PNPC - Lieutenant jg TK Cabrillo - A little too much excitement
Joel Cannistraro
A loud beep interrupted the moment and TK glanced up to Rachel. The look on her face confirmed his thought that this didn’t sound like a happy beep.
Morgan: Was that me or you?
TK looked back down at the coding wall he was trying to get through and paused. He felt a hint of frustration run his forehead as he looked at the secondary diagnostic file and then looked at the primary command structure.
Cabrillo: Me....I think. ::beat:: Take a look at this.
TK stepped from the table over to the wall closest to Morgan and changed the display to show the command paths and he felt a little lost in what he was seeing.
Morgan: ::she scratched her head and folded her arms across her chest:: Can you tell me what we’re looking at?
TK pointed to three points on the scan and then enlarged the view. The cluster of command fibers which lead from the assembly he was trying to bypass intersected something he was not familiar with. The computer indicated organic matter.
Cabrillo: Are these nano-bio gel packs? Is this thing using bio-neural circuitry?
Morgan: Holy shi– ::she slapped a hand over her mouth, eyes wide:: I m-mean crap. I think you’re right, we’re looking at bio-neural circuity, and it is very intricate in design, and on such a micro-scale.
TK glanced at Morgan and then to the spiderbot laying behind them on the table. The designers of this thing were throwing every conceivable piece of tech into it and they were making all this tech work together.
Cabrillo: ::grinning:: This thing does not have a plexing beacon or a subspace relay to the Borg does it? ::chuckling:: Seems like it has everything else in there.
Morgan: Not that I can see, not to mention we’d have all sorts of alarms going off. Rather not bring an entire security squad down on the place. :: she smiled sheepishly::
TK stepped back to the table and stared at their project. This thing had so many more questions than answers to it and they had barely cracked into the initial layers. Picking up a leg TK looked it over cautiously and slowly.
Cabrillo: This thing can probably jack itself into any data node and start accessing anything it wants. What if we give it enough power to try and link up with what it thinks is a computer source and piggy back that code right back into its own matrix? Let the monster let us in without knowing it?
Morgan: Look at this:: pointing at the node::, it’s a communications node, similar to what you would find on a Borg ship, but it’s not Borg tech, but it’s like someone tried to copy it….and make it a lot smaller.
TK stepped in closer to Morgan, almost touching shoulders and leaned in to view the area she was looking at. The work behind the node was near perfect. From TK's perspective, it looked like Borg tech and seemed to behave like Borg tech to a degree. Was it a copy or was it Borg Tech simply twisted in someone else's hands?
Cabrillo: I am not an expert on Borg Tech but it sure looks like Borg to me. Are you sure it's a replica of some sort?
Morgan: As I said, if it were Borg, we’d be in deep crap, but it’s not. But someone was trying to emulate Borg programming. And then use these nodes for mass communication. Once we juice this thing up a bit, I want to find out just how much range this node has.
TK watched as Morgan looked down at her console and typed in a few commands, the computer started a more detailed scan, a more up close section of what they were sure was a communication node. TK felt a bit of nervous excitement run through him as the shroud of this bot seemed to offer little answers to their big questions.
Cabrillo: ::to the spiderbot:: Trying to keep your little secrets will just make it harder on you. ::to Morgan:: How do you want to proceed?
Morgan: We'll give your idea a go. Give it enough juice to piggyback and root around in there like we belong. You sure you can fool it?
TK looked at Morgan and nodded with a slight grin across his face but at the same time he turned a bit more serious. There was programming from so many different species, along with tech, that belonged to those same species and then tech that was replicated to mimic other species all woven together in the nastiest little package of near engineering perfection that TK had to pause. He eyed the communication node, the data port or whatever it really was and then all the data systematically following across the display to his side.
TK looked back up to Morgan and gave her a 'go head' nod and she in turn nodded back and then began the power-up sequence, but did not fully engage it. TK watched the readings as she began working the power levels like throttling a warp core; riding a fine line of power balance. TK watched the appendage as it touched the data PADD he had placed under the sensors.
Cabrillo: So far nothing. It's either not enough power or it can't or doesn't want to access the PADD's data.
Morgan: I’ve only brought it up to three percent, so it’s just enough juice flowing that some of the minor systems and programming will come online. And with you on a piggyback ride, we can keep it from doing anything we don’t want it to do.
Morgan goosed the ‘throttle’ a little bit, adding a bit more juice and TK followed the surge in the scans of the bots pathways. The PADD connected to the appendage contained some fake fleet alignments TK had downloaded from a Holo-novel he enjoyed. The data should look interesting and given that the Holo-novel dealt with a new experimental weapon the Ferengi had stolen, well that should be a great piece of bait for this thing to go after.
Cabrillo: I would think that should be enough power for this thing to take the bait. ::brow furrowing:: Lets see what another two percent in......
An alarm sounded from the wall display and power feeds began to show a spike in distribution and power pull. TK jumped from his place at the table to the wall display and started entering shut down sequences but they were not reacting. The spiderbot was somehow accessing control on the power feeds directly through the feed itself and drawing more power.
Morgan: response
Cabrillo: I'm trying to disconnect the power feeds but this thing has a grip on the internal matrix of our own power lines. How in the hel.....
More alarms started to sound off and power levels began to rise steadily. TK looked over to Morgan who was racing through commands and protocols as fast as she could. The spiderbot seemed to have a backdoor that they had missed, or not really missed considering they had not gotten there yet. TK scrambled through several more sequences on the wall display before power to the lab table started to reduce and the feeds started to cycle back down.
Morgan: response
Cabrillo: ::stepping to Morgan's side:: The damn thing was trying to backdoor us and it didn't even have enough power to run its own systems. ::pointing to Morgan's display:: But look at those communication nodes. That's very interesting isn't it.
Morgan: response
TK leaned down and stared closely at the node Morgan had pointed out earlier. He shook his head very gently from side to side thinking about the activity levels those were reading with just the bare minimum power the bot had been able to grab. For TK, the spiderbot posed much more a threat even in it's dormant state than he would have thought possible. The secondary systems that they could scan and get data on did not even look like they had enough power for this thing to do what it just did. TK knew they had their work cut out for them and he needed to rethink his approach to this beast.
Tags/TBD