Highway to Hell
Posted on Thu Sep 13th, 2018 @ 8:55am by Captain Mrazak & Lieutenant Commander Kiril Nevin & Lieutenant Commander BaoJun Qiao & Captain Jeanette Armitage & Master Warrant Officer Alexei Sokolov
2,347 words; about a 12 minute read
Mission:
S1E2: Half Past Dead
Location: USS Phantom
Timeline: MD 1
The loading and prepping of the Phantom took more time than Mrazak ordered, but less time than he actually anticipated. All things considered, he was happy enough to be on their way. If the Phantom's slipstream drive was up to snuff, Abadar's Gate would only be a day away. If they were lucky, there would be something left of the original colony by then.
The Bynaus mission was a suitable test run for the QSD, but they would have to pull out all the stops for the jump to New Far Florence. First things first -- before Mrazak could check on the orders given in the briefing, he needed the peace of mind that the QSD wouldn't send them on a one-way trip to oblivion.
Big, burly, thick fingered Alexei was deep inside a Slipstream actuator, gently rearranging various thin fiberoptic wiring. The slipstream actuator being a rather small compartment at the base of the drive, and one of five units.
"Master Sokolov," Mrazak said, pulling the name from a data PADD in hand, "pray tell you are performing preventative maintenance rather than the emergency variety."
The russian pulled himself out of the hatch and stood up, his back cracking as he did. With his 7 feet of length he towered over the commander. "One could call it upgrades." Alexei answered, his grammar perfect, but the accent still strong on the vowels. "There was a new suggested wiring schematic from the work group that looked promising."
Mrazak's brow shot up in the air. "Indeed?" A grin curved across his face. "Do you suppose it might hasten our current ETA?"
"Not at all sir." Alexei answered, "It is merely a small upgrade to keep the vortex 0.05% more stable over extended flight."
While a faster rate of travel would have been ideal, Mrazak couldn't argue with a decreased risk of a transwarp breakdown. "Very good. Update me with any changes."
"Yes sir." Alexei nodded, turning back into his hatch after the commander left.
Mrazak moved on to his next stop.
With all of the operational matters sorted out, Mrazak turned his attention to the true crux of the mission. Containment. Mrazak decided first to visit his Xenoscience Specialist. There were few known facts regarding the Clock Makers. His hope was that BaoJun Qiao could peer through the fog of the unknown and divine answers to some of those secrets.
Bao had taken up residence in the Phantom's more or less only science space to review information. They did not have much information to work with at all. Precious little, in fact, though there were some extrapolations and that could be made. The signs pointed to them acting intelligently, although to exactly what level was unclear. The swarm must have some form of internal communication to coordinate its actions in the manner seen, given the limitation of chaos theory. That suggested it probably also possessed some way of performing external communication as well. He did not care for that idea. The incident with the gynoid had changed his muse, seemingly for the better, but in ways he was still discovering. He did not want anything else tampering with him, or the computer system. Disrupting swarm communications was, thus, his current focus.
"Report." Mrazak's tone was as unceremonious as it was demanding.
"The information we have, even from the database that does not exist, is exceptionally sparse. From what I can see, the swarm in the aggregate is intelligent and goal driven, but I cannot determine if it is sapient or merely an exceptional distributed AI. Regardless, the evidence suggests that the individual components of the swarm can communicate within the swarm. I am proceeding, therefore, on the assumption, that there is no principled reason they should not have external communicative ability as well, and thus at least the potential ability to attempt a subversion attack in addition to their prior brute force method. I am focusing my efforts, currently, on potential avenues of disrupting swarm communication and coherence. While it will not 'contain' them in the sense of bringing back samples, it ought to enable a more measured response than, as Colonel Garlake might put it, killing it with fire."
Mrazak rubbed his chin in thought. "Sufficient disruption of their communication may render them inert. I shall make notes for a field test to that end, just as soon as we determine the medium of their communication." The Vulcan fell into a near trance as his thoughts race. "Yes, yes... Lieutenant, I am redirecting your efforts. From here, I want you to find a way to crack their communications. Learn their language, if they indeed have one."
