Lieutenant JG Roy Bancroft - The Claw of Destiny
Carter Schimpff
(( The Afalqi Project, Hangar 1659 – Meranuge IV ))
The hangar was a large space by any practical measure, but the scale of it did less to impress than to expose. Every surface seemed to offer the same quiet refusal – no clear disturbance, no obvious point of failure. It was the kind of scene that suggested, not incorrectly, that whatever had happened here had done so with either remarkable care or an unsettling lack of resistance.
Or both.
Munro’s team had not lacked for questions. They had, if anything, developed a surplus. Each new pass across the bay – each scan, each visual sweep, each attempt to impose meaning onto their surroundings – seemed to produce one or two more questions, small and precise, like hairline fractures spreading just beneath the surface of otherwise intact glass.
Answers, meanwhile, had so far declined to participate in the day’s activities.
What little alignment had emerged among them rested less on evidence than on the recognition of what was not present. No signs of forced access, no structural compromise, no damage consistent with haste or improvisation.
That absence accumulated in a particular direction, and even treated cautiously, it suggested the same conclusion: there was a conspiracy afoot.
Imril: It screams ‘inside job’ pretty loudly. We already know that the ship’s Chief Engineer appears to be involved. Maybe they had help on the administrative or security side of things?
Munro: Let’s hope Commander Jovenan and the others can get some answers to that question, they are searching the Chief Engineer’s office. This place is eerie. Like everyone just upped and downed sticks?
Munro picked a toolkit up off the floor, examining it.
Munro: Engineers don’t just leave their tools unattended - especially if they go to the trouble of welding their name on the box.
Tarsan: Response
Bancroft: Right. I mean – even the chairs at the consoles. Not a single one out of place. They’re all even pointed the right direction.
Cole: ::looking over to the console:: Feels like they definitely had help covering their steps. I doubt they took the time to ‘Close shop’ before they left.
Imril: The ship’s transponder wasn't picked up in the skylanes by local traffic scanners or any privately-own scanners that the local police are aware of. The more mundane reasons for that would be that someone installed a second transponder, or the thieves had help from outside this facility in covering their passage to open space.
Imril: ::Calling to Tarsan:: Any news on more interesting ways of getting away unobserved, Ensign Tarsan?
Munro: Run a transponder signal, see if there’s any jamming in place?
Tarsan: Response
His tricorder trilled.
Bancroft: ::frowning:: PCE-4? A tiny amount, but it’s definitely PCE-4. This is just a hangar, right? Not a clean room?
Cole: In a place this tidy, the wrong trace isn’t background noise. It’s intentional. ::beat:: Details matter.
Cole rose from her crouch, her gaze already moving – quick, deliberate, and unsentimental – as it began sorting the space for any detail of use.
Cole: In a room this controlled, a tiny amount of the wrong thing says more than a mess would.
Imril: I know PCE-4 is the go-to sterilizer in Starfleet. But how common is it on this planet? Something to check on with the hangar’s quartermaster.
Munro: If they made an effort to hide something that would tell us that there is more to the story than meets the eye. Something that would require a full sterilisation?
Proteolytic Chelation Enzyme 4 was not the sort of compound one reached for in routine maintenance. It was precise to the point of indulgence – designed to break down organic residue with a vengeance as obsessive as it was thorough. Useful, certainly, in the right context.
There was, he knew, a very short list of good reasons to employ the solution, and they all fell into the same broad category: trace biologicals. The small signatures people left behind whether they’d intended to or not. Blood, if things had gone poorly. Skin oils, if they had not. Hair, in either case, with equal indifference to circumstance.
Tarsan: Response
Imril: I’ve got hangar computer access. Looking up Security sub-directories.
Munro: Tarsan, how are you getting on with the transponder signal? Roy, try and find me anything at all, a morsel of DNA could tell us anything.
Tarsan: Response
Cole: The room feels arranged. Not staged exactly… but managed.
Roy gave the tricorder another sweep – left, right, a slight lift as though courtesy alone might coax something out of it – before lowering it again. The result remained unchanged: nothing of consequence, no disruption, no residue save for the faintest trace of PCE-4 already thinning into the air, as if even that had decided it had said too much.
Bancroft: ::to Munro:: I’d give my second pip for so much as a fallen eyelash right now, Commander.
From across the bay, Imril’s voice carried just enough to reach them, threaded with a note of resigned recognition – as though whatever situation they had met aligned itself precisely with their expectations.
Imril: Surprise, surprise. More redactions. Some of them dating back to when the Afalqi was first docked here.
