Foul Play

Posted on Mon May 15th, 2023 @ 11:06pm by Petty Officer 2nd Class Henry Washington & Lieutenant Sturgis O'Connell & Senior Chief Petty Officer Thral Skrit & Petty Officer 1st Class Emon Imon Plex Vexx

Mission: Wrath of the People
Location: Vespae Station: Maintenance Control Room
Timeline: MD07
1269 words - 2.5 OF Standard Post Measure

Henry stood around with the other officers from the Athena and cleared his throat as he read from the PADD in his hand. "The station was attacked a few days ago by two unidentified ships. Sensor data is inconclusive at best. No warp signatures, no transponder readings, not even heat signatures." He scrunched up his face unapprovingly. "Somehow the ships managed to bypass the station's defence grid and open fire before anyone knew what was happening. Shields, weapons, and sensors are all offline and the secondary systems could lose power at any moment."

Henry signed as he put the PADD back down on the work table they were using as a makeshift master systems display console. "We could be dealing with an inside job or the scientists here may just be incompetent." He looked around at the others seeing if they had any more thoughts than he did.

"Or both." Plex's amiable speculation was punctuated by a slight twitch of his nose, a barely concealed grimace that was less of a reaction to the situation and more a complaint about the smell. "Though you'd think the sheer amount of tomfoolery that'd have to go into recording no useful evidence would have seen them kicked out of Bunsen Burner School well before someone started paying them to take a snooze on the job."

Henry snorted before he could help himself. Bunsen Burner School that was good, he would have to remember that one. "Is it likely that some of the Federation's top scientists would mess up so obviously with the sensors?" He asked after composing himself again.

"No sense in speculation without proof to back it," Sturgis stated. He looked to Plex and Skrit. "You two see if you can find anything on the consoles that are working. Storage records, experiment reports, logistical data, whatever you can find that will tell us what they had on the station and why. Maybe from there, we can figure out what they were after. Washington and I can work on restoring power to some of the larger systems."

"First trick is to find one that's working, skipper" Plex clapped the Andorian on the back, content as always to assume camaraderie until proven otherwise. "Time to see what these bunch of blue-shirts did to their home away from home."

Henry nodded, happy to have something to do. "Where do you want me to begin boss?" He was used to working with Lieutenant Leiko, the Betazoid allowing him free rein to trust his instincts of doing what he thought was best. He didn't know O'Connell and the man came across as more structured and so he waited for direction, like a good crewman.

"We'll start over there," he quickly pointed as he walked towards a table that looked like it had at one time been the center of operations for the area. "Let's get it operating and then we can use it to bypass malfunctioning systems and restore main power." He stopped next to the large device and ran his tricorder around, gathering as much information as he could before dropping to the floor to remove a panel. He moved quickly and deftly. each movement exuded a sense of confidence as if he'd done this repair many times before. He flipped a control that would prevent power from entering the device and stood back up to face Henry. "We need to route incoming power from a different EPS conduit and replace a couple of processors. You get started on those processors. I'll handle the EPS conduit. Do not flip the main power line unless it's communicated beforehand. Understood?"

"We don' wanna crispy fried chief do we mucka?" Thral chuckled to the engineer that the boss was speaking to. "'ere guv, I reckon I can pull some resonance readin's outta the main imager...at least give us a scooby what might ov been deleted iv anyfing, watcha reckon?" he asked the bossman.

"Sounds great, do it," Sturgis said though he wasn't entirely sure what he had agreed to. He gathered that the engineer could grab readings from the main imager, but what in the world was a scooby? And why did he keep calling him 'guv'? He shook his head and told himself that once they were back on the ship he'd have to find out what language it was that Thral was speaking and find a way to modify the universal translator code to make it actually sound like real English.

Henry laughed at the Andorian's joke. He had heard a few of his crewmates express that they couldn't understand the blue newcomer, but Henry, being Henry, knew that they just weren't well-read. He got to work on the processors as the Chief had instructed and managed to get them back in alignment but waited until the order came through so that he didn't fry the man. "Ready, when you are, Sir."

"Just a few more minutes and we should be all set," Sturgis leaned out from under the table and looked towards Thral and Plex. "Hows that fact-finding mission going? Find anything else of interest besides those resonance readings?"

"Poor buggers got a rotational menu to make your eyes water, looks like someone ordered more spinach than they had mealtimes to serve it up," Plex observed distractedly before a lull in conversation dragged his furtive gaze upwards and several quick taps of his fingers closed whatever frivolous investigation he'd been pursuing. "Uh, just checking manifest, sir, see if they had any incomings or outgoings that raise red flags."

"Sir, look at this," Henry said to O'Connell. He waited for the older engineer to move over to his workstation before he continued to speak. "I've been reverse engineering some of the damage, you know trying to find the root cause of the system failures. I might be wrong but this looks like a cascading virus in the sensor readouts."

"Interesting," Sturgis replied. "I doubt this could've been introduced to the system remotely. Viruses aren't my strong suit, but I would wager that this one was put here by someone on this station. Excellent find Mr.Washington. Grab any other data you can and we'll send it off to Commander Zora."

Henry nodded. Unlike the chief he was very good at viruses, to him they were just like big puzzles, all the pieces laying there in what appeared to be a sporadic order but when moved around a little, formed a much bigger picture. As he continued his search through the main computer and as more systems came online he saw more of the end result, he could almost taste the cheese at the end of the maze.

Henry's eyes became unfocused as he worked, something he had done since his days back on the moon as a child, looking at one of the ancient magic pictures he was so fond of. A picture within a picture, a deeper meaning beyond the surface level. He could almost see the sequence of events that had brought the Athena here. A cascading virus in the sensors, coming from a faulty power distribution relay, placed in an EPS conduit, adjacent to a replicator materialisation node, carrying a communication subroutine, piggybacked from a transporter energy pattern, sent from a small relay out near the asteroid belt.

Henry frowned as his eyes came back into focus. He opened and closed them a few times until the sting went away. He turned back to face O'Connell. "Sir, I think we need to speak to Commander Zora."