Holding Down the Fort.

Posted on Tue Apr 25th, 2023 @ 12:19pm by Lieutenant Commander P’rel M.D & Petty Officer 3rd Class Sam Saghir & Lieutenant JG Nayisa Wrea

Mission: Wrath of the People
Location: Intel Suite. USS Athena.
Timeline: MD5
3631 words - 7.3 OF Standard Post Measure

Man, P'Rel had a lot of work. At first, Nayisa had hoped that the many tasks she saw waiting on P'Rel's desk were an anomalous one-off occurrence of work, but the list didn't really seem to shorten in size, even when she delegated tasks out to individuals in the department. For the stuff she couldn't delegate, mostly because it was either highly classified or for the intel chief's eyes, Nayisa had started sorting them into things she believed she could look into, and things to save for P'Rel to handle. She didn't want this stuff sitting for too long, so the P'Rel pile was really a "deal with it later" pile because if her chief didn't return, she'd have to deal with it anyways.

To take a break from the sorting, Nayisa had gone to go help Sam and another officer with some software upgrade. The task certainly didn't need three people, but her brain needed to think about something simple. There was a reason she was content with her role instead of pursuing the department head chair. It was simpler. But barely five minutes later, the upgrade was successful, so Nayisa thanked the two while internally wishing it had lasted longer. "Hey Sam," she called out before he got too far away. "I'm working through the department, but do you have a moment to do like an informal update on tasks?"

Sam's ease at working on operational tasks rapidly boiled over into mortal panic as the stunning officer approached him; still embarrassed and reeling from both their initial conversation, and his cavalier willingness to divulge information to the Keating clone, Sam had done his best to avoid - more so than usual - interactions with his shipmates. "I oh..erm...actually I'm...yes." he somehow managed to compile and say, aware that his face was reddening.

Nayisa gave him a polite and inviting smile. She tried to put the incident on the bridge behind her for both of their sakes, but she hoped that he could contain himself even slightly. "Let's use the office. Have you seen this thing??" For maybe the first hour of being acting department head, Nayisa spent the time doing what she did best: snooping. She didn't touch any of P'Rel's personal files out of respect for her superior, but she poked around the entire office to see why the woman spent so much time in there. Ultimately, she contributed the isolation to Vulcan nature, but her search did yield a couple results. Namely that the master display on the back wall had a lot of potential.

As if there were an actual forcefield across the threshold to the ice queen's office, Sam stayed well on the ops side of the door; "I...I don't think we're supposed to..." he whimpered, very much aware he was on thin ice with the Lieutenant. "W w what's...what's in there...? he tentatively enquired, his stomach cramping hard.

What a goody two shoes. She made a mental note to see if she could loosen him up at all. Contrary to Sam, Nayisa had no problem entering the office and giving the v-shaped desk a gentle pat. "You know I'm acting chief, right? That means until our boss returns, I'm allowed to sit at the forbidden desk if I want to." She didn't admit it out loud, but being in the office felt weird. Even though her words were true, it still felt like she was trespassing. "I'll tell you what's in here when you get in here," she added with a sneaky grin.

'Oh god...' Sam cringed internally as his stomach knotted further before the tension collapsed with a regrettably characteristic gaseous anomaly generated from the anxiety of the situation. If for no other reason than to put a door between Wrea and the smell, he stepped forward into the office and gratefully heard it close behind him. "Ummm. O-O-ok..." he looked around nervously as if some vicious predator from the prehistories of any of hundreds of worlds were lurking in the room.

For a moment, Nayisa's grin faltered as she realized the precarious situation she put herself into. She was gambling hard on the state of the office's ventilation system, with her only means to escape Sam's gaseous version of an elephant tranquilizer now blocked off by a wall of the deadly fumes. While he looked around, Nayisa dismissed the thought, knowing if she mentioned it then it could only make it worse. Farts were funny that way.

"The main cool thing are these displays." Nayisa walked up to the one behind the desk and showed a diagram of the ship. It contained way more detail than the usual diagram, and with another button press a series of dots appeared throughout the ship. The dots were slowly moving, suggesting that the display was using internal sensors to identify crewmembers. While she was being nosey, she did find out that this could go a step further and track any of those dots. "Look at the level of detail here! The graphics are amazing, and you can display way more than on a standard workstation."

