Transporting to the Cassiopeia

Posted on Tue Dec 10th, 2013 @ 9:51am by Gabriel Grey & Captain Jacob Lambert & Commander Aztala Germond & Lieutenant JG Darzen Kail & Warrant Officer Stig Hjelm

2,121 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Episode 2 - Whispers in the Clouds
Location: USS Cassiopeia
Timeline: Day 2 - 1610

Heading off the bridge of the Unification, Aztala hits her comm badge. Ensign Vox, Ensign Ricky, meet me in Transporter Room 1. Ambassador Grey, Lieutenant Kail, You two are with me. Kail, I want an engineering assessment as soon as possible. Ambassador, work on contacting the rest of the ship. We'll be beaming in on the battle bridge. It'll be sealed off from the rest of the ship, but the status displays will still work."

Lieutenant JG Darzen Kail was seated at his station on the bridge. Right now he was working on the shields thinking that if they modify their shields. He checked on the status of the engine room and they were ready to go He stood up from his seat and followed Lt. Commander Aztala to the turbo lift. "Sir, the engine room reports that it's ready and everything is running at maximum. Have we gotten any hails from the people on board the Cass?"

Gabriel Grey turned to quickly follow the Orion XO to the Transporter Room. He smoothly tugged down on his white cable-knit turtleneck, using the innocuous motion to ensure that Joycelyn's PADD was still tucked away in his back pocket, where he'd placed it. Stepping into the turbolift right after the sandy-haired Trill engineer, Gabriel watched the doors close and felt the turbolift bear them all away towards their destination. A broad smile played upon the grey-haired Human's wizened face at the thought of heading out on an away mission again. It had been years since he had last been a part of one, and decades since he'd joined one in a non-diplomatic capacity. The excitement the old man felt at the prospect twinkled in his wrinkled dark-brown eyes.

"I don't think we've had the chance to meet yet, Lieutenant," said Gabriel politely, turning to face the young gold-shirted Trill who occupied the lift with himself and Aztala. "I'm Gabriel Grey, Chief Diplomatic Officer." Gabriel held a hand out the the Trill lieutenant in greeting.

Lieutenant JG Darzen Kail smiled and took Gabriel's offered hand, shaking it firmly. "My name is Darzen Kail and I'm the assistant chief engineer. "It's good to meet you. I haven't had any time to explore and meet people. The warp drive and the engines keep me pretty busy."

Gabriel nodded and smiled at Darzen. "It's no problem," answered the kindly old man, his eyes twinkling merrily. "Hopefully we'll have a chance to get to know one another better after all this excitement has passed."

"That would be a most acceptable outcome." Darzen grinned a little wiry.

Smiling softly, Aztala watches the turbolift doors open before stepping through them. She leads the small group down the hall the few feet to the transporter room. Stepping through those doors, she headed straight for the equipment lockers, getting out the needed tricorders, phasers, and a phaser rifle for herself. "We don't know what we'll be up against when we get there so be ready for anything. And don't get shot. Polaron weapon inflicted wounds don't clot and there's a good chance any attackers here in this area of space are using them."

Kiean pretended to inspect the equipment, trying to hide his anticipation. This would be his first away mission for more than 10 years now. He went over to stand next to the other members of the away mission and noticed an old grey haired human standing alongside a Trill engineer. He nodded a greeting to them.

As Ensign Ricky walked in, Aztala handed him a phaser and a tricorder before stepping up on the transporter pad with the other 3. As soon as he took his place, she said one word to the transporter chief. "Energize." The shimmer of the transporter enveloped them, taking them off to the battle bridge of the Cassiopeia.

As a dark room lit by red light materialized around them they'd likely first notice they were at the wrong end of a phaser rifle held by a man in civilian clothes who stood outside arms reach. A tense moment passed before the man lowered his weapon. "Welcome aboard, Commander." He said as he straightened up and visually relaxed, having spotted the woman's rank with his eyes already well adjusted to the dark.

Half the consoles around the room were glitched out and frozen, then others flickering as they showed live feeds from the bridge.

Lieutenant JG Darzen Kail was right behind him with a tricorder already out and working. He made his way to a console quickly. "Life support is still working, but not much else. We're running on back up now."

"See if internal sensors are online." Turning to the man in civilian clothes standing before her, Aztala eyes him warily. "And who might you be? A passenger?"

"Internal sensors are down. Although, I might be able to get this up and running with a little bit of time." Darzen, waited a few moments and without asking further he started to work on the main console. He didn't want to waste any time.

"Affirmative." The man said with about as much emotion as a Vulcan. "I am Warrant Officer Hjelm with Starfleet Intelligence. All sensors and offensive systems are offline as well as shields, transporters, communications, and propulsion systems. Medical systems, turbolifts, and force field generation and control remain fulling functional. Backup life support took over only about three minutes ago when short range sensors finally went offline."

The Warrent officer switched his rifle to his off hand. "Commander, I recommend leaving the internal sensors offline. I believe the ship to be primarily under hostile control."

Aztala looks to Darzen. "Skip the internal sensors Lt Kail. See if you can do something with the tricorders to get at least a picture of the area outside the door." Looking back to Stig, she smiles at him. "I'd say welcome aboard the Unification, but we're not there yet. I'm LtCmdr Aztala Germond, your new XO. It's good to see you at least made it this far."

