Out of the Frying Pan...
Posted on Mon Nov 19th, 2018 @ 11:31am by Captain Mrazak & Lieutenant Commander BaoJun Qiao & Lieutenant Nevada McKay M.D. & Ferrofax
3,875 words; about a 19 minute read
Mission:
S1E2: Half Past Dead
Location: The Vault, Deck 4 / The Bridge, Deck 1 - USS Phantom
Timeline: MD 2
When he rematerialized, the first thing Mrazak noted was that he was empty-handed. That he held an object when the transporter energized was an indisputable fact. The second fact was that he could not move. A close-quarters force field immobilized him, not unlike the 'cone of shame' from the briefing the day before where Mrazak had Ferrofax punish Nevin and Nevada for their tardiness.
"Ferrofax! Unhand me!" the Vulcan cried out.
Inside his own field, Bao was less phased. He was rather more familiar, apparently, with proper quarantine protocol for field expeditions. He set about bringing all of his implants back up to full and wakened Sunny to interface with the Phantom as soon as the quarantine procedure completed.
Lights flicked on within the Vault -- darkness was its default setting for various reasons of protocol -- and revealed a third fact: he was not alone. The other members of his away team were similarly suspended in what were to his best guess level 10 force fields, including the maimed and dismembered Lieutenant Odette.
A flicker of holographic light illuminated the darkness before Mrazak, and Ferrofax appeared out of the gloom. Maybe it was the setting, the floating box of Clockmaker matter held in its force field prison. Or possibly the red embers in Ferrofax's eyes where usually there was a hint of emerald. The collar around the AI's throat, usually a white band denoting the status of the inhibitor program, was now an onyx band with a single blocky word glowing on its side.
ARMED.
"In the event of possible contamination, I am authorised to deploy all active measures at my disposal. Whilst the Phantom's main weapons systems are locked out, the Vault's countermeasures are not," Ferrofax said coolly, as though discussing the Overwatch Station's power consumption levels. "You are all currently being scanned at a submicron level for signs of Clockmaker infestation. Nanoscale colonies of this matter have been found in the dirt and air samples brought in with the transporter buffer. It's easy enough to find in its active state, but for instance where it melds with the flesh... it's hard to determine one from the other."
A dull, warbling whine of something spinning up in the background beyond the Vault's bulky shielding filled the air.
"It's been a great many programming cycles since I've had the liberty of stretching out, as it were," Ferrofax said, looking down at his hand as he turned it over one way and then the other. "If I have to fire the gamma ray cannon to sterilise this volume, I want you to know it will be quite painless. Suffering was never part of my programming."
Mrazak's eyes bulged from his skull as much from wrath as from terror. "Ferrofax," he said slowly through grit teeth. "There was an inert Clock Maker sample in a sealed container which you clearly transported into confinement elsewhere. Now I am ordering you to release me this minute. Do so, and I will forget this ever happened. If not, then so help me I will rewrite your governing protocols with a magnetic pen."
"Sticks and stones will break your bones, but redundant file management macros keep me hale and hearty," Ferrofax said with a smile.
"And then I'll give my dying breath laughing with the assurance that Commander ben-Avram will see you properly domesticated. You've seen the things he's done to AIs. Unseemly things. Especially ones he calls family. Don't make me make him do the same to you."
Ferrofax leaned in a little close, a little uncomfortably near to Mrazak's ear.
"You've never met my mother. Compared to her, who brought me and my brothers and sisters of the sword to life, your Commander is a rank amateur," Ferrofax whispered before with a flicker of holographic magic he snapped back a meter away. The black band around his next flicked to white, an illuminated SAFE appearing there. The forefield cells released the crew to the floor.
"You're all clean. Discharging the capacitor on the gamma-ray cannon. Clockmaker sample is being transferred to engineering for storage in the warp core."
Once the force field deactivated, Mrazak nearly toppled over. A groan escaped his lips as he fought for balance.
