LtCmdr. Talos Dakora - Prove The Theory
Travis
((Bridge - Deck 1 - USS Artemis))
Dakora: What in the four hells was that?
Across the bridge consoles flickered, some hard-rebooting and other displaying errors. Talos shifted in Addison’s chair uncomfortably and stared at the main viewscreen, which fortunately seemed undisturbed.
The Cube still hung there, nestled in the nebula. No weapons had fired as far as he could tell and nothing had changed.
Silveira: I lost my console.
Talos gritted his teeth as he waited for their equipment to regain enough functionality to tell him what had happened.
T’Ama: Me too, though it’s trying to come back up.
Too anxious to stay put, Talos rose and crossed to stand beside Silveira,
Silveira: We weren’t hit from the outside. That much I can tell…
Peering over the man’s shoulder as his console came back to life, the Ops officer on loan from the Constitution spoke up.
T’Ama: Then it was the ship itself blowing up.
Talos was confident that she was right. He’d served on starships long enough to know the difference between an explosion against the outside of the hull and the uncomfortable reverberation of an explosion within it.
It wasn’t a distinction he was happy to know about.
Dakora: Then our little problem below decks is getting worse.
The explosion itself hadn’t felt all that large, but with the precision nature of the saboteur’s previous attack, that provided little comfort.
Silveira: Is it just me or did we lose coms?
He shifted his gaze to the eye-patched Vulcan at the Ops station.
Her eye-patch– much like Genkos’ cane– made him feel sort of uneasy. Not because he found it strange or unsightly, but because it was a reminder that even with all of the advancements made by Starfleet Medical, there were still things that couldn’t easily be fixed.
Not all wounds were resolved in just a few minutes with a dermal regenerator and one day, his number would be up.
T’Ama: Internal comms went down but are trying to reboot…
Her voice shook him from his dark musings, but what she said did nothing to improve his mood.
Dakora: Sket. ::He crossed over and leaned on the railing near her station.:: Keep working on it. I don’t like being out of contact with the away team and our security forces.
Silveira: OK, looks like we still have shields now…
That was good, but Vitor was tapping away rapidly and Talos could see from the half-scowl and furrowed brow that it wasn’t going well.
T’Ama: Well that’s something..
He nodded.
Dakora: What else, Sil?
He kept tapping as he waved for Talos to come closer to his console.
Silveira: Either someone tampered with the system or we just lost the phaser emitters… ::He raised his head to face Talos and T’Ama.:: All of them.
Talos felt the cold tingle of fear start to rise up his spine, causing the little hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end.
He tried to think of some time when things had been worse, but his mind came up blank.
They had a saboteur roaming free within the ship, who had conveniently appeared just as they’d detected a Four-forsaken Borg Cube in the Federation’s back garden. Now the saboteur was chipping away at their systems, despite their lockdown and they currently had harsh language as their only means of defense if the Borg attacked.
Yeah, this was about as bad as it had ever been.
T’Ama: I’m going to go with someone tampered with it.
Talos shot her a glance that he hoped sarcastically conveyed how helpful her supposition was.
Dakora: We need our weapons online, A-flippin’-SAP. ::He pointed.:: If that Cube wakes up and decides it’s time to party, I want to have something more than rude gestures to throw at them.
Fortunately, Talos knew that Silveira wasn’t any happier than he was about being rendered toothless. He’d flag them for damage control teams immediately and Talos would bump them up the priority list.
Silveira: Either way the phaser emitters are dead. ::He tapped in a message and forwarded it.:: Dispatching a team to check them now.
T’Ama: More bad news. I can’t re-establish contact with the away team or get a lock on them. Sensors are down and short-range comms are hanging on their reboot.
Vitor looked at T’Ama and then to Talos, before speaking.
Silveira: Isn’t it such a coincidence that it happened just now?
Talos shook his head, with a sigh.
Dakora: Coincidences only happen in holo-novels. ::His brow furrowed.:: Whoever this saboteur is, they wrecked our long-range comms moments after we detected the Borg cube. Now they’ve blinded us so we can’t see what’s going on in there. We need to regain control of this situation before it goes any further.
He moved back to the center of the bridge, staring at the ominous cube on the screen as he did.
Dakora: Do we have a damage report on that explosion yet?
The Lieutenant who had unwittingly signed on for this mess when she’d hitched a ride on the Artemis spoke up.
T’Ama: Damage reports indicate there was an explosion in the sensor pod. It looks like we have a number of error logs from internal security sensor 031 and a video recording from the control room.
