STF

Staff meeting...when the past doesn't match the present...or the future

Posted May 8, 2022, 3:17 p.m. by Lieutenant River Styxx (OIC Marine) (Nathan Derricutt)

Posted by Gamemaster Deus Ex Machina (GM) in Staff meeting…when the past doesn’t match the present…or the future

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Ethan Nash (Chief Engineer) in Staff meeting…when the past doesn’t match the present…or the future

Posted by Civilian Jessa Novar (Child) in Staff meeting…when the past doesn’t match the present…or the future
Posted by… suppressed (12) by the Post Ghost! 👻
OOC: I am setting this timeline as the end of a week in the story timeline. That will allow for everyone to have “time” to experience bringing something to the meeting. I know a lot of us are busy with real life and at times are not able to post as fast or as frequently as others. Please look at this as a working storyline. Please feel free to interject, insert posts, and post as far back as needed to share what you choose. That means, for our newer players, you can back post to the entrance in the thread even if we are far past that. Yes, it may make the post slightly “messy” at times but life is messy for many right now. I have created a resource sheet for the story if needed or wanted. https://www.star-fleet.com/core/character/1836/

OOC: There is a lot of info so I am putting it up in stages so it is easily readable. It will also allow people to enter the thread or comment and expand on parts if they want.

Kate

IC:

Ian slid into his seat at the conference table taking a sip of his coffee and making a face. Cold the murmured and shook his head. Cold coffee was something he rarely experienced since he had married Kelly. She drank coffee enough of the stuff and fast enough that it never got cold. It was just one more reminder of all the changes that had taken place in the past week. Glancing to his right, her seat still remained unfilled. A small smile curled the corners of his lips when he noticed not only was it not filled but also missing.

Mardusk, Nash, or Drayke had to have removed it since the last meeting. It was not a show of crew solidarity or respect for her absence in being attacked by the aliens called the Elders that were now sitting in the brig. It was purely vindictive against the pompous Admiral sent by Starfleet at an oddly specific time for no clear reason. Admiral Niles Primrose had been anything but helpful cutting out the crew whenever possible and making decision only an idiot would find constructive. In the last staff meeting, Primrose had taken Kelly’s seat as a sign of being the superior officer. Ethan, Gravel, and Jacen seemed to have made sure that the visual option was eliminated. The fact that Ian made sure not to send Primrose any reference to the meeting about to occur might mean the inflated egomaniac would never grace them with their presence.

Don’t count your chickens before they hatch, suddenly rang out in his head in his grandmother’s voice. It again brought a small chuckle from Ian as he got up and moved to the replicator to get a new drink. He was so tired of tribal wisdom and archaic quotes to last a lifetime. Jessa was a walking Socrates with poetic quotes and stupid mantra’s about life. When this was all over, he was going to take a long vacation with his wife on some isolated beach without comms and devoid of any other lifeforms with the capability of speech.

Sitting down at the table, Ian sipped his coffee and review the plethora of notes that needed to be shared with the officers that would soon be joining him.

Ian Bordeaux

Maddie appeared to be the first to arrive and nodded to Ian “Sir.” She said taking a seat and letting out a deep breath, first staff meetings aboard a new ship were always nerve wracking, this one more so than normal since she had left in unusual circumstances.

CTO

“Just Ian,” he laughed and nodded behind him to the table laid out with sandwiches and other assortments of food. “Sorry about the lunchtime meeting thing. Get something to eat if you are hungry,” he gestured at the half sandwich caddy-corner from his PaDD. “As you are about to be caught up to speed it has been one helluva week. Our staff meetings have been scheduled around Jessa seeing Rinker. It is not ideal but someone has to keep eyes on that kid at all times for now.” Leaning back in his seat, Ian looked the woman slightly up and down. While it was not unusual to get new crew, timing right now seemed to be oddly specific with a lot of things.

“So what do you know about the events of the past four days?” Taking a sip of his coffee, Ian waited. The coffee felt warm and comforting as the heat filled his body. It was a temporary reprieve from the stress and tension that kept him from sleeping or eating a decent meal over the past few days. Setting the mug down, Ian’s mind drifted to what Rinker said before they entered the Brig to speak with Rogan. Life is never going to be normal again. He knew this was a fact but part of him wanted to resist that thought.

The ship in general knew the broad scope of what happened. An alien ship arrived, the captain was hurt, prisoners were taken, and the Atlantis had been on a steady yellow alert for the past seven days. Only a tighter circle had more specific details.

