Posted by Captain Kelly Bordeaux (Commanding Officer) in MAIN SIM - away team to the planet (XO, Tigress, Nash, and anyone else that wants to join)

Posted by Lieutenant Cara Esmé O’Farrell (Counselor / Education Specialist) in MAIN SIM - away team to the planet (XO, Tigress, Nash, and anyone else that wants to join)

Posted by Commander Garinder’Jen th’Jir (Executive Officer) in MAIN SIM - away team to the planet (XO, Tigress, Nash, and anyone else that wants to join)
Posted by… suppressed (24) by the Post Ghost! 👻
snip
“No, but the orb might,” Kelly pulled it from her pocket. The little device the Lorn had given them had been a lot of help. Until now Kelly had almost forgotten it. “Orb,” she stated holding her palm out flat. “Is there another race with enough tech to help us try to figure this out or familiar with the tech behind it?”

Kelly Bordeaux CO

The Orb glowed purple which was indicative of it doing a logic analysis… the longer the delay the more difficult the processing. =^=The Lorn has no knowledge of any race that controls this type of radiation. The Darkness’ primary weapon is an anti-neutrino beam weapon. What is not widely know is they have a secondary weapon that disrupts known warp fields and drives preventing a vessel for ‘escaping’. This secondary weapon is based on directed proto-matter. Proto-matter is a substance that is illegal in this quadrant.=^=

Orb/GM

The computer on the planet would reveal that proto-matter was part of the experiment that they were running, but obviously the objective listed on the computer was only loosely related to warp travel as both were related to movement and little else. Micro-worm holes did not operate on the same principles as warp drive, although some theorized that warp fields in their own way created worm holes…

GM

=/\=The Genesis Device. Jen is there traces of proto-matter on the planet,=/\= Kelly asked feeling a knot form in her stomach.

Kelly Bordeaux CO

The tone in the Captain’s voice caught Jen by surprise and his antennae stopped in their tracks. He tried to recall something about this device and proto-matter but as a career marine that was not a talking point in the trenches. Lexi looked like she had an idea and he would inquire after her once there was more space to do that in. The Captain’s tone implied an urgency. Still, in catching a bit from the Orb with the channel still open did catch him up. Whatever this proto matter was it was used by the Darkness to generate a kind of interdictor weapon to snatch ships out of warp. In their last encounter were they too far away to have that used on them? It was an informational tool that would be very valuable not to mention tactical analysis of its recorded use.

=/\= Captian the XO is busy with something right now but the scans are showing that proto matter is present but not blanketing the space. Running scans now to see if it is located in certain pockets or evenly dispersed.=/\= Lexi was slightly taken back by the news. Protomatter was incredibly unstable and if there was a explosion here it would explain the apparent loss of life. Genesis was the creation of life from lifelessness but that would also mean the structures would be gone too? The only way in her mind you could have some of both would be if the proto matter was used in weapons format yet this was out of her purview of expertise.

Lexi Robbins

The proto-matter itself was in microscopic quantities. The experiment itself was a century old and whatever stores that were used had long since been emptied. There was little that could be collected or analyzed at this point.

The experiment as they further put the pieces together did not cause the Genesis wave here. The matching ‘experiments’ of proto-matter in two distant parts of the galaxy caused the experiments to achieve half of their objectives. Some knew what happened in the alpha quadrant, but they did not know of the micro wormhole that formed and transported bits of the Mutara nebula and Defiant here.

But what happened here was part of the wormhole/high speed opening that this race was trying to and it created a small connection. Receiving part of the Genesis wave and re-evolving the race here converting whoever was present into this world into a mutation of themselves… is a wave that enveloped the whole world in minutes.