Bao gave the Vulcan a raised brow. "Consider it on the list once I or someone else figures out the medium they are using. At the moment, I still have no idea what kind of communication system I am working with. For all I know, they have a distributed quantum mental mesh, which makes this rather academic."
"If anyone in Starfleet can determine how to disrupt a quantum entangled communication network, it's the man who was deciphering a dead language inscribed on the inside of an ancient Dyson sphere." Mrazak clapped Bao on the back. "Keep me updated. And keep up the good work."
"Wilco," came the verbal reply, while inwardly Bao bit back a comment about the Dyson Sphere language being intended to be comprehensible and not actively trying to reprocess him into an eldritch horror.
Mrazak twitched slightly at the word but otherwise kept his stride. Aside from the inadvertent reminder of the Traitor of Bynaus, this mission was shaping up rather nicely.
Mrazak's next stop was the Infirmary. His medical specialists were supposedly hard at work on containment procedures, yet for some reason he found his Number One nose deep in the Medical Bay instead of down in the Vault where his subordinate was.
"That had better be a model for defensive and/or containment measures," Mrazak barked at Nevin.
The Bajoran didn't look up from the console he was hunched over. With a graceful move, he pointed towards the side of the room where another man was working at a large screen.
"We're working on it, Commander," Isaiah said, his fingers spinning the wire model on the screen to one side. "It's not as easy as we make it look."
Mrazak pursed his mouth at Nevin's casual disregard. "Well? Your progress isn't going to update me on its own."
"At the moment, we're following up on a rather crazy idea," Isaiah said, looking up to the Vulcan as he walked from one console to another.
Though he continued to scowl at Nevin, Mrazak indulged Isaiah. "I'm listening."
Isaiah pointed to Nevin, "His idea," he said. "From what we know in the archives, these clockmakers eat basically anything they come into contact with." As he spoke, the light in the man's eyes brightened. It was obvious he was enamored with this substance. "It's actually quite amazing. But there was one interesting thing Lieutenant Kiril noticed."
"They don't eat plasma," Nevin said, his voice sounding distant and uncaring.
"They don't eat plasma!" Isaiah exclaimed, his face forming a smile. If it was appropriate, he would have probably jumped in place with excitement. "So we're formulating a way to house the clockmakers in the middle of the warpcore. It won't have any impact on our power systems, but we will be limited to Warp 5 while they're in there. But with the swirling of the warp plasma, they'll effectively be contained completely. And the plasma residue that coats the inside of the core casing will keep them from touching the casing itself. It's genius!"
Nevin looked over at the man, clearly annoyed by how excited he was. With a roll of his eyes, he turned back to what he was doing.
Despite his nascent frustration with the Bajoran, Mrazak couldn't help but be impressed. "Very good. Hopefully Lieutenant McKay is making similar strides in how to capture the damned things. I'll leave you to it."
Isaiah watched as the Vulcan left in silence, his eyes bouncing between him and Nevin.
Once they were alone, he stopped working and took a step towards the Bajoran. "Not very talkative with him," he said, clasping his hands behind his back.
"Stay out of it," Nevin said, looking up at the dark-skinned man.
Isaiah raised an eyebrow. "Whatever it is, you should talk it out and try to resolve it. You can't let personal issues get in the way of the amazing discoveries we're finding."
Without a word, Nevin turned back to his console and kept working in silence.
At last Mrazak returned to the bridge. The command chair was growing on him, and he found himself longing for it as he considered each individual part of the puzzle before them. The short 'lift ride from the infirmary to the bridge, all of 2 decks, did not prepare him for the sight that waited for him.
"Captain Armitage," he said rather curtly to his guest, "I believe you are in my seat!"
