Lt. JG Natasha Cole - The Scene Was Too Clean
Natasha Schell
((The Afalqi Project Hangar 1659 - Meranuge IV))
Munro: :: to them all :: Any questions?
Cole: Just one. Do we know who had authorized access to this hangar in the last seventy-two hours, or is that one of the things our hosts will be… selective about? ::beat:: One more thing, Have the Da’al already collected anything from the scene, or are we looking at how it was discovered?
Tarsan: Will the Da'al allow us to speak to any of the engineers who didn't leave with the ship... ::pausing:: if there are any left, that is?
Bancroft: No questions, Commander. ::beat:: Yet. I’m sure that won’t last long.
Imril: I’m interested to know how many engineers, and other folk, did leave with the ship. And if the Afalqi picked up more on their way out of the system. The size of the crew needed to run the ship could tell us something about it that’s not on the schematics. ::Huff:: What we’re allowed to see of them.
Munro: The administration staff discovered the ship was gone :; to Imril :: I don’t know the exact figures but that would suggest that all of them left with the Afalqi. The Da’al authorities are questioning their own people, with good reason. They aren’t a Federation world, so we can’t directly interrogate their people. We’re here just to lend a hand, even if those hands are tied :: looks around at the gantries and the work stations :: From what I gather the Da’al have left the site untouched.
Natasha’s expression softened by a degree as her eyes flicked toward Tarsan, just enough to say first missions always feel louder than they are. Then she looked back at Ava.
Cole: Then let’s not waste the chance to look before procedure turns into a wall.
Bancroft: That happen often to you, Nat?
Imril let out a chuckle at Roy’s joke. Natasha flicked Roy a look that acknowledged the joke. The corner of her mouth twitched, but her attention never really left the hangar.
Cole: I’m going to work the perimeter and spiral inward. People notice the middle. Mistakes usually happen at the edges.
Natasha stepped away from the group, already angling toward the perimeter of the hangar rather than the center. Her pace was unhurried, but deliberate. Corners first. Access doors. Tool stations. Floor markings. Places where someone might have paused, waited, watched, or decided to do something quickly and hope no one noticed later.
Bancroft: ::pointing:: I like the look of that console over there as my starting point.
Imril: Save me one, Roy. ::Looking across the hangar:: Oh, wait, there’s plenty to go around.
Tarsan: ::to Imril:: Lieutenant, where would you like to start? If- uh if you don't mind, I can pick up the engine specs?
((OOC: Natasha would likely still hear this conversation, but not be focused on it, unless a scream or yell was let out.))
Imril: Right now, while we have access to the hangar and it’s computers, I’m going to go see what those computers have to say about what happened here. But we’re going to go over all of these so-called specs soon enough. See what’s there. What doesn’t need to be there. What probably shouldn’t be there. What all of those things put together can tell us about the parts of the ship that we’re not allowed to see.
Imril: My guess is if there’s something aboard the Afalqi that our hosts don't want us to know about, it might be something the theives thought was important or valuable enough to take control of for their own reasons.
Tarsan: I was thinking that I might check for any technology that would have allowed them to escape from the hanger without being seen, wormhole generators, and so on?
Imril: If a wormhole had come through this area, we’d be picking through the pieces of a disaster area. So I think we can rule that out. But you've got a good idea, so run with it. Go ahead and scan this place from top to bottom while you're at it. We may want to rebuild this crime-scene in a Holodeck later.
Munro: :: to Cole :: What you got Lieutenant?
Cole: ::eyes focused:: It's what I don’t have that interests me more.
Natasha lowered herself carefully, bringing her line of sight nearly level with the floor rather than trusting the room from standing height. From down here the hangar looked even cleaner, which somehow made it worse.
Bancroft: ::idly:: Place seems pretty intact for having just hosted a large-scale heist, no?
Cole: If this was a heist there would be signs of haste ::gestureing:: skid marks, things knocked over in the hustle.
Imril climbed up a ladder as they spoke.
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?
To emphasise her point, Ava picked up a toolkit that had been left abandoned on the floor.
Munro: Engineers don’t just leave their tools unattended - especially if they go to the trouble of welding their name on the box.
Tarsan: Responses?
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.
Imri: 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: Responses?
Roy’s 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.
Natasha rose from her crouch slowly, eyes already shifting from the floor to nearby consoles and work surfaces. Her attention sharpened at the mention of PCE-4.
Cole: In a room this controlled, a tiny amount of the wrong thing says more than a mess would.
Imri: 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?
Tarsan: Responses?
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.
Bancroft: Responses?
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.
A pattern was starting to emerge and it was getting harder to ignore: cleaned traces, missing disorder, redacted files, blocked transponder.
Tarsa: response
Bancroft: Responses?
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.
Ava turned to her and Bancroft.
Cole: Whatever happened here, it wasn’t just escape. Someone stayed behind long enough to make the aftermath look orderly.
Natasha’s eyes moved once across the nearest bank of consoles, then to the abandoned toolkit, then back to the floor. The hangar still felt wrong in the same specific way, not empty, but edited.
Bancroft: Response
The tricorder made an alert.
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?
Cole: If the signal was blocked and the room was cleaned, then somebody planned for both the departure and the aftermath.
Bancroft: Response
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/Munro: Response
Cole: If they buried the signal, they still had to bury it somewhere.
Bancroft/Munro: Response
Cole: Details matter. Big stories are easy to arrange. It’s the small inconsistencies that forget whose side they’re on.
Bancroft/Munro: Response
((OOC: leaving this here as a place holder for when Imril and Tarsan rejoin the conversation))
Tarsan/Imril: Response?
Tags/TBC
----- ◌● -----
Lt. JG Natasha Cole
Security Officer
USS Artemis-A
A240205NC4