Digging in the Closet: Dusting the Shelves

Tom O'Flagherty '''USS Atlas Shuttlebay Shuttle Thesseus'''

The crew of four tried to get comfortable, but the environmental suits made that next to impossible. When in space, the suits were bulky, but nor heavy and uncomfortable. While in standard Earth gravity, the suits were just a bitch. None of the engineers were comfortable, and a couple, mainly Petty Officer 3rd Class Togon of Bolarus, were complaining. "Isn't there something we could have done with the design of these suits? I mean we can get a starship to bore a hole through space time, but we can't get an EV suit that doesn't chaffe your crotch?"

"You really complain a lot," said Ensign Mason York. "Even for a Bolian." The perpetually grumpy human settled himself, as best he could behind the controls and got the clearance for departure.

The ship had pulled back from the graveyard in order to deploy shuttles so they wouldn't be struck by EM lightning, as the crew had begun to call it. Once deployment was complete, the ship would resume a patrol through the morass to run off pirates and grave robbers. Meanwhile, the shuttles were to pick their way through the wreckage, each starting at different points and coordinating with the other ships on the same mission. York, and his team of engineers were bound for a Sze cargo ship that had been carrying pharmaceuticals. On the priority list, it had been marked as a level one, and so the little shuttle raised its shields, another precaution against the lightning, and zoomed into the tumbling mess at full impulse.

As the shuttle approached the edge of the debris the smaller particles became more visible, their erratic paths shot them through space a much greater speed, careening off of the larger sections of battered ships. "Slow down for the love of whatever god it is you humans worship!" Togon bellowed from the rear.

"That god is called 'money' for me, and it is most pleased with my expediency." York said under his breath. "Next time, you pilot the damn shuttle. Until then, shut up, Petty Officer."

After a spirited collection of maneuvers, the shuttle arrived at its destination, or what was left of it. What once had been a rather large, though bulky cargo ship, was now little more than a floating chunk of cylindrical Swiss cheese. The primary hull was equivalent in length to an Intrepid-class starship, and the scorched surface of the remaining hull had the distinct marks or scorched metal. Only one section looked to be relatively untouched and it bore the name Rrrr'krrrikkk'chk.

Crewman Ortega was the first to speak up as they surveyed the surface damage. "Why was our crew tasked with this salvage, sir?" The young latina held an expression of fear mixed with inquisitive wonder on her Castillian features.

"The Sze in the graveyard don't have the requisite equipment to handle the chemicals on board. If there has been a containment leak, there could be some potentially hazardous mixtures. Make sure you all watch my back." Ensign York responded as he maneuvered the tiny craft to an opening where they could dock. The others laughed, but there had never been a joke intended in his comment, he didn't care whether they lived. It was only his well-being that occupied his mind.

The shuttle gracefully eased up to an auxiliary hatch and docked with just a soft thump. The four-person crew quickly attached their helmets, magnetized their boots, and lit their headlamps before opening the hatch. Inside was a world of scorched twisted metal and floating debris. A severed wing from an adult Sze collided softly with Crewman Ortega’s helmet causing her to screech into the comm system.

“Jesus, Ortega!!! Watch the comms, dammit!” York snapped as he clutched the outside of his helmet.

“I’m sorry, sir, but I wasn’t expecting that.” The pleading look on her face held a great amount of fear. She didn’t want to see the horrors that were waiting deep down in the lower decks of the Sze ship. In her young Starfleet career, she had never even heard of the Sze, let alone seen one. Now here only acquaintance was through the introduction of dismembered corpses.

Without responding York pushed deeper towards the middle decks, the beams of his headlamps fading down the corridor, and the group shuffled along to keep up. The tricorders in their hands scanning rapidly for some kind of access ladder to let them go down a couple of decks. Twenty meters down in the left-hand wall, an access hatch to an auxiliary ladder was cracked open slightly. PO Togon and York got on opposite sides and pulled the damaged doors open, and the moment Ortega’s headlamps illuminated the inside, and ear-splitting howl and flash followed.

York was dazzled by the bright blue light that caused him to lose his footing and begin to float away from the hatch, and if not for Togon's quick reflexes, back down the corridor. Once the Bolian had put his boots back on the deck, the questions began to roll. “What the hell was that? Did anyone get a reading?”

Ortega was frozen in place, staring into the access tunnel where a mangled corpse of Sze floated in the vacuum illuminated by her headlamp. “I think it came from below, sir.”

Togon carefully tagged the body with a transponder for the Sze to come and retrieve the body. Then, he pushed it up the shaft, and started down with the others behind him. “Sir, my HUD is showing no energy signs coming from below, and no life signs. Nothing registered from that flash that I can tell.”

As they arrived at their destination, Togon popped the hatch and approached the scarred doors of the storage hold. The lights of his tricorder reflected in the face plate of his helmet as he stopped and turned to the group. “Sir, I think you need to look at this. These readings are odd.”

York snapped open his tricorder, and held it up next to the Bolian’s. “I don’t see the big deal. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong at all.”

“Exactly, sir.” Togon didn’t understand why the human wasn’t catching on. “There should be chemical readings of some sort, but there’s nothing. The room looks to be completely empty.”

While they had been talking, Ortega and another engineer accessed the manual controls for the doors and forced them open. As the massive containment hatches slid open, and the grinding of metal against metal could be felt through the magnetized boots, everyone’s eyes opened wide at the emptiness in front of them. “Let’s get back to the shuttle. The Sze need to know about this, and they are not going to be happy.”

A post featuring Mason York and the gang.

11-14-2011, 14:35

Jacey Adams

After a few more scares, some which involved floating bodies and others pieces of debris that snuck up on them, Jacey and Peters had finished the ship. It hadn’t been completely horrible, and she thought they’d done a pretty good job salvaging what was left.

“Hey Peters,” Jacey called out, “Where are you?”

A crackling came over the comm

“Peters?”

Currently they were in the remains of the shuttle bay. Their own shuttle was docked in the corner. Peters was supposed to be getting it ready to take off however the shuttle was still dim.

Making her way over Jacey paused as she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. A shiver went down her spine and she shook slightly,”Okay...” She scanned the area again, looking for someone or something that could cause such an effect. Out of the corner of her eye she thought there was a flash briefly from a console on the wall.

“That’s impossible. This ship has no power,” Jacey moved over to the wall. The uneasy feeling still hung in the air. If it was possible the air almost felt alive, moving around her making it more difficult to navigate than usual.

Again she saw a flash and this time it seemed to jump out at her. It missed but narrowly. Jacey’s feet halted and she looked towards the shuttle. Backing up, not taking her eyes off the weird console, Jacey moved towards the open door of the small craft.

“Peters?”

She could see him sitting in the pilot’s seat. However he didn’t turn to her when she called. Entering the shuttle she reached over and pressed the button that shut the door. Nothing happened, the computer didn’t seem to even acknowledge the command. That’s when Jacey realized the lights on the console were dead.

Her hand moved to Peters shoulder and he slumped down onto the floor, partially landing in her lap.

The scream held in her throat. This wasn’t the time for dramatics. Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath she looked down into the still face of Peters. To her relief he was still breathing, although it was shallow and from what she could tell the lights on his suit were off as well. Which meant his oxygen wasn’t cycling.

Jacey tapped her chest, =/\=Adams to the Atlas. We need an emergency transport out of here.=/\=

=/\=Where’ your shuttle?=/\=

=/\=It’s dead and my partners suit is malfunctioni-=/\= The console off the room began to glow again. The sparks arched out and reached for the shuttle,=/\=Get us out of here now damn it!=/\=

The blue haze surrounded them and Jacey held her breath as they vanished from the shuttle just as it began to glow as bright as the console.

“Next time,” The transporter operator said with a tilt of his head, “Try saying please.”

Jacey’s eyes rolled and she quickly unlatched Peter’s helmet, allowing him to breath in the safe air of their ship. He instantly responded and Jacey couldn't help but hug him. The doors opened and a small group of medics appeared. As they moved him off to sickbay Jacey swore she saw a small arch jump from his suit to the doors as they closed.

11-20-2011, 21:40

Edward Pellew

Edward and Tall were working feverously on figuring out what this small shuttle was. The small party they had come from had overtaken the tiny craft. It had emitted a large signature that was the size of a galaxy class star ship. When the team had overtaken the vessel, it was occupied by a pigmy Ferrengi. Ensign Banninga had escorted the creature to the shuttle and proceeded to the Atlas. Edward and Tall were not far from the Atlas when the vessel just stopped. Tall was beginning to get frustrated. “Why the hell wont it go? It just stopped in the damn middle of damn space!”

Edward poked his head out from under the console. “Oy, watch you language. Shouting at the old girl won’t make her jump on any faster.”

“Well, what freaking happened? I cant make out any of these console readings.”

Edward wiped sweat out from his forehead and just sighed, “Well I cant either I’m just winging it.”

Edward fiddle some more and suddenly the vessel jolted, “There I think I got it so we can at least get to the ship.”

11-22-2011, 10:16

Edward Pellew After what seemed like an endless eternity, the tiny shuttle finally reached the Atlas. From then, Tall disembarked and Pellew finished securing the shuttle. Tall shook Pellew’s hand. “Well Pellew, hopefully we’ll see you around the mess.”

Edward returned his grip, “sure thing, and come by and will break out that latest shipment I just got.”

Tall walked off and Edward shut everything down. Edward walked off of the platform and turned and looked at the shuttle.

“What are you? And how in the name of queen anne can you emit that much energy?”

Thinking on this question he went to find the one person who would probably know.

Main Engineering Edward walked into the main engineering section where the power grid was. There standing next to the warp core was Senior Chief Billy Sunday.

“Top of the morning to you Chief!”

“And the remainder of the day to you, you sniveling little Englishman.”

“Aww, much love to you as well.”

The Chief smiled, and turned back to the core. “Did you bring it?”

Edward pulled out a round cylinder, “Here it is, right out off the boat!”

The Chief picked it up and opened it and pulled out a long stogie, bit off the end and stuck it in his mouth.

“So my young crewman, What can I do for you?”

In his best cockney Pellew responded, “Lawd above! I got a real puzzler ov a problem. , innit.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“We got a shuttle we took out in the pitch black. Here’s the kicker, the sombitch is tiny. Me and Tall could bareley both fit in the cockpit comfortable but we found a real Connaught Ranger hiding in it. The thing was a pygmy Ferrengi.”