Munro: Does it indicate who has access to those redactions?
Cole: If the records are selective and the room is selective, I’d start by assuming the same hands touched both.
Tarsan: Response
Roy lowered the tricorder and clipped it back into place at his hip.
For all its pedigree, it had yet to justify its continued involvement in this particular situation. It had, however, performed admirably in the role of illuminated reassurance – cycling through its scans and displays with a kind of confident ambiguity that suggested it understood everything… just not anything particularly compelling or meaningful.
Bancroft: ::to Cole:: If the same hands touched both, then they were double-gloved. ::raising his voice:: Imril, you wouldn’t be able to work some of your magic and find us a digital fingerprint, would you?
Their answer, when it came, seemed directed at Commander Munro.
Imril: Would it be terribly undiplomatic of me if I started peeking behind some of these black bars?
Munro: :: reluctant sigh :: Let’s try and find out what we need staying in the lines of diplomacy. The captain is with their Minister now, I don’t think it would help if he found out we tried to hack their system. You and Tarsan are going to have to get me some answers based on the access you have. Go help them, ensign.
Munro turned then – not abruptly, but with enough finality to make it clear the decision had already been made – and settled her attention on he and Cole.
It was not an unkind look. If anything, he decided, it was composed – professional, expectant in the way of someone accustomed to being met with results. There was no edge to it, no deliberate pressure.
Roy knew that.
And still, something in it mapped too cleanly to ignore onto a much older pattern of behavior – Margot’s behavior. He had seen its likeness across a lifetime of small, exacting moments with her – never raised voices, never spectacle, just the quiet recalibration of his worth when what he had offered had failed to meet her own lofty expectations.
The association surfaced on its own, uninvited and, he knew, entirely misplaced.
Cole’s voice cut through before he could further indulge himself.
Cole: Whatever happened here, it wasn’t just escape. Someone stayed behind long enough to make the aftermath look orderly.
Bancroft: You think some of the perpetrators stayed behind?
A moment later, Munro’s tricorder chimed. Its lilting cry carried far through the cavernous space – a reminder of just how spartan this place was.
Munro: The transponder signal didn’t connect with the outside security systems. That means something must have blocked it :: grin :: I don’t go in for all those detective holo-novels but I still know a clue when I see one?
Well, that was at least one question answered.
Cole: If the signal was blocked and the room was cleaned, then somebody planned for both the departure and the aftermath.
Bancroft: If the device that blocked the signal is still here – and wasn’t ‘cleaned’ with everything else in this hangar – how would we locate it?
The Artemis’ First Officer, luckily, had a ready answer.
Munro: We need to triangulate the signal :: thinks :: We can use the tricorders to send a tri-vector transponder signal. Cole, if you can send the same signal from over there :: points to the other side of the gantry. Roy, you go down there :: points again :: Set your tricorders to send out the same wide beam resonant signal as me. I do love the classics, good old fashioned echo location.
Cole: Understood. Let’s see what the hangar forgot to erase.
Cole was already moving by the time her last word left her, tricorder in hand and angled toward one of the vectors Munro had indicated. Roy drew his own a beat later and set off in the opposite direction.
Bancroft: Ready on your mark, Commander.
Munro: Response
Cole: If they buried the signal, they still had to bury it somewhere.
Bancroft: Hopefully, in here.
Munro: Response
Cole: Details matter. Big stories are easy to arrange. It’s the small inconsistencies that forget whose side they’re on.
Roy keyed a brief sequence into his tricorder, then brought it into alignment with the others – its signal widening, settling into the same resonant sweep Cole and Munro were already pushing through the space.
Bancroft: I’m locked, Commander. You getting anything?
Munro/Cole: Response
Bancroft: ::hopeful surprise:: Really? Well, that’s the first bit of good news–
The sound reached him before the motion did – a low, mechanical whir that carried just enough weight to suggest it had not been designed for subtlety. Roy’s attention lifted instinctively, tracking it upward to the gantry that had once held the Afalqi in place.
For a moment, the gantry seemed content to remain where it was.
Then it began to move.
Not laterally – but down. Slow at first, deliberate in a way that implied intention rather than malfunction. Then, faster. Still downward.
Toward them.
Munro/Cole: Response
Bancroft: ::shouting over the noise:: Some sort of automation maybe?
Munro/Cole: Response
(( OOC: Preserving Nat’s tags to Tarsan/Imril ))
Tarsan/Imril: Response?
TAG/TBC!
===
Lieutenant JG Roy Bancroft
Assistant Chief Medical Officer
USS Artemis-A
A240205RB1