The Good, the Bad, and the Spotted

Posted on 17 May 2017 @ 5:35pm by Lieutenant David Moreau Jr & Commander Jayla Kij

1,933 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: The Finnean Crisis
Location: Phaser Range
Timeline: MD 2 || 1500 Hours

David had to admit he was feeling a bit better after Doctor Kij had healed the scarring on his chest muscles and he was looking forward to testing his limits again, but would take the Trill Doctor's advice on seeing one of the therapists onboard the ship before he started to push himself again. For now, though, it was his turn to give her the best training that he could in an area that the Captain had mandated as required for all senior members of the ship.

He stood in the phaser range going over some Type II and Type III phasers, checking the clips, making sure everything was in working order and checking the various training programs that were offered. Kij had admitted that she was a horrible shot, so he decided not to make the program too difficult, but not too easy, either. Enemies didn't care if someone was a novice shot or an expert when they were shooting at you, and they would be shooting to kill.

Jayla arrived at the range very nervously. She had thought about changing into comfortably clothes, but decided against it. She doubted she'd have time to change into comfortable clothing if the ship was boarded. "Good afternoon, Lieutenant Moreau," she said nervously, spotting the security chief nearby.

"Hey, Doc," David said as he saw Doctor Kij come in. "I hope you're ready to eliminate some bacteria," he said, continuing the offer that he had made to her in Medical earlier. "I found a program that uses holographic projections with the probes, so you can practice your medical skills and phaser training at the same time."

"Thanks," she said nervously. Damn! Was she ever going to get over those nerves where phasers were involved? "I sure hope this works," she added.

"Okay, let's go over phaser safety first," he said as he motioned towards the counter where two Type II phasers were set. "Are you familiar with the various settings?"

"Well, yes," she replied, but then suddenly became unsure. "Um... let me see. I think 1 through 6 are various levels of stun... Um.... And the rest are... oh, I know burning is in there somewhere..." She chewed her lip.

David shook his head. "There's only three levels to stun," he said. "Light, medium and heavy. The light stun, or setting one is calibrated for base humanoid physiology, and causes temporary central nervous system impairment resulting in slight daze but not unconsciousness. Setting two renders base-type humanoids remain unconscious for up to fifteen minutes. Setting three can put someone in a deep sleep for up to one hour. There's other effects which are cumulative based on how many shots someone is hit with, but we'll cover those another time." He paused and looked to see if she had any questions about that.

"Okay," she said, still chewing her lip. "So 1 is dazed, 2 is knock out for 15 minutes, 3 is knock out for an hour. I think I got it."

"Setting four is low thermal which causes base-type humanoids to experience extensive CNS damage and epidermal electromagnetic trauma," he continued. "Setting five is high thermal which causes humanoid tissues experience severe burn effects but due to water content deeper epithelial layers will not char. Setting six causes light disruption to organic tissues and structural materials exhibit comparable penetration and molecular damage as high energy causes matter to undergo rapid dissociation. Questions so far before I continue?"

"I think I've got it," she said. "4- CNS damage, 5- severe burns, 6- um.... 6 breaks down organic material?" That one was difficult to put into simple terms to help her remember what they all did, but she supposed that would do.

"Right," David said. "For a simple breakdown of the settings. Setting seven causes moderate disruption to organic tissue damage causes immediate cessation of life processes as disruption effects become widespread. Setting eight causes medium disruption and a cascading disruption forces causes humanoid organisms to vaporize, as fifty percent of affected matter transitions out of the continuum. All unprotected matter is affected and penetrated according to depth and time of application. Setting nine is high disruption and medium alloys and ceramic structural materials of over one hundred centimeters of thickness begins exhibiting energy rebound prior to vaporization."

"So, basically, 7, 8, and 9 are all kills," she said grimly.

"Settings ten through sixteen are based more on explosive disruption of matter rather than organic and the higher the setting, the less charges you have remaining," he said. "With setting sixteen, you have one shot and only one before it drains the cell completely. Now on to the types of beams. There's your standard narrow beam which requires aim and there's the wide beam."

"You have to realign the emitter crystal for the wide beam and the advantage of this is that multiple targets can be neutralized at once. However, there are multiple set backs. The beam which is emitted from the phaser is not as powerful as a single shot would be. As such the phaser often needs to be set to a higher setting to compensate. This in turn has a significant effect upon the power consumption causing power cells to be depleted quicker."

"That makes sense," she said. "The higher the setting, the more power is required and the fewer shots you get. Wider beams require higher settings because the power is spread out a bit more. Okay. I think I understand. Oh, I should've been taking notes."

