Fixing Problems

Posted on Mon Feb 24th, 2014 @ 10:03am by Captain Jacob Lambert & Lieutenant Joanna Masterton & Lieutenant Trishna Durani
Edited on on Mon Feb 24th, 2014 @ 10:04am

3,143 words; about a 16 minute read

Mission: Episode 2 - Whispers in the Clouds
Location: Bridge
Timeline: Day 2 - 1820

Lieutenant Masterton was at her station on the bridge. She was the one keeping an eye on the sensors, watching the away teams move about the ship. This was harder than normal, considering the enemy who had taken over the Cassiopeia had set up dampening fields all over the ship. Her console was starting to get sluggish. Must just be the sensors trying to counteract all the dampening fields she thought to herself. But things we starting to get slower and slower.

"Commander, I think somethi..."She paused, a look of shock on her face.

"Lieutenant?" The Commander asked her.

"Shit, hold on." She would never usually talk to her Captain like that, but the look of horror on her face confirmed it all for the Commander, who seemed to get exactly what was going on.

"Computer, lock down the computer core and isolate all systems, authorisation Lambert Alpha Four Nine Omega. Joanna looked to him and gave him a curt nod as she typed continued to type furiously on her console. Other officers around the bridge also began typing with the same speed as Joanna. Everyone working to the same goal.

Minutes passed, before she finally gave herself a break, with about 15 different people around the ship working on the new problem. Lambert had left the bridge and gone to his Ready Room. She paused, and tapped her comm badge. Masterton to Lambert, could I have a minute?"

"Yes Lieutenant, come to my ready room, Lambert out." The comm channel closed, she picked up her PADD and headed to the ready room.

"Commander, I think you know what's happened. We have the virus that infected the Cassiopeia's computer.

"How bad? We still have most of our computer control. The Cassiopeia was crippled completely."

"Well its a bad news, good news problem. The bad news is that we cannot purge the virus. The good news is from what we learned from looking at the original code, we have slowed its progress down to a slow crawl." Most of the systems are isolated, but we don't know how to stop it completely. We think it would self purge once its completed its programming as there are systems in the Cass's computer that we know are virus free now, which we know were infected."

"Thats troubling. We still don't know what its programming is designed to do." Lambert paused for a second. "Its mission wasn't to lure a ship here, because all its done is cripple the ship. And the way we have been infected suggests that we were not meant to be. So why would it purge itself from some of the Cassiopeia's systems?"

It was a valid question. One Joanna didn't have an answer to yet. "Maybe we stumbled onto the Cass before it had finished... its... mission?" She stopped, he hand tapping at her PADD. She started to nod her head."That could explain alot."

"Lieutenant?" Jacob was up to date on most of what's going on, but he was clearly behind Joanna this time.

"The virus. Its intelligent. Thats why its still going through our systems even with all the safeguards, thats why it isn't in parts of the Cass now! The virus is intelligent. Something happened to it on the Cass, it knew it couldn't complete its mission, it detected the Unification and transmitted a part of itself here! I can't believe I missed that!

[Im going to filling in more stuff here, but it won't involve Trishna so dont worry about it =)]


The bridge was bustling with activity as Trishna stepped out of the turbolift, and on to the bridge proper of the Unification. She could almost swear that the lift controls had been a just a hair slower reacting to her than they typically were. Normally she didn't have much a reason to be up here unless there a meeting, she had something to report to the Captain, or they were under fire. None of those were the case for her visit this time, right now she was just trying to figure out what was going on. One minute she'd been uploading an information report detailing the background of the Galavant's senior staff (Not the most pertinent task, given the nearby, crippled Cassiopeia but she'd almost been finished and had no other pressing assignments), and then the normally lightning fast computers of the Unification had slowed to a dead stop. At first she'd thought it was just a temporary problem, but after a few retries, and using a computer console in a different section of the ship entirely it had become clear that it was more widespread. She'd used her combadge to ask what was going on, but only received a "standby" which could have meant anything, or nothing. She was willing to bet it meant no one had a clue that wasn't on the bridge though, and so there she was to get the facts from the source.

Just about every piece of information on a ship, especially one as small as the Unification, passed through the bridge or engineering at some point. Seeing more than dozen scrambling about the bridge, at a pace that almost put Trish in the mind of a combat situation certainly told her more than a simple "standby". It was also clear that Commander Lambert wasn't on the bridge. Frowning slightly Trish wondered if he'd gone somewhere, and cursed herself for not checking with the computer before coming all the way up here. Still it seemed likely to her that if he wasn't on the bridge, than he was probably in his ready room. If he was a good CO he'd want tot stay close to the bridge while his people were on a dangerous mission, in her opinion at least. She didn't know enough about the man to really say what kind of CO he was though, the trip had been too fast paced for her to really to get know anyone yet. Turning towards a Bolian man in the champagne yellow of operations based on the console he was standing over, she cleared her throat to get his attention.