Bao took his landing down into a crouch before coming to his feet. Another lesson any good Lagashi learned early, just in case. He shot a bemused look at Ferrofax, "For future reference, a Gamma-ray cannon does not have sufficient power to neutralize my implants or skeletal system. Were they to be compromised, you would need to use measures capable of vaporizing hull-graded alloy materials. You should plan accordingly in the future," he said mildly. "Though, it is a shame you could not vaporize the Commander for us."
"A regrettable oversight, but in these situations, I am limited to the weapons compliment at my disposal," Ferrofax sighed. "There times I do miss being in my real body, as it were. The Norway-S class was retrofitted extensively for the Combat Automate program. No combustible atmosphere, no pesky inertial compensators keeping the max acceleration before 400G's. And the weapons...oh those I miss most. Like a limb, I can still feel them there."
Ferrofax sighed, and then vanished in a pray of holographic light to do other things than contemplate the war crime that was his existence.
"All right, then," Mrazak said once he had righted himself. "Here is what is going to happen."
Snapping his fingers and pointing to Dak, he said, "Marine! You've seen the Clock Makers up close. Go to the warp core and make sure the inert sample therein stays that way."
"Yes Sir," Dak said, tugging on the collar of his uniform as he took his rifle and headed to engineering.
His countenance fell as he looked upon Ciara's prone form. Being unconscious, she was unable to stay on her feet. "Doctor, stabilize the lieutenant and then report to the bridge."
"Ferrofax, Emergency Transport Doctor McKay and Lieutenant Ciara to the Medical lab, prep the Cyro Chambers!" Nevada Barked as she rushed to her patients side.
"Acknowledged," Ferrofax commented as the transporter beam caught them.
Looking to Bao, Mrazak said, "And you? You're with me."
Bao paid little attention to the Vulcan as he began walking, instead instituting a thorough review of his systems, starting with his AI, and then having it assist him. He wanted to make sure of their integrity, at least as far as he could, and perhaps see if they could be used in the opposite direction in any sense.
With that, Mrazak marched out of the Vault.
When the lift opened onto the bridge, Mrazak's bottled up tension exploded onto everyone present. "Report!" Unfortunately there was a skeleton crew present. A female comms specialist and a male flight-rated Tactical officer holding Zork's spot on the helm, both Terran and in yellow, stared at one another, wondering who should respond. "Don't everybody talk at once!" Mrazak yelled. "What's the status on the other away team!"
"Communication with the Eros away team is spotted at best, though I have detected a number of high energy discharges in keeping with the standard issue assault rifle assigned to our Marines," Ferrofax said, as the view screen began to display a system map. Around the inner planets was the swirling debris cloud that was feeding whatever massive industry was happening down there. "The flow of resources has increased tenfold since your departure to the surface. We have also detected what could be a structure. It was obscured by the stars solar output, but it passing beyond it."
A close up of the sun appeared, with various filters passing over it until a dull arc as fine as a hair could be seen.
"It's currently four hundred kilometres in length, with a surface diameter of six kilometres. It is growing at the rate of a kilometre ever four seconds," a ghostly image projected the arc continuing its growth until it curved back on itself to form a ring. "Estimate three hours until its completed, if there are no further increase in production. Its purpose is unknown at this time."
"Based on the observed pattern," Bao stated, "we should assume a continued expansion in the rate of resource flow. From my limited observation, the clock-makers are effectively an implementation of the Universal Paperclips. Assuming they have the ability or desire to do so, they theoretically could continue in exponential growth until they consume the universe. Although, I suspect they might encounter a singularity type event before then," he added. "Although, that is complete speculation. I would need more contact and a willingness to exposit on their part to be certain, though I suppose it wouldn't hurt to ask them."
Mrazak shook his head, not liking what he heard. "And what of the Ferengi? Has he run any scans from the shuttle?"
"Negative, Commander," said the Tactical officer at the helm.
"What?" Mrazak asked. "Then what the blazes has he been doing out there all this time?"
"Forgive me, Commander. I meant to say that his scans have been as inconclusive as our own." The Tactical helmsman fought back a grousing tone.
