Oh. You want to talk about that day.

After the Admiral, Ensign Jallen and I had collected all our documents and I’d caught her up on some of the key differences between the original Intrepid design and the final one that was launched. The Admiral decided to fill us both in on the morning’s events... Do I need to recap that for you as well?

Thank god.

Well. After we had the news, I had to break the news to the construction crews. Given the time frames we were being given I didn’t have the chance to do it personally. I had to submit the orders from the terminal in Tracy’s office.

They could have given us a few days to get things in order, couldn’t they?

No, I suppose not. Still though. I don’t think that the brass really respect how we put our blood, sweat and tears into these ships. From the drawing board to the day the bottle breaks across their bow. For them, the ship is just another registry number on a fleet movements report. To us, they’re career, hell even life defining experiences. I know that you know that.

After I broke the bad news we returned to the design schematics for the two versions of the ship. There were a lot of differences, but it was then I realised that there was one significant similarity. One technology, unchanged, on both ships. But not any others.

Tricobalt devices.

They were something dreamed up by the ‘trauma unit’, the admittedly somewhat insensitive nickname for the working group created for the Wolf 359 survivors. While they were processing their losses and trauma, Starfleet in its infinite wisdom decided to give them the resources to invent new technologies and starships to fight the Borg.

Exactly, that was one of theirs. As were Quantum torpedoes and bio-neural gel packs come to think of it. Only those made it into other ships. Tricobalt devices didn’t, for a number of reasons.

Are you familiar with the second Khitomer Accords?

Well, long story short. They ban subspace weapons. For good reason, they’re unpredictable as hell.

Tricobalt devices weren’t theoretically subspace weapons. They only got reclassified and promptly banned when we discovered that they could create a tear in subspace if the warhead had a high enough yield. Something that didn’t come up until field tests.

It wasn’t something that could really be designed out because the main selling point of tricobalt devices was that they had a customisable yield. They wanted them to be the torpedo for every occasion. If they had to put a hard cap on that yield, well. That was more engineering time that they were worth. Especially with the ever more promising Quantum Torpedoes that were being developed in parallel.

We were searching for a reason, any reason, that would explain why both the Intrepid classes that had gone into deep space had experienced a critical failure. Despite their internals having significant differences.

Jallen pulled up some of the weapon testing records and told the admiral that the shockwaves from tricobalt device detonations could severely damage any ships in the area if the shields weren’t properly modulated before the device was fired.

The most recent test with the Intrepid, that took place after Voyagers disappearance, also found that Cherenkov radiation acted as a catalyst for the subspace tear forming. If it was present, the advised yield limit would still be too high and the ship would be damaged by the resulting tear.

We knew the Intrepid had been damaged in both it’s Tricobalt field tests, but Voyager still had a couple in her inventory when she left us for Deep Space Nine as a sort of ‘break glass in case of emergency’ solution.

If they had then had a reason to fire them in the badlands, perhaps while caught in a Cherenkov radiation producing plasma storm... Well. That could be the connection we were looking for. From there, we just needed to prove our theory.