Ian Bordeaux
Maddie stepped over and grabbed a sandwich and a glass of water. That gave her time to compose her answer, she knew alot more about what was going on but had her orders, turning back to Ian “I know that we encountered an unknown ship, Captain Bordeaux was injured and that is about it.” She said sitting down with her food “Is there more to what’s going on?” She asked as she took a bite of food.

CTO

Ian set his cup down and gave Maddie the once-over in his mind. It was not that he had any reason to distrust her but there was no reason to trust her. Yes, the woman was new to the crew but so were a couple of dozen other people. Kelly had specifically requested this woman to be part of her senior staff weeks before. It was then Ian realized his hesitation had nothing to do with the officer. It was because the situation felt like airing dirty laundry to a stranger. Whether he broke the news or someone else did in the next ten minutes wasn’t going to change the facts of the situation. Having a fresh pair of eyes and someone slightly distant from the problem could however present facts and a different point of view.

“You might have wanted something stronger than water to hear my answer,” Ian said dryly. Opening his mouth, he was stopped by the swish of the pneumatic doors as the operations officer blew into the room with all the youthful vigor of a fresh-faced cadet. If Ian had not been told about Tenzig’s peculiar situation of his own, Ian might have barked an order for the officer to leave.

Tenzing popped in with enough energy for the entire crew. Given his history being far from home, one would think he’d be the opposite. “Scuse me,” The Ops Officer said as he made his way over to the table and picked up a sandwich. Trainor stopped momentarily and looked between Bordeaux and the CTO, the shrugged. “Someone telling secrets?” He asked.

Trainor then took a seat and grinned towards the pair, “So… spill the beans?”

Trainor
Ops

Oh my god if you start singing Whitney Mears songs I will blow you out of the airlock, Ian thought looking at the youthful expression on Tenzig’s face. It was not the kid’s fault. The guy was practically as old as everyone about to sit around the table. That meant he had a wealth of knowledge but it was just hard to get past Tenzig’s boyish good looks.

Since these were the only two new faces joining the table, it was best to get them up to speed so real discussions could begin when the rest of the officers arrived. If anyone else showed up they would just fill in the blanks. Reclining back, Ian rested an elbow on the edge of the table and activated the large wall PaDD. Four images and one vehicle appeared on the screen. Clicking on the vehicle, Ian wore an annoyed expression. “The Beacon of Hope,” he said as the large vessel appeared on the screen, “arrived off our port bow just before fourth and first shift change. We are not sure if this was calculated or coincidence.” It was common knowledge that the third and fourth shifts were the shifts with the least amount of command experience. “If the aliens wanted their arrival to confuse us, it worked because as you know most of us are in bed at 0400 hours. Kelly was on the bridge because she was finishing up the last of Ensign Rio’s observations required for him to officially take the helm and get in his command experience hours. I was pulled into a closed-door meeting an hour before the aliens arrival. Nash and Drayke were dealing with a warp core fluctuation. The rest of the crew was asleep until all hell broke lose.”

Ian waited to see if either of them thought it was odd about the timing. In retrospect, things seemed off but hindsight was always twenty-twenty.

“There was is a lot much to summarize. It was best to take it in easily digestible parts. Let’s start with the ship.” Expanding the image of the ship so everyone could take in the details, Ian continued. The Beacon of Hope gleamed like it was just off the assembly line. The hull looked almost like wet metal without the small pockmarks or dings associated with space travel. The color was silver but so highly polished that one wondered if they could almost see their own reflection in it if they were up close. A slight shimmer to the ship indicated that it had a shield or force field of some sort around it.

The overall design of the ship might be described at torpedo-like. It was completely long and cylindrical with no wings or beams visibly linking one section of the ship to another. The ship was larger than a shuttle and about fifty meters in length. There were no windows except for the large viewport on the front of the ship. There were also no seams in the hull that was readily visible as if it had been poured as a single mold. Examining it from all angles, there did not even appear to be a door or a hatch.

“Styxx was sent over with a Marine contingent to enter the ship. She will go into more detail when she arrives but the Marine contingent was armed to the teeth entering the ship. All I know for now is that we took on heavy casualties.” Ian’s voice had a strained quality to it. The body count was going up but there were spinning their wheels in place. It had been four days and they barely had figured out who was who or verified any of the information they had gained.

