The Bomb

Posted on Fri Apr 14th, 2023 @ 7:10am by Lieutenant Commander P’rel M.D

Mission: Wrath of the People
Location: Orbital Habitat 24F
Timeline: During the trial
1858 words - 3.7 OF Standard Post Measure

Within the lounge of the small apartment hanging above the Earth, both women could hear as the entrance doors slid open and closed again, a bag dropped to the floor in the hallway out of sight and a cheerful male voice shouted "Hey gorgeous!".

'Gorgeous' was seated on the only sofa in the utilitarian room, an athletic Bolian woman with an impressive adornment of earrings and nose chains. She sat bolt upright with her hands in her lap, wincing as P'rel reaffirmed her grip on the phaser; an unnecessary gesture meant only to remind the Bolian that she had a phaser pointed at her head. From around the corner and out of sight of the front door, the Vulcan waited for the human engineer to enter.

"Babe?" he shouted again, more curiosity in his voice this time. "What er...what's up hun?" he asked, having seen his wife and stridden to her side. A caring hand placed on her shoulder remained in place though tensed with fear, as he followed her eyeline over to the Vulcan. He gasped, and stood in front of his Bolian wife, automatically reaching for his comm badge.

P'rel shook her head slowly at the human and made a human shushing gesture by placing a single finger over her lips. She flicked the phaser to the right a few times, and the engineer in a yellow Starfleet uniform obeyed by taking a single step away. The phaser once again pointed at the Bolian, who had been so valiantly fighting against the tears which now leaked onto her blue cheeks. "Captain Edmund Pearle. Senior Engineer, Starfleet branch of internal investigations..." P'rel stated.

"And you...you're the one from the Athena. That Kane fella's accomplice..." Pearle replied, looking quickly to his wife. Don't, don't worry ishn'allae; it'll be alright..." his voice hardly conveyed confidence.

"Yes. It will" P'rel confirmed. "Comply and dearest Nyl - " the Vulcan deliberately dropped her name - " -your ishn'allae- will not be vaporised". She repeated the Bolian word of affection, using his own words to embed resonance in their dialogue. It was a bluff of course, the phaser was on a low setting; at worst anyone she shot would wake up after a few minutes with one hell of a headache but little else. "At this moment, you are comforting yourself with your professional knowledge that any active weapon will have alerted security, and that a team will have added your residence to their patrol in order to make sure everything is alright...".

P'rel noted the micro-expressions of realisation and fear as they flashed across Captain Pearle's face for the briefest of moments. "You will be disappointed to learn that when you notified the security desk earlier that you would be working from home this evening on a sidearm, they were most accommodating and offered their tactical advice should you need it for whatever you're working on". She paused for a moment to let the words sink in to his brain which was being flooded with fight or flight neurochemicals. "Do not worry, you refused..." she confirmed. "And the sensors alerting security to a weapons discharge are no longer functioning..." she lied, "...so forcing a confrontation to discharge the weapon is not going to work either".

She rose from the corner chair she had been perched in, and gestured for him to sit down next to his wife; "No. The three of us are quite alone". Keeping the phaser trained on the pair, she moved towards the dropped bag in the hallway and moved close enough to toss it to Captain Pearle.

"What do you want...?" the Captain asked, his voice cracking with a mixture of fear and rage. He was a senior officer to be sure, but not a command officer and not someone who was used to this kind of stress.

"Information. Once I have what I need, you have my word that you both will be free to go unharmed" the Vulcan answered truthfully.

"Your word isn't worth much" the wife retorted, "not when you're holding us hostage". To P'rels surprise and a modicum of admiration, the wife had more steely determination in her eyes than her military husband.

"True enough" P'rel agreed, ensuring she stood sufficiently far back from the pair to be able to react if she was rushed; she dropped the phaser into the outer cloak she was wearing. "I will not harm you unless I have to" she said, trying to at least somewhat reassure them. The couple looked nervously at eachother, and exchanged some kind of agreement as if they were telepathic. "Captain Pearle, you are the lead technical investigator on the academy bombing. You have classified technical knowledge on the composition of the explosive device".

Pearle visibly took a moment to weigh his options; "we have not yet determined the composition of the device", he cautiously ventured.

"I respect your attempt to retain classified information sir" P'rel responded, "and whilst it is true that no official identification has yet been confirmed, you have determined the nature of the device and are going to submit your final report tomorrow". P'rel revealed what she knew in an attempt to convince Pearle that it was pointless continuing to lie. For his part, the man sat with a clenched jaw and slowly reddening face. "Captain, I can extract the information from your mind forcibly, however it is an extremely focused process. I would be unable to monitor Nyl here, and would be at risk from her - I would have to neutralise the threat before I began opening your brain and digging through..." she looked him right in the eyes, conveying that was deadly serious.