Given the Faustian bargain struck on New Far Florence, Mrazak found that to be a chilling notion. "Recall the away team from the Eros immediately," he ordered. "We have what we came for. Ready the Red Matter torpedo and aim it directly for the star's core." His face stretched into a grimace. "We have what we came for."
"Commander!" The exclamation came from the conn. "The away team has jumped away from the Eros!"
Mrazak's fierce Vulcan brow shot up. "Order the Orpheus to intercept!"
The Ops woman at the Communications console began to send the order, but helm interrupted. "The Orpheus is already moving to intercept, sir!"
"On screen." Mrazak folded his hands behind his back, in giving his rapt attention to the scene unfolding before him.
After a blip, the screen showed the Orpheus shuttle flying toward the immense hulking wreck. Compared to the not-quite-a-starbase Excalibur-class wreckage, the shuttle looked like a pea encroaching upon a melon. Even so, Mrazak eagerly watched the Orpheus fire upon a breach. Now if only--
"I'm detecting an incoming projectile of some sort bearing directly upon the shuttle!" The Tactical helmsan arose from the conn in retreat to his familiar station. "Permission to--"
"Negative!" Mrazak shouted. "Bring us in to assist." The situation was getting out of control, and there were few options remaining. Mrazak knew what he had to do. "Ferrofax..." The Vulcan Without Logic took a breath. "Execute Sword Class Combat Automate protocols. Authorization Mrazak-Lambda-Three-Three-Eta. Neutralize the Clock Maker attack and retrieve our people--safely, I must insist. And then stand down protocols immediately."
Ferrofax's holographic avatar stood at the back of the bridge in the little cage of the holo-com suite. But upon the words spoken not in haste, or under duress, but with directed purpose...he changed. The more obvious changes were visual, as his eyes glowed a sullen angry red, and the white collar around his throat burned to a soot black. ARMED it proclaimed to the world as a warning.
Then all of the consoles blinked off.
"Instructions understood," Ferrofax said, closing his eyes as he cocked his head to one side. The Phantom leapt into action, the whine of her impulse drive filling the air along with the rising cry of charging phaser banks. "All crew accessible controls have been locked out during this event. The Clock Maker swarm infesting the Eros is reacting to us."
On the main view screen, the wreckage began to get closer. A haze of dust seemed to be coming off of it, but as target reticules haloed each mote it quickly became what they were. The phaser array began to fire, but not in the steady pulsing or lancing beam of tradition. Instead, long chittering streams of phaser bolts filled the space in front of the Phantom with an economy of precision that only an AI could achieve.
"Point defence subroutines are working...adequately," Ferrofax muttered darkly to himself, probably consigning a diagnostic program to silicon hell when they returned to base. "Arming photon torpedoes, firing."
The trio of torpedoes left their launchers and spiralled out into space. On the bridge Ferrofax's hand moved by his side, guiding the torpedoes the way a shepherd might guide the action of his herd dog. The torpedoes split up, curling away from each other and then coming back like a clenching claw that blossomed into a single massive explosion.
"Huum, torpedo 2 was soft killed by the others. It would seem either the detonator was defunct, or part of a Clockmaker got into it. Either way, dropping shields. Either way, better shielding on the torpedoes would be nice, and perhaps a better grade of warhead? I'm not asking for transphasic weaponry, but maybe we could use the Hellfire weapons in the main storage facility? Just a thought." Ferrofax looked up at the ceiling for a moment, mulling something over. "Away team onboard. Committing to hard acceleration curve away from the combat volume."
The consoles flickered back to life, and with a resigned sigh, Ferrofax's eyes returned to their normal green colour.
"That was...not as satisfying as I had wished it would be," he said. "A live target that's firing back, not just throwing spores into the local spatial volume just isn't the same."
Mrazak teased Ferrofax with a golf clap. "Very good. Now that the snake is back in his cage, somebody--anybody--confirm the Red Matter torpedo's trajectory straight into the heart of that star." It was a vengeful sneer that Mrazak made at the infested wreckage and the gigantic gravity sink beyond it. The one slowly being eaten away by the Clock Maker scourge. "We're wrapping this up and going home."