GM

=/\= Away team=/\= Kelly put out her question to anyone on the team. =/\= Can anyone tell me if the decay rate of the radiation they were studying correlates to the decay rate I am about to send you?=/\= Touching a button Kelly sent over the scientific info about decay rates radiation from the Genesis wave the Federation had on file. =/\=I am trying to figure out if we are dealing with a possible zeitgeist.=/\=

Kelly Bordeaux CO

bump

Jen looked at all the scientific data that came down and was very grateful that there were people who actually knew what the squiggles and numbers meant. And what in the icy hells was a zeitgeist? Was that some kind of alien that was around this quadrant too? He saw the decay rate chart and a small bubble brief on the Genesis wave which for the second time in not too long stalled his antennae in surprise. =^= Stand by =^= Jen replied then looked toward Lexi. “Do they line up?” he asked, indicating the decay rates.
- Jen, XO

OOC: Im not certain what the decay rate has anything to do with what’s going on. If you could tell me the conclusion or theory you are wroking on I could give you a more useful answer… but at this juncture.

IC: There wasn’t too much information on the decay rate of the Genesis wave since the whole planet and system was classified and then self immolated. However the other two substances Proto-Matter did not have a decay rate since it was matter. Neither of the two items were of significant enough amounts to create a reaction. Not that they even knew what reaction they were looking for.

GM

OOC: Let’s try posting this again and NOT reboot the computer unthinkingly in the middle of the post … must be Friday ..
IC:

=^= Jen to Atlantis. We are not seeing any kind of radiation decay rate. All that we see is fairly inert matter at this time that may be proto-matter residue in very small quantities. Do you think that that is a normal state of the aftermath of one of these devices deploying? Why would they have turned this on themselves? =^= Indeed, surely they would have tested it somewhere else besides their own home world, or so Jen would think.
- Jen, XO

=/\=We have a working theory right now,=/\= Kelly’s tone was only slightly confident not having a firm grasp on all the science behind this at the moment. =/\=that our Genesis device opened a micro wormhole which is why I am looking at a piece of the wreckage from the Reliant right now in our hangar. Our theory is that we punched a hole over here when Khan and Kirk went toe to toe. I am in communication with the Lorn using the orb trying to get any info they acquired studying it 100 years ago. I will patch the conversation through to your end.=/\=

Kelly Bordeaux CO

Conference calls. Jen was not sure he liked them but in this case being on the party line as some Terran in his regiment had mentioned once - and then had to explain - would save time. He tried to fathom the how on this side. Genesis device that altered an entire world’s DNA as it were with proto-matter, creating first a paradise then watching it fall apart as it became unstable generated a wormhole from there to here. Okay, he could see that, and even that creeping through to here to affect the planet here in a similar way. But how did this include the Reliant? Was it just in the extremely wrong place at the wrong time and intercepted the wormhole and was dragged through like through a garburator? He shuddered at that thought. He liked fighting chances. It didn’t sound in that sense that that gave the Reliant even that. Jen centered himself in the room so that those there could hear it as well.
Jen, XO

“Cmdr, It’s possible if this was from the Genesis wave and the Reliant, they may have scavenged some of the tech, computer core, sensors logs, etc from it and kept it here. Should I take a security officer and search?” Cara felt pretty useless at this point. There were no personal records or video recordings for her to try and get a look at what the beings working here were like or what might have happened to them. It was frustrating, but that’s the way it was.

O’Farrell

“Good idea,” Jen said. “Do it.”

Then, back to the Atlantis, Jen asked, =^= How long have the Darkness been about? =^=
- Jen, XO

The report of the Darkness harassing and destroy shipping has been growing in frequency. There has been whispers of Darkness attacks for nearly a century… minor things here and there and missing ships. But those might have just been weird accidents attributed to a ‘boogie man.’ The more recent attacks over the last 20 years, growing in frequency magnitude and evidence are for the most part proven to be the acts of the Darkness ships.

The level of advancement of the Darkness ships suggest a development of a race several decades, or several centuries longer than that of the oldest Federation races. For instance the Bajorian race was a millennia older than Earth. Likewise, there is a possibility that they are a millennia older than the other native races of the area and the Federation.

Cara nodded and toward the exit of the room. The security officers all shared a resigned smile, slapped Royo on the back for luck, and her ever faithful shadow. Cara glanced down at her tricorder and set it to search for federation power or comm signatures and material compositions. She knew the tricorder wasn’t enough so along with Royo they did a full search of every room they came to.

