Posted by Kvasir (Storyteller) in Main Sim [Bridge]: Belly of the Beast (TAG Woods)

Posted by Captain Rende Asam (Captain) in Main Sim [Bridge]: Belly of the Beast (TAG Woods)

Posted by Lieutenant Markus Woods (Chief Science Officer) in Main Sim [Bridge]: Belly of the Beast

—[SNIP]—

Markus listened to report on the containment for the Remnants and nodded. Theory was his area, and sure he could make things, but he wasn’t the same level of makers that the ship’s dedicated engineering team was. All that was left was to try it. Quietly he sent orders to Engineering to test it when they got the opportunity.

Still sitting just off of center, he let out another sigh and cast his gaze about at the walls, then leaned back in the seat. Closing his eyes he let his mind drift, opening up, widening the channels, widening his perception once more. Impressions began to float in. Mixtures of frustration, determination, worry, stress and more. The crew was over-stretched and stressed. Tired. But still pressing on, like the best Starfleet had to offer. In that moment, he was proud of all of them. Despite a situation none of them had considered, they were performing admirably.

But among them was a pained spark, a mind reeling after their encounter with one of the Remnants. Guilt, shame, grief… Profound grief. And disorientation. He recognized the texture of the mind as the doctor he’d encountered earlier, first in the cargo bay then in engineering. A troubled expression crossed his features then, and he seemed to come back to himself.

“Mister Yorba, I need to attend to something in Sickbay that may give us a little more light on the situation. You have the conn. Notify me if anything… else unusual crops up, if you would.” With that he pushed himself to his feet.

A moment later he slipped into the turbolift. =^=Sickbay.=^=

Lt Woods, CSO/aXO

=^=Bridge to Captain Rende.=^= Lieutenant Yorba somehow managed to sound both exhausted and intensely focused. =^=The Muninn is in distress. There’s some kind of power fluctuation and they’re not responding to our hails. Report to the bridge immediately.=^=

=/\=Yorba get a tractor beam on it. I know, release the other one. And tell me you know Morse code.=/\=

The lieutenant blinked at the request and smiled to himself at the rhetorical question. The captain knew very well that he had an ear for linguistics, studied unique techniques in his spare time. Morse code hadn’t been used regularly in over a century, but it was still taught at the Academy as part of the history of communication. It was simple, could be used across a variety of mediums, and could make life difficult for anyone unfamiliar to decrypt—especially if another method of deceit was employed. How the captain expected him to use that knowledge Yorba wasn’t sure, but he did know she had a plan.

She always did.

“Anderson,” he murmured, turning in his chair to glace at the tactical officer. “cut the Valh’kaeri free and snag the Muninn. Let’s see if can’t at least stop her drift, bring her close enough for a clean extraction if they can’t get it under control.”

Lieutenant Anderson nodded and tapped away at her console. The hum of the tractor beam dripped away before snapping to the runabout a heartbeat later. Seconds later there was an alert from the computer. “Sir, there’s a problem. The tractor beam is having trouble locking on to the Muninn. There’s a… strange polarization of the hull making it difficult to get a solid grip. Attempting to compensate.”

Yorba swung back to his station and pulled up the data displayed at the tactical station. A few keystrokes displayed the Muninn‘s energy distribution and resident life signs. Life support was still functional and the crew was stressed but conscious, but most other systems were questionable at best. Power was being haphazardly pulled from the runabout’s various systems and moved to other parts of the ship, almost as if something was playing electronic keep-away. Yorba also noticed that it was being routed through the computer core at distant but distinctly regular intervals; another perk of his training was the knack for noticing patterns and potential ciphers. While this was not a form of message encryption, it was definitely deliberate. The “why,” however, would likely be more elusive.

=/\=Rende to Woods. I want these things confined or destroyed. Now From the bridge or Engineering, I don’t care. Get it done.=/\= Rende barked across the the comms in true drill sergeant mode. She wasn’t angry at any of them, but she wanted results and no excuses. This had gone on far too long.

“There’s a fluctuation in the confinement beam,” Yorba noted, turning back to the tactical officer. “Try sharing the load by engaging the secondary emitter.”

Lieutenant Anderson worked furiously at her station, then shook her head in dismay. “No good, sir. Whatever’s got the Muninn is dispersing… no, absorbing the beam’s energy!”

“What?!”

“Look at the dispersal pattern along the dorsal shield grid!” Yorba peered at his readouts and confirmed the assessment. “There’s an energy build-up near the lateral phaser array, but it doesn’t look like the system is engaged. It’s possible the away team is attempting to dump the excess energy, but I can’t tell anymore. The building charge is ionizing the atmosphere inside the runabout obscuring our sensors. I’ll try to—”

The Viking rocked sharply, and the lights in the bridge flickered. Yorba’s fingers flew across his console, but something about the way his systems were twitching bothered him. Shaking his head he worked even more diligently. His intuition payed off when a cry of alarm and confusion rippled through the bridge.and the image on every console warped into a jumble of random symbols and numbers. Thankfully the images were still intact, and he was relieved to see that the Viking‘s shields were active.

Minutes later Rende strode onto the bridge ready to destroy the beast staring back at them across the void. “Yorba!” She didn’t even bother to sit. The old woman was steaming.

“Captain!” he barked reflexively in reply, snapping to his feet. “The Muninn is still in distress, but we’ve managed to slow her into a more controlled drift. With any luck, Commander Kohr will be able to get her back under control soon. From the erratic energy readings present, I would say that they have a stowaway wreaking havoc on the runabout. I noticed a strange pattern in the energy fluctuations but I wasn’t able to react in time to prevent a counterattack.”

Yorba gestured to the consoles at the back of the bridge, all displaying strings of various symbols and glyphs. Some were recognizable while others were completely foreign, but all managed to tickle the mind somehow. “Whatever has the Muninn sent us a gift in the form of a virus via a feedback pulse through the tractor beam. It took a bit—long for a computer, anyway—because it didn’t directly attack any of our vital systems. A cute trick, since the computer would have noted the incursion and blocked it. Instead, it snuck into the universal translator and tangled it. I managed to keep it out of our comm badges, so we can still talk to one another, and I got the shields up before everything was scrambled too much. But, for now, anything linked to the computer system might as well be inoperable..”

“Since the universal translator contains references from hundreds of intelligent species across the Federation,” he sighed gravely, “it’s going to take a bit of doing to untangle this Gordian knot of linguistics. The good news is that sensors detected some transport patterns at the same time as the attack; judging from the runabout’s display, two of the away team managed to squeak back before hell broke loose.”
—Jas—

Rende walked over to the helm. “Maneuver the Viking to visual distance, rotate with the Muninn. I want to see our running lights reflected in their view port.” The woman at the helm swallowed, “But Ma’am…I can’t read..” Rende patted her shoulder. “You don’t need to. The controls haven’t moved, pitch and yaw and thruster control are still in the same place. You could do it blind folded. Don’t look at the controls, watch the view screen and the Muninn.”

“Yorba, we’re going to use the running lights to send a message to the shuttle in Morse code. And don’t give me that you can’t read the language. The off and on controls are still in the same place on the console. Close your eyes and visualize it. It’s like working in the dark without night vision goggles or typing without looking at the keyboard.”

“The message is simple ‘Wraiths feed on energy. Cut power.’ Let’s make sure he gets that first. I know the Muninn seems to be floating dead but any backup systems they can cut will, hopefully weaken it or make it go else where to look. We’ll see if it is willing to travel in the vacuum of space.”

=/\=Rende to Forgrave or Sigmundsson. Where are you? What happened?=/\=

Rende, CO