Ian Bordeaux

OOC: Is rinker here?
OOC: If you want him to. I try to use a staff meeting to get people up to date on all the threads so they don’t have to read everything to participate in the main story. If you want to give a blurb about the mental state of the Elders and Jessa you are more than welcome. If not I can make a vague statement. ~Kate

OOC: Perfect segway and amazing post, Nathan. I will let you explain what Styxx found.
I am going to have a paragraph above so people not involved in the sim so far can have several possible places to post.
I know that time is tight for a lot of people so if you want to share your part of the sim as Nathan did (ie: Rinker, security, engineering, science, etc) just pop it in and I will alter my posts to make it all flow. That way we have the story summarized and people can comment or add where they want. ~ Kate

As they spoke River walked in carrying a case. She had changed out of her armor and into her normal uniform.

The meeting stopped as Styxx walked in, all eyes on her and the items in her hands. Of all the people who were going to speak at this meeting, right now Lt. Styxx, officer in charge of the marines, was undoubtedly the most important. “Styxx, what have you got,” Ian shifted in his seat from the laid-back posture to one of more rapt attention. During Rogan’s interview with him and Rinker, the Elder hinted the ship held a lot of answers. Maybe a few of them could be answered during Styxx’s report.

“Five dead, three wounded.” she said simply as she placed the case on the table and opened it. Taking out Jessa’s dairy and the picture she took from the other bunk she placed them on the table so all could see them “We’re dealing with religious zealots on some dam fool crusade, they have advanced technology and everything on that ship was designed to kill trespassers. However the ship isn’t much of an issue now” she said pausing.

“Five,” Ian said leaning back in his seat. He had heard they took casualties but five was a hard number to swallow. The Marines were smart, tough, and almost invincible. It they took on that much damage under the command of someone like Styxx, the Altantis was in far more trouble than they originally realized. Ian glanced at Styxx. While it was only visible to those that knew her well, Ian could see the tightness in her facial muscles. The way her lips stretched into a thin line as she talked and the dark circles under her eyes told Ian volumes. Styxx was not cracking under the pressure of what happened. Instead, the Marine leader was storing it up like emotional fuel. When it finally was released, nothing in the world was going to stop Styxx from reigning pure holy hell on the Elders. Nothng he said would make a difference but not saying something felt wrong too. In place of words, he locked eyes with Styxx and nodded slightly. It was a silent pact between them that Bordeaux would allow her to do what she needed for the marines she had lost.

River locked eyes with Ian and returned the nod. She knew he understood where her head was and she knew he would let her unleash hell when the time was right. River was not interested in showing mercy to their guests. She wanted to make them suffer and she would.

“True enough, everything I’ve learned confirms that… at the level of a cult, Kool-Aid and all.” Rinker had a few ethical issues he had to work out in his head. But generalities he could confirm, not that 5 dead wasn’t confirmation enough.

Rinker’s words confirmed what most of the crew suspected. It felt like a weight on everyone in the room. Defeating an enemy was one thing. Defeating religious fighters on a mission made the job that much harder. In history, wars built on religion tended to have many more martyrs. Martyrdom was one hell of an opponent.

“Between the firefight with the mechs onboard and my less then gentle sample gathering, it isn’t in much of a state to fly anywhere. I’ve also put enough explosive on it that if they tried to escape, which I hope they do, on it the only thing going to warp would be their ashes.” she continued her tone sadistic for a moment before returning to a plain tone. she moved to the computer screen and punched in a few commands. The screen lit up with a list of samples, readings from various sections, a full schematic for the ship and materials gathered from the ship, all split into what department would be best to analyse them

“I took the liberty of gathering samples from all over the ship and bringing them onboard, figured you guys would like to have a crack at sorting it all out. I also started a partial translation key for their language and text, while I was over there. I sent it over to xenolingustics hopefully they can pick up form where I started and fill in there blanks. I’m hoping to hear from them soon. I told them to contact me as soon as they had something.” she said her tone professional.

“Good call,” Ian said. “Rinker and I have a smattering of the verbal components of their language which I can safely say is translatable by context even if we don’t know that exact translation. I will send that over to Roth and the xenolinguistics team.” Glancing at Rinker, Ian debated the line between personal and public knowledge. The psychiatric chief had stated Jessa had an epic breakdown writing her language during their last session. As her parent, Ian could freely share what he wanted. The question was did he want to. Rinker held the vast majority of Jessa’s therapy sessions behind a durasteel door only sharing what he felt was needed to be known to Ian. Was the fact that Jessa was willing to pretend to be illiterate instead of sharing her language something for public consumption? Ian held the glance long enough for someone as experienced as Heathcliff to know Ian had just okayed the therapist to share what if anything the man felt important.

