LT Gila Sadar - Historical Breakthroughs or Explosions?
LT Gila Sadar
((Outside Water Treatment Plant - Outskirts of the Bantlox Colony, Laoi III))
Coming around the corner, the group found themselves on the upper section of a manufactured ridge that looked down on the coast and ocean itself. Next to that was a large, freshly dug hole, connected to the ridge by hastily erected walkways and various construction sites. It was frightfully clear that most of the construction happening was makeshift solutions to an unexpected development.
In the centre of the digsite was a long, crooked grey starship wing that appeared to reach for the sky, like a monolith of pale bone, the skeleton of an extinct monster.
Vailani: :: dumbfounded :: That's the wing of a Jem'Hadar attack ship. It must have been scouting the area …
Morgan: But how did it get here without anyone knowing? And what happened to the crew?
Silveira: Gone by now, that thing must be here for what? Twenty eight years if I am not mistaken.
Gnai: Response
Gila wasn’t certain, but there was something that was nagging her about that theory. She looked to the Administrator, who was watching the Starfleet officers’ reactions with spiteful amusement. Evidently, he was quite pleased with the fact that the protruding ship wing was now someone else’s headache.
Sadar: A-Administrator, how long has your colony existed for?
Bim Pend: We’re approaching our 80th anniversary for landfall.
That posed a whole different kind of problem for this find.
Vailani: Wouldn't a planetary survey have detected this?
Morgan: I would think anyone with the technology to get a message to us would have been able to track this. Or, ya know, anyone looking up at the sky would have seen it…
Well, the hole was new - Gila suspected as she looked around the walkways - given that it seemed specifically artificially created. This was less of an impact site, and more of a hollowed out vacuity that the colonists had dug to allow for the underground piping the plant required. While the wing looked massive now, Gila was certain it hadn’t poked out of the ground before the excavation had begun.
Silveira: If it crashed and nature got its way with it I think it's possible for it to be undetected.
Imril: Considering that we’re not all standing in the middle of an impact crater, I’d suggest that the ship could have entered atmo well out of view of this area, hit ground a long distance off, and ‘skipped’ or tumbled its way here.
To verify their hypothesis, Ensign Imril pulled out their tricorder, and Gila watched with interest. Given that the Administrator had complained about the Ship interfering with the plant computers, she wondered if it would do something similar to their tricorders.
Apparently not.
Imril: There’s a trail of compacted ground under the surface flora. Little impact zones, going off in that direction. The initial touchdown site is past the range of my tricorder.
Sadar: Is this the original water treatment plant?
Bim Pend: No, we had another one a few miles away until just before the War. It was the last upgrade the Federation ever gave us before handing us over to the Cardassians.
Gila tactfully ignored the Tellarite’s barb surrounding the Federation’s politics regarding the DMZ, while considering the implications for the buried Ship. All things considered, the evidence was drifting drastically in the favor of this wreck predating the war, even if it was unclear by how much. She doubted the Ship could’ve made it into the ground next to the treatment plant without anyone noticing.
Gnai: Response
The group walked onto one of the makeshift pathways that mainly consisted of metallic grates that formed a rudimentary, uneven walkway to the digsite. Gila only hoped their tricorders would continue to work as they got closer to the wreck.
Vailani: :: to Gila :: Securing the computer database should be a priority once we've made it safe for the colonists and ourselves.
Morgan: Might be safe to assume there won’t be much need for a medical officer. At least, hopefully not.
Silveira: No Doc, at least not yet.
Gila nodded, while Ensign Imril audibly voiced their agreement.
Imril: I have to agree. This ship could be full of nasty surprises. Very aggressive security measures for one. Plus, the ship’s systems have had nearly three decades to degrade. Short-circuits could be the least of the nastiness there. I’m particularly worried about magnetic shielding for the disruptor banks.
Gnai: Response
Sadar: We need to find out how this Ship got under the plant in the first place. Either this was an advanced Scout Ship, and the Dominion had fighters pass outside of the Bajor System earlier than our history books tell, or they managed to find a way to get their fighters into the ground of an established water treatment facility without anyone noticing.
Bim Pend: What you need to do, is fix whatever this thing’s doing to our computers!
Well, yes, also that.
Morgan: Any way to tell how long this ship has been here? Or its service history?
Silveira: That last one might be too early to know. Only if we salvage some of its database.
Imril: We might get some clues to that by determining the exact complement of offensive systems the ship is outfitted with. That could help us pin down which phase of the war this ship was operating in at the time of the crash. ::Refers to their PADD:: Phased polaron cannons were phased out early in the war as Federation shield tech advanced. Antiproton emitters for detecting cloaked ships were swapped out for long-range tachyon scanners about halfway through. Breen energy dampeners were integrated towards the end.