The Chief raised his brow, “So what do you need me for?”

“The shuttle was emitting energy that was the size of a galaxy class starship.”

Sunday seemed to become interested. “So what are you waiting for? Shoe me to it.”

Hanger Bay “This is quite a fricken amazing piece of engineering,” the chief said.

“Well Chief, What do you think?”

The chief scratched his head, “Well my friend you are lucky to be alive. This bitch is armed to the teeth with subatomic weapons, subspace torpedoes and phaser banks that rival the Atlas. I wonder why he didn’t destroy you shuttle?”

Edward felt his spine tingle. “Blimy, thank my lucky stars.”

“Further more Pellew, the emission you saw was a device attached to the impulse drive that intensifies the signature. The shield on this thing is weak which explains the device and the weapons. It could kick our ass but if we were to get one good shot he’d have been done with.”

As they walked out of the bay Sunday went toward Engineering and said, “Meet me here at 0000 and we’ll do a little late night engineering.”

Edward nodded and went toward his berth to catch a quick nap.

11-24-2011, 23:26

Gerhardt Rahner

'''USS Atlas Bridge'''

The crew of the Atlas had seen better days, and it was showing on the faces around the bridge. As though a creepy mission of salvaging a graveyard from the Xul war weren't bad enough, the Captain and XO were missing, no leads had come up on where they might be, and reports were coming in from most of the shuttles of all manner of strange shit going on in the field. Apparently, there had even been an injury, one of Gerhardt's engineers.

"It's enough to make a man crazy," whispered a calm voice that immediately drove fear down Gerhardt's spine like a thick rod of steel. Not this, not now! he thought. "Aw, Gerhardt, you don't sound happy to see me."

"I said nothing," he muttered through gritted teeth.

"What's that, sir?" asked Lt. jg Harrison, a young woman at the tactical station. She had taken over for Wexall when he was called away from the bridge to handle the situations with some of the shuttles and apparently, her hearing was much better than Wexall's.

"Hm? I said nossing, nossing," Gerhardt responded. "I will be in my, er, I mean, the ready room."

Without waiting for a reply, he stood and walked quickly through the door just off the bridge. Harrison watched him go curiously. She turned to the enginering station, currently manned by Mott, the Bolian in charge of propulsion. "Is he always that... tetchy?" she asked him quietly.

"I've always found most humans to be a bit tetchy, as you say, but the Chief..." he considered his commander a moment, "Recently he has seemed a bit more on edge."

Main Engineering

Ayla was in way over her head, though her infamous stony face would never let that show. She had stood beside Gerhardt in the pit for months now, offering opinions, support, and advice, and she felt that she'd gained a good grasp of the game. But standing there alone, trying to keep tabs on everything and provide answers to problems before they occured, she was starting to understand why Commander Rahner kept an air of looseness around him.

"Keep me informed of the situation with the shuttle that's lost power," she ordered the ops officer on duty. "What are we with the commander search?"

The ops officer only looked at her and shook his head slightly, indicating a general feeling of hopelessness. Ayla sighed heavily. I wonder how Gerhardt's handling the seat of power?

She tapped her commbadge. "Cressida to bridge."

=/\=Mari, here.=/\=

"Lt. Mari? Where's Commander Rahner?"

=/\=Just went to the ready room. Do you need him?=/\=

"No, that's alright. I was just... um, just wanted a sitrep."

=/\=About the same. Ayla, how's the Chief been lately? I know that heart thing was a while ago, but has he shown any signs of relapse? Maybe some psychological damage?=/\=

Ready Room

As soon as the doors closed behind him, Gerhardt rounded on the hallucinatory woman. "What the hell are you doing here?" he hissed at her.

"Is that any way to speak to a superior officer?" she asked haughtily, raising her chin and poking out her right shoulder. The four full pips of a captain seemed to catch the light, though it unnerved Gerhardt that it caused no glare in his eye, highlighting the illusion of a woman in uniform in front of him.

He trembled a bit before sinking into the chair nearest him. "What the hell are you doing here?" he repeated, though the conviction dropped out of his voice. "It occurs to me that I should report this to Dr. Ulrika and have myself removed from duty."

"That would be a distinctly bad idea right now, Gerhardt," Rand said in a consoling voice. She crouched down next to him and used a knuckle to raise his face, looking him full in the eyes. "You're so close to solving this thing. Don't give up on me now."

"Give up on you?" A derisive laugh escaped him. "It seems like the Captain and Commander Vaughn are the ones I need to not give up on. Not some conjuration of my cracked mind."

Rand sighed heavily. "Gerhardt, your mind isn't cracked. It's just being pushed past limits it's never had to deal with before. Trust me, your mind is working fine. Hell, your mind is working better than fine. You're just projecting your capacity for intellectual reasoning and deduction into an immaginative extrapolation of the activity normally retained within those parts of the brain devoted to split-think and internal monologue, especially the corpus callosum."

Gerhardt gawped at her. "I do not recall being a psychologist."

"You took three terms of psych at the Academy. Standard officer training," she said as though it didn't matter. "Though, I don't think you ever read anything like that in a textbook. That's more of that imaginative extrapolation you're so good at."

He considered this for a moment, but wasn't terribly relieved that he couldn't see any holes in the logic.

Main Engineering

"Unless you count a general lack of concern for his own basic human needs of sleep and food," Ayla replied, "which I don't because, well, he's an engineer, the Chief's mental fit as a fiddle."

No response came as Lt. Mari considered this. Ayla started to get concerned; surely Gerhardt wasn't cracking that much under pressure. "Why do you ask?"

=/\=Hm? Oh, just, someone up here heard him muttering to himself and came to me out of concern.=/\=

"Probably just thinking out loud. He's done that as long as I've known him, especially with big problems." But it had been happening more and more since the surgery, she purposefully didn't say. If there had been a serious psychological break with the Chief, surely she would have noticed.

Ready Room

"Okay, so instead of muttering to myself," Gerhardt was trying to grapple something out of all this that sounded a little less crazy, "my self is muttering to me. How does this help me find the commanders?"

"Not a bad way of thinking about it," Rand said, looking disappointed that a padd on the ready room desk failed to respond to her touch. "And I think this would be a good time to review the data we have on the problem."

"Review the data? Right. Review the data," Gerhardt muttered. The commanders had been on their way to perform a routine inspection when they were last heard from, during which the ship was struck by an EM phenomenon that- "caused us all to have so much fun," Rand finished the thought. "So..." so they were either no longer on board, "as the computer so merrily keeps suggesting," Rand interjected, to which Gerhardt added, "but we've already established as near impossible," or they were somewhere between the ready room and deuterium cryo-storage on deck 15. "They are obviously not here or on the bridge," Gerhardt muttered, "Yeah, that would've been awkward. Imagine you sitting in the captain's lap all that time," Rand agreed, and deck 15 has already been searched. So what detour could they have taken between here and there? For that matter, why would they have taken a detour? The most direct route would have been the turbolift access off the bridge, and there's another access just down the corridor from the cryo-storage. "And I used the turbolift access on the bridge when I came up from Engineering, and the search team that hit deck 15 used that access," Gerhardt's finger pointed randomly at two opposite sides of the room as though indicating places on a map.

"You're so close, Gerhardt," Rand exclaimed. "I can feel it! It's right there on the tip of your brain."

"They are stuck on a turbolift?" Gerhardt guessed, but immediately shot the idea down. Rand dropped into a chair, exasperated. "Come on, Gerhardt! You're smarter than that!" Not stuck on the turbolift, stuck... somewhere...

Gerhardt gasped sharply, suppressing an urge to yell at Rand's face, which had appeared nose-to-nose with his. "Come on, Gerhardt. Why was I there? Why was I there?"

"Why were you wh-" He stopped. The previous 24 hours seemed to playback through his head at warp speed. He'd been having a bad day, something felt out of kilter, but he couldn't put a finger on it. The music of the ship, the miniscule vibrations that told him what was happening in the ship before the sensors could, had always felt a little flatter than he thought it should have. It went against everything he had read about the Atlas, and it was just the smallest difference, something only an accomplished, well-experienced maestro of starships would notice. Given the right conditions on the right day, it would be enough to make him irritable.

And he'd ignored it, just let it go on unchecked until it became a grinding point on his nerves. But the implications of such a difference... an oversight that went unnoticed by everyone, brushed aside, just as he'd brushed it aside, by every person who should have seen it rubber-stamping their approval of a bone-headed mistake like that. But even if it was true, now was hardly the time to think of such trivialities, not when he should be focused on finding the commanders.

Gerhardt stopped breathing.

Bridge

"Well, if you think of anything, let me know," Lt. Mari concluded her conversation.

=/\=Will do, Ma'am. Cressida out.=/\=

Johanna sighed deeply. Something was up with Commander Rahner, even if the people who worked closest to him everyday couldn't spot it. The door to the ready room swished open and Gerhardt ran through them looking frantic. He flew up the platform where the Captain's chair sat and grabbed Lt. Mari's shoulders as she rose to see what was going on.

"Ich fand sie!"

11-27-2011, 20:46

Tom O'Flagherty '''USS Atlas Lost Deck'''

The doors to the lift had closed and it had started moving again not five minutes after Tom and Chris had walked into the midst of skeletal framing that was their missing deck. They had both sprinted back in hopes of diving through the doors, but they closed just as Tom's shoulder collided with the sealed portal, sending him onto his back.

After rubbing his sore shoulder, Tom and Chris started exploring. The beams and ribs that made the supports for the secondary hull curved in from the ceiling to the deck. Some of the walls had been assembled, but most of the area was completely open, save for some light framework where rooms should be. Light from the Epsilon Indi star brought the image of the graveyard in through the windows to partially illuminate the are, but for the most part, it was very dark. "I don't think I've ever felt more vulnerable to space than I do right now. How the hell does this happen?"

“Because McKinnley Station is staffed by a useless crew of aweful jackasses.” Chris snapped. “I’m going to sue someone over this.” Moving threw a few of the open beams toward a window he brushed aside a bundle of uninstalled wires. Well I hope this wasn’t suppose to be attached to anything important. He peered out the window for several moments before letting out an uncomfortable sigh. “I don’t see anything, well maybe one of our shuttles heading to a derelict ship.” He squinted trying to make out more details. “Well, if regular salvage ops are in progress that means two things, one - the ship must be fine and two - no one knows we are gone.”

