Ensign Imril - New Team, Same Mystery
Chris Taylor
((Ensign Imril’s Quarters, Deck 5, USS Artemis-A ))
Engineer’s log, supplemental.
I just got out of Sickbay. They had to dig a shard of glass out for my shoulder, and patch few holes. But I’m all better now. Well, I’m alive. Everyone else on my team -- both teams -- is too.
The Capital Building capsized just after we beamed out. Half of it’s still standing, a gutted skeleton of exposed rooms, twisted beams, and glitchy holograms. Drones and rescue bugcraft flying around it like flies circling a carcass. The Plaza we beamed down to is gone, buried under the rubble. It, and all the Kobyar who were killed there. The distribution of the debris suggests, on first view, that the epicenter of the collapse was the guest quarters that our team was given. That we, or the evidence we were gathering, was the target.
That just makes me want to find the cause of all this madness even more. I’ve come back to my room to change clothes and get some food in me. Then it’s back to work. I need to make something positive come out of the destruction and death that I just left behind.
((Holodeck 2, Deck 2, USS Artemis))
Imril shoved the last of their sandwich into their mouth on their way through the Deck 2 corridor. The hurriedly-downed meal wasn’t sitting well in Imril’s belly. They’d eaten quickly, and entirely out of necessity. One ate when one could in a combat situation. And even though the Artemis was orbiting well above the fray, it still felt like they -- the whole crew -- were in the middle of it. Minutes, seconds, counted in lives. They could feel the weight of that time in every step. Like someone had been playing with the gravity settings.
The Holodeck door opened and Roy Bancroft was standing there with Tho’Bi and Jovenan. If they were to be working together on this share of the mission -- the crisis? -- then it would be the most time they’d spent together since the Medical Officer took over Kel Solas’ berth. The active lives of busy Ensigns didn’t always allow for one to socialize with one’s own room-mates or neighbors.
Tho’Bi was a welcome sight. Jovenan, though, was a little intimidating. How much had Siveira told her about their charging into the computer lab under fire in whatever moments the two had managed to steal since the Kobyar/Grunden war reignited?
Jovenan: Hello. Thank you for coming, Ensigns. I’m Lieutenant Commander Jovenan, the Chief Science Officer, for those who don’t yet know me.
Tho’bi: En-Ensign Tho’Bi (beat) Engineering.
Bancroft: Pleasure, Commander. I'm Ensign Roy Bancroft, Medical.
Imril: Hello, all.
Commander Jovenan nodded at each of them in turn, her expression pleasant but assessing. There was no hiding the mix of emotions in their face and posture; eager as all get-out to go to work, not at all thrilled as to the reason why.
Jovenan: Okay, good, nice to meet you all. And I’m sorry that you all got caught up in this mess. The Captain is starting diplomatic talks with both the Kobyar and the Grunden, while another team, composed of some of our most capable senior officers, are conducting an operation to locate the offworld signal. Meanwhile, it comes down to us to actually solve the mystery.
Jovenan’s smirk was brief but unmistakable — not smug, not condescending, just something private flickering behind the eyes. Imril took it as something to find comfort in. No scolding, yet.
Bancroft: I do love a good puzzle. ::hesitating:: Just… full disclosure, I’m a bit out of my depth here. I did minor in Engineering at the Academy, but that was mostly so I could argue confidently with my medical devices when they misbehaved. ::gestures vaguely:: So if I say something that sounds insightful but makes no actual sense, that’s why. I’ll do my very best to be helpful, or at the very least, entertainingly wrong.
Imril: I don't want to speak for Ensign Tho’Bi, but we full-time engineers do tend to have heads full of technobabble and standardized methodologies. An outside perspective could be exactly what we need to… ::realizing they were about to say “Blow this thing wide open” and deciding that would be in bad taste:: … find an approach that no one’s considered yet.
Jovenan: I didn’t manage to catch up entirely the timelines for each of the teams. Are you all okay? What happened?
Tho’Bi: ::quiet and numb:: It got a little hectic (beat) ::louder and disengaged:: The drone we were sent to recover (beat) the solid state power supply went critical (beat) ::quieter and forlorn:: took out the forest (beat) ::louder fained upbeat:: We were lucky ::nods to himself:: (beat) then I had to get around the (beat) ::stutter:: the jamming signal so we could erm… (beat) ::quieter lost in thoughts:: beam out (beat) ::quieter and numb:: luckily I (beat) figured it out. ::smiles without conviction::
Imril tried to answer the smile with a smile. Something to help cheer the Andorian up. Or at least show some solidarity in mutual survival. But their grin was no more happy than Tho’Bi’s had been.
Bancroft opened his mouth... then promptly closed it again.
Starfleet was very good as training its personnel to handle a combat situation. Drills in the Academy. Drills after it. Wargames aplenty. But the part that came after… The part where a survivor has to put everything that they’ve gone through into words -- or just into the right order -- was not a skill that could ever really be taught. Only muddled through until an individual found their own way to do it.