"Is Commander Lambert with anyone?" She asked him, motioning towards the door that lead to the Ready Room.

"What? Oh he's with Lieutenant Masterton I think," The Bolian replied, obviously still a little lost in his work.

"Thanks," Trish replied with a smile, letting the man return to his work. Making her way towards the Ready Room she picked up bits of conversation from the men and women on the Bridge. They were all talking about a virus, which was probably why the computer was acting so sluggishly. If there's a virus we're going to need to purge all the sensitive files Trish thought, as the pressed the button next to the door to chime the CO. If there was virus she'd definitely need to talk to the Captain about that, she'd need his permission to start scrubbing the computers clean of anything that could be harmful. Once again it seemed like the Computer was taking just a barely noticeable second longer than usual to complete her request, but it did which meant that Lambert would let her in when he was ready.

Lambert looked around Joanna to the door. "Enter" he called out to the computer. The door opened and revealed the Intel Chief Lieutenant Durani. "I assume you are here in regards to our recent system problems?"

"I suppose I am sir," Trish replied with a smile as she entered the room. She nodded to Lieutenant Masterton, as she moved into the room, standing next to her, with her hands clasped behind her back. "I'm not entirely sure what the problems are, but I take it from the way everyone out there is talking, that it's some kind of virus? If that's the case, I'm here to recommend that we start purging any sensitive information from the ship's computer systems. There are backups on independent systems that aren't linked to the ship if we need to put them back again."

Lambert nodded in agreement. "Ok, but don't touch the backups at all. We can't risk the virus getting into them. And given the fact that we have discovered the virus may be intelligent, theres just too much at stake."

With that Trishna finished her piece. She didn't know much about computer viruses, other than that they were a favorite tool for organizations that didn't have the capability to go toe to toe with their opponents. The Maquis had certainly used more than few to great effect in the bad old days, along with other tricks that could disable Starfleet's best warships without firing a shot. thinking of that, made her think of another point to bring up as well.

"Oh and I'd recommend we start working on taking control of the Cassiopeia remotely in addition the away teams work," She added. if the Unification was already infected, she didn't think it would hurt to start opening up to the Cass again, but she didn't know much about how that worked, or if the Cass's computers were even in a state where they could start trying to "hack" their way into it from here. But she did know, if any of the other ships crew had been compromised or were responsible from bringing the ship to current state to begin with, they could just as easily reactive the bigger ships engines once, if the virus disabled the Unification and simply plow over the smaller ship. Nobody ever wanted to think that a fellow officer was a turncoat, but the very nature of Intelligence work meant you had to assume that sometimes. And if they could take control of the Cass, and lockout her crew from use, Trish would certainly feel a lot safer.

"Joanna, is that even possible?" the Commander asked the Operations officer.

"Hmm. Possibly. One moment please Commander." She taped her comm badge. "Masterton to Murdoch, did you determine how we were infected yet?"

"Aye, we traced the infected files back through a comm channel from the away team after they first arrived there. It was only a few fragments of the virus, but it was enough for it to recompile itself in the outboard comm buffer."

"Thats why we can't contact the away teams anymore but we still have internal comms. Ok, thankyou Ensign, Masterton out." She tapped her comm badge again to close the channel. "Now we know how we got infected and the fact we know it used the outboard comm array we might be able to send signals to the Cass without using the outgoing array. We could jury rig something with an isolated section of the internal system. This isn't my specialty though."

"But if the virus is travelling through the comm systems then shouldn't we disable or destroy the comm array?" Trish asked. "If Starfleet sends another ship the same thing will happen to them, that happened to us."

Trishna was sure the idea of disabling the ship's comms wasn't something anyone really wanted to do. But if they couldn't solve this problem, she was sure that Starfleet would send out another ship if they didn't hear back from the Cassiopeia and the Unification. It would also complicate any plans to "hack" the Cass, but she was sure they could find another way to do that. Theoretically the shuttles wouldn't be affected by the virus, assuming no one was doing maintenance on them, and them connected to the ship physically or with wireless.

Jacob cleared his throat."No, we can't destroy it. I know for a fact no Starfleet ships will come get us. With the Galavant missing and the Cass disabled, the bulk of the fleet report back to New Bajor, to protect HQ. And besides, we need the comm system to have any chance of getting back in touch with the away teams." He paused. Something clicked in his head. "The bulk of the fleet report back to New Bajor. You don't think..."

Joanna interrupted. "It seems too obvious. It can't be that simple?"

"Name one system that wasn't taken offline by the virus on both ships. One system that wasnt even touched."

Joanna started tapping away at her PADD going through the list of systems. "Holodecks, replicators, warp engines, warp core, shields, force fields."

