LtCmdr Tamio K'Wara - Let's Play a Game of "Who Am I?"

[LtCmdr Tamio K'Wara]

((Tertiary Conference Room - Operations Center, Deck 5, USS Artemis-A ))

The revelation that their Romulan infiltrator most likely hadn’t looked like a Romulan had changed things quite a bit. No longer was this a matter of Da’al security being too lax to catch an obvious interloper, or the Romulan using technology and an excessive knowledge of Da’al security measures to avoid every camera, but instead, this was a matter of highly sophisticated cosmetic technology at work.

K’Wara: It would explain why no one seems to remember seeing a Romulan walking about the facility. But evidently, it doesn’t mask DNA, and that’s why the infiltrator needed Alvaine’s biometric ID to pass through security.

Tamio had to be honest that something like this was unlikely to be caught by Starfleet too, unless someone was deliberately going through the internal sensors searching for weird DNA signatures.

Bergmen: Yeah, and there goes the puzzle piece about the receptionist, I guess.

Imril: What color were the receptionist’s eyes? They could be a Chameloid. They always have yellow eyes. ::Remembers they have yellow eyes, blinks, looks away:: Never mind.

When a beeping emerged from Ollie’s PADD, their attention was dragged to the next clue falling into place.

Bergmen: Sir, I was working on the DNA comparison against the Da’al database with the initial raw data…

K’Wara: Found something?

Ollie displayed the discovered data on the holotable, numerous DNA helices, but several of them incomplete.

Bergmen: ::points to helices:: Three data samples were too corrupted to be analyzed, but that’s not an issue. The computer was able to find a match for the rest, and I’m quite sure they are connected to the other five identified. I think those oldest transporter patterns in the communication belong to these eight Da'al engineers and scientists - all close coworkers or acquaintances of Doctor Havun in the past.

‘Think’ didn’t inspire a lot of confidence in this circumstance, but it was certainly somewhere to start.

Jaran: Are these from the group that was sent home? Or are they missing, like some of the others?

K’Wara: ::to Ollie:: Have you had time to verify yet?

Bergmen: There is just one issue… Two, technically, but one is more like headscratch…. (beat) All eight were flagged by Da’al Security for some reason. All eight died altogether in the transport accident according to Da'al records… A month ago.

That would certainly put them out of the known timeline with the Afalqi theft, but then, from everything they’d learned so far, it was clear that Havun’s plans had been in the works for a while. What was the trigger?

Imril: First guess, they all faked their deaths and were hiding out in the Afalqi until the time came to leave. Quietly building the plasma accelerators and whatever else in the ship all the while.

Jaran: A transporter accident with multiple people at once would be very suspicious. I assume it was investigated.

Bergmen: Response

Tamio didn’t like that answer, as was apparent from their expression, but it did make a certain kind of sense.

K’Wara: Accidents tend to be downplayed or simplified if there’s a lot of progress and prestige riding on a project... This is the same no matter how advanced the civilization.

Imril: How might this ‘accident’ tie in to that transporter signal? Could the ‘shapeshifters’ be these supposedly dead Da’al, walking around the facility in other forms?

Jaran: It's possible. If they're taking the risk of that sort of thing, they must either really believe in their cause, though.

K’Wara: I doubt it. The only biometric sign-in that was out-of-place was that singular one of Alvaine’s. If there were multiple disguised infiltrators milling about the place, there should’ve been several flags of strange DNA logs over a prolonged period of time.

Bergmen: Response

Imril once again focused on the Afalqi’s schematics, and Tamio looked at it with an increasingly lack of focus. They’d seen those schematics before. The eight missing Da’al was new.

Imril: Let’s play another mental game. Assume eight officially-deceased stowaways on the Alafqi. The best place to hide the lifesigns would be here and here, in the schematic gaps nearer the engines. Any power readings given off by cryopods or shielded saferooms could be pretty easily masked there if you modulate the EM wavelengths coming off the experimental dilithium chamber. The excess power linkages in the walls could support either option.

Tamio eyed the Doctor with an unspoken question in their eyes, which the redheaded Bajoran caught onto quickly.