O’Farrell

The scans weren’t all that informative. The base resembled any generic science station. The key security seemed to be on the outside, keeping those who shouldn’t know what’s going on, outside. They were able to detect hardware inside the wall of the inactive volcano. The power still was on, at very low levels powered by the ‘unlimited’ natural power of geothermal energy. These hardware was machinery and interestingly a number of very small magnetic bottles.

“I just don’na get it, Royo,” Cara muttered to the security ensign with her. “Even a clean planned evacuation leaves somethin’ behind. This place almost seems ta have been scrubbed.” Royo shrugged as the counselor examined the machinery. =/\=O’Farrell ta Nash. We found somethin’ down here. Machinery that’s still powered. Looks like from geothermal energy, and some weird magnetic bottles. Ya wanna come take a look?=/\= While she spoke she ran the tricorder over the bottles.

O’Farrell

(The magnetic bottles were in another chamber but visible and scannable from their location) The magnetic bottles somehow continued to contain, in different containers, two liters of anti matter, 4 grams of bio-mimetic gel, and dark matter - 20 liters of pure dark matter.

Cara’s brows went up. All very dangerous substances. The theory that something happened to change the darkness into what they were may have some validity. She wasn’t going to attempt to get into the chamber or move the bottles. She could surmise how to move them safely, but that was better left to the experts. She looked around for a computer console and hoped that the translation matrix would work in this room as well. Maybe she could get an idea of what they were doing with the substances.

There was clearly a console set up in a position facing the Magnetic bottles that would logically be the controlling system. It was not technically activated, but clearly it had to be working on some level since the bottles were still working. Even with relatively unlimited geo-thermal power, there would be needs for minor tweaks over the years, or decades.... perhaps centuries.

Gene asked about the darkness and Cara is wandering the facility.

That was conclusive but not conclusive, at least to Jen, at least before he had a thought. =^= The attacks suggest the Darkness has only been at it for a brief time, well within the century of this incident. But what if they had technology prior to that and only added to it.. The Darkness may be young but their predecessors that were transformed by the Genesis effect may have been advanced and they built upon it? =^=
- Jen, XO

OOC: Bump .. Gene

It was logical to presume that the Darkness had only started the attacks in the last few decades when they had the power, and proximity to rain death on the collective of the races.

GM

=/\=Cmdr th’Jir. When you have a moment, you need ta come see this.=/\=

O’Farrell

GM

Cara moved over to the console and looked it over carefully hoping the translator was working. She scanned the readouts to see what exactly, other than keeping it stable, was going on in the next room.

“Hey Cara the XO is on a call with the boss and some Ambassador. What did you find,” Lexi asked before seeing the wall. “Have you scanned this?”

Cara looked up from the console she was studying, “Looks like a containment area for volatile substances. Scans show the magnetic bottles contain Dark Matter, Anti-matter, and bio-mimetic gel.”

“Whoa,” her voice got quiet looking at the readout. Moving closer to the canisters Lexi let out a breath she was holding. “So we got anti-matter, dark matter, and biometric gel Biometric gel is highly regulated by the Federation for its use in genetics. What concerns me more it the two bottles of kaboom just sitting next to each other. Have you tried to access the computer systems to see if there was any information on what they were experimenting on in here?” As she talked, Lexi walked towards one of the consoles. If this place was like the control room, they would have a hard time access any information but like the control room, this place had to be active since something was controlling the storage of two highly volatile substances. “Computer can you produce the findings of the last experiment involving the canisters in storage?” Her comment and question were probably pointless since talking to the systems had not worked in the main control room but it was worth a chance.

Lexi Robbins science

Unfortunately she was very right. There was no audio command system for this computer. There actually had been no signs of an audio input system anywhere. There was an audio output which many technologies could use as an input as well, but there was no evidence of a dual role. If she was going to do anything with the computer they would have to ‘science’ the hell out of it.

