Ensign Delphina Wren- Herd Immunity
Grace McDermott
((Lab 2, Deck 10, USS Ronin))
Wren: :: getting a little anxious:’ It's just a hypothesis, of course. I really think we need to find a way to negotiate for further information. If the Jem’Hadar and the Tholian aren't options, maybe we can get a full picture from tr’Kharis.
Niac: Fortunately your clever little legal maneuver has lead to the Ferengi Alliance taking a vested interest in the system, so short of assembling a full scale armada I don't think the Alliance is going to make its way back into that system any time soon. We've got time to debrief them further or have Starfleet Security do it for us. My question is...did we stop it in time?
Zh'taan: I couldn’t say whether we intervened in time or not… But I think the Alliance, thanks to Tholian technology, would be capable of reproducing their bridge to another universe… provided they can recreate a Sencha radiation generator.
Kel: That reactor, as far as I know is still going. It's under control for the moment, but we just barely averted a disaster. We can't allow the Alliance to regain control of it, or worse, replicate it.
Delphina thought of the Ferengi alliance. What had formerly seemed like a boon was now far dicier, considering the fact that a potentially unlimited source of energy would drive quite a profit. The Ferengi worked with Starfleet when it benefited them, but she could imagine quite the bidding war would come of this, and there was no guarantee that the Federation would come out on top.
Niac: I mean, do you think they harvested enough of this extra-universal material to try this again somewhere else? Somewhere deeper in their territory where we wouldn't know about it until they were successful or until there was a big hole in subspace where our galaxy used to be.
Zh'taan: I don’t have all the information on this subject. ::He briefly glanced at V'len:: But from what I saw on Moon Sigma, the Romulan technology used was rather outdated. I think they could make do with older, even abandoned complexes to deploy their technology.
Kel: Could we detect such a facility? When we entered the system there was nothing unusual until the Kurosawa arrived and that lid blew off.
Wren: The system didn’t even register the temporal eddies until it was too late. That’s why we thought for so long that…. Well oO That you and the first officer were dead. I can still feel shreds of that despair in the nooks and crannies of the ship sometimes. The trauma hasn’t just lingered in the people, it sometimes feels like it scarred the ship itself. Oo
Niac: Response
Zh'taan: I would recommend that we store the results of the anomaly signature analysis and compare them with the Starfleet database. It might allow us to detect other sites with similar characteristics… I think.
Kel: Good thinking Ensign. We could also use the sensor array Starfleet has placed in the Alpha Isles, see if we can detect anything.
Wren: oO The problem isn’t that it’s undetectable. Anything can be detected, the ship just needs to know what it’s looking for. It needs to recognize the threat before encountering it…. Oo
Niac: Response
Kel: What about the Argus Array? Could we aim that at Alliance Territory? See what it sees?
Wren: That might help, but that wouldn’t work for every ship. This all happened in our territory, not theirs, which means there’s a risk of multiple ships encountering it at once.
Niac/Zh'taan: Response
Kel: What about a covert mission into Alliance Territory? See what we can find? I could get Kos to lend me the Foxy Lady. It's an unassuming freighter, perfect for something like this.
Wren: oO That would give me the opportunity to study the schematics more thoroughly… maybe even fill in some of the blanks in the notes that they left? Oh, but… I’m not sure they’d consider me for something like this. You’re at the bottom of the ladder… but maybe… Oo
Niac/Zh'taan: Response
Kel: I've done this sort of thing before Karrod it's nothing new to me. If the Alliance is building other reactors like this Starfleet needs to know.
Wren: ::thinking back to her childhood anatomy lessons:: What if we created a sensor that could detect Sencha radiation like it’s a virus?
Kel/Niac/Zh'taan: Response
Wren: I’ve been through the records of what we know about the radiation, and Starfleet computers simply don’t have enough data to properly recognize what it’s detecting. It’s like suddenly exposing a population to a completely alien pathogen. Sometimes there are survivors, but what usually happens is the population is quickly killed because their bodies have no frame of reference for what they’re fighting.
Kel/Niac/Zh'taan: Response
Wren: ::Talking a little faster now:: Exactly. But when a population is slowly acclimated to the pathogen over a long period of time, eventually they gain herd immunity. What I’m suggesting is that we gather as much information about the Sencha radiation as possible, active Sencha radiation, and expose our system to that raw data in increments in a simulated program. Over time, the computer acclimates, and can detect both the radiation, and the side effects. We’d be able to detect strong surges in Sencha radiation within a matter of days if we have multiple people working on it.
Kel/Niac/Zh'taan: Response
Now came the tricky part.
Wren: Well, we’d still need that raw data, which means… I think that a trip into Alliance territory might be necessary to see if there is another reactor. oO Don’t overstep here, Della. Oo We need to see Sencha radiation actively in use. If they’ve built another reactor, then we could gather as much as we need just by observing.
Kel/Niac/Zh'taan: Response
Tags/TBC