Jaran: It's theoretically possible, with the right energy signatures.

Bergmen: Response

Imril: That would leave this area to house the plasma accelerators and whatever they charge. It's near the front end of the ship, and not too far off from a main weapon bank. It wouldn't be too hard to link one system into the other, or to convert these portholes into cannon ports. 

Jaran: There would need to be some really substantial shielding between that array and any living beings. The radiation would be intense. Cutting it close to hide lifesigns that near plasma accelerators.

Tamio nodded, accessing the computer to remove the schematic and pull up the eight helices once more. This was the next step.

K’Wara: So now we’ve found out where and how the eight Da’al went. We need names, profiles, motivations. We’ve found out a lot of the hows, but we’re still missing several vital components to this mystery.

Bergmen: Response

Jaran: I'll admit, professionally, I'm far more interested in this transporter technology, if that's what it is. There's also one major unanswered question: who's the Romulan in this pattern?

K'Wara: And how did they first get into contact with Havun, and why? Vitor’s team is dealing with some pretty interesting technology right now, which is presumably what the infiltrator wanted. But how did they convince Havun to play ball?

Nothing in their files about Havun had indicated that he’d been of a traitorous disposition previously. Something had to either have enticed him enough, or threatened him enough, for him to decide that stealing a high-profile government vessel and absconding with it immediately was the only logical option.

And yet, nothing that could indicate that was anywhere in the personnel files.

Bergmen/Imril: Response

Jaran: No, I don't think it could be a Da'al, even with that marker. Quite frankly, editing someone's pattern finely enough to alter someone on the DNA level with any reliability is beyond us. It may be possible that something could alter enough to fool, say, biometric scanners, though.

K'Wara: And yet it wasn’t. The only reason we caught this in the first place was because they had to hijack Alvaine’s biometric to pass through the checkpoint, and even that wasn’t foolproof.

It was comforting, at least, to know that there was a pretty easily trackable weak spot in this peculiar technology.

Bergmen/Imril: Response

Jaran: Right. I'm certain we're looking at something that is purely cosmetic. Even that's tricky enough, and, if I'm being honest, could explain a transporter accident that killed eight people as much as them hiding somewhere. But if the Da'al were working with the Romulans, why would a Romulan need to hide? And where are they now? Presumably on the Afalqi.

It felt like a puzzle piece suddenly slotted itself into the massive tapestry going into Tamio’s brain. They’d been presuming thus far that Havun had knowingly harbored the Romulan infiltrator, assisted them with their workings and purposefully worked for them rather than their own government.

But, perhaps, that wasn’t the entire truth. If the infiltrator was able to look like anyone, did that mean they had first approached Havun disguised as someone else? Someone Havun would never doubt?

K'Wara: We need to know who else would be on that Ship. If the Romulan is still disguised, it may be possible that even the Afalqi’s crew isn’t aware they’re there. Ollie, do you have any of the names of those missing Da’al yet?

Bergmen: Response

Jaran/Imril: Response

K’Wara: This is our focus now. Use whatever sensor data we got from Launch Control. We need to know how many people are likely to be on board that Ship, who was involved with the construction who’s since gone missing.

Bergmen/Imril/Jaran: Response

K’Wara: Thanks to Ollie and the others, we have Havun’s personal communications. Odds are, some of those names will match the missing ones. ::searches through the files:: The first one’s obvious: Havun’s wife, Falon. She wasn’t one of the missing Da’al from the transporter accident, but she’s definitely on the Afalqi with him. According to Jetripar, she’d been home sick for the past several days.

Tamio dragged a picture of Falon onto the screen, placing her headshot next to eight empty slot above the unnamed helices. A middle-aged Da’al woman with deep dark eyes and wispy hair framing a face wrinkled with traces of smiles and laughter in times gone by.

The Afalqi wasn’t being flown by Havun alone. Naming his co-conspirators and figuring out which of them had first put these thoughts of ship-theft in Havun’s head, might help them localize their infiltrator.

Bergmen/Imril/Jaran: Response

TAG/TBC

LtCmdr Tamio K’Wara

Chief of Ops

USS Artemis-A
A240006GS1