GM

Cara started to answer yes, as she stood at the console, she was looking at the computer to try and figure that out, but Lexi just kept right on going and she let the woman. It certainly wasn’t Cara’s area of expertise.

Jen was not that far off and the conversation not that stimulating, at least to him. He was task oriented and a hunt and seek for intel was not his forte unless it ended with them blowing something up - preferably not themselves. He shifted over to where O’Farrell was. He didn’t need to be static to hear the comms. What was that he said about blowing something up? he thought once he saw the scans. “That is a lot of .. kaboom, as you say it, having sat like that for a long time. All that would take was a mouse chewing a cable somewhere and this would be a crater and then some.” That much he knew. “What do you suggest they were working on. I get anti-matter, but what does dark matter have to do with this?” This was where he needed to rely on people who had those smarts. His began and ended mainly with setting those up to blow up. Once he had more than a ‘hey they were delving into a reactor creation’ he’d inform the Captain.
Jen, XO

“It is, Cmdr.” Cara answered. “I wouldn’a begin ta speculate on what they might have been doin’. I was lookin’ through the computer, but before I hit somethin’ I shouldn’a, I wanted ta ask Nash ta take a look at it. See how stable the system still is after all this time. Make sure I don’na restart some experiment or disengage the safety protocols. I don’na want ta be caught in the kaboom.”

O’Farrell

OOC: Fixing a split.

“Looks like we have to do it the hard way,” Jen said. “Elbow grease and hot wiring the computer to get in. Have you seen what kind of hardware they use under the hood? If it’s anything like our opticable it may be easier. Old fashioned cabling .. ship’s replicators may have a jumper cable that can be linked in.”

The comm line had been on in the background letting Jen listen as he worked. As he was working with Cara and Lexi, the conversation played in the background.

/=\ Ambassador=/\= Kelly asked, =/\= We found an old base on a planet along with some of the wreckage of possibly one of our ships that went missing two hundred years ago. Who historically controlled this sector of space before the Darkness.=/\=

There was a strange tinkling from the other side of the comm line. No one had ever heard a Lorn laugh Kelly just might have made history. =^=You are floating outside a long abandoned mostly dead world a distant colony of the planet Syria Alumina. Syria was the home of an insectoid race. They lived for thousands of years constantly growing. The full grown could actually fly in space slowly colonizing other worlds.... They were unique in universe, but they weren’t numerous. Until suddenly a whole colony of this race in its entirety became adults. Which planet it was is irrelevant to the Lorn. You perhaps have found it. =&= He said perhaps, but it was far more likely than perhaps.

V’goth the Lorn Ambassador

Jen listened. He had never quite gotten used to insects. They had little of that on Andor. It was too cold for a typical insect species, at least anything that flew. There were some which burrowed through the ground and ice but above ground it was sparse at best. He wondered what size they started at if they were mostly the same size as they were by the look of their laboratory here. So they found their home base. That was okay but irrelevant to their study at the moment. =^= Are there any images of them available?” Jen asked. It wasn’t like there was a volume of artwork on the walls to see.

Again there was another pause. =^=Indeed there are images.=^= as if weighing a huge decision. =^=You will need to keep this information to yourself.=^= Givne an unknown comman the Orb projected an image that looked much like a cross between the legs of spider and the head of a cricket.

Years of being on a command team had taught Kelly to hide initial reactions but hiding the fact she was dealing with an insectoid race was hard. It was a bias but also just typically hard to interact with insectoid races. Often due to anatomical differences, mainly being no larynx, insectoid races could not produce a true voice. Most often they used specialized body parts to make sound. =/\=Thank you, Ambassador. We do appreciate your help in this matter. We look forward to speaking to you again.=/\=

Clicking off the comm line to the Lorn, Kelly let out a groan which the XO and CSO could plainly hear. =/\=Did you get that Jen? If this race is the basis for the Darkness, it might explain a few things such as why no one can communicate with them or why there is no trace of them on the planet’s surface. =/\=

=^= Are you thinking that the Darkness is a kind of mutant species that came from these beings? =^=

“A vast majority of insects tend to live underground right,” she looked at Trainor. “Maybe we have been looking in the wrong place with the wrong scans to detect biological life. Also maybe you and Lexi can work on reconfiguring the universal communicators to detect possible speech patterns out of the mammalian or avian ranges.” The request made sense because only mammals and some avians had vocal folds or the equivalent of vocal folds to produce language. This did not mean insects didn’t communicate. It just meant insects communicated more through body part vibrations such as legs or abdomens, color changes, and chemical odors.