“I bet the group we were supposed to be meeting will notice that we never arrive. At some point our absence should be noticed.” While Chris stared out the windows, Tom moved through the area that was supposedly a room. In the corners, he noticed the empty sockets where internal sensors would have been installed, and his heart sank. “Of course, without those sensors installed, they may never know where to look.”

“This is absolutely unbelievable.” Chris mumbled. “An entire deck, lost.” Walking back over to the tubrolift he noticed the control panel was also not installed. “What about Jefferies tubes? They go everywhere on the ship?”

The spark of recognition and hope flickered in both their eyes, and they quickly moved across the towards a main rear junction. "I don't understand why no one has noticed a missing deck when they've been crawling through these tubes doing repairs." The corridor was dark and the section of wall panelling that would normally cover the access hatch was missing. Tom knelt down and started looking for the controls, but the control pad was missing. Then, the young captain tore through a bundle of unconnected wires to find the manual lever, but it was also not there. In disgust he threw a handful of the wires across the floor. "Got any other ideas?

A JP with Chris Vaughn...TBC

11-28-2011, 22:26

Katie Banninga



Edward couldn't sleep. maybe it was the music playing in the room or his berth-mates’ poker game that took the desire from him. he sat up and scoured at the clock.

“Ten minutes! Damn this insomnia.”

He rolled from his rack and sat up. He pulled a tumbler from the ledge over his bunk and fished the bottle of whiskey from his foot locker. he poured a healthy glass and picked up the butt of a cigar very nearly finished. He re-lit it and sat back.

The smoke filled his lungs and the brown liquid seemed to soothe his soul. He finished his glass and stood to his feet.

“This doesn't make sense of the man in the moon!”

His bunk-mates paused and turned to look at him. One of them spoke up.

“Come to join us have you?”

Edward ran out the door without so much as a by your leave. He ran down to the security offices and walked through the doors.

“Cadet Banninga? Does any one know where I might find her?”

“Looking for me?” Katie said, she had been standing in front of the replicator when Edward walked in. She grabbed her coffee and walked towards him.

Edward walked over to her.

“ma’am, have you talked to him yet? There is something very fishy. First he puts out a projection of power knowing the ruddy old thing was gonna be detected, second the shuttle is armed like a dooms day machine with an engine and a cockpit and let us board her with out so much as an alarm and lastly, when he attacked us it was as if it was for show. The whole damned thing don’t make a bit o sense.”

“About that, I was just finishing my report on the event and got to the same conclusion. If you like, you can join me? Maybe we can get some more answers.” Katie said.

Edward smiled, “Absolutely show me to him.”



As they walked in to the Brig she saw the prisoner sitting in the holding cell. When they had brought him in a couple hours a go he was still unconscious. The medical team that had waited for them upon arrival said that he didn’t have any complications from the stunning shot.

He looked Ferengi, only than a couple centimeters shorter. She guessed that he wasn’t much more than one meter. He stood up when he saw them. “Finally, can you tell me where I am and what I'm doing here. That guy” and he pointed to the sentry officer standing at the console in the brig. “won’t say anything.”

Katie gave the sentry guard a signal and he released the forcefield. She entered and said “You’re on the Federation Starship Atlas. You’re in the brig because you attacked to Starfleet Officers” The Ferengi sat down. “So, let’s get started at the beginning. Who are you?” she asked him.

“I’m Bena” he said coy.

“that ship you were on, was it yours? Katie asked.

The little Ferengi sat stoned faced unflinching. Edward leaned in and whispered to Katie.

“I'm gonna try something.”

Edward walked to Bena and picked him up by his throat and held him up agianst the wall.

“Listen you Ferengi Imp Bastard, If you don't tell us what the hell you were doing out in the black I’ll rip your eye from you ficken skull!”

While this Ferengi was clearly different in many ways from the others a fear that was common seemed to abound.

Bena blurted out, “Do what you will we are all dead. They are coming........They’re comming.”

Katie stepped forward and stepped beside the men. “How do you mean? Who is coming?”

The creature just looked at the two and with seemingly great reluctance, he said “The Whisper.”

Edward raised his eyebrow, “What the hell is the Whisper?”

Bena closed his Eyes and dove into the tale.

“Some years back I began trading with an Andorian outpost less than a week from here. It was small but very lucrative. They dealt with ancient rarities and in one of my trades I found a box and the box held an old map to a world of far away. In the map it mentions its inhabitants as the whisper. little did I know that it was a dormit ancient evil. I bought the ship you captured, armed it and went looking for riches fueled by greed matched by no Ferengi before me.”

The Ferengi stopped and opened his eye, “I awoke them, and we’re all doomed.”

Katie sighed “Right, you don’t really think we believe this. It sounds like a ghost story”

“No, It’s not some story, I’m serious. I still have the map, it’s in the ship” Bena replied.

Katie looked at Edward and said. ”Have you found a map?”

Edward shrugged, “Not bloody likely, of course I hadn't looked for any hidden compartment yet I’ve been looking at his systems. Why don't we just string em up by his great big ears until he tells the truth?”

The imp screamed at the two, “You stupid, foolish children. Believe me don't believe me but please kill me now! I stole the seat and it or they or whatever is coming for me to kill me!”

Edward puzzled, “What seat?”

“There is a smugglers door to a hidden compartment and there is a chair I took from what looked like a deserted temple. I took it to the Andorian station. They didn't want the chair but bought some of the other trinkets and now they are all dead.”

“So, let me get this straight. We’re going to die because you stole a chair?” Katie interrupted the Ferengi.

“No, Because its here. Look for the Station I’ll give you the Coordinates and the Andorians have a report on it. Go see the chair and find the report, see then if I'm lying?

Edward looked over to Katie, “Ill be in the shuttle bay,” and walked out.

“Hé, wait for me.” Katie said and walked after Pellew. “How serious do you think this story is?”

“Beats the hell out of me but the chair may give it merit. Computer are there any records of a race called the Whisper?”

The computer responded, “ two entries found.”

“Computer send the information to my padd. Katie would you find the report? That would give it even more merit and meet at the shuttle.”

“Good idea. See you in a bit.” Katie said before she went down to Main Communications to get the report.



Edward entered the the shuttle. He started checking every edge and every crack. He found nothing. The inside was clearly Ferengi, he even had a bust of the Grand Nagus. Edward pulled his pipe out of the back of his pocket and lit the pre-stuffed bowl of tobacco.

He walked over to the bust and felt it. The nose seemed to give so he pressed it. When he did a floor compartment opened up. In the floor was gold pressed latinum, relics and a very decorative chair.

Edward puffed his pipe, “Shit.”

When Katie walked in the shuttle and she immediate saw that Pellew had found the hatch. “Ah, I see you found it. I got the report. There have been two ship that report having been attacked by a people they describe as Ghost. Listen to this” Katie said and read a part of the report out loud. “they attacked out of the blue, without any kind of warning. They were able to shut everything down, weapons, shield, everything.”

Edwards took another drag from his pipe and rubbed his eyes, “What next?”

“The best part if you ask me, listen to this. They move like a shadow, one moment they are here, the next they are gone.” Katie continued. “It really sounds like a ghost story. What have you found there” she asked as she tried to maneuver through the small ship to the hatch.

“Well, besides a good bit of gold we have a chair that looks almost like King Tut’s throne. I had a a brief chance to view the information we have on the whisper and apparently they are almost like a virus. The roam then return to their resting place and lay dormant for a few hundred years. According to an ancient text the a some people began bringing gifts and the year the chair was added they were supposed to revive and had not until recently.”

“And now Bena revived them because he stole the chair? I’m not getting a good feeling about this” Katie said.

“So it would seem. But there has got to be some other explanation for all of this though I’m drawing a blank on what it could be.”

“Maybe we should go to a senior with all this stuff”

“I agree but the question is where can we find one who is free? They are all looking for the CO and XO.”

Edward looked at his time piece, “Almost midnight I expect Chief Sunday to poke his head around here soon.”

No sooner had the words left Pellew’s mouth then did Chief Sunday walk boisterously in.

“Pellew I see your early, lets break this bitch open and see what we can find.”

Edward nodded and walked back into the shuttle. The chief nodded at Cadet Banninga.

“Cadet, nice to see you .”

Edward stuck his head out, “Chief, stop flirting and come help me.”

“Shut it Pellew, gotta get my kicks somehow.”

Katie ignored the discussion between the men and followed them in the shuttle.

“Are you going to tell our little problem, or do you want me to?” Katie already got used to the fact that Pellew took the lead in this investigation, although she outranked him.

“No Ma’am its all you.”

“Ok, Quick summery” Katie said and looked at Chief Sunday. “We found a shuttle that was emitting the same amount of energy as a Galaxy class ship. There was a mini Ferengi in it who says he was running for a ghost like race who he disturbed. They are now after us, because he’s on the Atlas. Here take a look at this, this are some reports about encounters of other Starfleet ship with the species.” and she gave the padd to him.

The Chief scanned the reports, “Well missy, I looks like we may have possible encounter to prepare for.”

Pellew chimed in, “I want to see if we can increase the shields somehow. I think this vessel would be a huge asset if it could even have the shield capacity of one of our shuttles.”

Chief Sunday agreed, “Yeah this things shields only have the capacity for entering and exciting out of orbit. I have a feeling though he had to sacrifice defense for firepower.”

The three got to work, Pellew was in the main cockpit trying to check the power grids to see what shield modifications could be done and the chief was double checking the propulsion.

As they were working on the shields the entire shuttle lurched to port. Katie fell down to the ground, along with everything else that wasn’t attached. She grabbed a beam and pulled herself up. When she looked out of the shuttle door, she noticed it wasn’t just the shuttle that moved, but it seamed that the entire ship had. She walked over to the cockpit where Sunday and Pellew were working. “What the beep was that,” she said to them.

Edward picked himself up from the floor. He tapped the console and did an initial scan. The alarms of the Atlas went off.

“Was does the scan say? Is it an attack or just one of those EM disturbance?” Katie asked them.

“The scan is inconclusive,” Chief Sunday replied. “It can be both, I can’t tell.”

