Preparations

Posted on Tue Aug 9th, 2022 @ 5:16am by Lieutenant Etan tar-Lexros

Mission: The Lost Brother
Location: Security Office.

Wagnor stood in front of a table with several earpieces he'd recquessioned for the search mission. Apparently there was some sort of special coding needed to pair these with the ship's COMM system. So he was calling in an expert.

Etan was actually finding himself more needed now as an Ops officer than he'd ever expected. This was front-line service at its most stressful. They weren't going out and exploring a strange new world to find new life; they were rescuing people close to the members of the crew. In that effort, they could not allow themselves to fail. The request was regarding Comms earpieces; updated versions of the old Bridge earpiece, tied to the officer's commbadge. But to actually get them to do more than passively receive took a little knowledge of the ship's systems. The Efrosian walked into the Security Office and nodded at Wagnor. "Commander, you requested assistance with the earpieces?"

"Yes Lieutenant," the Commander. "My officers and I are going to need hands free communicators while on the planet. Ear pieces seem like the best choice however I want them tied into the regular combadges because those are easier for the ship censors to track. I don't have the technical skills cool skills to make that happen so I figured oh I figured you might be able to help me."

Etan nodded slightly at the commander's comment. It was an interesting conundrum and one Etan had never considered. He'd never been Chief of Ops on a front-line mission before, after all. "Well, earpieces can be configured to be hands-free receivers, but for transmission, tapping the commbadge is still the easiest way. The only alternative, voice activation, isn't a great method, as it's either locked to a specific voiceprint - which means it can fail in the field if someone is stressed enough to change the register or timbre of their voice - or it's just open to all sounds of a certain volume, which means just about anything could cause activation and an open, traceable, channel." He pulled out a tricorder and a PADD, picking up one of the receivers and scanning it, then scanning the Commander's badge. After a moment of checking the readouts, he removed the antenna from the base of the thing and pressed a small stud on the underside. Etan then replaced it, typing a command on his PADD before handing the device over. "This unit is now paired to your commbadge. A few warnings, though - it does transmit on a local frequency, which can be tracked by a strong enough sensor, and it can be badly affected by outside EM radiations - which might include phaser fire if it comes too close. I'd need to know the commbadge IDs of each person on the team, and then I'd be able to pair the earpieces."

Wagnor nodded, " My people used a similar earpiece. We used a clicking noise made with the tongue to activate the earpiece, would that be possible?"

Etan thought for a moment, considering the possibility as he picked up his PADD and started working it out. "It can be done. The major problem is that you risk having any noise in the programmed range set it off. That could create a lot of false traffic that you don't want. It could cause interference in the channel, or worse, leave you open to being tracked or jammed. I can set up a sound-activation, with all those caveats noted, but I would still very strongly suggest touch activation."

"We don't have time for a lot of modifications so we'll do it your way this time and and we'll see about future modifications later." Wangnor said.