A blue hand gripped his arm, and his body almost entirely relaxed, his tension dropping into a defeated slouch. "The explosive was a complex of mix of explosives, available for a range of purposes and readily accessible on most starships. Some require a command officer authorisation to access...such as a Captain..." he jabbed, accusingly.

"Go on" P'rel instructed, her absolute attention focused on what the man was going to say next.

"The ignition was most probably Rossium-K, a variable thrust propellant; but this is stable unless exposed to an ionic field, from a pulse generator. No such device was recovered, however that is unsurprising given that a number of people haven't been recovered either..." Pearle practically spat as he finished. He reached into the bag that had been thrown to him and retrieved a PADD, opening it he seemed to jog his memory by looking at his notes.

"Continue..." P'rel ordered him.

Clearing his throat, the engineer appeared to even relax as his mind entered the realm of work and not the threatening situation he found himself in. "The Rossium-K when properly ionised, would have would have created an exponentially expanding runaway ionising field which would then have ignited a compound called Hutzelite-27; this is used in long range impact probes and is normally stable until exposed to ionising radiation, traces of both Rossium and Hutzelite were found. Honestly, that's only enough in small quantities for a much smaller explosion, we believe that Bishop/P 374 was the primary accelerating agent as it is non-oxidising; so it would have been ideal for a small targeted explosion, almost like a shaped charge".

"But the explosion was larger than that..." P'rel countered.

"Yes" Pearle agreed. "Your Captain clearly intended to kill one person, and yet caused a runaway explosion which killed others..."

"The quantities were incorrect?" P'rel queried, not biting the bait the Captain had tried to antagonise her with.

"No" he said, shaking his head. "Without a precise balance of ratios, there would have been no more than a small pop less than a party cracker. There were other trace chemicals at the scene, but they are so degraded that they could be one of several compounds. Kane obviously lacked the technical knowledge to balance the ratios, and added something else to make sure it went off".

"Such as?" the Vulcan asked, trying to simultaneously draw up a list of who could have supplied Rossium, Hutzelete and Bishop compounds.

"Pastorium liquid 342 is my belief" Pearle answered, placing the PADD on the floor and sliding it to her with his foot. "A plasma ignition chemical, used to generate an ionising pulse..." he looked at her as if he wasn't about to complete the puzzle for her.

"To further ignite the Hutzelite..." she whispered, making audible conclusions. "But why? Why include Rossium at all? Why not simply ignite the Hutzelite, and cause the explosion that way?"

"Fire" Pearle shrugged. "The Hutzelite would have ignited for sure, and within a minute or so would probably have ignited the Bishop compound but that's a long time to notice a fire and do something about it. The inclusion of Rossium to catalyse the ionic field, and the Pastorium liquid to have first triggered the Rossium reaction...and all very easily controllable remotely".

P'rel cocked an eyebrow and betrayed her intrigue. "Remotely?"

"A small microwave pulse device, it could have been triggered from anywhere in the system really, assuming it had a powerful enough transceiver..." he shrugged.

"And otherwise?" P'rel enquired.

"You would have had to have been in the auditorium, certainly, but the closer the better. Since Kane was sat on top of it, it was reliable..." Pearle sneered.

"To be sure I understand you correctly Captain. From a PADD, someone activated a microwave pulse device which ignited Pastorium Liquid 342; this in turn created an ionising pulse which triggered a further runaway ionising reaction in the Rossium-k..?" she looked at him, and he nodded his agreement. "The Rossium's runaway reaction then ignited Hutzelite-27, which exploded, and the Bishop/P 374 was intended to chemically contain the explosion by de-oxidising the explosion?"

Pearle breathed in and seemed to recount the words in his head before shrugging in a vaguely affirmative manner.

"But the explosion didn't de-oxidise as planned..." P'rel mused verbally; "but why...?"

Pearle had seemed to completely relax by this point, his mind now firmly engrossed in his work. "Something caused an unanticipated acceleration reaction, it could have been chemical or radiological. An ultritium derivative would be my guess. Ultritium 283 is almost entirely undetectable, and would have been totally burned away; something is missing from the chemical traces at the auditorium, and the total absence of Ultritium is certainly indicative of it's presence...".

P'rel nodded thoughtfully, taking everything in. As she buried the PADD in her cloak, she grabbed the phaser once again. "Thank you Captain. You have been most helpful..."

Pearle stood and the couple's demeanor once again returned to a panic and fear state. "So what now? Now you shoot us?" he demanded, gripping his wife's hand.

"Yes" she replied, rapidly raising the phaser to first drop the standing man, and then a second later the seated woman. No more than ten minutes and they'd be awake, no more than two and security would have entered the apartment. As covertly as she had arrived, the Vulcan made her pre-planned escape and returned to Earth. Paris, this time, she had a call to make...