"Your ship isn't exactly handicap enabled," she said, the fingers of her working flesh and blood hand tinking across the LCAR's display on the armrest. "Nor the roomy 'Not Quite A Starbase' that was the Eros. No offence, but I feel like I'm back in the driver's seat of my first air car after getting accepted to Starfleet Academy. It was a second-hand death trap with an expired emergency transporter for when, not if, the Anti Grav motor gave out. But it was all mine..."
With a flick of her foot, the chair spun to face Mrazak.
"Not quite the same as the Phantom I know, but still..." she tapped the arm rests, allowing the mechanical fingers of her right hand to curl around the end of the arm rest. "I didn't think I'd get another chance to sit in this chair. They don't exactly hand out ship assignments to captains who refrain from going down with their commands when given the chance."
Mrazak's chin pointed up ever so slightly. Just enough for him to stare down his nose. "The Phantom is the most state-of-the-art ship that never existed. I've had to watch men die to get this ship. I'll do more of the same to keep it. You have my regards for the assistance you've provided, both in bringing the latest reports of the Clock Makers to my attention and in delivering a payload big enough to eradicate them once our mission has concluded." He stepped forward and extended an inviting hand away from the command seat. "But don't ever presume to sit in my chair again."
"Not a fan of people sitting in your chair?" came Nevin's voice from the turbolift. "I'll keep that in mind. Maybe you'll find a surprise in that seat next time you go to sit?" As he walked up to Mrazak, he handed a PADD to the man. "Preliminary tests of the containment chamber."
Casting a smug glance of victory at Armitage, Mrazak accepted the PADD. "Promising," he said, giving its contents a once-over. "What say you, Captain?" Mrazak handed the PADD to Armitage's consideration.
"Foolishly stupid," she said, not evening looking at the PaDD. Her cold mechanical eye narrowed at Nevin. "No offence to your team or your work, but thinking you can contain something like a Clock Maker is a gross misjudgement. And bringing one back from New Far Florence is dangerous to the extreme. This isn't a virus that can sit in a lab freezer. Worst case there if the power goes out your sample spoils or leaks into a room. Your plasma containment cell loses power and it'll eat the cell and then your station. The red matter singularity mine is the only containment we need."
"Don't look at me," Nevin stated. "I get no say in what happens here. I just do as I'm told. Mrazak makes every decision unilaterally." He looked at the Vulcan, "Don't you Mrazak?" he asked with a smile.
Mrazak waved the PADD in the air. "Keep making designs like this, and that might change." Turning back to Armitage, Mrazak said, "Our mission is to study threats like this. We happen to be very, very good at it. There will be no detonation until we have a sample in hand for future study in Deep Storage back on Tartarus."
"Actually, that's not completely correct," Nevin said. He knew he was speaking out of turn, but frankly, by this point, he didn't much care. "We've developed a plan for long-term storage connected to a state-of-the-art lab, but our recommendation is that we build a separate facility for this artifact." Nevin pulled out another PADD and held it up in Mrazak's face. "We're confident in our design, but there are too many variables that we can't contend for. And there's an asteroid stuck in Tartarus' gravity well that would provide the perfect place for this separate facility without endangering the other important artifacts in deep storage."
"I wasn't suggesting we store it in the infirmary," Mrazak said with a hint of indignant condescension. "Every measure will be taken." Mrazak assumed the vacant command chair. He crossed one leg over his knee as he turned his attention to the heading on the viewscreen. Still dozens of lightyears out from Abadar's Gate, and few more to New Far Florence. "Prepare active sensor sweeps," Mrazak ordered to no one in particular. "Full spectrum analysis. I want to know exactly what's happening out there."
"Aye, sir," said the teal uniformed Science officer who had been doing her best to remain invisible during the entire exchange. "Scans initialized. Analysis will be ready within the hour."
"This will all end in tears," Armitage said with a shake of her head. "At least promise me at the first sign of disaster you'll fire the mine? Don't try and save your crew like I did, it'll just waste time if it hits the fan."
"There are a few I wouldn't miss," Mrazak quipped. "Onward!"
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