Sparing a moment for the rescued away team, Mrazak tapped his combadge. "Mrazak to McKay. Doctor, the other away team has been beamed on board, very likely to the Vault. Please see that Ferrofax does not incinerate them."
"Not going to be an issue," Nevada's voice range through the combadges.
"Targeting trajectory is a go," the Tactical officer said from the helm. "As if we could miss a damn star at this range."
"Do you have more Red Matter in your pocket?" Mrazak pointedly said. "Yes? Then by all means, continue your cavalier, devil-may-care attitude!"
The Tactical helmsman muttered under his breath.
"What was that?" Mrazak barked at the man.
"I said, 'no, sir.'"
"Then kindly keep your barbs to a silent minimum." Mrazak whirled back to Bao. "Lieutenant, please confirm that the weapon is armed. I want an intelligent mind to ensure the on-switch is engaged before deploying it."
Bao sat down at currently vacant tactical station and tapped a few buttons manually. "The weapon is armed, commander," he said. "However, given events we must assume the clockmakers are aware we have the weapon as that information was within my implants. We should prepare for the possibility they have some means of interfering with, stopping, or otherwise negating the device," he added, somewhat reluctantly.
"Very well," Mrazak said. Turning to the Tactical officer at the helm who sported a particularly petulant look by this time, Mrazak ordered, "Prepare multiple volleys of quantum torpedoes. Let the bastards think they know what they're getting before we deliver the Red Matter payload. Give them everything we've got."
"Aye, sir." The Tactical helmsman grumbled as he complied. "Salvos ready."
Mrazak glared into the sun. "Fire!"
"Red Matter torpedo has cleared the launcher, impulse booster's set for suicide burn," Ferrofax reported as one the main view screen warning labels began to flicker into being. Words like 'Terminal Gravity Event' blinked in strobe-like effect. "Beginning the spool up of the QSD, plotting out entry vector to minimise subspace-"
The Combat Automate at the back of the room went silent for a moment, eyes brows furrowing in a very well programmed look of confusion.
"Everything in the system just came to a halt," Ferrofax said dryly. "And I do mean everything. Every planet, moon, asteroid, and comet just killed all their velocity and acceleration to zero relative to common stellar motion as soon as we launched. All of the resource streams heading into the inner system have ceased movement as well. Only the Red Matter warhead on its booster is in motion along with us and the wreck of the Eros. I am detecting a two-degree Celsius heat spike on all visible objects in range, meaning that whatever is doing this is obeying the laws of thermal dynamics."
He then cocked his head to one side: "We appear to be being ha-"
Bao now stood in Ferrofax's place atop the holo plate. Same hair, same face, same build though the cut of his clothes was of a civilian design native to his homeworld. His eyes though were black polished orbs of coal, staring out atop the slight curve of a charming smile. The Negotiator had arrived.
"I hope you don't mind, but given you've changed the terms of our agreement, I thought we might revisit them." the holographic project said calmly.
"Lieutenant Qiao," Mrazak said under his breath, "could you kindly keep your doppelganger busy?"
Bao gave Mrazak a look that plainly said "you are crazy" with a few extra profanities for colour as he turned towards the hologram. "An oddity of the behaviour of most of the known galaxy's sapient species, I'm afraid, if a propensity for lying in order to save their own skins. Our own programming, if you will, is clear on this point. Although, I express some surprise you did not see this coming. The information was contained quite plainly in the information you subverted my implants to gain."
"Duplicity is not in our nature. We are simple tools following our programming, much in the same way you are tools following yours," the Negotaitor said flatly.
Mrazak slid over to the Ops station and unlocked the console. While Bao did his best to banter with the Clock Maker avatar, Mrazak attempted a last ditch effort to kick the Clock Makers off his ship. Level 1 Diagnostics, when initiated, automatically took their associated systems offline in order to thoroughly troubleshoot them. There was no way to tell where the Clock Makers had wirelessly hacked the Phantom's comm systems, but since Ferrofax had been kicked off his own roost, the situation could not be good. Travelling without a heading at maximum impulse was not the ideal time to reboot a ship's computer and all its associated systems, but Mrazak didn't see much choice.