"Warp core and engines? The Cassiopeia's engines were damaged, so they were inoperable. One of the first things we started to fix was the engines when we beamed on board, once engineering had been cleared of hostiles." He looked to his PADD. "I would almost go so far as to say that the virus is actively avoiding systems that directly influence any of the warp core systems."

"But if the Virus knows about fleet movements," Trish said before tapering off as she became lost in thought. She didn't agree with the CO about the comm system, but that wasn't what was on her mind. She tapped her own combadge to get in touch with whoever was on duty in the tiny Intelligence Department. If it hadn't gotten it from the Cassiopeia, that meant it had cracked through all the vaunted encryption software, and algorithms much quicker than anything Starfleet was prepared for. "Durani to Intelligence"

"This is Vargas on duty Lieutenant, what I can do for you?"

"Start purging all sensitive information from the computer core, I'll find someone in Security to get an armed guard on the backups. "

"Will do Ma'am, I'll make sure there's a forcefield up around them too."

"Good, Durani out," She replied tapping the badge again, before turning back to Lambert. "Sorry sir, but that didn't seem like something that could wait."

Nodding in agreement, Jacob looked to the Intelligence officer. "As is your prerogative Lieutenant. We are in unchartered waters here. Tell me if I am wrong. looking at the code, it seems to avoid the core and engines. Meaning whoever wrote this virus needed the Cassiopeia to go somewhere. When the engines were damaged, it did what it was designed to do. Seek out a new ship. And then we popped along. It couldn't just transmit itself, we would instantly detect it and enact countermeasures. So it came on board the only way it could, through..."

"The outboard comm array, where is replicated itself trying to remain hidden until enough of it had replicated that it could start to take over control of the Unification as it had the Cass." Joanna interjected. "It leaves the engines offline but functioning, it wants to take the ship somewhere. What if it wants to go to New Bajor?"

"We can't know that." Jacob knew where she was going with this.

"No we can't, but you said yourself that the bulk of the fleet is pulled back. What if its trying to take over New Bajor, or even destroy it?"

"But the weapons systems are offline too, the only thing they could do would be... a warp core breach." The thought of what Jacob had just said horrified him. If the Unifications warp core exploded over New Bajor, the damage would be catastrophic. HQ would be wiped out, and the orbital stations would be taken offline.

"And that's if the goal is to blow up the ship," Trish though, thinking of something worse."What if once we're there all it does is transmit the virus to every ship in orbit? With all those ships spreading out, it could cripple more than just the Task Force. Or what if it goes for Dominion territory instead? This could be some group trying to spark a war between us."

"That’s a terrifying thought. If it took down every Federation ship in the Gamma Quadrant, the Alpha quadrant would have no idea what’s coming, if anything." Jacob clearly was unnerved by the thought of this.

Thinking about the virus more, Trish also though about the Away Team. If they were out of contact, it would make it harder to get a handle on what was really going on. There were just too many unknowns to really know what was going to happen, other than it wouldn't be good. She was still on the track that they should try to disable the comm system though, as far as she was concerned. The CO had said that they weren't, and that was that unless he changed his mind, but she still didn't feel quite right leaving it on.

"Lieutenant," Trish said, turning towards the Assistant Chief of Ops. "I couldn't help but notice that you left the transporters off the list of things the virus was affecting, can we even get the away team back?"

"Sorry, no. That’s one of the weird ones. The transporters themselves are online, but the targeting scanners are offline. So we have the capability to transport stuff but not to select something, or someone." She hoped that answered the Lieutenants question.

"So we have no contact with them, and we can't get them back?" Trish asked, rhetorically turning back to Lambert. The ships XO, along with a good portion of the senior staff was over there, and could be screaming for help for all they knew back here. In addition, they still had no idea what was going on really on the Cass, and that was something that drove Trish nuts. She didn't like not knowing, especially for something as dangerous as this. "Sir, I'd like permission to take a shuttle over with a security team to find our people and at least let them know they have a safe way back off the Cassiopeia."

"Thats not a bad idea. Lieutenant Masterton I want you to go with Lieutenant Durani and get in touch with the away team. Find a way to get them back, or at least get in contact with us. Lieutenant Durani, I want you to take a data unit containing the hard reboot subroutines for the computer core and take it with you. Its very likely that we can purge the virus if we just reboot.

"Will do sir," Trish said, turning to leave with Masterton. They'd need Security, the data unit, and then one of the two Type 9 shuttles the Unification carried. You couldn't exactly fit a lot of people in a Type-9, but she figured they might be able to squeeze in a few more people. It wasn't like they were going on a long trip, and if needed they could take one of the Cass's shuttles back. The bigger Nebula was sure to have more spacious ones, and maybe even a Runabout. Hopefully though they wouldn't need one at all, and could just transport back when the Away Team was found, and the data unit could get the Cass up and running.

Hopefully.

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