Don't Do It

Posted on Tue Oct 20th, 2020 @ 2:14pm by Lieutenant Kevan Dash & Lieutenant Commander Finnley Keating VII & Senior Chief Petty Officer Mason Malone

Mission: The Shadow of Arachne
Location: Security Office
Timeline: MD-04 - Coincididing with "Lift the Veil"
1120 words - 2.2 OF Standard Post Measure

“So, what have you got for me?” Finnley asked as she walked into the security office. Mason had called down to engineering a few moments earlier stating that he was done with his investigation on the device they disabled in the phaser control room. It was designed to cause a radiation spike which allowed for the ship to be tracked, but also allowed intruders to beam over. At least, that’s what the captured Bolian had claimed. The piece of hardware certainly had some intriguing aspects and she was excited to both hear what the investigation had revealed and get a better look at the device herself.

"Uhm..." Mason looked over at Kevan for a moment. "We ran several diagnostics and I don't think we found anything conclusive. I do think this is some kind of explosive, which thankfully has been disabled but from what it seems, it is also a kind of tracker if you will. If it's turned on, it'll light us up on the map like a Christmas tree. Other than that, it's too early to say more about it."

“The Bolian that was down there also said they could transport over once it was activated. Have you found any evidence that it can be used for that purpose? Do you mind if I take a look?” Finnley asked, looking slightly like a kid on Christmas day considering new and foreign technologies were always fascinating to her.

"Be my guest. Just...don't blow up the ship or anything," Kevan shrugged. "Not sure about transporter tech, but when activated it was going to be like sending up a flare on any sensor scans this side of Tellar."

“Why do people keep telling me to not blow up the ship?” Finnley chuckled as she leaned in to get a better look at the device. Things had been relatively hectic when they were in the phaser control room and she hadn’t really had time to truly evaluate the piece. She looked closely at all the components. Comparing each one to similar mechanisms or electrical equipment she’d seen in the past to try and determine what it’s purpose was. A small assembly within the device caught her eye.

“Interesting,” she murmured, grabbing a scanner and taking some readings. “The claim to transporter technology being embedded in the device may have been somewhat overstated, but not entirely inaccurate. It looks like this part,” she pointed to the assembly that contained a coil and what looked like a small emitter array and storage device, “was designed to store a transporter pattern and allow it to materialize when the device was powered.”

“My best guess is that they transported it over here and then powered it, allowing the Bolian to materialize in the phaser control room. Then the device is manually triggered, by whoever materializes, to detonate. Maybe as a way of covering their tracks and causing a lot of damage at the same time. Except in our case we were lucky enough to have stopped the detonation part.”

"You mean the Bolian was supposed to perish," Mason deduced, "but this thing can probably still be used to trigger a transport, so we need to somehow disable it completely. Right?"

“I guess I phrased that poorly, I meant the person that materializes triggers the explosive to go off after a certain amount of time. I assume the intention would be to set it to go off after say 10 minutes or so, enough time for them to get to a different deck safely and then have it detonate. I’m not sure if it can still be used to transport, I’ll have to do further analysis.” Finnley clarified as she continued to inspect the device. She stopped as a sudden thought occurred, “How many of these devices were found?” She asked.

"To my knowledge, just one..." Mason looked to Kevan. "Just one, right?"

"Honestly, I don't think I know what we're dealing with," Kevan shrugged. "We figured there might be a way to track down other devices like this one."

“We should be able to track it easily enough. I think Paxton helped someone disable one of these on the phaser batteries on deck 14, plus we’ve found two intruders so there must be at least two of these, right?” Finnley said, trying to put together each bit of knowledge she had surrounding the events from the past few days.

She tapped her commbadge, “Keating to Paxton.”

=/\= Paxton here =/\=

“Didn’t you help someone disable a device on the phaser batteries on deck 14?”

=/\= Yes ma’am. Lieutenant Commander Thy’lissa and I disabled a device on the phaser batteries on deck 14 and deck 4. The device matched the description of what you disabled in the phaser control room on deck 8. =/\=

“Thanks Paxton,” she ended the line of communication and looked at Kevan and Mason. “So that means a total of three of these have been found so far. Have you gotten reports of any other intruders? If my theory is right that we’ve gained a person per device and you haven’t gotten any other reports of intruders then we’ve got a third potential saboteur running loose.”

"Working theory is clones," Kevan repied. "Or at least identical twins; the Bolian we knocked-out in sickbay is a near-match for the one Lt P'rel has locked away. Could be that there's more, but we've not got that many ways of finding out unless you know of a way to track down any more of these devices."

“The emitter array has a unique signature that we can track,” Finnley said. She tapped her commabdge as she moved to the closest computer console and began typing in the details to track the device. “Paxton where are the two devices that you & Lieutenant Commander Shan disabled?” She asked. Why hadn’t Paxton brought the other two to Mason?

=/\= After Shan left, a Bolian Lieutenant Commander came by and said he was ordered to take them to the investigations officer so I handed them over =/\=

“Shit...well, I think that confirms our third intruder and he apparently has two of the devices with him. Now to find them.” Finnley continued to type in the last of the information needed to track them down. A moment later the computer chimed with a result. “Looks like he’s on deck 10….” Her eyes widened with concern as she focused in on his precise location, “with the main deflector controls.”

Having been told of the plan on the bridge to make some modifications to the deflector that would keep the Breen off of their trail, Finnley urgently hit her commbadge, “Keating to the bridge, don’t activate those deflector modifications!”