Relay Station of Death

Posted on Fri Jan 21st, 2022 @ 12:37am by Commander N'Garzi Zora & Lieutenant JG FalenvralLi Zh’kyhrihr & Ensign George Paxton

Mission: With Gleaming Eyes
Location: Relay Station
Timeline: MD03 Afternoon
2778 words - 5.6 OF Standard Post Measure

Zora made her way to the shuttle bay, she wanted to get going while the Cardassians and the Metis were busy distracting each other. On route, she checked the Engineering log to see who was available for an away mission. Zora would have liked to bring Keating along, but the radiation spilling out of the mine had to be a priority, they were here to help these people, not create more trouble for them. She saw that Ensign Paxton was available and summoned him to the shuttle bay, as well as her favourite pilot Lieutenant Li.

Zora was happy to see that they were both waiting for her as she stepped into the cavernous room. She noticed they were waiting by one of the standard Starfleet shuttles, which usually would have been fine, but today she had need for something a bit, quieter. "Lieutenant," she said to the Andorian. "I heard you know how to fly that thing?" She said referring to the alien ship that was still in the bay from the last mission. "I want to be in the air within a few minutes. Ensign," she turned to face the young human, "I need you to check over the stealth and sensor readouts, I need them at peak efficiency."

Li nodded. "I can fly it. Just know - it's stealth compared to our shuttles. It'll mask most emissions, but it's not cloaked or anything. When I flew it on the last mission I was counting on the Cavalier's regular crew to not be the ones running sensors and whoever was there to be more preoccupied with Athena and the pirate ship. If we don't have clearance from the Cardassians and they're looking close enough, they'll be able to see us."

"Thank you, Lieutenant," Zora replied. "However, the relay station should be unmanned and I'm hoping the Cardassians are too busy to watch what we're doing up here. Besides, what's life without a bit of risk?"

Nice. Life is nice without risk," George thought, already slightly nervous with the idea of taking the foreign shuttle. "So, what's the plan once we get to the relay station?"

"The intel we have managed to gather alludes to outside involvement from an unknown alien race," Zora said as he made her way into the small craft. "I'm hoping the relay station has some information that might prove useful, sensor readings, communication logs, transport activity, anything that might shine a light on these new players in the game."

The three of them entered the shuttle and took their respective positions, Li in the pilot seat, Zora in the co-pilot seat, and Paxton at one of the aft stations. "Paxton, monitor the sensors, I don't want any surprises today please. Li, you know the drill, nice and steady, get us there in one piece."

"That is usually my intention," Li said as she worked through the pre-flight check as quickly as she could without being irresponsible. Athena's people had gone over the shuttle a few times now, including Keating herself, but it was still a bit of a pimped-out hooptie. Once everything checked out she got clearance and eased out the bay doors.

"Not showing any active scans. I'm just going to loop us around a little bit to build up momentum in the shadow of Athena, then angle the shuttle so its baffles mostly hide our maneuvering thrusters and braking from the surface." Once that was done, the viewscreen pointed toward the planet as the shuttle continued apparently sideways on a transfer orbit toward the station. She half-turned toward the XO, though keeping her eyes on the readings. "You said the station was unmanned. I guess that means it could be manned? We're boarding, not just setting up a link?"

"That's correct Lieutenant," Zora said, turning to face the pilot. "I don't want to risk the chance of missing important intel because we just pulled their sensor logs and didn't get our own readings whilst we were onboard. Don't worry, I know you can handle yourself," she added with a half-smile.

Zora turned to face the engineering sitting behind them. "Paxton, speak to me, what are the sensors saying?"

"No life signs detected yet. The facility looks as though it's running on emergency power only. I'd recommend we dock at docking port one. Two and three don't appear to have power. My guess is that emergency power only supplies energy to the one." George shrugged, not knowing a lot about Cardassian procedures.

"Let's do that then," Zora said to Li, making sure that she had heard the conversation. "Paxton I want a full sweep of the exterior too. Cardassians are known to boobytrap their own facilities in case they receive unwanted guests. I'm going to set up a link to the main computer, see what we can pull before we venture into the unknown."

As the shuttle moved closer to the station, Li adjusted their trajectory. "Okay, so I've identified Docking port one as the port at the base of the station, closest planetward. Looping around the station now to give you a clear view of the exterior." It all looked dark to her but, even without power, manual docking wouldn't be a problem with a stationary object.

