Troubling findings

Posted on Sat Mar 6th, 2021 @ 1:59pm by Lieutenant Mila Lynn & Colonel Sehan t'Varis & Major Ashley Rogers & Lieutenant T'Ango

2,145 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Chapter III: The Hunt is On
Location: Science Lab, I.R.W. Ourainavassa
Timeline: 238702.05

Mila walked into the science lab, clutching a large mug of strong raktajino. Dinner last night with Ash and her friends had been a lot of fun, but, in hindsight, she should have gone a little easier on the drinks. Especially when someone had brought out the Klingon bloodwine. She shuddered at the memory. Her head hurt. A lot.

She grabbed some painkillers from the first aid cabinet in the lab and gulped them down, before sitting down at the main console. Overnight, she'd set the systems up to try and break through the interference from the strange station's shields to try and get a clearer picture of what the Tal Shiar were up to at Hobus. The computer indicated that the process had been completed, and Mila brought up the results. The scans of the strange ship were still not much more telling, she found. Apparently, it had been equipped with hull plating that broke most scanners' effectiveness, giving it yet another layer of stealth. The Romulans were obviously not shying any expense in covering their tracks.

Then she moved on to the station. It appeared to be mostly automated, with only a handful of life signs. Understandable, for something placed so close in orbit to a star. She frowned as she continued to read through the scans. It appeared that the station was powered by at least four D'deridex-class singularity cores. What were they using that much power for? This being the Tal Shiar, probably nothing good.

As she continued reading, she did not come across any further surprises. The station was extremely well shielded against both the heat and the gravity of the star, which would also make any assault on it using conventional ship weaponry nearly futile. From the strength of the shields, she surmised that at least one of the cores was dedicated entirely to powering them, which would explain at least part of the massive power needed to operate the whole construct. So far, no surprises.

Ash strolled into the Science Lab with her own mug of coffee, "Good morning, kiddo. How are you feeling today?" She noticed the smell of raktajino in the air and nodded towards Mila's mug, "That good, eh?" She smiled at the teen before looking at the screen over Mila's shoulder, "Anything interesting with those scans we got yesterday? Is that four singularities?!?"

"Four does seems like a lot," T'Ango remarked as she poked her head into the lab. She looked at both of the humans and shook her head. "You need to teach your kit how to drink, Rogers." Her whiskers flipped forward with a grin. "Or fix her up with someone who carries hypos to fix hangovers."

Mila rolled he eyes at T'Ango, before nodding. "Yep, four. Each one big enough to power a D'deridex. They use an entire core just to power the shields, that's why it took so long to get through all the interference. And even then I barely got anything. Looks like they're studying the star. No idea what they are looking for, though."

She brought up a couple of scans that she had taken, none of them revealing anything more. "I did find one more interesting thing, though," Mila continued, as she zoomed in on one of the images. "Is it just me, or does this part, right there, look like an injector of some sort? Looks a bit Borg-y to me, too." She looked up at the other two, puzzled. "Should we get the Boss down here, see if she knows anything, through her Tal Shiar contacts?"

Ash nodded, "Yeah, I think it's time to bring in Raven... this isn't giving me warn fuzzies.... speaking of warm and fuzzy, T'Ango? Can you make sense of this?"

The Dosadi Marine looked at it, drawing on her original training engineering. "I wouldn't be surprised that a station that close to a star takes a lot of power - massive shielding, thermal management, maintaining orbit against that kind of gravitational pull - but unless the Tal'Shiar has gotten far more into fail safe redundancy, four singularities is still excessive. And that part," she pointed to the bit Mila had zoomed in on before, "...that does have some Borg characteristics, though it might be for sampling or injecting. If you wanted to place a specialized probe very precisely, that's the sort of thing to do it."

"The question is why...." she stepped back, tail lashing as she thought. "As far as we've ever been able to tell, pure science is not something the Tal'Shiar does. Of course, the Tal'Shiar is hardly a monolith - the jokes is that half the organization is there just to keep tabs on what the rest are doing, and even then there's pockets within pockets..." she paused, ears orienting on Ash. "How much can you trust your Commander? I've never heard of Tal'Shiar contacts that don't come with strings, and even if she's trustworthy and can somehow operate outside those, whoever is running this may not be a faction ...friendly to inquiry... Given what I came here for, drawing attention to a ship privateering for the organization might be ...counterproductive."

Ash raised an eyebrow, "T'Ango, I trust her about as much as I trust anyone. But even if she doesn't make inquiries, I think she should know. Especially if an alternate universe version of me might be involved somehow with this. If that's the case, we'll need all the help we can get."

Mila turned around in her chair and opened her mouth to speak, but the words escaped her.

"Well, it certainly does sound like you could use my help, Major." Raven shook her head. She had come along to the science lab, and ended up hearing the entire exchange. "Unfortunately, even though I hold full Tal Shiar rank, I'm still just a privateer. As useful as the badge is when it comes to dealing with Romulan bureaucrats or annoying Ferengi, I have very little authority within the Tal Shiar itself."

She turned to T'Ango and smirked. "And remember, you are a guest on my ship. If I wasn't to be trusted, you wouldn't be around any more to worry about it."

