Ensign Lyra Voss: Bad News Always Comes in Threes
Sarah Terry
((OOC: I think we accidentally dropped some McLaren lines, so I tried to add them in with Kel's lines))
((Deck 1 - Main Bridge - USS Narendra – Deep within the Phaethon Nebula))
Lyra could feel the creature’s presence as though it was standing at her back and watching with her as data started to filter back from the probe. She had to stop herself from looking over her shoulder for something she knew wasn’t there.
McLaren: I don't see many internal spaces given the station's size... I wonder if this is how they've managed to keep whatever crew it needs aboard it for any meaningful length of time. Do we have any readings on lifesigns?
The structural readings they were getting were certainly unusual. The commander was right - it seemed like there were sections of the station that were just… solid? She bit her lip as she puzzled over the data. Were they actually solid or could the probe not penetrate certain areas? Were they shielded differently? Made of a material the probe didn’t recognize? As to the lifesign readings…
Voss: The station’s hull is making it difficult to read lifesigns. I’ll see if I can filter out some of the interference.
Kel: ?
McLaren: I'd be surprised if they haven't already seen us... they probably think we can't see them... and I'm happy for them to continue thinking that for the moment. Gives us time to act...
Lyra looked out again at the station in the viewscreen and felt the hair stand on the back of her neck. How many pairs of eyes were out there staring back at them? She pulled her eyes back down to her console.
Voss: I’m running the lifesign reading again. We’ll see if we can get anything this time. If we can get a sense of how many people are actually on the station and where they’re located, at least that might help us as we try to figure out what they’re actually doing.
Kel: ?
McLaren: If we can disable the station in some way...that would be the best... but it looks like its shielding is enhanced... and its power systems are oversized for a station of its size.
Voss: The oversized power system might have the potential to be a double-edged sword - it’s easier to overload a system that’s been amped up like that. But we’d have to get through the shields somehow first. Maybe we –
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kel suddenly lean toward his console in great interest.
Kel: ::leaning forward, voice low:: There. That pattern... those cycling energy signatures. They match the same harmonic frequency we saw in the creature’s neural entanglement. ::a steadying breath:: Whatever the Romulans are doing in there… it’s interacting directly with the entity’s nervous system.
She stepped over to see what he was talking about. Sure enough, the overlaid patterns were almost identical. A shudder ran through her.
Voss: ::with growing frustration:: I just don’t understand why they’re doing this. Intentionally hurting the creature just to ramp up the hallucinations and keep ships away from the base seems like overkill, doesn’t it? There are far easier ways to hide a base.
McLaren: ?
Kel: If we can isolate the modulation source… we might be able to map exactly how the station is affecting it. ::eyes narrowing at the readout:: And more importantly... what condition the creature is actually in.
There was a ping back at her station as more data returned from the probe. She saw Kel’s expression turn grim as she returned to look at the results of the boosted lifesign scan.
Kel: ::quietly:: Something’s destabilizing inside the station. I can’t tell if it’s deliberate or a malfunction… but whatever it is, it’s getting worse.
McLaren: ?
Kel: I don’t think we have much time before that interacts with the creature again. And the next time… we may not get a warning first.
What was the old Earth saying - that bad news came in threes? A highly defensible, super-charged station, with a growing destabilization inside, and now these lifesigns…
Voss: Commander, I’m looking at the lifesign readings and… there aren’t just Romulans on the station. There are Capricalians too.
McLaren: ?
Voss: I’m reading twenty-seven Romulan bio-signs, mostly in the station’s main disk, and then a dozen Capricalians in the lower part of the central spire.
McLaren/Kel: ?
All this new information raced through her thoughts as she tried to come up with some way to synthesize it. Without thinking, she started processing it out loud.
Voss: So, it’s a relatively new station, Romulan, with a smaller interior and a larger power supply than it should have, hiding in a planetary nebula, intentionally hurting a creature native to said nebula by overloading its nervous system with harmonic frequencies, and they’ve found some way to shield themselves from the hallucinations, presumably, or they’re swapping people in and out, or both, and those frequencies seem to be ramping up to some kind of destabilization event which could be intentional or unintentional, but will definitely harm the creature and increase the intensity of the hallucinations, and we don’t really know why they’re trying to harm the creature, and also they have hostages. Maybe. Or Capricalians loyal to the Free State? So that’s – ::suddenly recognizing what she’s doing and freezing up:: That’s bad.
Ah yes, staggeringly eloquent. She blushed a bright red and would have dove to hide behind the science station if that wouldn’t have made it significantly worse.
McLaren/Kel: ?
Voss: ::clearing her throat and trying desperately to reset:: Anyway, I think we’ve gotten all we can from the probe. We’ll need something more sophisticated to locate the source of the modulating frequencies. The Narendra could do it, but that would mean getting closer. And if they can already see us, we’d need to pull off quite the disappearing act.
McLaren/Kel: ?