Checking In
Posted on Fri Sep 16th, 2022 @ 11:59am by Commodore Jacob Kane & Lieutenant Commander P’rel M.D
Edited on on Sat Sep 17th, 2022 @ 11:39am
Mission:
Scylla and Charybdis
Location: Intelligence Office
Timeline: MD-04
1879 words - 3.8 OF Standard Post Measure
It seemed customary at this point for Kane to arrive while P'rel was busy. Maybe she just gave the impression that she was always preoccupied with something, or perhaps his timing was just lousy. Either way, she had her back to him as he entered but he suspected that she would know instantly that it was him who had entered.
"Lieutenant P'rel." He announced himself all the same. "Any luck determining anything new about our Romulan friends sneaking around at the edge of the system?" It was a way to break the ice; to seem like he was there on business and to disguise the ulterior motive of checking in on her wellbeing after all she had been through in the last few months.
Sensing Kane's formidable presence as he entered the otherwise empty suites, P'rel momentarily mused how easily she was able to identify him without seeing him or hearing his voice. Perhaps the distinct clunk of his footsteps, or the reserved almost withheld breathing as if the man was constantly stood to attention; possibly it was that she could count on one hand how many came into the suite, and of those how many would likely still be up at this hour. Then there was the affinity she had to acknowledge she had for the man, the respect which had grown over the past year or so; it was a common misunderstanding that Vulcans didn't feel, nor have connections, and she could only truthfully - if entirely internally - concede that her respect for the Captain had a fleeting, occasional, tendency to flirt with the not entirely strictly professional. In any case, he was amongst the easiest of presences to determine and identify.
"Captain" she replied, acknowledging his arrival. "Quite some luck, actually". She turned and re-opened the active ops file and deployed the data to the main display on the far wall, the both moved over to where they had stood oftentimes before during mutual briefings. "Starfleet tracks indicate the vessel has a high probability of designation as the IRW Taleth, Commander V'rel Teth commanding..." she pressed a single button to open up her biography; "...a competent commander, she was a relatively senior combat officer during the Dominion War. Her rapid upwards movements were seemingly only curtailed by Hobus, whereafter she has retained this ship and demonstrated ambiguous loyalties to the Romulan Free State and the new Empire..." returning the display to the information on the vessel itself, P'rel focused on a small list of technical data. "The ship seems to frequently receive upgrades to primary combat systems - expensive ones - indicating piracy or other profitable activities. She can easily match our own firepower Captain, even in MVA mode; though her secondary and tertiary combat systems lag significantly behind her primaries."
"That's unusual for a Valdore..." Kane noted. He'd not expected that the Romulan ship would have been quite so combat effective by comparison. He tucked away that tactical knowledge for later. He approached the console, making a point of examining the readouts for himself. "We're too far away from support at this point. Avoiding an engagement seems wise until we know more." He left an elongated pause between statements as he pondered the best approach in the next part of the conversation. He was usually more direct, not empathetic. And P'rel was not the type to be drawn by token platitudes. So maybe that was the best route to take. "I didn't get a chance to speak with you properly after what happened to Mister Tolbar. His loss must have been a difficult blow."
Slightly lolling her head to one side to acknowledge her agreement with Kane, she was then taken aback by his sudden change of direction. Suppressing the sudden cold bite in her stomach, she steered clear of the emotional dangers of directly responding to him and instead opting for the simply truthful; "there was no opportunity to retrieve him and escape". She turned away from him, and fixated on the specs of the Talath; she had reached the same conclusion that the heavy armaments were unusual for a Valdore Class warbird, and the sheer weight of firepower on the vessel certainly corroborated the various vague intelligence reports regarding piracy and the possibility of working for all sides in the Romulan conflicts.
It didn't escape his attention that she had deftly side-stepped the point of his question, much in the same way he would have done. "I have no doubt that the sacrifice was difficult, all the same," he remarked. It wasn't an attempt to pressure for further answers, but a gentle reminder that it was still a difficult loss of a trusted colleague. "There would be no shame in accepting that it would have an impact on those that knew him."
Keen to veer away from the topic, and putting down the cold knot in her stomach, she deflected him again; "There would not". She hoped that her purposeful non invasion of further elaboration would move him on.
He clocked the succinct reply. Not one to probe too deeply, especially in an emotional situation such as this one, he moved on. "Commander V'rel Teth. The name isn't familiar. Nor is the Taleth. Tal Shiar involvement?" he asked, considering this the most likely connection.