Sam could feel his forehead breaking out into a nervous sweat, and uniform across his back and shoulders was beginning to stick too. He was, however, impressed - if a little unnerved by the level of surveillance. "Does...does that thing have tracking history...?" he asked, a thought having just occurred to him.

"Oh yes," Nayisa confirmed, with perhaps a little too much excitement. The sparkle in her eye was analogous to a kid getting their favorite toy at Christmas. "I haven't discovered everything this thing can do yet, but not only can you see what's happening in real time, you can also see what looks like the last couple hours of activity." As someone who would gladly pour over information for hours, the display was a work of art. A version of this was her new Christmas wish.

Knowing she was getting very distracted by the wall display, the silver-haired woman turned her attention back to Sam who, as usual, looked like he was going to have a stroke from being in her presence. "Anyways, sorry, this thing is a masterpiece and I just had to share. Now," she collected some of her enthusiasm, "onto work stuff. Obviously, the upgrade got finished, but any updates on the other two tasks I handed out yesterday?" Another reason Nayisa didn't care much for the big chair: delegating tasks just felt awkward. She didn't mind telling people what to do, but knowing that her decisions had a larger impact than usual weirded her out.

'There were two?' he panicked. He felt his cheeks flush as he scrambled to remember what the one was. "Errr I oh yes, erm - " he started, interrupted by a rapid chirping coming from under P'rel's desk. He looked quizzically at Wrea and the pair crouched down, to find a small almost flat rectangular device softly pulsing with an orange light. It was continuing to chirp, and as the chirps got successively quicker, the large monitor on the wall began to rapidly stream with data. "S- someone's downloading our d - d - database" Sam spluttered.

When Nayisa saw the device, her initial temptation was to yank it off the desk. When the monitor she was just swooning over began to show a concerning amount of data, Nayisa acted on her impulsive temptation, the device now in her hand. It was still chirping even after it left the underside of the desk, as if its placement was simply to keep it out of sight. She glanced at the monitor, seeing that the data stream slowed down somewhat, but was still chugging along. "Damage control, figure out what's been downloaded," she told Sam, her voice and expression suddenly serious.

Standing, Nayisa turned P'Rel's computer around and started typing, the device on the desk next to her. There was no doubt that someone with the audacity to steal from the chief of intel would know how to cover their tracks, but there was obviously a data stream leaving the ship, and unless it was absurdly encrypted, there was a chance she could figure out where the data was going. But to figure out where data was going, she needed the connection this device had to its owner, and she also had to be fast so minimal information was taken. Worst case scenario, she knew when to break the device to force stop the download. Pausing in her typing, Nayisa picked up the device and looked it over, searching for any features that could be a clue to its origin.

Sam watched as Wrea's fingers flew over the keys, she'd seemed to snap immediately from her slightly jovial mood to a far more serious one. "Wha...what are you doing?" he stammered, unsure really of what he could do to help.

"What does it look like I'm doing, I'm stopping this data leak," Nayisa responded. It was nearing the time where too much data would be taken. The simple solution to their problem would be to just destroy the device, but that meant destroying any hints to who was collecting information. It was better to cut off the connection between the device and whatever it was talking to. Then she had an idea. "Of course!" She said, typing something on the computer. A moment later, an audible click sounded from the door to the office as the command to secure the room enforced. To her knowledge, that included some kind of interference that cut off connections to unknown devices. She would have given P'Rel a good scolding if the office didn't have such a feature. "Duh, simple problems require simple solutions," she told herself, watching the device stop blinking.

The silver-haired woman turned to Sam, ignoring the tickling sense of dread that came with the knowledge of locking herself in with Mister Gassy. "You can use the wall display to see what got downloaded. Unless you want to figure out where this thing came from and where it was sending." Nayisa wiggled the device in the air, her little grin back on her face as if the whole panic of data being stolen didn't just happen.

Sam hurried over and pulled up the data pathways and access logs; "It...it was everything - the whole ship sensor database for weeks...." Sam spluttered. This was huge. He screamed both loudly and briefly as the data he was squinting at suddenly and rather shockingly became a huge eyeball. Staggering backwards, tripping over his own feet, and landing in a seated position on the desk, he was far enough back from the screen to see the glaring face of Lieutenant P'rel.

