LT Tamio K'Wara - Old Lessons and Fruit Baskets

[LT Tamio K'Wara]

(( Sensor pod - USS Artemis-A ))

Playing 20 questions with one of your new colleagues was a great way of getting to know them, but as had been readily apparent from the first moment they’d met her, Lt. Commander Jovenan always seemed to find a way of making something about work. Their response to the query of ‘geology or biology’ clearly elicited some interest, despite Tamio’s response being less than qualified.

Jovenan: Really? Have you ever considered a career in science?

K’Wara: Nah, haven’t got the patience for it. Your turn: action or mystery?

Jovenan: Hmm… Depends on if you refer to our missions or fiction. I’ve seen plenty enough action in my years already, so I wouldn’t mind solving mysteries moving ahead. As far as literature and entertainment goes, it’s more mixed, but an orderly, mentally challenging mystery still beats action.

Service in the Borderlands - with pirates running rampant and the Klingon Empire less than a stone’s throw away - certainly seemed like the place to serve if you had a hankering for some action. Tamio wasn’t surprised the shorter Edo woman had a clear preference on the subject.

K’Wara: ::smirks:: Never would have guessed. ::frowns:: Hmm... This is-

Jovenan: Yes? What is it?

K’Wara: There’s some subspace interference that I’m having trouble getting a clear read on. ::hums:: These scanners are getting a lot of data in.

Jovenan: Just take it easy and imagine the Captain’s here. ::smirk:: She doesn’t really care about the details of what you see, does she? Give her a brief explanation of what you see so that she understands it, and then your expert analysis of the possible explanations.

Tamio hadn’t had much chance to converse with the Captain at all - they’d basically joined the crew and Captain MacKenzie had immediately fled to Ferenginar before they’d had the chance to broach the modelling topic - so it was an interesting thought experiment to try and ascertain what it’d be like being on the Bridge under her watch.

They almost regretted not being the designated Helmsman. Alas, with responsibility came great sacrifices.

K’Wara: Makes sense - she seems like the ‘no-nonsense’ type. ::considers::

What did Tamio know without a doubt to be true? There was a low-level band of some type of emission that the scanners didn’t catch. They went back to the subspace particle scanner interface, looking at the nonsensical readout with frustration. There were a number of different types of background radiation or emission particles that messed up sensor readouts, and they could mean one of several things.

K’Wara: At first blush, it seems like a normal interstellar body, but there’s a low-level band of unidentified particles around it that are resisting traditional scan settings. I recommend adjusting scanners for a multiphasic sweep to get more information before approaching.

Jovenan: Proceed with the appropriate actions based on your analysis. Just a reminder, the drone doesn’t have weapons or shields beyond navigational ones.

The Chief of Science was playing coy with them, and Tamio thought she’d make a mean instructor at the Academy. Which were usually the best ones, frankly. Was her cautionary tale about weapons or shields an indicator that whatever the unidentified object would turn out to be would have weapons and shields if encountered in reality, or was it a red herring?

There was no point in thinking too much about it, as they interfaced with the sensors. Falling into motivation analysis with a Lt. Commander was a sure way to start second-guessing yourself, and Tamio wasn’t having that.

The preparations for a multiphasic sweep took a bit too long for Tamio’s liking; it was something different to adjust sensor configurations from within the TOV suit rather than from a console, but it was still a visibly Starfleet program design, so it wasn’t impossible. Just different. Definitely something they should be able to shave a good dozen seconds off for a second run.

They aimed the new sensor configurations over the drone and narrowed their eyes, though it wasn’t visible outside the helmet. The particles still resisted sensors... Either the Chief of Science had prepped a drone to warn them that they were heading straight into a black hole, or Tamio was missing something.

K’Wara: Still nothing…

Jovenan: Response

Tamio’s hands didn’t move. This was just a training exercise, so nothing would actually happen if they moved closer to the anomaly, but proximity was unlikely to help the issue, and if the thing the drone was standing in for turned out to be dangerous- Tamio took a deep breath, clicking their fingers together to shed the spiral they were heading into.

K’Wara: It’s not EM radiation, it’s not ion particles, it’s not quantum energy, it’s n-

An errant memory imposed itself as a particularly nasty drill chief from their time on the USS Churchill manifested in their brain, her words clear and stern:

oO If you’ve got four sensors, always aim one at them at the lower subspace bandwidth. Oo

Drill Chief Blizz’æ had been a deeply paranoid Dominion War Veteran with a massive chip on her shoulders about the Romulans, which Tamio had always considered an odd choice for serving in the Trinity Sector, but it also made a certain amount of sense. If you had to post someone to run security on the galactic intersection between the Federation, the Romulan Star Empire and the Klingon Empire, going with a perpetually paranoid security nut was definitely a way to go about it.

And Tamio realized that they would’ve likely been assigned several weeks of heat exhaust maintenance and at least three days of no fly permits for forgetting it.

Sure enough, as they adjusted the subspace scanner to focus specifically on that layer, they saw what Blizz’æ would’ve likely suspected from the second she’d run the scan in the first place.

K’Wara: ::annoyed sigh:: Tetryon emissions. I'd want to doublecheck with a tachyon scan, but it’s a cloaked Ship...

Jovenan: Response

K’Wara: I need to send an old drill chief of mine an apology note and a fruit basket now. She’d never let me live down taking this long to find it.

Tamio turned the probe away from the offending target, reorienting for the next one. And they could be sure the first scan they would be doing was a lower subspace scan.

Jovenan: Response

TAG/TBC

LT Tamio K’Wara

Chief of Operations

USS Artemis-A

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