Bancroft: ::clearing his throat:: Ensign Tho’Bi’s data will probably be a more coherent account than mine, Commander. I’m afraid I’ve come back with more questions than clues. ::beat, then dry restraint:: I spent most of the mission with Lieutenant Sadar and Ensign Cole. We were assigned to interview residents of Breetia Township, which was conveniently located near a downed drone.
Unfortunately, the attack started before we could speak to anyone–
Bancroft: ::pauses, then: wearily:: –aside from a very traumatized child. ::continuing on in normal tone:: We, er… stumbled onto an underground facility that, in my expert opinion, had absolutely no business being there. Inside we found one Grunden and one Kobyar scientist, both of whom had been chilling – quite literally – in stasis since before First Contact. ::a pause:: Also, Ensign Cole blew herself up, but she’ll be just fine.
Imril didn’t know Bancroft well enough to know if the comment about Cole was a joke or not. As they had tried to do for Tho’Bi, Imril offered him a smile too.
Having already talked through some of their own experiences in their log, Imril at least felt mildly capable of rephrasing them to an audience.
Imril: I’m fine. I got scratched up and my ears are still ringing, but I’m good to work. I’m more upset for the people we left behind than anything. Things started out alright. The Kobyari liaison, Major Oolwi, is a helpful sort. The Kobyar do like their surveillance, though. We were given space in the capitol building, with a lab, to get a crack at their smaller drones. Anomalies in their computers, the software and hardware both, became readily apparent.
They were about to go off on a list of the technical discoveries made by the team. But this wasn’t the time.
Imril: The Captain and some of the others, including Commander Jovenan, spit off to go explore a battlesite. That left me, Lt. Silveira and Scientist Richards in the lab. I’d just gotten a tactical drone fully disassembled when a pack of helicopters attacked the nearby plaza and then came for us. They shot up the windows, used some sonic weapon on the walls. We had to retreat with the whole place cracking apart around us. A Kobyar soldier got us into a bunker, where we were able to beam out. ::Looking away, in the vague direction of the planet:: I wonder if he made it.
Jovenan: Response
Tho’Bi gestured with his PADD, and Bancroft was eerily still.
Tho'Bi: Computer (beat) prepare to upload memory from device.
Computer: standing by.
Tho'Bi: PADD (beat) Ensign Tho’Bi (beat) Serial Number EG - 793 - 322 (beat) Confirm?
Computer: Awaiting access password.
Tho'Bi: Programs hacking programs
Computer: Confirmed. Upload initiated (beat) (beat) Upload complete.
Tho’Bi repeated the upload process with his Tricorder, and Roy blinked. Seemingly remembering just then that he had gear of his own to add to the data pile with. He unholstered his tricorder, brushing his thumb over the casing as though he might be attached to that particular scanner.
Tho’Bi: Who’s next?
Roy handed his Tricorder to Tho’Bi with careful motions.
Tho’Bi: Response
As Tho’Bi was handling the uploads, they delivered their tricorder and padd to him. Deciding to focus instead on the empty chamber they were all standing within. This confab called for more than four blank walls and a floor.
Jovenan: Response
Imril: Computer, give us somewhere to work. Load program Imril Workshop 6.
The holodeck turned itself into a simulation of a modestly-sized but well-stocked engineering workshop quite similar to the ones to be found in Starfleet Academy’s Engineering campus. Full of workbenches, boards, viewscreens, tools, whole shelves worth of technical manuals among other supplies. A foam-core mockup of Lt Sivleira’s video game arcade lay off to one corner as a lingering decoration.
Imril set their engineering kit down on a table and brought the tactical drone’s firewall device out. The small greenish box with the two partially destroyed isolinear gems. This, they set down on the table for everyone to see. Now was the time to get technical.
Imril: I have some physical evidence to share. I managed to salvage this from the lab. It was situated between a small tactical drone’s docking clamps. It’s a dedicated firewall device, presumably a standard Kobyar means of protecting the connected main computer. But the construction appears to borrow heavily from outdated Ferengi engineering.
Tho’Bi/Jovenan/Bancroft: Response
Imril: The damage occurred shortly after I got it out of the drone, before the attack. The power supply didn’t agree with Scientist Richard’s examination techniques.
Imril actually felt bad to expose Richards’ role in damaging the device. It had been an honest mistake, after all. But a thorough examination of the evidence at hand required an honest dissemination of what it had been through.
Tho’Bi/Jovenan/Bancroft: Response
Imril: ::Nods towards Jovenan:: According to Commander Jovenan, all of the crystals used in the drones show markers of having been grown under low-gravity conditions. Including the crystals that were components in the main computers. Where Lt. Bergmen found a number of pre-Dominion code syntaxes and a code reference to a Starfleet encryption dynamic library dating back to the 23rd Century. I noted similarities to our own ODN designs in the hardware, specs older than I am but not that old.
Tho’Bi/Jovenan/Bancroft: Response
TAG/TBC
----------------------------------------------------Ensign Imril
Engineering Officer
USS Artemis-A
A240110I12