Edward turned to Katie.

“Lets get to the bridge ASAP, I think this might be company!”

“Good idea” she replied.

[A JP with Edward Pellew] 12-07-2011, 10:44

Edward Pellew While on the way to the Bridge, Edward stopped and paused. He looked at Katie for a second.

“Ill meet you at the bridge I gotta run up to the enlisted flat for a tick.” She nodded and turned to go back toward the bridge. Edward ran to his bunk picked up a certain PADD and grabbed a wad of dip and ran out. As he rounded the corner, he was almost knocked over by Lt Lebowski.

“Hold on young blood. I need to talk to you.”

Edward was stunned. “Yes sir”, he said.

“I know you are in hurry but I have a proposal for you. I noticed you in that interrogation room and it was a little heavy handed but it worked. By the way, what have you got there?”

Edward glanced at the PADD, “Thank you sir, well its some information about a sector from my brother and my distribution route. I had him send me information that was not in the database all ready and there is quite a lot. We have a couple of cigar factories and whiskey refineries on earth and we sell across two quadrants now.”

Lt Lebowski raised his eyebrow, “Ever thought of Star Fleet Intel?”

“Yes sir, Id love to one day.”

The Lieutenant crossed his arms, “Well here is my proposal I need another security cadet because we are short and we need an interrogator. Lt Mari has protested strongly so you will be doing double duty in OPS and working for me at the same time. Plus we’ll see what we can do about that Intel part. Until we have a chance and find the CO I have been given permission to make you an acting cadet until the CO can ratify it. Will you be ok with the work load?”

Edward squeaked a yes sir. Lebowski took his crewman insignia and gave him cadet bars and walked off.

Edward ran to meet Katie at the lift. He got there and looked at her and said, “well shit.”

12-08-2011, 13:20

Jacey Adams

Atlas Main Engineering Room

“Hey...” Jacey called out as her hand lightly touched the shoulder of the man in front of her, “I...don’t mean to be rude but I can’t remember your name.”

“b`lyad'!” Petty Officer Anton Yeltsin almost leaped out of his skin, so busy was he with trying to subvert the source of the ship’s problems, “I- Don’t you know not to sneak up on peoples like dat?”

“Mmm I do but I’m not the best at remembering sometimes. Hence my lack of your name?” Jacey offered a smile, “Which is?”

“Yeltsin, Anton. Petty Officer First Class.”

“Well then, Yeltsin, I have a random question to ask you.” She shrugged, “Not meaning to pry but - have you by any slight chance...maybe seen anything weird in the electrical stability of the ship?”

Yelstin dropped his head and spat toward the floor, “eto piz`dets,” He grunted, “There is something - how you say - lit..er...alley? Eating the power created by the annihilation of matter and antimatter in the warp core.”

“There’s something in the warp core?” She paused, “But that would make sense. It followed me off an abandoned ship. It drained the power in my partner’s suit and I’m pretty sure it’s been living without power for awhile. The warp core’s a buffet in that case...” Jacey stopped, “Am I sounding crazy?....”

“Da,” Anton agreed, “Any ideas on how to get it out?”

“I wish we could see it,” She moved over to the core, “Can you lower the intensity of the core? Maybe bring it out a little?”

“Not without it eating the little power that is currently going to life support,” Yeltsin tapped some instructions into the console he was working on a moment before, “But I can do somezing better.”

“Somezing better?”

A dark grimace flickered across the Petty Officer’s face, “`suka” He muttered while inputting the commands to realise his idea.

“Hey!” She slapped his arm, “I know that one!”

“De Warp Core,” Yeltsin ignored her indignation, “contains reactions that creates light almost a million times more powerful than our Zun. I can increase the ‘mixture’ of matter and antimatter particles entering de reaction chamber and your creature will light up like Christmas tree.” “I love Christmas, “Jacey grinned, “Let’s do it. Or more...you do it and I’ll watch. “

“You like to watch uh?” Yeltsin grinned.

“Mmmm keeps my hands clean,” She winked.

Anton couldn’t help but let that grin widen as he set to bombarding the reaction chamber with a more ‘rich mixture’ of particles. In essence what he was doing wasn’t all that dissimilar from the Air/Fuel mixture control his aviator ancestors would have been familiar with during The Great Patriotic War. That creature only seemed to be consuming a certain amount of energy, so with enough excess...

“There!” He cried out, “Look for shadow!”

“Holy...” Jacey covered her mouth, “It’s grown.” The small ribbon she’d seen leaping out of her partners suit was nothing compared to the long, winding entity in the core. With each eruption it moved, as if swimming in the matter.

Yeltsin found himself startled for the second time that day when warning klaxons began to wail throughout Engineering, “Ahhhh!” He screamed as he frantically returned the mixture to normal. As soon as that was achieved, the klaxons stopped.

“He did not enjoy dat!”

=/\=Jacey...it’s Rebecca. Are you in engineering?”=/\=

The voice caught her off guard and she tapped her badge, =/\=Yeah? Why?=/\=

“The powers out on deck six....”

“Out?” She looked at Yeltsin.

“Out. For now.” Anton confirmed, “But I can see fluctuations on other areas too. This is unstable.”

“Okay so you can stabilize it right?” Jacey offered a smile, “I mean, it’s just a few buttons to organize...right?”

Yelstin looked at her apologetically, “I do not know...”

“Oh great. We pissed it off.”

=/\=Powers back on....=/\= Rebecca said again. Jacey’d forgotten the channel was still open.

=/\=Uhhh that’s good....=/\=

=/\=Although now deck eleven says its out...=/\=

=/\=Go make yourself useful Becx! =/\= Jacey close the channel, “ Okay so it’s moving decks?”

“I think we can expect dis to move across Decks,” Yeltsin sighed, “It could be any deck. I can’t say which will be affected and when. I’m sorry.”

“We need to tell the Chief...” Jacey sighed, “At least the power going out on a few decks isn’t the worst that could happen.”

Anton gasped, “Don’t say dat! You’ll curse us all!”

“Bah! I don’t believe in curses.” She shrugged, “I’ll go find the Chief. Lemme know if that...thing...does anything else.”

12-19-2011, 19:41

Gerhardt Rahner

Bridge

After several minutes of excited shouting (through most of which Gerhardt's modified commbadge mercifully employed the universal translator), sitting, and standing back up again, Lt. Mari finally got Lt. Commander Rahner to calmly explain his theory.

"The missing deck," he said wild-eyed. "It is not a fluke, but the answer!"

Johanna tried to keep her voice soothing as she asked, "What missing deck?"

"The one that I received three reports on just before all this happened. Look." He sat in the Captain's Chair and punched in some commands. The main viewscreen switched from the ship's forward view of the depressing graveyard to the Engineering MSD, with a top-down view above a cross-section view of the ship in blue (showing all systems clear and functional) and each deck labeled.

Gerhardt pointed dramatically at the screen. "The deck count right now reads 18 decks, but that is because I changed the deck count from Main Engineering this morning after receiving reports, one of them from you, about the deck count being off."

"Oh, right," Johanna mused, an eyebrow raised in a smirk. "This morning when you gave one of my crewmen bloody hell for delivering a report."

She let a brief pause sink into the pained expression on Gerhardt's face. "That report?" "Yes, that one," Gerhardt tried to answer over her and move on.

"Riiight," Johanna weighed the intensity of Gerhardt's claimed discovery against the sick pleasure she was getting from making him squirm. "Ok, so the deck count was off. How exactly does that help us find the Captain and XO?"

Gerhardt sighed. "Because, it would seem that I acted too hastily. There is no evidence that the Captain and Commander left the ship, either willingly or otherwise, therefore they must still be here somewhere. We cannot raise them on comms or find them with internal sensors, so wherever they are the computer does not register it as part of the ship. If the deck count originally said 19 decks but the systems all read 18 decks, then that means that either the deck count was a typo or there is a 19th deck that the computer also does not register as part of the ship."

As he spoke, Johanna's face lit up with understanding. "So they're right here, somewhere right under our noses. But if the computer doesn't register this missing deck on the sensors, how are we going to find them?"

"Incoming!" a cry rang out from Tactical, giving everyone just enough warning to grab something solid before the whole ship rocked hard to port.

"What the hell was that?" Gerhardt shouted, sliding into the Captain's Chair. Theories about the location of the Commanders were shoved aside by a commanding instinct which only took a moment to adjust from commanding Main Engineering to commanding the entire Atlas.

Somewhere between the Shuttlebay and the bridge

As they were running towards the bridge there was another big shake. "This is definitively not an EM surge," Katie thought out loud. "They never strike that soon after each other."

Edward and Katie ran from the shuttle bay towards the bridge. Edward looked over at Katie.

"Damn I got to lay off the pipe."

The two ran to the lifts, "Alright here we go."

As they stepped out of the elevator Katie was stunned for a moment. She hadn't been on the bridge before, only on the holodeck. It was huge. She noticed Commander Rahner sitting in the Captain's chair.

"Commander, we have a problem" she said as she walked to him.

"Damn right we do," Gerhardt said loudly. To the bridge at large he yelled, "Shields up! Damage report!"

He turned to look at Banninga and Pellew as the reports were quickly compiled. "We are in the middle of a second EM discharge, our commanding officers are missing, and two cadets from security show up on the bridge to tell me there is a problem," he summarized quickly. "Well... shit."

Edward spoke up, "Apparently its some old ancient evil wats got its nickers in a twist and has decided to destroy anybody who aids and abeds the old geezer we got down the hatch."

Gerhardt tried to make sense of this, realized he was missing some pertinent details, and asked, "What?"

"Yesterday we found a ship with a Ferengi in it. When we interrogated him he told us about the Whisper. An ancient race. He stole a relic, some chair from a temple, and woke the whisper by that. Now they are after us." Katie said.

Gerhardt took a moment to digest all of this. "So we have an ancient, evil, and mysterious race attacking us because of a greedy Ferengi," he stated as plainly as possible. "Would I be wrong in assuming they are the cause for the EM disruptions?"

Edward turned and smiled at Katie.

"See, he's a commander you know. Yes sir the old boy in irons said the Andorians had a run in with the buggers because they was holdin some merchandise and now they're floatin around the black lacking life. We pulled the report from the Andorian Defense Network."