"You are in my office" P'rel stated, looking at the surprised expressions of Petty Officer Saghir and Ensign Wrea. She huddled closer to the public comm terminal, grateful that the Parisian rain was keeping most people off the streets and proving her with some natural cover. Having changed into fairly non-descript traditional Vulcan robes, P'rel pulled her hood further over her head and drew the outer cloak closer. From the deserts of Vulcan, a miserable cold day on Earth was almost unbearable.

Nayisa's surprised sound was more of a gasp than a squeak like Sam. Was P'Rel the one accessing the computer this whole time?? The timing certainly lined up. Instead of immediately answering, Nayisa held up a finger, signalling to wait. Moving awkwardly around Sam's sprawled figure, Nayisa got to the computer on the desk and made sure the channel was secure. With everything going on, she didn't want to risk someone listening in, especially if it would make things difficult for P'Rel. Any intel personnel with half a brain knew when to be cautious. She applied some extra encryption just in case before whipping her head back toward the monitor. "Ok, channel's secure. Where the hell have you been??" She knew that even with the assurance of a secure channel, her chief may not answer, but she still needed to ask for her own sanity. "I guess the first question should really be: are you alright?"

P'rel looked between both Saghir and Wrea and inwardly chastised herself for not building in some protocol which would have confirmed that the office was empty. Ignoring the question regarding her location, P'rel dryly responded with "Evidently, I am alive...". She drew her cloak tight around her again, the rain was cold and as quiet as the streets were, she couldn't talk indefinitely, especially with the bulky tricorder-like device connected to the public comm terminal pulsing and flashing away in the moody darkness like a human Christmas tree on a winter night. "Thankfully I downloaded everything I will likely need before you interrupted..." she glared at Saghir, who almost seem to physically wilt under the look she gave him.

"Oh, sorry about that," Nayisa admitted, shifting the blame onto herself. That's what department heads did, right? Take responsibility for their underlings? It was her who made the decision to take the device off the desk anyways, so if anyone were to blame, it should be her. "I'll put it back, just in case. I'm paranoid when it comes to data transmitters like that, surely you get it." Even with the knowledge that P'Rel was behind it, she still probably would have yanked the transmitter off the desk because she was that paranoid about them. "Are you fine Roaming Free?" Nayisa figured out by now that P'Rel was probably calling from a public terminal, and she knew better than to share things openly. But perhaps through coded phrases, they could share more. Her question, when decoded, really was:

[ Do you need help with what you're doing? ]

P'rel carefully eyed Ensign Wrea and weighed the options of trust and how far she was willing to extend it. Having used the codeword for tech support, and not yielded any code word for being under duress, the Vulcan finally settled on it being more probable than not, that Wrea genuinely wanted to help. "I cannot roam far. I could do with a lift" she conceded. Another quick look around her in the rainy Parisian street, just to be sure; "I have an assignment which will make use of your skills, Ensign Wrea. Are Captain Kane's quarters still sealed, or has the new Commander taken them?".

Nayisa gave a simple smile at the Vulcan's response to her codeword, an acknowledgement that she understood the response. She knew P'Rel likely only had a tricorder on her, maybe a phaser if she was allowed to bring one to the commencement, and she understood that doing just about anything with virtually nothing on hand would prove difficult. When the Vulcan looked around again, Nayisa knew to keep the conversation short. "Let me check," she responded. Returning to the desk and now completely ignoring Sam, she pulled up the status of the Captain's quarters. She was in work mode now. "They are still sealed," she said, looking back at P'Rel's image on the wall. She could already guess what P'Rel might ask of her, and the silver-haired woman was a bit relieved that the quarters would be empty for this assignment.

Sam nervously looked to Wrea; Lieutenant P'rel was a fugitive on the run. The news only just this afternoon had said she'd broken into an officer's home and phasered them. Was he the only one who thought that speaking to P'rel was an awful idea, he wondered.

"Good, that will make things easier" the Vulcan replied. "The explosive on Earth was comprised of Rossium-K, Hutzelite-27, Bishop/P 374 and most likely Pastorium liquid 342... Kane would have needed chance to work on the bomb in private, his quarters are the logical place. You must scan for the residual signs of those chemicals - which I am sure you will find...you must cross reference the ionic decay rate. I am certain that the decay rate will show the chemical traces became present after the Captain was arrested...". She side-eyed a couple walking towards her being jovial, and she placed a hand on her phaser hilt just in case.