Looking around the bridge at the computer nightmare, she addresses everyone. "Ideas then. Virus? Computer failure? Virtual Intelligence takeover? How do we fix it and where do we need to get to to do so?"

Hjelm gave the XO a quick salute. "I was able to learn that the system failures were caused by a virus before it managed to lock me out of most all controls. Some of that could possibly the the intruders as well. I wasn't able to find an origin or start time." He pointed to a partially rendered section of the ship's layout at the engineering station. "Watching the patterns of the force field activation and deactivation along with turbo lift movements it would seem the hostiles used them in their taking over the ship, which means they likely know, or have someone who knows our computer systems pretty well."

"That makes things easier, I hope. Lt Kail, can you wipe the computer systems and restore them to factory defaults? It might not give us much, but maybe we can at least get access to some systems." Aztala didn't know much about engineering or computers so her request was nothing more than a shot in the dark based on something she had to do with a PADD once.

Darzen nodded. "Probably, although keep in mind that if we start erasing things we might lose what little information that we do have. I might be able to reboot some of the systems without losing the data, but I'll have to do it very carefully and that takes time. I could probably download all the logs although they might be corrupted. But it's also not my call. What would you like me to do Commander Germond?"

"Either of those things could likely alert the hostile forces to our presence on board, and transferring control to this bridge can only be done from the main bridge, for just this reason." He gestured around indicating their recent arrival via transporter.

Not even thinking about it, Aztala knows what has to be done. "Then I'll lead a team to the main bridge and get you that control. In the mean time, do whatever you have to to wipe everything and get computer control. if you can save some data, good. If not, restoring systems like life support and security systems are our top priority. Gabriel, stay here with Lt Kail and seal the doors behind us. The rest of you are with me. Ensign Ricky, you take the rearguard position. Officer Hjelm, take lead. You likely know this ship better than most, if not all of us. Lt Kail, you have until we get there to get the computers back online in some way and as soon as you can, seal off cargo bay 3 and start transporting any intruders you can detect there if you can. Any questions?"

"Aye, sir." Hjelm gave a curt nod and moved over to a more complete, but also frozen, diagram of the ship to double check a path while the other's asked questions, if they had any.

"Since there are no questions, let's get going." Aztala readies her phaser rifle and opens the door, clearing the hallway outside.

Darzan worked frantically to bring power back to the ship. After 10 minutes of struggling, he shook his head. There has to be something wrong or all these controls would be back online. "Shoot this panel's shot," He worked his way to a panel that was working and popped it open to look at the insides.

Stig followed Aztala out into the corridor, his rifle at the ready as he slipped past her and took point. They only moved a few meters down the hallway because he stepped across the hall to a maintenance access door which would allow them into the Jeffries tube system. With the coast looking clear for now he switched his phaser rifle to his left hand as he dug in one of his pockets with the other.

"This should only take ten seconds" He said quietly as pulled what looked similar to a hand-sized PADD from his pocket and held it against the control panel for the door. The small screen showed lines of quick scrolling code in yellow text for several seconds before the color scheme shifted to green and the words stopped moving. With a hiss, the door slid open. "Alright, let's move."

Once he'd found all the isolinear chips and used some of them to reroute the damage. He put the plate back and closed the panel doors. Darzan stood and started messing with the panel he just fixed with only a little frustration and effort he had the power up and running. "=/\= And we're back in business," he said over the comm. "Life support and environmental controls, back online.

Gabriel Grey slung his phaser rifle across his chest and quickly accessed the nearest console. "It appears you've got transporters and isolation fields, too, Lieutenant Kail," announced Gabriel, tapping his fingers against the LCARS display. "Internal sensors and tactical systems still offline."

Darzen nodded. "We need those weapons back online, this will all be pretty pointless if we blow up now, I'll keep working on it." He turned back around to his panel. He made an "Ah-ha! noise and pulled the cable up so he could see it. "Uh sir... we um... got some kind of rodent. These have been chewed. I'm not talking about little friendly lab rats... we have vermin."

About ten minutes later he was grumbling again. At least was attempted, he was still working, His head hurt and although. "Okay no more fighting until after breakfast. Do we have traps for these rats? Or do we just throw them out an airlock? and I really don't see them coming after me. We need a pied piper. Maybe while we're docked we have them flushed out."

"Sounds like that might be a good idea, Lieutenant," answered Gabriel, but the elderly gentleman had not really been paying attention to Darzen's observation. Rather, the 78 year-old Human was focused on the encrypted tricorder that Lieutenant Joycelyn Westbridge had so secretly slipped into his keeping earlier. For the past couple of minutes, ever since Darzen Kail had succeeding in repairing the Cassiopeia's internal sensors, Gabriel Grey had been using them to boost the range of the tricorder's scan. Joycelyn had programmed the tricorder to pick up on a particular backup transmitter frequency. She believed that the person still using that frequency might be responsible for the deaths of her former Starfleet Intelligence colleagues. Gabriel wondered if that person might not also be involved in whatever had happened to the Cassiopeia. The old man didn't much believe in coincidence.

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