LT Tamio K'Wara - Reunited, At Cost

[LT Tamio K'Wara]

(( Faraday Room - Garden Cave, Inside the Cliffs, Callis I ))

Now that the shock of finding the Faraday Room had somewhat passed - IE, not at all, but we can pretend for the sake of moving things along, eh? - it was time to focus on how they could utilize that fact for their own purposes. Having functioning combadges was a miracle already, but they shouldn’t be working beyond the confines of this room. Only, the Faraday Room had communications functionality. It was able to communicate with some faraway Faraday Room, despite the Maelstrom permeating the air outside.

How?

Jovenan: I doubt physical lines would remain shielded long enough, but folded-space communication through the Maelstrom’s fields would be prone to data corruption.

Bergmen: Back in times when I was an enlisted LCARS programmer, I would say you - we need at least project documentation before we can do anything about that idea of yours, Commander.

Bancroft: I suspect we’re going to have to make our own documentation – which means experimentation. ::nudging K’Wara:: Place your bets – when we tap the next button, do we get catastrophic decompression… or something theatrical? I’m leaning toward a spring-loaded countermeasure designed by someone with a sense of humor, personally.

K’Wara: Boxing glove or custard pie?

Tamio could tell that Jo was not exactly encouraging their levity so much as tolerating it, so they didn’t wait for a response to their responding quip, before focusing on the task at hand.

Jovenan: Right. ::pause:: What was the other icon? Maybe we’ll find more answers with more information.

Ollie tapped the other icon, but whereas the first icon had pulled up the feed in short order - though not with the same immediacy that Starfleet engineering was capable of - this time, the screen turned black as the machinery whirred.

Bergmen: Ehm… ::grins sheepishly:: Did we break it?

Bancroft: Don’t think so… it’s still making noise. Maybe the console’s screen burned out?

K’Wara: Could also just mean that the camera in that other room has broken, even if the circuitry is intact.

Ultimately, none of them knew enough of the ancient Callisians’ technology to hazard a proper guess as to why this icon didn’t respond in the same way as the other one, so they had limited options for their immediate response. Since none of them were Engineers, Tamio certainly didn’t want to hazard poking about inside the inner workings of the console.

Jovenan: Let’s give it some time…

Tamio nodded in agreement, but as though personally offended by the fact that Jovenan deemed it old enough to need time to work, the screen powered on. With people reflected on the screen. Roy reacted most strongly, stepping forward with fervor, but they all seemed to collectively hold their gasps at the appearance of people, wearing Starfleet uniforms. And then, a mirrored sway of hair here, a raised hand there - no, this wasn’t anyone else. This was them.

Bergmen: Is it what I think it is?

Bancroft: ::squinting at the screen:: It appears to be… us. ::flatly:: A live feed from this room.

Jovenan turned around, no doubt searching for the camera.

Jovenan: At least now we know for certain we’re not watching old recordings.

K’Wara: Almost a shame. It would’ve been nice to give the UT some videos of Callisians, see if we couldn’t learn more information from old surveillance footage.

As it was, they only had a surveillance feed of themselves, along with strange pictograms along the bottom line of the screen, and then a feed of another room, which was empty, and likely quite far away from them, if the arrangement of the tiles had anything to do with geographical location at least. There were at least 12 rooms between them and the next functional one.

Bergmen: I think I can quite surely read this as “that’s us”, and that ::points to the upward crossed-out triangle:: as pictogram for “alive”.

Tamio didn’t know what precisely made Ollie think an upwards crossed-out triangle meant ‘alive’ - certainly nothing that could be corroborated by any of the etchings they’d found so far - but at this stage, any interpretation was as good as the next one.

Bancroft: ::low, dry:: Well. That’s reassuring. According to the ancient alien computer… we’re still among the living. ::beat:: Nice to have it confirmed.

Jovenan: So, it monitors the lifesigns of the people in here? ::pause:: Maybe it’s a medical device.

Bancroft: If those symbols really do mean ‘that’s us’ and ‘alive,’ there must be some sort of rudimentary sensor suite built into this room. And if there are sensors in here…

There were likely sensors in the other rooms too. But why?

Jovenan: Right. Um. Let’s assume the operator of this machine is able to tell that the people in this room and in the other rooms are alive. Why?

What situations would it be useful to know what lifesigns are on the other end of a fixed link? Tamio tried to think back up to the Artemis, or the Princeton, or the Arthur Royale.

1) Keep tabs on an Away Team. 2) Scan for intruders. 3)...

No, that was ludicrous.

Bergmen: Response

Bancroft: Is there some way we can leverage this? Use it to find out if there are… others?

Jovenan: If they happen to step into one of these rooms and close the door. I don’t think we can scan outside the Faraday Cages. ::pause:: Now that the machine has determined we’re alive, can we get back to the menu?

K’Wara: No handy back-arrow, I’m afraid. ::sighs:: And I’m not sure I want to risk the whole ‘turning it off and back on again’ with machinery this old.

Bergmen: Response

Bancroft: I suppose randomly pushing buttons was only ever going to get us so far. I’d trade a month’s worth of brown mush for a translation matrix right now…

oO Not my not-chocolate! Oo

Jovenan: We don’t have that much brown mush, so the trade is off. Well, I’m not sure if we can accomplish anything else by playing the guessing game. I’d say we get back outside and rest, I’m not going to be sleeping with these loud… ::pause, look on the console:: Was that icon always blue?

