A Fun Time With Ghosts

Posted on Fri Nov 25th, 2022 @ 6:53pm by Commander N'Garzi Zora & Lieutenant Commander Michael Ki & Lieutenant Didrea Zade & Lieutenant Anthea "Thea" Mariatis & Ensign Vivienne Conrad & Senior Chief Petty Officer Thral Skrit

Mission: Scylla and Charybdis
Location: USS Avalon, Bridge/Ready Room
Timeline: MD04 (After "And Behind Door Number One..." and "‘oozat then?")
2176 words - 4.4 OF Standard Post Measure

"Duly noted," Zora replied as she positioned herself closer to Zade and the door panel, "but we need to know what's happening Doctor and the answers are on the other side of this bulkhead." She keyed in her command codes but stopped short of completing the sequence. "Prepare yourself," she said, a second before she pressed enter and the door swooshed open...

Zade shifted at Zora's words and readied the phaser, and when the door opened she quickly (as quickly as one could in their bulky suits) sidestepped so she was in the doorway and had full view of the room. The room, despite the activity on the internal sensors, was empty. Beeping pulled Zade's eyes down to an open tricorder laying sideways on the floor. It was deep enough into the room that the readout was difficult to see, meaning someone would have to go in to retrieve it. "The room's empty, except for an open tricorder," she reported to Zora.

Zora stepped into the room and then had to brace herself on the doorway to catch her balance. She felt... something, but couldn't quite explain what. It was more of a feeling than anything else, but it was powerful and it was connected to the room somehow. As quickly as it had come about, it was gone again, a fleeting sense of something that she couldn't explain. Pretty much every mission could be summed up in so many words too.

"Ensign," Zora called as she pulled herself together, "please tell me that tricorder is a clue."

Zade had moved a little more into the room, and happened to turn around to see Zora leaning against the doorframe. "Commander, are you alright?" She asked.

Zora waved her gloved hand in a dismissive fashion. "Secure the room Lieutenant," she said, ignoring the security chief's question.

Frowning at the response, Zade grudgingly complied and continued her search around the room. She did keep an eye on the Commander while doing so, just in case she needed to summon the doctor.

The slowest to catch up, having been forced to crawl upwards from her work position with about the same grace as a turtle trying to right itself, Conrad stood at the threshold to the room and screwed her nose up.

"Anyone else got a serious case of the heebie-jeebies?"

—

Broken from his explanation, all three suddenly turned as the ready room doors slid open and an EV suited Starfleet officer awkwardly stepped into the room with a phaser held out ahead of them. Noticing rather quickly that said officer didn’t acknowledge the trio in any way, a new wave of dismay found the Andorian and be felt his antenna sag. “Bollocks….” he mumbled. “I fink we need to split up, if these bubbles are unstable it’s better we’re not all in the same silk n lace at the same Vulcan rhyme ain’t it?”. He looked back over his shoulder, the EV suited officer was looking to the tricorder on the floor; “space man over there might find the SOS on the trike…I’ll stay ‘ere n try n get someone’s attention….maybe you two should ‘ed back to the labs…try n reintegrate us now we got a bit more goin’ on like…” he suggested urgently.

"All right, Chief. But be careful: we've no idea how long the bubbles will sustain themselves. And what happens if we interact with the wrong things. A stray power relay...a phaser..." Winfield shook his head. "No telling what that would do." He looked to Thea, a concern still ringing in his mind about the precarious nature of their situation. "We should be able to get to the labs, barring anything unforeseen. Do you think we can re-signal the Starfleet crew there?"

Thea, whose scrutiny of their escape plan eventually resulted in movement towards the access point, answered whilst distracted by her own forward planning. "They'll have deployed a team to work there." She spoke with confidence, though it didn't take much thought to see why the science labs would be a focal point for any recovery mission. "If we are lucky, they are astute enough to already be anticipating contact." She'd left behind as many breadcrumbs as time had permitted; deciphering them would take some finesse, as there had been a need to hamper any non-Starfleet attempts to extract the information. Ducking to enter the tube, Thea paused a moment and turned her head back to regard Skrit, making direct eye contact for the first time. "Be careful."



—

As Win and Thea disappeared into the Jeffries tube, Thral scratched his head and looked quizzically at the seemingly perplexed assortment of officers. Though he understood the futility really, he jumped up and down and waved his hands above his head just in case. Nothing. He walked up to the one who had been the first through the door, and brought his face close to the helmet, to his surprise a women stared back at him. Through him, he corrected himself. His face right against her helmet he grinned and muttered “tooty fruity what a beauty…”. Chuckling to himself as he stepped away, the Andorian looked around the room for inspiration as the group conversed, inaudible to him via their helmet comms. “That’ll do, luvvly jubbly….” He said to himself, walking over to the open Jeffries hatch once again. Thral held his hand against it, it had become almost an unconscious act by now, waiting for that small but telltale buzz in the fingers which somehow meant he was going to be able to touch something. He pushed, and pushed again, and finally with more force than he had originally intended slammed the Jeffries tube hatch shut with a large and loud thunk.

Zora's head whipped around to face the direction the noise had come from. "Did you hear that Lieutenant?" She asked Zade, her hand held around her phaser in preparation.

The noise made Zade jump, and she spun toward the direction it came from and readied her phaser. "Affirmative" she responded, her eyes searching for what could have caused the noise.