Li eased the shuttle into position alongside the orbital, slowly bringing them together. "Docking clamps extended. Should have lock in 3. . . 2. . . 1," A metallic clang rang the hull and she concluded, "We have physical lock. I'm not getting any telemetry from the dock though. I'm not sure if that's system incompatibility or their computer not responding. We may not have tested the docking system on this shuttle for Cardassian protocols."

"I think it's just an incompatibility. They use different data protocols on Cardassian vessels. Give me ten seconds," George practically burrowed into his panel, deep in concentration. Telemetry data streamed across moments later. "They were using an older Cardassian protocol, I just put in some conversion code so the shuttle could read it," he shrugged.

Once the data started streaming to her console, Li still took a moment looking it over. Nothing was exactly standard on this shuttle and certainly not Starfleet standard, but it was parsable. "Okay, station sensors report atmo looks good. Pressure normal. Temp's a little high even for a Cardassian station, I think. A hair over 300 Kelvin? Nothing dangerous short-term though." She clicked across a series of switches that lit up green so she said, "Latch is responding to our control. I'm ready to pop it open when you're ready to go."

"Let's not waste any time then," Zora said as she stood up, readying herself to exit the shuttle. "Standard protocol people, phasers on stun and we'll keep an open comlink at all times. If there are no questions, let's get in and out." She paused for a moment and when no questions came she led the group to the airlock. The shuttle door slid to one side as the door to the Cardassian station started to roll away.

Zora could feel the heat of the station before they stepped on board, Paxton was right, they wouldn't be able to stay here too long at all. They were in a dimly lit corridor of typical Cardassian design, nothing remarkable here. They walked down the tight corridor and entered into a turbolift. "Anything on sensors?" She asked her colleagues as they headed to the command room.

"Nothing yet, other than heat exposure warnings," Paxton replied.

Moments later they arrived at the command center and George walked directly towards an offline console near the front. "If we can get an ops console powered up then we can probably find more of the data you're looking for." He knelt down and removed the covering under the screen before tinkering with the wires.

"Good, you do that," Zora said. "Li I want you to access the main computer. We need their sensor logs and proximity logs mostly, but anything you can get a hold of might be useful."

"Right," Li said, taking in the cramped, utilitarian space. She did her best to interpret the layout she saw and the notes she had had stations like this and made her way to an access hatch on the central structure of the station and up a ladder to the next level.

"I am going to try and get into the command logs, I doubt anyone has been up here for a while but they may prove useful, or not." Zora nodded at the two officers and made her way to the small office at the side of the room. It was nothing spectacular, small, cramped, and only one workstation. It appeared to be offline but one of the smaller power packs she had with her would give it enough juice for her to get the information she wanted. Within a few minutes, the computer sprung to life and Zora was greeted with a typical Cardassian interface. "Now how do I access it," she said aloud to herself.

After plugging her PADD into the systems interface, Li did her best to navigate the central computer's database. She wasn't a hacker or systems specialist by trade, but some of these files might not be available to the Ops console, so she scrolled through it looking for any sort of archived, comprehensive stored data.

Zora poured through the computer and downloaded anything that looked like it might be useful. Under normal circumstances, she would take her time to look through the files first, only taking what was valuable to them and their mission. But for some reason, today, she wanted to get the hell out of there. She was used to Cardassian structures, after all, she had spent enough of her life with them, but this place didn't feel right. She was lost in thought when she came across a rather interesting looking file; the commander's logs from back when the station was manned. She tried to access it but was met with some kind of block. Typical Cardassians, always so cautious. Zora activated a decoding algorithm and waited for it to do its thing.

"Unauthorised access!" The computer announced, suddenly and loudly.

Zora jumped, not expecting the sound, then she noticed her mistake. Her tinkering had initiated some kind of booby-trap protocol. "Damn!" She said to herself as she tried to override the computer's defences. Unfortunately, she just wasn't that good and there was no way of telling exactly what this booby-trap was rigged to do. Knowing the Cardassians, it wasn't going to be pleasant, and they were all very much at risk.

"Paxton," Zora said through their open comlink. "I've set off some kind of programme, can you shut it down from your end?"