Edward handed it to him. Gerhardt looked over the report and mused out loud, "I flew in an Andorian freighter years ago. The shields on that thing never could hold up to an EM storm. But that was... a long time ago. It seems like they would have updated their systems since then."

"I haven't got time to fully analyze the whispers weapons, but it looks like they're using the electromagnetic discharges from the debris field to maximize their weapons." Katie replied as she walked to the tactical station to further analyze the info. "May I" she said to the tactical officer.

Gerhardt looked over Katie's shoulder as she ran the analysis. "The good thing about these attacks is that our shields can take most of the damage and what gets through the overload is negligible. And if the timing remains consistent, then we should be okay for several more attacks. Unfortunately, the shields were not designed to overload so often. Eventually the overload capacitors are going to burn out and the generators will take the full force of the discharge."

He paused to think for a moment. "We do not have a fix on their location yet, ja? Cadet Banninga, help tactical find some way to locate the Whisper and finish that analysis of their weapons. Cadet Pellew, I need you to work with Engineering. Figure out how many more attacks we can handle and find some way to boost the systems. We need to hold out as long as possible until we know what we are dealing with."

"Hold on," Katie shouted as another discharge shook the the ship again. Her fingers flew over the tactical console. "I got it. At least I think. Those discharges look like old fashion lightning". Katie thought out loud.

"Lightning? What, like a lightning storm in space?" Gerhardt asked incredulously. "That is impossible."

"That's what it looks like, I was able to track the origin of the last strike. It coming from our port side" Katie said.

"On screen," Gerhardt commanded. The viewscreen shifted to the port view.

Katie rechecked her data. "It should be there, that's where the discharge originated from. Only it seems there is nothing there."

"Chief!" Jacey yelped as the turbolift doors opened. She halted momentarily as all eyes shot to her." Hi...guys...I think I forgot that you were all here." With a wave of her hand she jogged down the ramp, "Sorry for my entrance - there's just something you gotta see..I mean we reaally need to talk."

"Modulate shield frequency to 56.2," the Chief yelled to the tactical station as another discharge struck them. "It seems that the attacks are coming more frequently. Fortunately they do not seem to be a major drain. Jacey, we are under attack by an invisible opponent. Do you have something to top that?"

"Live being living in the warp core?" She shrugged, "Does that come close?"

Gerhardt stared at her with wide eyes and dropped jaw. "Oh," was all he could manage at first. "Well, then... er, yes. That would be a problem." With that, he slumped down into the command chair.  Can anything else go wrong?

A mass JP of discoveries, mysteries, and mounting disasters, brought to you by Edward Pellew, Katie Banninga, Jacey Adams, and Gerhardt Rahner

12-21-2011, 11:54

Tom O'Flagherty

'''USS Atlas Lost Deck'''

“Do you even remember what was suppose to be on this deck?” he asked, almost rhetorically. Tom shook his head. “Me either.” Walking throught the downed duct-work and skeletal beams that made up the backbone of the Atlas he considered. “Do you think anyone left some tool down here? Maybe we can try cutting through the hatches into the Jeffrey's tubes.” It was a foolishly hopeless plan but there seemed to be little else he could thing of.

Both he and Tom cast about looking for anything that resembled a cutting tool left behind from the shipyard. Moving his search to a large stack of debris he began sifting through it. The uninstalled panels and wire bundles were piled hi atop something else...several something else’s in fact. Discarding the junk to see what was underneath he finally caught side of it. Buried the pile of discarded parts was a set of pallets with long dark cylindrical objects stacked and carefully tied down. As vigorously has he had been crawling over the formerly buried pallet and haphazardly tossing scraps off of it he now found himself momentarily frozen.

“Umm....Tom.” he eased himself off the pallet slowly. “There are twenty five quantum torpedoes...just...sitting over here.”

Tom ceased digging in the pile of parts he had found and came to look over Chris's shoulder. The long, black reflective casing in the low light of their hidden habitat caused the torpedoes to almost disappear. Slowly, he moved up and removed an access panel from the top torpedo in the stack. He knew it was probably inactive, but if it could be left In a place it didn't belong, then it could be left in the wrong condition. Thankfully, it wasn't. "The casings have the guidance and propulsion systems in place but the antimatter chambers of the warhead are empty. They're inert. Stupid place to have these though."

As they moved on, there was one area that seemed to have walls erected, and the place set for a door. Inside there were consoles set but the LCARS interfaces had never been installed and wires spilled from open monitor panels. "What do you think this was supposed to be? I don't remember any of the plans calling for something this size." Tom continued to move through the silent monument to inefficiency with a mixture of awe an disappointment. "This is almost depressing."

“What’s more depressing is the time. Its been three hours now that we have wandered around this lost deck.” Chris gestured to his Omega watch. “No search parties...and I’m starving.” Taking a piece of un-installed decking he tossed it through one of the empty LCARS stations and it disappeared into the darkness beyond. A few seconds later it crashed into something in the distance, only the muffled sound emanating from the black.

“Since when did the Federation contract ship building out to Soviet Russia?” he asked rhetorically.

Tom suppressed a small laugh as he picked through junk or parts that littered the floor. “I’m sure your stomach can hold out a little longer. There are probably people looking for us as we speak.” He moved through some more piles of wires and loose circuit boards as his mind began to wander. It didn’t go far before it wandered back to Lisbet. Their fight still weighed on him rather heavily. “I hope they find us quickly. Lisbet and I need to talk.”

“That doesn’t sound good.” Chris said looking at what seemed to be a large...hour-glass(?)...amid a pile of debris. What the hell is that and why is it here? he wondered. “Trouble in paradise? Tell your Old Uncle Vaughn about it.”

"There's nothing much to tell, really. We had a fight last night." Tom sighed heavily, weariness from the sleepless night weighing on him. "Don't ever argue with a Betazoid woman. It doesn't go well."

“I’ve tried to tell you a million times, don’t let them live with you.” Chris shook his head. “Rookie mistake. Happens every time.”

"Well, you know I have to make those decisions for myself," both of them erupted into laughter until there was the deafening sound of a collision which sent them sprawling over the deck. "What the hell was that!"

“Son of a bitch!” Chris snapped as he was thrown to the deck. “It has to be a Xul attack.” He grasped one of the structural ribs and forced himself to his feet, feeling immediately guilty for not being on the bridge.

Tom started sprinting towards the bow of the ship. There were no active consoles to read sensors from, but he could look out a window. Hopefully, something would make itself visible, but the floor seemed to stretch out in front of him, continually getting longer as his feet pounded the deckplates. When he finally reached his goal, all he could see was what looked like lightning streaking across the hull. "I don't think this is the Xul."

A JP with Christopher Vaughn

12-26-2011, 19:59

Tom O'Flagherty

'''Junior Officer’s Quarters ''' Mason York slid into his room after finally having finished his long shift. Engineering was a madhouse as the crew tried to reconcile what was on the computer records with what was apparently happening. The ship didn’t recognize a deck that had apparently swallowed the CO and XO whole, and York didn’t really care all that much. He had spent the day trying to locate this missing deck without being allowed to leave the ship. He had made numerous requests to use a shuttle pod, or even an escape pod, to manually count the decks, but the discharges, debris, and the Atlas’ own movement were making that impossible. Instead he had spent his time looking over schematics, using the MSD, and trying to allign the internal sensors to help him make some progress.

''What kind of idiots get themselves lost in their own ship? I mean, really, survival of the fittest. If they are not intelligent enough to be able to make it out of wherever they are, then they are not intelligent enough to be the commanders on a starship. I’m so tired of having to clean up after other people’s mistakes. I should be getting medals for this, instead of still being an Ensign.'' In the process of trying to scan the ship for the Captain and XO, York had discovered that he had served with both of the officers on his previous assignment to the Gettysburg, though even on a small ship the two officers, who had been department heads at the time, didn’t stand out to him.

He walked over to the small replicator and ordered a drink for himself, the synthehol was horrible, but it did allow him to kill a few tastebuds before he got to his real stuff. After the glass of high-grade cleaner was finished, York lifted his bunk and pulled out a bottle of Romulan Ale he had been hiding. He knew that if he were to get caught with it, he would be out of Starfleet, but compared to the other things he was involved in, Romulan Ale was the least of his worries.

As the first taste of the powerful beverage began to burn his throat, the comm channel on the computer interface in his quarters began to beep at him. York set down his drink and made his way across the small room to the desk and opened his communications link that was buried under the subspace tracking signal sent back to Megiddo. It had taken him weeks during his first posting to figure out the code required to bury the messages, but now after he had transferred so many times, it was a piece of cake. He while stationed at Utopia Plantitia, he had figured out how to transfer live messages with video, and the Atlas that was such an advanced ship made that even easier.

When he went through the code and opened the connection, the face of Marvud Tang was all smiles. "It seems we have made a decent haul. I guess you really are worth the money I've been paying you."

"What the hell was that with the booby trap? I was almost killed by that."

"We didn't leave any booby traps. We grabbed the drugs and that was it.". Tang looked just as confused as it was possible for an Orion to look. York wasn't buying it though.

"I know how you like to tie up loose ends, and I'm not going to take your response as much."

"You watch yourself, human. If I wanted all my loose ends tied up, you would have been dead a long time ago. Now, do I send the money to the same place? I'm sure the Bank of Bolarus is going to become suspicious at some point." Tang let his rather discolored teeth gleam in the light as he snarled at th human to let him know that he knew how to get to him, or so he thought.

"You just send the money and let me worry about Bolarus."

A post featuring Mason York

01-03-2012, 22:12

Katie Banninga

Bridge

Gerhardt dragged his fingers through his graying hair and sighed hard. "Okay, the... er, thing living in the warp core, this is causing problems with the power, ja? If it hits our shield generators, that will bring our other problems cascading down. So, Jacey, what can you tell us about this thing?"

Jacey paused as all eyes turned on her, "I..I don't really know much..."She continued, "It se..seems to be feeding off the energy in the core. We tried playing around with the core a little to expose it and it freaked out. It seems q...quite happy to be in there. I don't think it'll move unless we make it..."

"Playing around with the core?" Gerhardt asked, his voice trailing off at the end. He shook his head. "We will come back around to what that means later. Right now we need to focus on what this will mean for the current situation. The last thing we want is for this thing to drain off the shields' power in time with one of those EM attacks."