"Heard." Nayisa spotted the subtle tension in P'Rel's expression and waited to reply. Usually as the one in P'Rel's position, Nayisa knew the signs of someone listening to their surroundings, and she knew that P'Rel would likely not be listening until whatever she was watching went away. Shooing Sam out of the way, she grabbed a PaDD from behind where he was previously standing and quickly typed up some notes that summarized what P'Rel had told her. Aside from the chemicals, everything was in her own shorthand, allowing her to take only a moment to write down information and have it still be legible to her. When she finished typing, she glanced up at P'Rel, then over at Sam who looked like he was about to let loose again. Please hold it until the call ends, she thought, as if Sam could hear her. If there was a seal on the door, it would benefit her to have someone else with her to watch her back. While Sam was probably capable, she had a bad feeling when it came to the idea of him tagging along. For one, he was always nervous as hell, and that could land them in trouble. She also couldn't risk having his cheeks undergo a rapid unscheduled depressurization in an area sealed off as evidence.

Looking back to the monitor, Nayisa saw that P'rel had turned her attention back to the current conversation. "Can I minimally involve Zade? Security seals are her domain and she might be useful in bypassing them." Nayisa could in theory do it all by herself, but that came with a greater chance of something going wrong. With someone else assisting, it increased the chance of success.

P'rel took pause for a moment, there was a logic to Wrea's request but then again it was a significant risk bringing yet more people into the investigation. The fact that Saghir and Wrea were involved at all was an act of happenstance in the first place. Though, it would be easier with someone on board than combing through sensor logs looking for particulate signatures, and Lieutenant Zade brought with her a certain level of access. "I would prefer not, though use your own judgement Ensign" she replied. A yellow bar on the signal interface displaying on the tricorder screen suddenly raised, and P'rel knew it was time to go. "Starfleet have found a signal anomaly in the public comms grid, I must soon leave".

Nayisa gave a nod of understanding. She knew the risk as much as P'Rel did about involving non-intelligence folks, or 'normies' as Nayisa sometimes referred to them. But she also understood the risk P'Rel was simply asking her to take. Entering quarters that were under restricted access already broke several protocols, make it the Captain's quarters and she had a full plate of trouble if something went wrong. She needed to see what she was up against to decide if she needed Zade's help. "Give me 12 hours and I'll get those readings," she confirmed. The benefit of an infiltration assignment being on board the ship was that it involved significantly less preparation. Part of the time frame she gave the Vulcan was to also allow her to relocate. Roaming Free basically meant she was on the run. "Anything else I can do for you?"

The Vulcan looked between the pair once more; "Give the uplink device to Mr Saghir to dispose of. It will explode if handled incorrectly however" she said, with a likely misplaced attempt to alleviate their apprehension.

Sam felt his stomach cramp. P'rel was joking. Right? She was joking...?

Looking back to Ensign Wrea, P'rel tried to convey with as much sincerity as possible; "Whoever put the particulate traces, as I'm sure you will find, in the Captain's quarters would have to know the ship and how to bypass access protocols as well as you and I..." she looked around her once more, as the yellow bar flipped upwards again to the red threshold line on the screen. "Remain alive" she ordered, before pulling the tricorder from the comms terminal and shutting it down. Drawing her cloak in around her tightly once again, the Vulcan disappeared into the rainy Parisian night.

Nayisa simply nodded in response. "You too," she said quietly, after the wall display went black. Looking at the uplink device sitting innocently on the desk for a moment, she then shared a look with Sam. "She was probably kidding, about it exploding I mean..." She glanced at the device again before slowly adding, "... but just to be safe, use the standard procedure for containment of explosives." The last thing she needed was to fill out an incident report and have to explain what happened.

Sam studied Nayisa's face as the comm line closed; he didn't know her well enough to be sure, but it almost seemed like she was worried for the Vulcan ice queen. He looked at the innocuous seeming device on the desk, and inwardly bet that the woman had rigged it to explode on his DNA alone.

"Oh, and Sam?" The silver-haired woman made sure he was looking when she put a finger to her lips, emphasizing that what just happened was to remain a secret. "That conversation never happened. Not a soul, for the Captain's sake. Got it?"

"Yeah..." Sam replied back weakly; "Got it...". One thing he was becoming more and more certain of, he actually was the only one on the ship who thought Kane probably did it...