“Well if you mean that we understand the curses.”

“I would like to get a look at that when they done with the translation.” Rinker face was implacable under Ian’s glance. However his lack of further addition to the conversation was the answer to whether Heathcliff had any interest in giving any additional context.

“I’ll get you a copy,” Ian said feeling a knot form in his stomach. Maybe now was not the right time to bring up they had someone that could probably, willingly translate it for the right motivation. Jessa wanted to see the Elders. The crew needed a translation. With five dead, maybe it was time to push Jessa a little more.

“While we wait I can give you a briefing of what we encountered over there, just let me know where you want me to start” she added as stood at the head of the table.

Lieit Styxx (Marine OIC)

“Maybe with the defensive mechanisms,” Ian suggested picking up the diary and thumbing through it. None of the symbols looked like anything Ina had seen before but it was handwritten and the phonemes repeating enough that it wasn’t some made-up language.

Ian Bordeaux Chief diplomatic Officer

River nodded “The exterior defences consisted of a force field of some kind that repelled anything that came in contact with it. I threw a combat knife at it and it came back at such force that imbedded itself in the shuttle. There was also a series of spikes that shot out at the slightest pressure, the spikes killed one of my men.” River said pausing “They where strong enough to punch thru marine armour. we where able to disable the shield with emp grenades, and disabled the spikes by keeping a weight on them so they would not retract.” as she spoke River displayed her tricorder scans and the screen recreated the spikes coming out

“Once we where past that, the hull showed its seams and two hatches one was a fire trap, the other the entrance. Luckily the marine that entered the other hatch was half Klingon that combined with his armour protected him from the fire. He told me that there was camera in the fire trap, meaning our guests are a sadistic bunch. After that it was going pretty well. Until we bumped into the next defence” she said playing her helmet cam footage on the big screen. it showed the mech attack and what River did to destroy it. As the video played river gave commentary.

“It was made of something that looked like liquid mercury it must have come out of the ceiling. As soon as it saw us it spat acid, we barley avoided it. Vahsar and I opened fire and we though we where getting somewhere but it spilt into to parts and resumed its attack. That was when I noticed it a black disc at it base. That was its weakness. I was able to use a canister shot by Vashar to destroy it. But there was another one onboard.” she said simply as she paused the helmet cam to show the mech in its form and the black disc.

As she was talking River saw Ian thumb through the diary and moved to grab one of the pictures she had gathered “That diary belongs to the kid, I found it in what I assume was her bunk. There was also this” she said handing Ian the picture with Jessa in her Ceremonial robes surrounded by others in similar robes. “They probably brainwashed her from an early age to heed the word of her elders and what ever religion compels these people” she added.

Lieut Styxx (Marine OIC)

Rinker

“Ya think,” Ian replied staring at the image before passing it over to Rinker. The image did not match what they knew of the Galactic Union. It showed a little girl, smiling and dressed up in what was traditional clothes. Shop the face into a communion dress, and Jessa would have passed for any five year old girl in the universe.

Ian Bordeaux

River just nodded “Children are easier to manipulate and brain wash, for the most part. Though it never worked on me as a kid. Adults are far harder to break. Its doable but it takes time. Unless of course you use a chemical or other substance.” she said a knowing tone in her voice “She was probably told and taught form birth that her elders where the greatest thing in the galaxy and that everything they did, the controlled life she led was how everything was and that she should be happy and thankful for it.” she added.

“That’s my guess, I’ll know more once her diary is translated. Or if I get to have a word with her” she said after a short pause.

Just then the door opened and Nash walked in. Pausing just inside the door, he reached into his tunic and pulled out the stub of a cigar, clamped it between his teeth and then sat down in one of the free seats around the table.

“What I miss?” he glanced from person to person.

Nash, CE

River watched as Nash came in and took a seat “I was just briefing the room on what I discovered on my mission to our guests ship Sir” she said simply “I manged to get onboard and retrieve several samples and access all the ships files. I have them stored and sorted ready for your engineers and the other departments to inspect them.” She said simply ” I was also informing the room that the stuff I got came at a very high price.” she added

Lieut Styxx (Marine OIC)


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