"I'll give them to you on a PADD after the session," David said as he handed her a pair of goggles and a phaser. "Next is inserting the power cell." He picked up his own phaser and a cell and turned the phaser so she could see it, then inserted the cell into the bottom of the handle after releasing a latch, then closed it again. "Now you try it," he said as he handed her a cell.

"Okay," she said nervously. She very gingerly took the cell, picked up a phaser and tried to insert it. She realized that she'd forgotten to release the latch and did so, nearly dropping the phaser. Finally, she got the power cell inserted and nearly forgot to close the latch. "There," she said nervously; why was she so nervous? "Did I do it right?"

"Yes, but you forgot your goggles," he said. "Safety always comes first. Don't be nervous around a phaser unless it's pointed at you and never point one at someone else unless you have to."

"Oh, right," she muttered, looking at the goggles she'd set on the table absentmindedly. "I- I'll try. Okay. So... what now?"

David went to the terminal and activated the program he had selected and after a moment, the holo emitters created ten slow moving biological infections which looked like magnified viruses roughly the size of softballs. "Now," he said as he went back to her and indicated a illuminated bar on her phaser. "That's the control panel for the settings. The button under it is the safety and the stud under that is for firing. Remove the safety and start shooting at the viruses. I need you to hit eight out of ten of them."

"Okay," she said. She did was instructed and removed the safety, carefully checked the setting and aimed at one of the viruses. She missed, of course, and tried again. It took her five tries to hit it. She quickly aimed for a second, but that one took her six tries to hit. Frustrated, she turned her attention on a third. "Come on, Jayla, it's physics," she hissed. She'd been really good at physics. But, she missed again.

David put his goggles on and moved up behind her. "May I guide your arm?" he asked her. "It's nothing personal, but you're not leading the target and you're trying too hard. Breathe in, aim, press the stud. You're firing as if they're everywhere excerpt where you aiming and that wastes charges."

"Okay," she agreed. "Don't worry, I don't take it personally. I can use all the help I can get."

He reached out to put his hand on her wrist as he stepped up behind her without touching any other part of her body and looked over her shoulder. "Okay. See the one hovering slightly above the others?" He raised her wrist and lined up with it as he sighted over her shoulder. "Now follow it and get just ahead of it, then give a gentle tap of the firing stud."

"Physics," she muttered, allowing him to guide her. Just ahead of it, she thought. And fire! She gently tapped the stud.

Sure enough, she hit it on the first shot and he nodded. "Good. Now would you like to try for the next one on your own, or would you like my help a bit more?"

"I think I got it," she said, feeling a bit more confident. She chewed her lip as she took aim at another one. Just ahead of it, she reminded herself before she fired. It still took her three tries before she got it, but that was an improvement. She gave a satisfied nod and aimed for another.

"Slown down. Breathe. Lead. Imagine that you're tracing the path of an infection and anticipating where it'll spread to next," David told her. "This isn't critical at the moment, but if you were trying to stop, say, the spread of Borg nanoprobes, what would you do?"

She nodded and took a deep breath. "Okay," she said, aiming more carefully this time. She still missed, but got it on the second shot. "I'm getting better," she said happily, taking aim at another of the 'germs.'

"Keep at it," David said as he stepped away from her. "One shot, one hit. You can do it. I'm going to get you trained to the point where you can get eight out of ten with eight shots, and then we're going to the next level of difficulty. Keep practicing."

Jayla nodded. But, try as she might, she could not get one on the first shot. Most of them took two, but the last one took three. She growled at the failure. She let out a Trill curse under her breath. "I thought I had that one," she said, frustrated.

"You're doing a lot better, but I'm going to schedule another session for tomorrow," he said as he went over to the terminal and checked her score. It was lower than her Academy score and he quickly entered it as training and shunted it off the screen. "Schedule some holodeck time for Velocity and use that for practice," he suggested. "It's great for hand eye coordination."

Jayla nodded, but didn't think hand eye coordination was quite the problem. "I'll do that," she said. "Thanks."

"Tomorrow, same time, same place." David said with a smile. "See you then."

Jayla blinked and finally looked up at him. "Thank you," she said sincerely. "For not yelling at me. It seems like everyone just wants to yell at me during these training sessions."

"It's my job to get people certified, not make them more nervous," he said. "I learned a long time ago that that never works, so I don't do it."

"I wish more people would learn that," she said. "Anyway, see you tomorrow."

"See you then, Doc," David said as he went over to begin cleaning the phasers after removing the power cells. One way or another, he'd get her scores up or he wasn't worth being a Chief of Security.

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