Sadar: Is that something we can determine with scanners? Or do we need to go inside?
Bim Pend: All the scanners we’ve got are experiencing the same fritz as the plant’s computers. We can’t get through it.
Vailani/Gnai/Morgan: Response
Sil-net looked around the hole, carefully, and Gila awaited his analysis. While her friend was a jokester at the worst of times, and a downright menace at the best, she’d come to value his strategic input. She’d had plenty of opportunities to learn first-hand why Captain MacKenzie trusted this maverick to be her Chief of Tactical.
Silveira: OK so it’s up to us now. So to me we got two options. One we should secure the hole and check out the ship. ::He tipped his head to Vailani:: We can try and get it database, learn more about it. We dig a little more around it.
Vailani/Gnai/Morgan: Response
Sadar: Hmm... ::looks to Sil-net:: Option two?
Silveira: Option two, we get everything to a clear distance and start dismantling the ship apart. In whatever way possible, we could blow it up somehow. I think that could be the safest of these options.
The Tellarite administrator clapped his stocky hands together, evidently pleased with the expedient option.
Gila? Not so much.
oO YOU WANT TO BLOW THIS HISTORICAL FIND UP!? Oo
Bim Pend: Do that. The faster we get rid of this thing, the faster I can get construction back on schedule.
Imril: I can’t recommend dismantling or demolitions without more information. We don’t know how the ship will, or can, react to either as yet. Or how big an explosion would actually be if we blew it up, because we don't know how much the ships stockpiles will magnify it. If that thing is stuffed with Houdini mines or fully energized weapon banks… Just one Jem’Hadar fighter making a suicide run was packed with enough destructive power to take out a Galaxy-class vessel. We need to be extremely sure what we’re doing before we do it.
Sadar: I-I’m with Ensign Imril! W-We can’t be certain that won’t endanger the colony, e-especially since we don’t have a reasonable way of determining the blast radius, or what it is that’s causing the interference with the colony’s equipment!
And that was before addressing the fact that learning more about this ship could change the established historical canon about the beginning of the Dominion War itself.
Silveira/Vailani/Gnai/Morgan: Response
Imril: I think the first thing to do is evacuate the colony, or at least this part of it, to a minimum safe distance.
Bim Pend: Evacuate? But I thought you said you wouldn’t blow it up?
Silveira/Vailani/Gnai/Morgan: Response
Imril: The hull of a Galaxy-class vessel being over six hundred meters long, I’d say a one-kilometer radius at minimum. Two or three, if possible. We have to consider how far all of this rock and infrastructure could be thrown in addition to parts of the vessel itself. Dominion warships are designed to maximize that kind of damage as much as possible, with intent to destroy whatever destroyed them.
Sadar: Right... ::looks to the team:: Ensign Imril, Sil-net; do you think you could find a way to get into the Ship? ::considers:: Or at least a way for our tricorders to get through the interference without malfunctioning?
Silveira/Imril: Response
Sadar: Assistant Chief Morgan, w-would you mind staying with them, in case whatever’s acting up inside the Ship gets, uhh... Worse?
Giving suggestions on how to proceed to senior officers never stopped freaking Gila out.
Morgan: Response
Gila looked to the others.
Sadar: Vai-net, Lieutenant Gnai, please come with me and the Administrator to start evacuating the nearest districts of the colony.
Vailani/Gnai: Response
The Tellarite Administrator was grumbling with discontent, evidently unhappy with the fact that a quick ‘boom’ wouldn’t be solving his problems so construction could restart right this instant. But he did see the value in getting his people away from the blast radius, so he didn’t argue.
A rarity for Tellarites.
Bim Pend: Very well... This way then.
Gila and the others started following the Administrator, before Gila had the strangest notion of a premonition. She turned around, narrowing her eyes at the Artemis Tactical Chief as she did so.
Sadar: ::to Sil-net:: Do not go in there without us!
Silveira/Morgan/Imril/Vailani/Gnai: Response
And then, she followed behind Administrator Bim Pend as they went back over the walkways and headed towards the Colony itself.
Sadar: Lieutenant Gnai, are Ensign Imril’s calculations accurate? Would a two or three kilometer radius suffice for a safety perimeter?
Gnai: Response
Gila looked to Vai-net, the Chief of Operations on the Artemis. While Gila’s specialty was Trauma medicine and Crisis Care Response, she wasn’t used to being the one actually initiating an evacuation. She was just used to dealing with the health hazards that usually necessitated such an action.
Sadar: Vai-net, how do we do this? Transporters?
Vailani: Response
TAG/TBC
LT Gila Sadar
Medical Officer
USS Artemis-A
A240006GS1