Lt. JG Natasha Cole - A Room with Teeth
Natasha Schell
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.
Natasha was already moving before the last word fully landed, tricorder in hand and eyes tracking the angles Munro had indicated.
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.
Bancroft: I’m locked, Commander. You getting anything?
Munro: Response
Natasha narrowed her eyes at the tricorder, adjusting the angle by a few degrees rather than trusting the first return.
Cole: I’m getting an echo. Weak, buried, and very much not accidental.
The signal wasn’t clean, which somehow made Natasha trust it more.
Bancroft: ::hopeful surprise:: Really? Well, that’s the first bit of good news–
The sound scraped across Natasha’s nerves before it resolved into meaning, too heavy and too deliberate to pass for harmless machinery. Her gaze shot upward and caught the gantry in motion, descending with the kind of slow certainty that made panic feel almost merciful.
Then it accelerated.
Munro: Response?
Cole: Everybody clear the drop zone!
Natasha lunged sideways rather than straight back, one arm cutting out in a sharp warning toward the others while the other kept a death grip on her tricorder. Her attention split between the descending mass above them and the floor beneath it, already trying to read whether this thing was meant to crush, cover, seal, or destroy.
Munro: Response
Bancroft: ::shouting over the noise:: Some sort of automation maybe?
Cole: Not unless somebody taught it timing.
This was no longer just a missing ship. This was a room defending its own secrets.
Cole: Back up and watch the mechanism—if this thing is tied to the signal, we need to know what moved first.
Bancroft/Munro: Response
Tarsan/Imril: Response?
Cole: Somebody didn’t just steal the Afalqi. They built insurance into the scene.
Bancroft/Munro: Response
Tarsan/Imril: Response?
Tags/TBC
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Lt. JG Natasha Cole
Security Officer
USS Artemis-A
A240205NC4