"More so than Free State," confirmed the Vulcan, grateful for Kane's progression of the topic at hand and his not dwelling on the loss of Silnan. "Starfleet hasn't invested much effort in ascertaining precisely what tasks the Taleth has undertaken for each side, though the general body of seems to be target elimination, capture and ransom, and asset acquisition..." she returned to Commander Teth's bio; "the Commander is broadly regarded as a highly competent combat officer, and has sufficient skill or connection to negotiate contracts with both sides openly without reprisal. Logic would indicate she knows about the Avalon somehow, and is here to acquire either it or her crew - or indeed both...".
"Potential infiltration of the Avalon and the wider project," Kane surmised. It had happened before. The original Prometheus from which Athena descended was a cautionary tale in that respect. "I suspect we're leaning more towards Tal Shiar. At least they're predictable in their pervasiveness. Cross-reference the Avalon crew with the data we do have on her. Maybe we'll get lucky. Anything else unusual to be aware of?"
"Aye sir" she replied. "Only the radiation and unique properties of this region you're already aware of. I also have been given the means to find the Avalon by Starfleet, and will be seeing Commander Keating later, however I do have a suggestion..." she looked to Kane, waiting his invitation to continue.
"By all means," he nodded.
"This is in your ops pack of course, but the Avalon takes engineer power to run the array. We're working with a lot of hypotheticals here, but it is logical at this time to assume something went wrong with the new array; if it is still turned on, then there will be an almost imperceptible radiation spike from the engines. One would never know it unless they were looking for it..." it was probably lost on Kane, but she turned the display to an overlay of the engine frequencies and background radiation in the area, noting how closely they matched. "Indeed, that was one reason this region was chosen for the test...". Replacing the screen with an overlay of the immediate region, P"rel added in the positions of Athena and the Taleth, between them a large patch of dense nebula. She created a directed pyramid shape from the Athena and pointed the base toward the nebula's interior. "Even with the frequency, our scanning range is highly limited. I recommend separating the ship..." she did so on the overlay and demonstrated a far quicker scanning coverage using the active directed scan from all three sections. "...and covering the area quicker. It is vital we find the Avalon before the Taleth does".
"We're already at a tactical disadvantage with the ship entirely in one piece, Lieutenant. I'm not willing to leave one section out and vulnerable. Not yet." He pointed at the screen. "Deploying probes here and here..." he indicated two areas. "Should rule out a significant portion of the search area, though. That narrows our parameters down. Given the angle the Taleth is taking, we'll have completed, what - 80% of the area we'd need to cover?" He watched for indicators from her. Although not a scientist, Kane was a tactician at heart. He knew the averages, the odds, the risks involved. A potential 20% chance they'd get there second. But a gamble he was willing to take.
Scowling at the Captain, flicked his hand away from the console and overlaid a graphic of the complex interference patterns onto the grid. "Yes, thank you for that Captain..." she said, "I
"Captain..." she said, to draw his attention to her screen as she opened it and transferred the display to the main screen. A slowly pulsing blue circle had appeared barely a few million kilometres from their current position; next to it was a transponder code, the universal code for ship in distress. P'rel took a moment to manually cross reference the frequency and code with the reference files provided by Starfleet Command; "we are too far way to verify this as the Avalon..." she informed the Captain with uncertainty in her voice. Her brow furrowed as she tried to integrate several harmonic challenge and repeat algorithms, though none of them worked. "No..." she confirmed, settling on the definite position; "there is too much frequency drift at the source, all we can confirm is that this is being transmitted within the Starfleet unencrypted frequency band, with a standard distress code. This could easily be a trap sir..." she concluded.
"And a classic Tal Shiar one at that," he nodded. "But we have to follow it through. Kane to Bridge - lock onto the frequency signal being provided by Lt P'rel and lay in a course." He glanced back at his intelligence officer. "ETA will be around four minutes if you want to try to work out if it actually is a trap before then."
P’rel nodded at Kane and turned back to her console instinctively as a second alert registered; “We may not need all four Captain…” she began, looking at the tactical map and the designated tracks the computer was alerting them to. “…the Taleth, she’s moving for the signal as well….”.
He just nodded. "Bridge. Add a yellow alert to that order." It was the last thing she heard before he was out of the door.