Tamio noticed it a facsimile of a second before Jovenan said anything, the sudden shift of the pale gold to cerulean, and they felt that stubborn sensation start again. That sprout of hope that had gripped them all tightly and refused to release them. They touched the icon with scarcely a moment’s doubt, looking up. And suddenly, their body felt about ten tons lighter.

Bergmen/Bancroft: Response

K’Wara: Jo, it’s-

Jovenan: It’s them! Can we talk to them? Do we have…

Tamio forced their eyes away from the screen, stopped assessing the other team - a whole five people! - for injuries, instead focusing on the interface below their fingers.

oO By hells, friend, you made a lightning bolt for electricity, surely your icon for ‘talk here’ shouldn’t be this hard to find! Oo

Munro: =/\= Jovenan! Is that you?! =/\=

Someone on the other end had found the button instead, and Tamio chuckled breathlessly as a familiar, and yet very strange, voice came over the console. Was it really just a week since they’d last heard the voice of the First Officer?

Jovenan: =/\= Yes! Yes, Commander, I am! It’s so good to see you! Can you hear me? =/\=

Munro: =/\= :: elated :: We can hear you?! I think we're in some kind of … =/\=

Jovenan: =/\= We can see you. The room you’re in is quite similar to the one we have here. ::pause, looks to the console:: We also have several symbols on the screen. We’ve figured the triangles reference to your health status, but there are also some prominent semicircles. No idea what they mean. =/\=

As the two Commanders discussed the situation, Tamio looked at the others. The image wasn’t very clear, but the number of crew aboard the Karnack had been precious few, and they finally had started remembering the other crew, if only by name. They saw Doctor Jaran, though they seemed to be limping - they must’ve gotten hurt - and they saw the fuzzy head of curls belonging to one of the new ensigns, Breys. They didn’t know any of them better than Ava though, and they could tell from the way she tried to keep her agitation off of her face:

Something was wrong, and it was bad.

Munro: =/\= I think I know what they mean… if I'm right this is some kind of crude transportation network. =/\=

Jovenan: Do you have any idea what she is talking about?

K’Wara: Rudimentary transporters. ::looks down at the console:: Not free transporters, but curated travel between point A and B. That may be why the sensors are registering lifesigns… ::looks at them:: It may be a way to differentiate between those that shouldn’t be transported, and those that should.

A pretty reasonable precaution on a planet infested with the Things.

K’Wara: We have no clue how to work it though. And considering that we don’t know how it’s powered-

Bergmen/Bancroft: Response

After seeing fellow survivors for the first time in a week, none of them seemed willing to gamble their safety on a system they had no clue would even work as intended, if that was indeed the intention.

Jovenan: =/\= You might be right, Commander. But we can’t take the risk using it on people, the probability of incomplete or corrupted transportation is too great. We could try it out with objects, first… is everything alright in there? =/\=

Ava turned to speak to her own team, though her words didn’t come through the communications system clearly. And now, Tamio could hear it. Howling. Scraping.

Six eyes looking through the darkness, reflected in firelight.

Munro: =/\= Commander, we're ready. Do what you need to do. =/\=

Ava didn’t have the time to dally, and while Jovenan seemed reluctant to follow that particular order - likely due to her boyfriend’s presence on the other team, plus her rather strict Edo ethics - it was an order. And if they didn’t do anything, it wasn’t entirely unlikely that they would instead be audience to their friends getting murdered by Things instead.

All things considered, Tamio didn’t feel too bad about following Ava’s orders given those two options.

Jovenan: Okay. Let’s push some buttons and hope something happens.

K’Wara: Right. Roy, help me: we need to find the actual transporter technology. It must be physically present here somewhere, if Ava was able to reach that conclusion, just hidden. We need to make sure they don’t appear fused with a gardening shovel kept in a wrong place. Ollie, you’ve had the best luck with these pictograms, get on that interface and find the correct button.

Bergmen/Bancroft: Response

Tamio left Ollie and Jo at the console as they started violently tearing stuff away from the walls. When Ava gave the order, she and her team were headed for the walls of their own room - one of the blind angles of the camera - so there had to be something on the walls that resembled a transporter enough that Ava would be willing to bet on it.

The room itself filled with a loud noise, like thunderclaps, only constant and all-encompassing, with no direction to it, and Tamio saw bright lights starting to ebb out by the corners of a large piece of broken furniture. They dragged it away, just as they saw a form start to take shape within. They know who yet, but they were here. They were here.

But at what cost?

((( Timeskip: 12 hours later )))

Tamio had been working in the Faraday Room for almost half an hour now. They needed to know what the transporter network had done to their friends, and while some of them had been muttering about a ‘voice’ talking to them, Tamio had yet to find any evidence of it in their investigations of the menus. In frustration, they smacked one balled-up fist on the interface, seriously deliberating the ‘turning it off and on again’ reluctance from before.

If they did so, then perhaps that voice would manifest itself to tell them off, and they could demand some answers.

That didn’t happen. Instead, something new appeared on the screen, and Tamio blinked. The interface shifted, no longer tiles showing functional Faraday Rooms, but something else entirely - a power grid of some sort, showing the flow of power throughout the network, though it didn’t help identify how.

But there, separated from the grid, was a power signature Tamio would have been able to recognize in their sleep. A warp core. And it was close. It was only twenty seconds later that they ran down the hallway back to the Garden Cave, calling for Jo and the others.

TAG/End of Act 2 for Tamio K’Wara

((( OOC: Thank you for a fantastic Act 2, ya’ll! Now, let’s get off of this rock xD )))

LT Tamio K’Wara

Chief of Operations

USS Artemis-A

A240006GS1