"It's happy where it is as long as we leave it be. I think it was starving out there. It drained the power out of my shuttle and my partners suit as if it hadn't been around energy in years. I'd suggest powering down the core but I'm not sure what it would do."

"Hold on," Katie said, interrupting the conversation "You can't just power down the core. Not now at least. Secondary systems can't hold the shields for long. And we also need power to fire back." When we figured out where they are and with what we could fire back Katie thought with frustration. She had been looking at the sensor for minutes now, and everytime she followed the source there was nothing there.

"Powering down does seem a bit rash at the moment, but we need to get that thing out of there," Gerhardt replied. "But you say it jumped from the shuttle and suit before hitting the warp core... maybe we can make it jump again? If it attacked a suit as well as the warp core, then we can assume it does not care what kind of energy it eats. I wonder if it would like a buffet of EM radiation?"

"Why don't we shoot that thing towards the whisper" Katie blurted out.

Gerhardt shot a look of consternation at her, which immediately softened as he thought over the implications of her comment. Finally, he said, "Cadet, that is either incredibly brilliant or stupid. Either way, I expect no less from a security officer. Care to tell us what you have in mind?"

"That thing is attracted to energy, right" Katie said. "If we put an extra power source in a torpedo, we can shoot that thing to the Whisper and it can take their energy, instead of ours."

"I like it," the Chief answered. "And we have an automated EPI capacitor stowed in the engineering workshop that I removed before the Atlas left spacedock that should serve our purposes well. But that would not produce the same output as the warp core. How do you propose we make it move out?"

"If we shut down part by part we can guide it to the torpedo. You did say it went to an other power source after the first it gone, right" Katie said to Jacey.

"Yeah it followed the energy," Jacey nodded then added, "However we'd have to move the crew out of the dark areas."

"This is going to require a huge coordination," Gerhardt added. "We will have to go to auxiliary power so we can power down the core long enough to draw the creature into the torpedo. Adams and Banninga, I trust the two of you can prep the torpedo. Lieutenant Mari, begin the evacuation of all non-essential personnel along the path from Main Engineering to the torpedo launchers on Deck 11 and make prep everyone else for immediate evac when we are ready to go. Ensign Joole, start the preparations to switch the bridge and all essential systems to auxiliary power on the upper decks and contact your counterpart in Main Engineering to start the process there and on the lower decks. Lieutenant Harrison, stay on Tactical and find some way to target the Whisper."

He watched the various officers going about the business of saving the ship and taking his orders. That was the strangest thing in all of this, the whole bridge listening to him. He felt at ease with it as long as he kept moving and thinking, his actions and words given to keep the ship safe. Now the words were out, the plan set in motion, and the people he trusted with his life and the life of the ship were working their asses off to save them all. That was when the magnitude of it all hit him square in the face: he was commanding a starship. He slumped down in the chair and tried not to look anyone in the face or let his face reveal how shocked he was.

A JP with Jacey Adams and Gerhardt Rahner

01-08-2012, 10:27

Jacey Adams

Jacey had never really realized how much she loved electricity. As an engineer you knew the fallabilty of a ship, given it was your job to keep it from doing the inevitable - blowing up. Everyday engineers beat the odds, performed miracles and relied on the fact that they had the knowledge to work around whatever they came up against in space.

But all the working around she could think of required the ship's power. If they lost it entirely they would be reduced to the bottom of the space food chain. A bunch of humans and aliens mixed together on a floating lunch box.

She didn't feel like being anyones entree today.

As she and Katie headed to work on the torpedo, Jacey's mind wandered over the events on the Atlas. Her previous positions had never been this chaotic, in truth they were far more relaxed. Even the Emissary, where she'd met her now CO and XO seemed less complex than their current post. This ship had missing parts, large hiding places and a structure unlike any other. Jacey was grateful for her little 'hiding room' that the chief had shown her. However if having a hiding place meant that this ship was a secret rubix cube - she'd happily go back to her quarters.

With a shrug she looked at Katie, "I wonder if what we're doing counts as murder in some random faction of space. Killing an entity to stop it from destorying our little tin can home..."

She stopped and went quiet. They continued walking.

01-08-2012, 13:20

Gerhardt Rahner

Bridge

Sitting in the command chair, watching the bridge crew carry out his various orders while others went about their business across the ship to avert disaster, Gerhardt couldn't help but admire the efficiency of it all. With a skeleton crew, the Atlas seemed to be able to tackled just about any situation. Here they were, under attack by an unknown, ancient viral race, being drained by an unquantifiable shadow, and this crew was about to handle both problems at once, all while the away teams were still carrying out their salvage mission out in the black. The only doubt Gerhardt had was the occasional consideration of how much better the Captain and XO would have handled all this than he had.

But, he reminded himself, that is a problem we can resolve. Until the cadets finished modifying the torpedo, or the Whisper managed to break through their shields which seemed unlikely, Gerhardt didn't have much to do but watch over others working. He pulled up the ship schematic on the command chair's small display and stared at it, trying to meditate or mind-meld or memory-jog or any other mental exercise he could think of to pull some scrap of a clue out of the evidence he already had in the search for the commanders.

What do we know we know? he thought, roughly at the small display. ''The commanders were on their way from the Bridge to Deck 15 when they went missing. There is sufficient evidence to suggest that there is a missing deck somewhere on the Atlas that was never fully completed or logged in the system, which would account for the computer's inability to locate it. From this, we have already extrapolated that the commanders are on the missing deck, which apparently lacks any sensors or comms. Hmm... we have no reason to assume it has any major systems, including life support!''

This grim thought hit him hard, but knocked an idea loose. He punched in commands for a sensor sweep of the space inhabited by decks 6-15 for life signs. It was a complex request because he had to specify the use of external sensors to compensate for the lack of sensors on the missing deck, but he had to turn the external sensors inward. In the end, the command was input as a manual sensor sweep of the spatial coordinates, rather than using any parts of the ship as a reference point. He sent the command into the queue and was annoyed to receive a waiting screen.

"Commander," came the exasperated voice of Lt. Mari from Ops, "we're running simulations on our plan to shut down the warp core and re-route all primary systems and several secondary through auxiliary power. Could we hold off on sending random and complex sensor sweeps into the spool?"

Gerhardt opened his mouth to apologize, but shut it immediately when it was apparent that Johanna wasn't waiting for a response. She'd already cancelled the request and moved on with her own project. He should have realized it was stupid to expect what would normally barely cause a blip on the computer's power usage to be an acceptable use during a time of crisis. All power and resources had to be focused on the primary objective of keeping the ship safe, and no matter how ready Gerhardt was to relinquish the weight of command back to the men in charge, the search for the commanders would have to rely solely on Gerhardt's capacity to think things through, an ability which was currently being hampered by the weight of command. Oh, what tangled web we weave, he thought demurely, ''when our commanders get lost on their own ship while we are under attack on two fronts. Eh, not quite poetical.''

01-09-2012, 03:19

Katie Banninga

 Burstfire Launchers, Deck 11  When Katie walked in the torpedo room she saw two crewman playing cards. They hadn’t noticed her. “Are you completely crazy” she yelled at the crewman. The crewman stood up and the cards were flying around the table. Katie put the EPI Compensator she was carrying on the table. She had just retrieved it from the Engineering Workshop. It was just lying there in the racks between all other technical things.

“Didn’t you noticed that were under attack.” Katie said, still yelling.

The crewman were looking at each other. “We already started preparations in case we needed to fire, but since there got no order, we just waited.” The older one said.

“So you decided to start a game of cards. Mensenlieve. Anyway, we need to prep a torpedo and get this thing in it.” she said pointing to the EPI compensator.

One of the crewman walked to a console and started punching buttons. “One Pho-torp Mark Q-II Quantum Torpedo coming up” he said with a grin on his face.

“Where are you grinning about? Where under attack by a ancient evil race and we have a energy sucking being on board and your grinning, Eikel” As the torpedo came out of the storage she walked up to the replicator and ordered a cup of coffee. It’s been a long time a go she was able to get some sleep, so she really needed another shot of caffeine. If she had known what problem that ferengi had brought, she would get some sleep first before she started writing the report. When she turned around she saw the torpedo. The black slender torpedo came rolling on the platform. She quickly finished her coffee and walked towards the torpedo. She removed her jacket and rolled up her sleeves.

“Crewman, will you please check if the torpedo is offline” The last thing she wanted was to get the ship in more trouble.

“The torpedo is offline and ready to be opened.” he said in reply.

Katie kneeled next to the torpedo and took a deep breath. She had done this a thousand times in training on the holodeck. Now she finally understood why she had to learn this, being a security officer and not a tactical officer. Just in case. She opened the middle hatch and she could see the zero point energy warhead. the plan was to remove the warhead and put the EPI in it’s place. By that the torpedo wouldn’t explode when it was with the Whisper. If the torpedo did explode and it would kill the energy being, they had only got rid of one problem instead of two.

A couple minutes later she had removed all the cables attaching the warhead so she could lift it out. One of the crewman walked to her and accepted the warhead she offered him. “Put that in storage please,” the excitement of the work she was doing had removed all her sleep, and with that also the bad mood she was in. Looking in the direction of the other crewman she said “Can you pass me the EPI?” When she took it over from him she held it above the area it suppose to fit in. It was going to a thigh fit.

“Will you please stand on the other side so we can lift it in together.” As he held the other side of the EPI they lowered it in the place of the warhead. The room wasn’t very much, but it should be enough.

“Watch out for those thoron emitter”she said to the crewman, but also as a reminder to herself. If those would brake the torpedo would be neutralized by radiation before it got to it’s target. When it was in it’s place Katie started connecting the EPI to the torpedo’s hardware. When the EPI was connected all she had to do was connecting the weapons anti matter with the flight control antimatter chamber. Just in case the energy being didn’t have enough form the EPI, so that the torpedo did have enough energy to reach it goal.

When everything was finished she removed the loose string of hair out of her face and closed the hatch. “Crewman, please check if all systems are correct and ready to be fired” she said to the crewman behind the console.

The crewman fingers flew over the buttons. For a second Katie held her breath. She didn’t like it if she had done something wrong. “All systems are a go” he said after a long minute.

 Katie said over the comm.

