”.

While T’Fal tried to ignore this distracting conversation, Brel looked up from his console, “Don’t tell me it was Commodore Oland? I heard she has a thing for omnipotence beings.” His mind wanders off to the possibilities that Q was involved in this all, or that Oland really did send out that message as a bad joke, it sounded so believable.

Closing the hatch of the recently made array, H’ulish grabs his tools to secure the hatch “What if is totally something else, imagine us being trapped in some kind of holodeck simulation after the events of Frontier Day. The Fourth Fleet is just scared to pull the plug because we younger generation are too deep into the system, and it could mean biological failure of our organs.” He was most of the time very quiet, but when H’ulish talks it was an ongoing talk.

While others look at each other with skeptical expression in their faces, T’Fal breaks the silence “Statistically likely, we haven’t had a holodeck failure in the Beta Quadrant. It’s quite overdue” She didn’t look at the others, but she could feel the stunning surprise that T’Fal would agree with that oversized rumor. “Then again, it is just a rumor”

Marisol blinks a bit, not knowing if she was worried about these rumors or the minds of her team. “Right, let’s focus on these arrays boys and gals” With that she put the conversation on a break. Everyone was still contemplating if there were any possibilities if one of these rumors were potential, right?