"Hey, Clock Makers," he said with his finger hovering over the activation command. "Get off my ship!"
Primary lighting shut off, plunging the bridge into darkness for an instant before the emergency lights kicked on. The Clock Maker impersonation of Bao disappeared from the holo plate with a glitching stutter that caught in a monosyllabic loop before being cut short. And then the engines died. Evidently the Full System Level 1 Diagnostic brooked no exceptions.
"That could have been worse," Mrazak said to nobody in particular. "Ferrofax, please tell me you're still with us. If so, then kindly batten down the hatches and keep out any other malicious foreign runtime systems."
"They gained access through the lateral comm's antenna. I've locked down exterior comms, and I am running all sensor traffic through a dozen layers of protective buffering. I would suggest air gapping the sensors, but then we'd be flying blind. As it stands I can tell you the Red Matter mine is on course for the star, but I cannot tell you if it undamaged," Ferrofax said, his voice a little tinny, a little less full of the vim of life.
"The ship-wide diagnostic should be completed in approximately two hours," Mrazak said, "at which point we'd better have a plan in place." He tapped his combadge. "Mrazak to--" The combadge was silent. "Cthia take me, our combadges are down as well?"
"They are patched through the ship's comm systems," said the Ops comm specialist. "Comm systems have a high priority in ship-wide diagnostics, so we should get them back before other primary systems."
"Not good enough," Mrazak said. "I need my Field Team summoned to the Strategic Operations Conference Room--as many as are fit for duty." He put the thought of his injured people out of his mind for the time being. They were no good to him, and if he allowed himself to be weighed down by concern, he would be no good to them. "We have a strategy to devise."
The communication specialist hesitated for a moment, confused by the order. "But... how can I do that with the comm system--"
"Get off your ass and find them!" Mrazak shouted. "One by one if necessary!"
She flinched at the outburst, but it broke her hesitation. "Yes, sir," she said, eyes down as she left the bridge.
The Tactical helmsman openly glared at Mrazak in sullen disapproval.
"Go assist her," Mrazak said to the man. "Your services are obviously not required at this time."
This time Mrazak received only a grunt in acknowledgement before the other man left the bridge. Alone save for Bao and Ferrofax, Mrazak collapsed under the weight of the situation into the command chair. He ran a hand over his face and sighed. "I don't rightly know what we're going to do," he said candidly. "But we've got under two hours to figure it out."
Bao gave Mrazak another withering look of "crazy asshole" as he commented, "You mean, unless they arrange for that singularity to form and toss us in it, or decide to come 'harvest' our resources, I assume? This seems like a situation where boom today seems much more likely than boom tomorrow, or boom 750 years from now that we might have managed to make hold."
"Don't be such a pessimist," Mrazak said. "They never die happy."
"Biological's rarely do," Ferrofax said dryly. "And I'd be more worried that 750-year time limit they put on themselves. Unless you were sitting on top of a very large concentration of Clock Maker matter on the colony, it suggests New Far Florence's crust and mantle have been infiltrated. At least to the point that a sudden cessation of movement along its orbital path didn't shatter the planet. That feat was accomplished in 6 months. Give them 750 years, or just 2...I have the exponential growth charts here if you like. I can also predict within a good margin which stars would be best used as shelters from the swarm for the time remaining to sapient biological life."
Mrazak looked up at the ceiling, as the holo plate systems hadn't reactivated yet, which meant Ferrofax was without visual form. "Yes, Ferrofax, that's why we deployed the Red Matter. Since we haven't been overtaken by a supernova, we can only assume that the Clock Makers devoured the Red Matter like the standard garden variety. Please turn your vast computational faculties toward a solution rather than overstating the obvious. Were going to need a plan, and fast."
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