That was something. Part of the Wildfire Protocol was a massive escalation of computer-assisted internal sensor surveillance. If someone was somewhere they weren’t supposed to be, ideally, they’d know about it.
Dakora: Good. ::He crossed to an unmanned aux console and began pulling up the report.:: Do we have an ID on the bad actor?
Talos saw T’Ama’s eyebrow raise from across the bridge and he wondered if it was a good eyebrow, or a bad eyebrow…
((OOC: There was a typo in my sensor sim on the line that T’Ama is referencing here that’s getting carried through, but I was trying to say that there was a “Gait recognition”/Facial recognition mismatch, but it got auto-corrected to “Gate.” No fencing is involved. ))
T’Ama: Gate recognition unknown… Gate/face mismatch.
Talos, now with the report in front of him skimmed it quickly. There were a number of ways one could fool a facial recognition system, but utilizing a combination of gait and facial biometrics made it much harder for bad actors to slip through undetected.
But there was something else in the report that concerned him.
Silveira: Does that mean what I think it does?
Frowning and pointing down at the report, Talos chimed in.
Dakora: I don’t know what it means, exactly. But I do know that Ensign Marcus Li left the Artemis on bereavement leave before we left DS9. ::He pointed to his chest.:: I approved his leave myself.
Yet the sensor log had listed Ensign Li as one of the people who had been in the sensor suite maintenance area when the explosion occurred. Something strange was happening here.
T’Ama: Have the Borg assimilated changelings?
Talos’ head snapped around to look at T’Ama and for a moment all he could do was blink a few times.
It felt like a massive conclusion to jump to. Either she was possessed with a sort of clairvoyance that allowed her to make a wild deduction like that with what little evidence they had or she’d lost her marbles.
Silveira: Surely you can’t be serious? May I ask how you got in that line of thinking Lieutenant?
He raised a finger.
Dakora: And to answer your question, no. Not that I’m aware of. ::He shrugged.:: Though there have only been an extremely limited number of interactions with any changelings since the end of the Dominion War.
He paused, softening his voice a little.
Dakora: Unless you’re seeing something I’m not, it feels like a bit of a leap.
T’Ama: Response
Talos listened, willing to be proven wrong. As his adrenaline and fear leveled off a bit he became aware of something else swirling in the tornado of emotions that danced across the bridge. He risked a sidelong glance in Sil’s direction, before returning his focus to T’Ama.
oO Vitor, you dog. Oo
Silveira: Are you certain?
Talos took a deep, centering breath. He still wasn’t fully convinced, but T’Ama seemed confident enough in her theory. Either way, bolstering their defenses against the threat of a potential changeling would also be effective in stopping the Suliban or any other of the more likely culprits.
Positioning himself at the point of a triangle completed by Sil and T’Ama, he replied.
Dakora: What makes you think it’s a changeling over, say– a Suliban raider or any other bad actor with a holographic disguise?
Though Talos would concede he wasn’t aware of anything that would put any of these groups in league with the Borg. The Borg didn’t make alliances. Did it?
T’Ama: Response
Vitor tipped his head to Talos.
Silveira: I have seen worse theories. Hell, I had worse theories than that.
Knowing the clock was ticking, he chewed on his lip as he made his decision. As a relatively new Command Officer, he still hadn’t quite gotten used to making these kinds of big decisions on the fly.
Dakora: Ok. ::He nodded to T’Ama.:: If you’re convinced, I’m convinced. What steps can we take to limit the movement of a changeling?
T’Ama: Response
Silveira: Response
He rubbed his chin for a moment.
Dakora: Right. And Internal comms are down, but the internal sensors are still working in most areas. I want to know if Ensign Marcus Li or that crewman– Nubar, I think it was?-- show up anywhere.
T’Ama/Silveira: Response
Almost immediately they received a result. Apparently, the sensors had Crewman Nubar moving through the Jeffries Tubes between decks.
That was bad.
Dakora: Who are those other dots there?
He pointed to a pair of dots not too far away from Nubar’s location. A few more console taps added names under the dots. H.Yellir and J.Chevalier.
Talos tapped his badge but the sad “connection failure” tone was all he got for his trouble.
Dakora: Silveira, T’Ama, gear up and intercept Nubar-or whoever they are before they get to Lt. Yellir and Ensign Chevalier. I’ll stay here and try to manage this sket-show.
T’Ama/Silveira: Response
TAG/TBC
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LtCmdr. Talos Dakora
First Officer
USS Artemis-A
O238811CD0