"Uhhh, let me see," George frantically stopped what he was doing and tried to access the program. The doors around the command room hissed and sealed shut as the program counted down some sort of lockdown sequence. His fingers soared across the panel. "I'm getting blocked at every turn. There are too many defenses in place!"

Suddenly everything stopped. The alarms went silent the George looked to his two other crewmates trapped in the room with him. "Do you think it's over?" He asked apprehensively, not even thinking to look at the console in front of him.

"I doubt we're that lucky," Zora said looking at the two officers. "Knowing the Cardassians, it's a multi-layered trap and sealing us in here was just stage one. Paxton, get those doors open. Li, see if you can remote access our shuttle. I'm going to try and access the station's transporter. Move people."

Why is it always me that ends up on away missions where we get trapped somewhere? George wondered as he tried to bypass commands to open the doors. "I don't think there's any way we'll override this seal from a console, at least not one that I'm seeing. I'll see if I can short a circuit to it instead." He announced as he walked to the door. Sweat dripped from his forehead. The station was hot, but somehow now it felt as though they had walked into an oven and someone closed the door behind them.

Unplugging from the main computer, Li tapped to retask her PADD to interface with the shuttle docked outside. "I should have rudimentary control from. . . " She frowned and tapped several more controls, antennae drooping. "No. I'm locked out. Hooking into the station's systems infected this thing." She looked around for some suitable surface of the station to glare at.

Li moved toward where Paxton was working. "Any way I can help? If you can even momentarily short the lock maybe I can work the manual override on the door itself to keep it from re-engaging?"

Zora's fingers glided over the controls as she tried to bring the transporter online and get them the hell out of there. She tried to ignore the fact that she didn't have the command codes, or the station was running on minimal power, or that the computer she was trying to urge into working was the very one that was trying to contain them. After another failed attempt the terminal she was working on went blank and then beeped at her.

"Intruders located in the command centre. Security measure stage two activating. Life support has been deactivated."

Zora looked at the other two officers after the computer's cold announcement. "We need that door open," she said unnecessarily.

"Try the manual override....now," George looked to Li as a momentary spark flew from the panel he was working in.

As the two officers fought with the door controls, Zora had another idea. She went to one of the wall panels and pulled with all of her might until it came loose and fell from the wall. She reached inside and started pulling out as much ODN cable as she could manage. "This should help, right?" She asked Paxton.

At the engineer's signal, Li popped the release on the manual override for the hatch and started pumping. With no hydraulics and no triggering solenoid, the piston turned gears that could slowly - maddeningly slowly - crank the hatch open. She didn't turn to see what the XO was doing; hopefully whatever it was would help but, for now, she concentrated up and down on the mechanism in her hand.

"Nice!" George let out a sigh of relief as the door cracked open and said a silent prayer that the random cables the Commander pulled wouldn't set off another chain of Cardassian booby traps. "Let's get out of here," he said, shimmying his way through as soon as Li had widened the exit enough.

"It seems like the rest of the station hasn't been affected by the program in the control room," George noted having pulled out his tricorder. "Life support is still intact out here, minus the fact that it's so hot. We could try engineering and see what we can gather from there?"

Zora let out a sigh of relief as they managed to get their way out of the death trap command room. She checked the tiny PADD that she had on her and shook her head at Paxton's question. "No. It looks as if we have over 70% of the computer information, I won't risk our lives further for today. Let's make our way back to the shuttle, count our blessings whilst we still can."

Within a few moments, the three officers were back aboard the shuttle, thankfully with no further incidents or station murder-y moments. Zora noticed instantly that the alien ship was much cooler than the Cardassian station and thanked the Gods that they had all made it back in one piece. "Lieutenant Li, please do the honours and get us the hell out of here."

"With pleasure, Commander," Li said, taking a moment to double-check that the hacked-together interface with the Cardassian station hadn't left the shuttle vulnerable to whatever had locked her out of her own PADD and triggered the alarm condition. Everything looked normal so she broke the connection and unclamped from the dock. She tugged at her collar with one hand, her body practically steaming still, while casting off from the dock with the other. Once clear, she leaned back and took a simple, direct route back.

Zora slumped into the empty co-pilot chair, only able to relax once the shuttle was far enough from the relay station and the danger was over. "Phew," she said out loud, knowing that the two officers with her felt the same. "Let's get this data back to the ship and hopefully there's some useful information here."