Artemis: Replicating Romulans
Dori
Trish returned to her office and looked around, giving a soft sigh. It was nice and clean, just as she had left it. Swallowing hard, she sat back behind her desk and activated her terminal. She transferred the schedule Bela had set up for her to her personal terminal and quickly set some reminders for herself. Now, to tackle the problem the Captain had given her. She tapped her combadge.
=/\= Piper to Fairchild, can you join me in my office please. Thank you. =/\=
=/\= I’ll be right there, Commander. =/\= Destiny’s voice came over the comms. She set up her alarms, left her quarters, and headed up to the XO’s office, ringing the chime to let Patricia know she was there.
“Come in.” Trish gave her a small smile as she came in. “Thanks for coming Commander, I appreciate it’s on short notice.”
“It’s no problem. My work is fluid.” Destiny replied, smiling back. She was glad to see Patricia back at work. “What can I do for you, Commander?”
“Please, sit down. And it’s Trish. This is work related but you know I try and keep things a bit informal. Would you like a cup of tea? We’ve got some planning to do.” Trish moved to the replicator and got herself a cup of tea.
“Coffee please, white.” she replied. “Uh, Trish.” Informal was not how she did things, but if her XO was telling her to be informal, she would try. “This about our soon to be guest?”
Trish handed her a mug and sat down.
“Correct. The Captain’s worried, with good reason, and anyway, I had this kind of crazy idea that may help but I need your help with it.” Trish sipped her tea.
“Okay Trish, let’s hear it.” Destiny replied, picking up her coffee and taking a sip.
“It sounds a bit silly, but ages ago I remembered reading somewhere, back before the Third World War, Royalty and Politicians and the like used to use body doubles for security purposes. So i was thinking maybe we could do something similar - have a few shuttles or ships about with the matching bio-signs of our guest?” Patricia wrinkled her nose a little. “I know it sounds silly, but I think we could make it work.”
“No, it doesn’t sound silly.” Destiny replied, cupping her coffee. “This to prevent the kidnapping? It’s excellent counterintelligence.”
“Yes, the Captain’s really worried about it. And given the fact both of us have had bad experiences with Romulans, well, we want everything to go smoothly. So, do you think it’s feasible? Could we pull it off?” Patricia sipped her tea slowly, feeling a little bit more herself as she slowly got back into the swing of things.
“I do think it’s feasible. It came up in my Academy classes.” Destiny frowned, trying to remember what they had talked about. “Faking a specific biosign is tricky, but it’s definitely possible, and given the talent we have on this ship, I would say there should be no problem doing it. Were you hoping to take several of our shuttles to pick her up, and clone her biosign into all of them, so anyone trying to kidnap her wouldn’t know which one to take?”
“The second option. Clone her biosign so they won’t know which one is the real her, and which one is the decoy. If we have, say, half a dozen shuttles or the like, it might be the best way.” Trish frowned slightly. “But we’ll also have to come up with something that’ll not let them get a lock on all of them at once.”
“I think I remember an engineering trick we were told about that would let you show the same biosign in each shuttle.” Destiny replied. “We’d have to run it by our ship’s engineers, it’s been a long time and I might be mis-remembering it. But basically you’d have to be on the ship with the person to know which one is the right one.”
“That’s a great idea. Well, let’s come up with a plan and then go see Nate. If we can nut this all out and work out the kinks with Nate, we can then go to the Captain with a problem solved.” Trish gave a tiny, wry smile. “I mean, he gave me a whole hour to solve this, so I guess I’m lucky.”
“A whole hour, you are lucky!” Destiny couldn’t help but giggle. “Okay, so pretend that we’ve figured out how to project a biosign of the good doctor into all the shuttlecraft or runabouts we are sending, an added measure might be to send someone in each shuttle looking like her as well - it isn’t difficult to make a holoemitter that can go on someone and make them look like someone else these days. Then if a shuttle actually gets tracktored in, or bordered in some way, and it’s not hers, we can keep up the pretense until she’s back safely on the ship.” she frowned. “Is that too complicated? Having a whole bunch of security on her shuttle would only give the game away.”
Patricia shook her head.
“Not complicated at all. In fact, if we use the new personal cloaks that Jacey has designed, we could even make things a bit safer for her.” Patricia frowned a little. “Although I think we’ll have to ask Jacey, as well as Nate, how to modify them to reflect that. That way, we could have some security on those shuttles, just in case they are boarded...”
“Yes, of course. They would have to reflect lifesigns against sensors, as well as any regular vision.” Destiny said, nodding. “The same as a ship would disappear against sensors. I had forgotten about the personal shields. Such a new technology. It sounds like the next step is to meet with the engineering command.”
Patricia nodded as she finished her tea.
“Sounds good to me. Shall we go then?”
Destiny took another drink of coffee and put the rest back on Patricia’s desk. “Yes. It sounds like we don’t have much time.” she replied.
“No, and I’m afraid it’s getting shorter all the time.” Patricia put the mugs back in the replicator and smiled at Destiny as they headed out. “I certainly picked a good time to come back to work, didn’t I.”
End