“Yes! Yes!” Thral shouted, jumping up and down wildly and screaming incomprehensible noises at his colleagues. “Here! Here!” He shouted, desperately, pleadingly, even excitedly. Trying hard to kick the wall over and over only a fraction of the contacts seemed to make any sounds. In his chaotic desperation to be seen, he ran around the room and with excruciating failure in most instances, tried to knock over the Captains various decorations, plants and vases, with only a couple moving and only one actually falling to the floor. “Fakinell!!!” He screamed with frustration, turning away from the confused officers, bending over and pulling his pants down to reveal his bare backside in a gesture his human mates had called “mooning”. “As if you fakkin’ numpties can’t see this!!!” He screamed, jumping up and down and slapping his bare buttocks.

There was movement out of the corner of Zade's eye that made her turn, and she watched with tense confusion as random items began to move on their own. There was nothing present to move said objects, but she doubted a cloaking device was involved, because to her it was the most ridiculous way to misuse such a tool. They were designed for stealth, not for... whatever was happening here. Movement caught her eye again, and Zade's eyes went wide when she turned to see... well, a full blue moon. Barely a couple meters away was an Andorian jumping up and down with his pants gradually falling down his legs, slapping his exposed butt. She couldn't help but watch for a moment longer than she wanted to, her own confusion keeping her in place, but she eventually turned her head toward Zora. "Um, Commander... there's..." Turning her head back, her brow furrowed in confusion when the jumping Andorian disappeared. "What the... um... there was someone here. I saw an Andorian petty officer over here for a brief moment." She pointed in the direction she saw the figure, hoping she didn't have to describe what specifically she saw.

Zora looked in the direction that Zade indicated but she couldn't see anything, perhaps she was too distracted by the conversation she had just had with the captain. "We can continue to investigate this Lieutenant," she said as she turned to face the Trill officer. "The Romulans are sending a landing party to the Avalon, you're needed right away."

“Yes! Here! Oh my gawd….!” Thral screamed, returning to jumping up and down to get the pretty woman’s attention again. Trying hard he desperately attempted to push the captains desk chair over and barely succeeded in spinning it round. His efforts may have progressed to something, however their barely established contact was interrupted by a sudden crunching into the hull several decks down and a deep, sharp rumble coming through the decks. “Well that weren’t no achin’ blow were it..?” Thral muttered to himself, aware of the lack of explosive force from a weapons impact. The pair in the room with him exchanged looks, hidden to him from the sides of their helmets.

Zora swayed as the ship rocked violently, the inertial dampeners were clearly not working as she could feel the room slowly tilting. "Zade, go!" She ordered before turning to face the doctor. "Are you reading any life signs at all, anything that can collaborate what Lieutenant Zade saw?"

Zade felt the rumble shortly after Zora spoke up, and nodded to the Commander before leaving the ready room with haste. "Zade to Dash, Malone, and Lorel. Meet me on deck thirteen of the Avalon, and bring reinforcements. We have company." The rumble was faint, and she hoped her intuition was correct in that the impact was far away, possibly the middle of the ship or lower decks.

Michael had his tricorder out and scanned intently. He saw nothing, he wished to god that he saw something. "I am sorry Commander there are no life signs except for the Away Team. There are a lot of abnormal energy readings. But nothing biological."

Vivienne, who had been given the job of analysing the lone tricorder, was once against crouched low and uncomfortable. It was hard to be precise with gloves on and the speed with which she was used to working was so hampered by the cumbersome protection that the engineer's frustration has created a laser focus. "Was your Andorian dancing a foxtrot by any chance?," she grumbled, groaning as she slowly stood upright and squinted at her readings. "Whatever this thing is transmitting, it keeps cycling through a pretty intentional rhythm."

"Like a code?" Zora asked. Everything was pointing to someone being present with them, the strange readings they had discovered earlier, the moving objects, the feeling she herself had felt when coming into the room, the tricorder, and finally Zade's ghost person. Then why couldn't they see the person or get a clear reading? She pressed a few buttons on the panel on her right forearm, redirecting the speaker in her EV suit from internal comms to external comms. "If you are here and can hear me, help us find you," she said out loud in the general direction that Zade had indicated. "Give us a sign."

Thral couldn’t believe it. Here he was, he had their attention, they had seen something though they didn’t know exactly what. And what could be do? Nothing. Trying again desperately to interact with objects in the room, he could barely make anything wobble. “ ‘sake….” He muttered to himself, sighing. His best bet now he figured, was to follow the other two to the labs, since he’d seemingly done all he could here. The Starfleet crew at least now knew there was someone, somehow, alive - “mission accomplished” he said to himself grimly as he walked through the officers in front of him. “Heebie jeebies…” he chuckled to himself, remembering old stories of ghosts and spirits walking through people from classic human holonovels.

Zora felt a pang of disappointment when nothing happened, she was sure there was someone here, she had felt it, right? Her dark eyes roamed the room, looking for something, anything that would back up her theory but there was nothing and time was running out. She turned to the two officers who were also looking around the room but they both gave her a despondent shake of the head. If something was here before, it wasn't now. "If someone is here, you need to leave the ship via the airlock, it's not safe for you here," she said, her voice echoing in the near-empty room. She waited a brief moment and after still no signs turned to face Conrad and Ki. "That's that then, we need to leave." Without another word, the three officers left whatever they thought they had seen behind and made their way off of the Avalon.