T'Ango's ears flipped back, the thought Don't bet on it rising in her mind at that, but if the Colonel couldn't appreciate that trust shouldn't be just given, she wasn't likely to be real Tal'Shiar. That didn't mean T'Ango had no reservations, particularly after the delivery of that reminder, but Rogers trusted her went a long way.

Mila, having gotten over the initial shock of Raven's sudden appearance, turned back to her console. It appeared that T'Ango was right about a probe - something appeared to be tethered to the station itself. "Huh, that's weird," she muttered, barely audible to the others. She turned around yet again. "Uhm, guys? I was filtering the scans to get an idea what this probe here might be tethered with, and, well. Look at it yourself."

The readout on her console had disappeared entirely, replaced with a single symbol: The Greek letter Omega.

"Well, that's going to be a problem..." Ash said. "Omega Directive. It's a Starfleet protocol. Only Captains and above can unlock this." She looked at T'Ango, "I never did make it to Captain... but the Tal'Shiar are messing with something that can be very bad...."

Something did not smell right here. "This isn't a Starfleet ship. That station certainly didn't look Starfleet. Why is a high level Starfleet blocking protocol popping up here?" T'Ango asked in much the same tone that a doctor once used when asking why 'God' would need a starship.

"You are asking exactly the right question there," Raven said, as she went over to the locked console. She entered the override code that her father had passed on to her, and the system unlocked again. "The Ourainavassa does contain a Federation-designed computer core. Still, whatever that Omega Directive is, we need to find out more. What do you know about it, Major?"

Ash raised an eyebrow to Raven as she entered the code in, "I know what the Section has briefed it's operatives. That there is such a thing as the Omega Directive that takes precedence over all others. Ship's Captains are the only ones briefed on the specifics. Which, personally, I found to be idiotic. If the Captain is incapacitated or not available, then the entire ship is locked down. But if the ship detects something that triggers the directive... it enacts the protocol." She looked over at Mila, "What was the last thing we saw before this was triggered?" And then turned to Raven, "And why did the Tal'Shiar allow this protocol to remain when they took possession of this ship? This can't possibly be a coincidence..."

"No, it can't," T'Ango agreed. "Having a Federation core at all just... no one installs cores from rival powers on their military hardware, but Romulans especially don't. And something that could disable even part of a ship if activated? No." She cocked an ear at Raven. "There's some sort of Tal'Shiar game here... wheels within wheels, secrets within secrets."

Raven pondered for a moment. "My father was a Tal Shiar General, and he had the Ourainavassa constructed as his personal flagship, to his own specifications, although she was then captured by pirates on her shakedown run. The computer core was built within the Romulan Empire, from Federation schematics that he had acquired. Every single thing on this ship had some thought put into it by him. The computer core, the replicators, even the cushioning on the command chair was according to his own wishes. From looking at the blueprints, the only things remaining from the original Mogai-class are the hull, floor plan, and propulsion system. Not even the turbolifts are exactly as standard. You are absolutely correct, there has to be a reason for this. All of this."

She turned to Mila. "So, what was the last thing you were looking at before the Omega showed up?"

The young scientist frowned. "I was looking at the readings for the way the probe was tethered to the station itself. It's held with a tractor beam, but there is something else there as well. Maybe they are channeling matter though the beam?" She turned back to the console and restarted the analysis. After a few seconds, the same lockout appeared. "Okay, whatever is triggering this has to do with that probe. I can't get anything else."

The colonel nodded slowly as she unlocked the terminal again and looked at the readout. "Two beams. One holds the probe, the other seems to be transferring something between the probe and the station." She tapped some commands, overriding the lockout while the computer processed the data yet again. "There is a lot of energy there," she finally said. "Looks like we found what they need all those cores for."

Ash ponders the implications, she's not a scientist, nor an engineer, but none of this seems to be a good idea, "What ever they're messing with has got to be volatile as hell if they need that level of power to harness it or contain it. I'm getting a sense that one wrong move and everything will go kaboom. I think I know the answer to this, but... just to confirm my paranoia: what would happen if those singularities blew up?"

"Singularities going unstable that close to a sun?" T'Ango shuddered, hair momentarily standing on end. "As our old friend Burnie would say, 'KABOOM'."

Mila grimaced. "That's putting it lightly. Four miniature black holes right next to a star that is possibly being injected with who knows what? Yeah, that would be a very big boom." She quickly turned to the terminal, and ran a few calculations, before cursing out loud. " Um. Yeah. If those singularities go unstable, and if they are prodding the star with something volatile to boot..." She gulped. "Safe to say if that thing blows, we won't have to worry about the consequences. Nor will most people in the quadrant, for that matter."

Raven shuddered. She knew the Tal Shiar were reckless, but this was massive even for their standards. "Right," she finally said. "I just remembered. There were a number of logs on the Commander's console. Severely encrypted and locked behind a password. The only hint to the password was in an ancient Earth language. Ubi Omega. Where is Omega. I think I just figured out what the password is." She headed for the door, turning back at the others as she left the room. "Come to my ready room in half an hour. Copy the readouts onto a datastick and bring them as well."

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