=/\=Jen, could it be possible that the reason we can’t access the control of the bunker is that we are literally speaking the wrong language to the systems?=/\= Kelly had no idea how to remedy this but at least they had a new working hypothesis which was more than they had thirty minutes ago.

Kelly Bordeaux. CO

=^= We have had some rudimentary success in looking into their systems but it is slow going. We’re probably going to have to hotwire a connection between theirs and ours to try to have a more direct access. =^=
- Jen, XO

=/\= Keep me posted=/\= Kelly stated and clicked off the comm.

Kelly Bordeaux CO

GM

Lexi looked at Cara and then side-eyed the XO as they began to work on activating the console without making it go boom. “I know we had talked about what the species looked like but the confirmation of legs on a cricket head as the species that possibly created this has my mind spinning,” Lexi said seeing the image Kelly sent down to the team from her conversation with the Lorn.

Lexi Robbins

Jen shook his head trying to imagine in what universe such a being could evolve. It looked similar to a Krayset Glacier Spider on Andor. Sort of. If one applied spikes to the base of the legs, turned said legs a transparent blue along with its body, and altered the head to not be so .. cricket looking. But other than that it was a spitting image. “Is there a way in our imagination to take the way that they look and morph that into a Darkness vessel?”
- Jen, XO

Using the link to the ship’s computer to translate the alien files, Cara tried searching first for power readings and containment numbers for the three compounds in the other room. Then she searched for entries, logs, files, sensor records, anything of that nature that might tell them exactly what happened here. “I can imagine quite a bit if they were usin’ bio-mimetic gel along with the other two compounds. How much is possible, I don’na know,” Cara commented looking at Lexi to see if she had any ideas.

O’Farrell

“Well, skies are the limit. You could create a Zander Dixon,” she replied naming one of the hottest holo-movie actors from OMAP currently, “but you could also create something deadly and grotesque on the other end of the spectrum when you are playing mad scientist. That is why genetic manipulation is banned pretty much which is different from genetic manipulation for things like X-linked recessive disorders. I would hazard to guess that that creature was not 100% based on genetic experimentation but on genetic mutation from radiation. If Kelly is right that the Genesis wave impacted the area here, it is totally within the realm of reason that life was created from lifelessness or used life like a petri dish.”

Thinking about the creature, Lexi pulled up a program on her Padd and began to emit a series of tones that one could almost feel as much as hear. “Now that we know the race here is insectoid, maybe we can get the console to turn on if we use the right language.” The tone was not a language as complex as ‘hey computer turn on’ but vaguer like ‘come here’. “Insects like crickets and spiders use vibrations to communicate. The way they create the vibrations impart basic meanings like come, run, and hide. Maybe if we find the right vibration patterns we can communicate with the tech.”

Lexi Robbins science

While Jen could field strip a phaser rifle in the dark and plot out a tactical advance on the battlefield the language of science that Lexi and Cara were using was beyond him, and he was okay with that. Everyone had their strengths. Jen didn’t have to be a master of all disciplines when others were so much better. Focus on one’s strengths, he was told. Don’t try to level off what you are not good at at the expense of how you might excel when focused on one’s strengths. One must ever learn and grow, yes, but there was too much to learn in a lifetime to hope to know it all or do it all. Focus and be content. Those were the words of his old mentor and trainer many years ago. Only as he has aged some has he learned the wisdom in that. Strange how it seemed to take living to learn wisdom when the answers were all given ahead of time, and, by one’s youth, nearly always set aside.
- Jen