“Are you ready?” she asked the others. When they knotted in confirmation she said “Ok, than it’s time for you to leave, this entire deck will be shut down in a couple minutes.” She herself was going to wait a minute, just in case something was going to go wrong.

01-15-2012, 11:08

Gerhardt Rahner

Bridge

 Cadet Banninga's voice came over the comm.

"Very good, Cadet," Gerhardt answered pensively before closing the channel. He spun the command chair to ops. "Johanna, are we ready to go with that evac plan?"

"Aye, sir, non-essentials are cleared out and the bare minimum crew are keeping us afloat, ready to abandon their posts so we can shut down our ship's pulse, draw an unknown entity out of the core, and shoot it at the other unknown entity," she replied with a load of irony.

"Thank you, Lieutenant. A simple 'yes, sir' would have sufficed."

"Probably," she answered, trying very hard but failing not to add, "but I just couldn't help myself." She grinned sheepishly.

Gerhardt sighed and turned back to the main viewscreen. He opened the comm channel. "Commander Rahner to Engineering."



"Good, good," Gerhardt said. "And, er, should I come down there to help?"

A brief pause as Lt. Cressida grinned to herself was broken with, <''Negative, sir. Someone needs to stay up there and keep us together. What's the plan for moving the torpedo once we power down the core?''>

No one on the bridge moved, no one made a sound. Gerhardt slowly spun the chair to face Lt. Mari. They looked each other square in the face and shrugged. "We may need to work that out before we go ahead with this plan, ja?" A sound not unlike a head smashing itself into its owner's palm came through the comm in answer.



Gerhardt thought this over, ignoring the mocking tone in which it was delivered. Actually... "That might work, Lieutenant. I would recommend two people though; those torpedoes can be heavy. And as long as the EPI compensator holds out, there should be more power produced in the torpedo than in two environment suits, so they should be... relatively safe. Just make sure that the creature moves to the torpedo before anyone gets near the downed core in a suit."

An even longer silence came over the comm, followed by the still voice of Lt. Cressida saying, "I was just joking... but, I suppose the math does work out on that. Who should I get to do this?"

Gerhardt didn't even think before he answered, "Well, you could see if Ensign Miller wants to redeem himself..."

01-25-2012, 15:05

Katie Banninga

'deck 11'

When Katie heard that they were manually going to push the torpedoes from engineering to the launcher she applied. She was the one that was responsible for this mess they were in. It was the least she could do. If she hadn't brought Bena on board, the Whisper probably would have left them alone. She opened a locker and grabbed a suit.

As she was putting it on, an ensign came storming in the room. He pulled the locker open. As he turned he noticed Katie. "What did you do to get this splendid assignment" he asked her.

When she looked up to him she could see he was furious. She shrugged and said "I volunteered. And you? With that look on your face I assume you didn't volunteer"

"Aren't you a smarty pants." He looked at the ground. "The chief hates me"

For a moment she could see could sadness in his eyes, but as he got up the anger returned. He tapped his commbadge. 



Katie looked stunned, the chief just put her in control over an Ensign. She didn't know what Miller exactly did, but the chief really didn't liked him.

 she replied and walked out of the room, avoiding Millers look. She didn't need to look at him to know that he was furious.

As they got in the torpedo room she put her helmet on the casing and tried to push the damn thing. When Miller didn't get the hint of helping her she said to him, "Do you mind?" in a very sarcastic tone.He looked at her and sighed, before helping to push the thing to engineering. "Why are we pushing this thing to Engineering anyway?"

Katie stopped walking which caused Miller to bump his head on the torpedo. "Hé" he yelled. She turned around and looked at him. He was rubbing his forehead."Where have you been last couple of hours? Do you live under a stone?" she asked him. When he didn't say anything she continued pushing the torpedo. "There's an energy eating creature in the warp core. They're going to lure the thing in this torpedo and shoot it to another creature attacking us." She explained in the simplest words she could come up with.

"Oh," was all he replied. When they had arrived at Engineering and placed the torpedo at the right place Katie communicated to the bridge that they were ready to continue. She and Miller were the last to leave engineering. When they were in the hallway they put on there helmets. "Ok, here we go" Katie said. Secretly she felt excited because of what was going to happen.

Bridge

"Johanna, have we cleared all personnel from that deck?"

"Aye, sir," came the quick response from Ops.

"Alright, go ahead with the shut down, Ensign," Gerhardt signaled the engineering station. The ship was already at red alert because of the attack, but Gerhardt knew the protocol. Right now, an automated red alert script was passing unchecked through the computer, a final check ran down the switch-over to auxiliary power, and core itself was preparing for shutdown. As the core slowed its reactions per second, a minor tremor went through the ever-present rhythm of the ship. Gerhardt could feel the final shutdown of the core before the announcement came from Ensign Joole at the engineering station.

"Now what?" asked Lt. Mari.

"Now we pray it worked," Gerhardt answered solemnly from the command chair. He hit the comm and said, "Ok, Cadet Banninga. The core is down. You are our eyes down there. Has our little ruse worked?"

Deck 11

 she said in response. She grabbed the emergency hand actuator, put it at the door and opened it manually. As she entered she looked around the room. She didn't come here that often. She had only passed through it a couple of times during patrol.

Miller automatically took the lead and walked through the room. The room wasn't complete without the blue glow from the core."Slow down, we're not sure if the creature already left the core" Katie said to him. "If it hasn't jet it can use your suits energy. I don't think you would like that."

As they approached the core, it looked calm. Katie grabbed her tricorder and scanned the core for an energy signature, but she couldn't find one. "So far so good" she thought out loud.Miller walked to the torpedo and started scanning it. "Was the EPI full when you put it in?" he asked Katie. She walked to him while replying "Yes, it was. Why?"

"Than the trick worked, power level of the EPI is at 88%"he said.

Katie smiled. Finally something was going as planned today. 

The response came from the bridge quickly. 

Ok, here we go. "If you can take the rear, I'll take the front" Katie said to Miller. When they were both in place she looked at him and said "On three.. One.. Two.. Three.." and they lifted the thing. Man, this thing is heavy she thought as she walked backwards to the door.

The hallway was completely dark and because Miller's headlight was right in her face, her eyes weren't able to adapt. As long as were not going to walk through a maze it's going to be fine. She closed her eyes to concentrate and tried to remember the hallway. Hopefully Miller would let her know before she would bump into a wall. And if not, well bang means stop, as the dutch proverb goes.

Katie turned her head. Just a few more steps before the curve, and around the corner was the torpedo already. She couldn't wait to put the torpedo down. It was pretty heavy. After they had entered the room Katie walked around the torpedo launcher. She just took the first step up when a warning for another incoming attack sounded through the comm.

As they attack hit Miller yelled "I'm losing it." The weight of the torpedo started to shift, but Katie was ready to catch it if the worst should happen... and she was thoroughly confused when it didn't."Ha! Just kidding!" Miller shouted across the suits' comm units, and started laughing childishly while they shoved the torpedo into its launch tube.

"Verdomme" Katie shouted at Miller. "Are you crazy. We're carrying a very heavy torpedo with a energy sucking creature in it and you're playing games." She now understood why everybody hated him so much. He wasn't just playing with his own life, but also with hers.

As she reached the launcher she laid the top of the torpedo on it and walked around it to grab the torpedo from the other side. She picked it up again and slid in into the launcher. After it was in place she checked with a tricorder if everything was still as it suppose to be. The power levels of the EPI had dropped to 62% which was enough to keep the creature in until it had reached the Whisper ship. She walked over to the console and loaded the torpedo in the torpedo tube.

 01-30-2012, 05:48

Gerhardt Rahner Bridge

Banninga to the Bridge, torpedo is ready to launch.

"Very good, Cadet," Gerhardt answered the comm. "You and Miller get out of there. I do not want to risk any lives if that thing jumps before we can get it off the ship. Rahner out."

He tapped the comm system and turned towards tactical. "Harrison, tell me we have a way to target the Whisper now."

"We definitely have something, sir," came a reserved response. "We've been tracking the EM dispersion pattern across our shields for the past six attacks. It's not exact by any measure of the word, but we have an estimated target window of roughly 40 square-kilometers to our port side."

"40 kilometers?" Gerhardt gaped at him. He did a quick mental calculation before continuing. "But, the Atlas's broadside could fit through that window with room to spare! Do we know how large our target is?"

"No, sir," came Harrison's despondent response. "For all we know, this thing could be a micron across or it could out-class us by untold magnitudes. Our best home is that this shadow thing gets close enough and jumps off the torpedo. I recommend we aim right at the center of that target window and fire at once."

Gerhardt gave a short moment's thought, but he knew the decision was already made. "Aim and fire at will, Lieutenant."

The main viewscreen panned to the target window as the modified torpedo shot out from the burstfire launchers out into seemingly empty space. The normally over-whelmed sounds of the consoles working away on the bridge sounded loudly in the utter silence emanating from the crew.

Seconds ticked by without incident. Gerhardt cycled through the read-outs on the command chair's private display, stopping on the display of the EPI compensator's power, which read at 11%. If this was going to work, it would have to be soon. Gerhardt turned to Tactical. "Report," he ordered noncommittally.

"Nothing, sir," Harrison answered with more than a hint of sadness in her voice. "The torpedo is passing through the estimated window now. No change."

Gerhardt sighed heavily. "Well, at least that's one less prob-"

"Wait!" a cry came from the Science station. "Something's happening. Just need to adjust the viewscreen..." The ensign input a quick command and the viewscreen lit up.

"What are we seeing here?" Gerhardt asked.

"It looks like the Whisper was just unleashing another EM attack; that's the glowing blue discharge we see through the filtered screen. But something started draining the plasma as it came out of the weapon, and it's moving up the plasma stream, which is the dark red part."

"The shadow?" Gerhardt said hopefully.

No one answered, but then he didn't really expect one. All eyes were locked on the wild mix of colors and lights on the screen. At first, the blue glow kept growing at a regular rate, but as the weapon discharge expended itself, the dark red took over, finally disappearing itself.

"Is that it?" someone asked just a moment before the screen flared a bright blue outline of an evil-looking ship. The blue glow of the ship slowly gave way to a growing dark red spot in the middle, which grew faster and faster.

"Science?"

"I'm just as lost as you are, sir."

"Speculate, damn it!"

"Uh, I think maybe we're seeing the shadow draining the power from the Whisper's ship, but it looks like the Whisper's ship is completely made of energy. At the rate of shift we're seeing, the Whisper should be completely depleted within the next two minutes."

Gerhardt perked up a bit, but then a thought hit him square in the face. "And what happens when the Whisper is depleted?" he asked, but received no answer. "Can we trap it somehow?"

"How the hell should I know?" the insolent reply was yelled as everyone scrambled to find some answers. "Maybe if we can get it to latch onto something else, we could set a signal buoy to warn off others, but what can we possibly use?"

If they found on a derelict... Gerhardt thought. "Target the nearest derelict ship that has any amount of power with the tractor beam and move it close to the Whisper. Engineering, get ready to bring the warp core back online. Helm, as soon as we move the derelict, get us as far away as you can as fast as you can. Make it quick, people, we may not get another opportunity."

"Sir, the tractor beam is a massive drain on resources," Lt. Mari called from Ops. "We may not have enough power to move away and maintain life support until we get the warp core back up."

"Yeah, but if we fire up the warp core too close to the shadow, we risk becoming a target," answered Mott at Engineering.

"We have to push the power as far as we can, Johanna," Gerhardt decided on the spot. "We cannot afford to have that thing back on this ship."

While all the bridge crew scurried about and deliberated, the viewscreen showed the Whisper's ship darkening at an increasing rate. As the tractor beam pulled a derelict into range, the last few meters of the Whisper's ship began to yield its energy. "Get us out of here!" Gerhardt yelled.

The ship's impulse engines fired, driving the Atlas away from the derelict and its new deadly cargo. "Warp core is online, sir," Mott announced.

"Steady course, Warp 1, helm," Gerhardt said. "We need to be further out before that thing's done gorging itself on the Whisper."

In the time all this happened, the brief remnants of the blue discharge around the Whisper's ship flared out and faded into darkness; it took less than a minute. When the Atlas was at a safe distance and the warp core was fully operational, Gerhardt ordered a sensor sweep of the derelict. The small amount of power still available on board was slowly draining away, giving as much of an indication that the shadow was there as they could hope for. Four signalling buoys were shot out to surround the derelict. That's the best we can do for now, Gerhardt thought. He added out loud, "Now then, let's find our commanders, ja?"

01-30-2012, 08:59

Katie Banninga

''' Katie was on her way to her quarters when she run in the Chief. “Banninga, what are you doing here?” Lebowski said.

“I..Uhm..I was on my way to my quarters” she responded. Looking confused, was she missing something. She had been running around the ship for the last couple hours saving the ship. It wasn’t like she had been doing nothing.

“Just follow me.” he said as she started walking towards the security office. “I’ve tried to call you. I want every security officer searching for the CO and XO. They’re missing for way to long.”

“I was kind off busy lately” Katie said “Anywhere specific you want me to look.”

“Preferably the place they are.” he said right before he stepped into his office.

“Yes sir,” she said to a closed door. Katie looked around and noticed there were only a couple SO’s in the office. She sighed and walked to the replicator. If they wanted her to join the search she really needed more caffeine. “Coffee, extra strong” she ordered and with her mug she walked over to a console. “Computer, display all available information on the missing officer’s” she said as she took another zip. The computer started displaying the info. Well, it was just one sentence. They were last seen on deck 6, leaving the bridge for an inspection of the Deuterium Cryo Storage, or what ever that was.

Katie accessed the search logs. They had only been able to search the the half of the ship. Not that surprising. There were only 20 SO’s and the Atlas had 18 deck’s, each being around the 12 square kilometers of floorspace. That was going to take some time. Why did they have to get lost while we only have a shakedown crew Katie thought.

Deck’s 6 till 11 had already been searched and at the moment there were teams roaming the upper decks and deck 12. She decided to try to get a team together and start at level 13. Looking around the room once more and noticed that the few officer that were there before were gone. She walked to the chiefs office. “Chief, I..”

He came storming out of the room and walked towards the her on his way to the door. “You’re still here, didn’t I tell you to start searching” he said before he left the room.

Katie stared after him before finishing her sentence. “I suppose that’s a no.” Than I just start on my own down there, the others will follow something, I hope, Katie thought. She walked to a away locker and grabbed a flashlight. Just in case. And headed to the turbo lift to take her to level 13.

When she arrived at that floor it seemed she was the only one. The deck was dark, except for the flashing Red Alert light. I guess they haven’t turned the core back online jet. She grabbed the padd she had downloaded the deck lay out on and tried to find where she was. When she had figured out where she was she decided to start walking to the port side. She needed to find some kind of hidden space. The internal sensors had already determent that they weren’t on this deck, so looking in the common areas was a wast of time. There had to be a place where the sensors didn’t looked.

“Computer, please specify my current location” she ordered to the computer.

“Your current location is deck 13, midway port section.” the computer replied. Well, here the sensors still work, Katie thought. She took another look at the padd. It’s time to get out of the corridors, I’ll just have to start crawling to a Jefferies tube. The closest access tube was a 3 meter down the hallway. As she opened the hatch she looked down the the tube. It was small and cold. Katie turned on her flashlight on her arm and took a deep breath before she entered the tube.

After crawling for what looked like an eternity she arrived at a section. She could go right, left, up or down. She grabbed her padd to try to pin point her position. Great this section doesn’t exist. I think. Reading a map wasn’t her strong point, but still. She only went straight ahead, hadn’t taken any turns. “Computer locate my position” she ordered again. “Your current location is deck 13, forward port section.” it replied.

Great, the sensors still were working. She wasn’t completely lost jet, just in her head. Ok, now what. She looked around to the different option she had. “Iene, Miene, Mutte...”she said when she was interrupted by her comm beeping. 



Why was everybody asking here that. < I’m attampting to find our missing officer,> she said with a sarcastic tone. What else do you think I’m doing crawling through a Jefferies tube.

Joel chuckled at her reply 

< No, thanks, I’m fine. If your team searches this floor, I’ll get started at the deck below.> she said.

< We’ll do that, Joel out> she heard him say before the line went off. She took the stairs one level down. When she arrived she started looking around. This time she could only go further down or start crawling in the tube again. According to her padd she should have two options for entering this level, instead of one. Going crazy over a map that didn’t make any sense, she put the padd away and started crawling again.

After another ten minutes of crawling her way was blocked by an hatch. She tried to open it, but the handle was missing. Great. Than the hard way. The other option was crawling back for ten minutes, and Katie wasn’t really in the mood for that. She turned around so her feet were facing the hatch. She kicked the hatch a couple times. Except for some loud noice it didn’t open. Banging her head to the wall from frustration. She turned around again, so she could push with her upper body and setting off with her feet. She clamped her teeth together and set off. Than the hatch suddenly did gave. She tumbled out of the Jefferies tube. After she bumped her head to the deck she noticed someone standing there.

“Hi,..” she said.

With a quick appearance of Chief Lebowski and Ensign Joel of the Security Department '''

01-30-2012, 13:12

Tom O'Flagherty

'''Deck 14 Access Hatch B'''

Tom and Chris had been working on a way out of their predicament for what seemed like hours. They had even gotten to the point of finding things to beat on the access hatches with. In the process, they had been covered in grime, and Chris had even torn the sleeve of his uniform, which gave Tom a great reason to chide him relentlessly. The XO had no appreciated the jokes as much as Tom, and both ended up frustrated and tired when they started hearing the sound of boots on metal.

"Well, it seems we are going to be rescued after all," Tom said with more than a hint of sarcasm.

“Not a moment too soon.” Chris said picking up a metal pipe that remained un-installed and tapping against the bulkhead. “Gerhardt’s probably crashed the ship into something without our steady hand to guide things.” Chris pounded on the bulkhead more, “In here....here damn it!”

The pounding on the hatch got even louder, when it looked as if it was about to give way. Tom reached out and grabbed Chris by the shoulder, pulling him back as the metal hatch tumbled across the floor followed by a mass of dark hair, gold and black. A young cadet came rolling to a stop at Chris's feet, causing both of them to look bewildered.

"Hi," she said in surprise. She brought her hand to her head as she got up. That’s going to leave a bump, Katie thought, another one.

For more than a few seconds, both the cadet, who Tom recognized from her personnel file as being from Security, and Chris didn't move a muscle. Finally, Tom stepped around his friend and addressed Katie, "Cadet, report."

“I think you need to be a bit more specific, sir.” Katie said “You want me to report about how I got here, or about what happened the last couple hours”

Tom rolled his eyes slightly and started climbing up the hatch she'd come out of. "I want a full report. What's happening to my ship? Why is it shaking? How did you get her? All of it. I'm out of communication and need to be brought up to speed."

“And I for one want to know why the hell someone didn’t find us sooner.” Chris piped in following the other two through the maintenance hatch.

“Well, we had this energy sucking being in the warpcore, but he is gone now. And we’re under attack by an ancient evil race because we have their holy chair in our shuttlebay. But that should be over any minute now.” she said as they were crawling through the tunnels. “And to answer your questions,” she said to the XO. “they entire Sucurity department has been crawling through the ship from the moment you were missing” All twenty of us, she thought with sarcasm.

“Why are living organisms always attacking our warp core? I know it’s new and all, but can it be that incredible?” Tom climbed the ladder at a quick pace, trying to get up the next deck as fast as possible. “Cadet, you’ve done good work. Thanks for the assist.”

“Uhm.. Thanks, Sir” Katie said. Wait till he hears how that chairs got in the shuttlebay she thought.

Tom winced slightly as he entered the normal lighting of Deck 13's corridor and shielded his eyes for a minute. A science junior officer stopped for a moment, confused as to why the captain looked so out of place, but Tom only acknowledged him with a nod before continuing on the turbolift. "How about the salvage operations? Have we been able to meet all of our objectives?"

Katie chuckled “Sorry, don’t know about that, but I think that the salvage was suspended with the attacks and all.”

The turbolift doors closed behind the trio, and Tom called for the Bridge. The lift zoomed up and then laterally before opening the doors to the main corridor. “Well, it looks like everything is where we left it,” he threw to Chris before striding towards the blast doors. “Cadet, again, thank you for the help. I’ll make sure to have Lt. Lebowski contact you to debrief. I’m sure he will want to hear the full story.”

A JP with Chris Vaughn, and the hard-working Katie Banninga.