A Guiding Light

Posted on Wed Feb 28, 2018 @ 11:17pm by Lieutenant JG Zander Devereaux & 2nd Lieutenant Gage Aravan & Warrant Officer William Fontaine & Lieutenant Colonel S'er'in'e & Lieutenant Marisa Cheshire & Lieutenant JG Mirok & Lieutenant JG Jacob Hartley & Ensign Gaalen Tholav & Ensign Athyle sh'Paveress

Mission: Falling Star
Location: Bridge, U.S.S. Victorious
Timeline: MD 33 ll 0900 Hours

S'er'in'e found himself sitting in the command chair on board the destroyer Victorious. The tasking was simple, scout ahead of the Triumphant, relay sensor data back to the ship and ensure that during the transit enemy ships do not lay in wait to ambush her. Covert operations was not something new to S'er'in'e and while often his skill sets were more ground based he could none the less employ his experience to get the task done.

The ship had been altered, a sort of camouflage really to hide the vessels true nature but the ruse would only last for so long if they were forced to employ it. Running under cloak provided a measure of security but a single ship was not all that was available. S'er'in'e also had the capabilities of a pair of surveillance fighters, these small craft would prove useful as extra eyes and sensors out there when trying to detect ship movements or scouting areas unsafe for the destroyer to venture.

The Commodore had assigned some of the senior staff to the Victorious too, each with valuable and vital talents and skills that would aid in completing the mission that so much was riding on and so many lives were depending on. Ahead of them lay the bottle neck of the route the Triumphant was to take, this was considered a dangerous area where a nebula was not far from the planned route, a nebula ideal for an ambush.

S'er'in'e had ordered both craft to investigate the nebula, sensors would be disrupted, cloaks too but visual searches might prove helpful should anything be in there. That was an hour ago and soon he would expect a report.

Gage waited with the Marines in the small transporter room while another squad waited by the door. He had no idea if they'd be deployed or not, but he was prepared if they were.

Zander stood back in Engineering and admired the small but powerful engines of the Aquarius class destroyer. She was a badass little ship, but he preferred the tricore Engineering department that he had helped work on for the past two years. With a sigh, he grabbed his coffee mug off of a terminal, took a large drink and headed over to do another diagnostic.

William Fontaine looked around the tiny Medical closest that he had been assigned to. It wasn't much, but it was state of the art and he set about getting himself familiar with everything while the Victorious was en route.

Gaalen was sat on the helm and admired the state of the art controls of the Aquarius-class destroyer. It was his first time on an away mission aboard the Victorious and he was looking forward to the opportunity. He sat patiently and thought about what to do next with his in-progress model of the ice-cutter Kumari - a project he had started on the day after his assignment to the Triumphant.

On the bridge, Ensign sh'Paveress sat at her station, quietly monitoring the ship's systems and sensors. It wasn't her first time on this tough little ship, and hopefully this mission would fare better than the ones that preceded it. Part of her even hoped that they'd outfitted some of the Triumphant's gravity wave generators to aid in their reconnoissance, but they couldn't be giving away all of their tricks now, could she?

S'er'in'e waited patiently, the cloak and dagger feel of the mission had already sunk in with everyone as too did the importance of what they were doing.

=^=Fox Hound actual to Scratch Post actual.=^= The CAG's voice came over the Ensigns console.

S'er'in'e while not new to the nicknames and plays on his species growled faintly, while not new to it, didn't mean he enjoyed it. =^= Actual, Go. =^=

=^=Akula has picked up several metallic objects near the periphery of the nebula. Initial scans indicate that they're pulsing what we think to be a network beacon at 1 minute intervals. Could be early warning, could be mines, could be a civilian observation probe. The nebula is preventing us from getting a more detailed scan. Please advise on how you'd like to proceed.=^= Marisa said with a clear and concise cadence.

S'er'in'e thought about his options, weighting what he could do, wanted to do and possible to do. =^= Maintain random flight patterns but keep current distance from the beacon. We are going to attempt remote connection with the beacon by bouncing the link via your fighters to prevent back trace to the Victorious. You will be our firewall, report any irregularities in the data stream and stay alert, who knows what might happen when we make the connection.=^=

"Lieutenant Hartley, attempt to gain access to the beacon, route the link through both fighters to help mask this ships presence. I want to know what it is, what its for and if possible how long its been here."

Jacob, at his station, began to work at the controls as he sent a remote signal to the beacon, via the fighters. He also added encryption codes which would make it practically impossible to trace. This was something he was good at, and of course he had to show that he wasn't going to make the same mistakes that he did before.

He had screwed up on the Romulan ship previously, but this time, he followed the right protocol, and made sure he wasn't going to do anything other than his job. "I've established a connection to the beacon." Jacob said, calling up the data. "I'm now working on accessing the systems, and determining what it's for."

Athyle glanced up from her console, though the glance was short-lived. When her eyes returned to her console, she kept a close eye on the sensors around them. "Looks like there's a Valdore-class warbird entering the fringe of our sensor range. She's not headed for us, but I'm not sure she can't see us either.

"Helm, full stop." S'er'in'e considered his options. Even if they had gone undetected the fact this vessel appeared as almost soon after a connection was made was too much to ignore. He also knew there were a variety of measures that could possibly reveal a cloaked ship both technological and natural especially next to nebulas.

"Does it's current heading pose any danger to the Triumphant's projected course?" S'er'in'e asked while he waited for a report from Mr Hartley about the the nature of the device they were connecting to.

Gaalen immediately reacted to his orders and brought the Victorious to a full stop. He rested his hands at the bottom of the console ready to respond to any further orders.

"All stop Colonel" Gaalen responded.

As the ship came to a stop, Athyle watched the sensors closely, waiting to see if the Valdore would make a move. "They're not changing course," she reported. "They'll be out of range in fifteen seconds."

"Monitor the warbird and keep an eye out for subspace distortions or anything that might hint at a cloaked ship. Lt. Hartley anything on the beacon yet, I'd rather not stay in one position any longer than required." Even though cloaked, that was by no means a measure of utter safety, they could still be detected so mobility was a defence and a good one to use.

"Aye, Colonel," the ensign said, not breaking her monitoring of the sensor readouts.

Mirok kept his eyes locked on the Warbird. "A Valdore shouldn't be ignoring us..." he muttered, looking down at his station.

Jacob frowned as he looked at the information on his screen. He continued to try to get full access to the buoy, and it was proving to be a challenge. He needed to make sure he wasn’t going to be detected as he did, because if the Romulan’s detected him, it would be very bad. But this wasn’t his first time accessing computer systems like this. But he knew it was going to be a challenge.

As he read through the lines of coding that he could read, he was inserting his own coding, trying to gain access to the inner core. He knew some people expected it to be easy, just send a virus of some kind and gain immediate access. But people often didn’t appreciate how difficult it was to just gain access to view the coding. It was, however, a thing of beauty. Jacob could appreciate a decent bit of coding, and this buoy was very well protected.

But if there was one skill Jacob had, it was patience. He saw the coding, and he could see the pattern, which was why he was good at this. Because knowing code was nothing if you couldn’t see the right patterns and make order from chaos. As he cracked one layer of encryption, he smiled. He had found the right pattern. Romulan’s, for all their faults, were exceedingly logical when it came to protecting their systems and their coding, using a forty-three-part cipher key into their entry. Each part had to be isolated, and then used as the primary code.

Isolating most of the codes wasn’t that difficult, thankfully. His experience with computers helped him immensely, and he saw it as a challenge. As he reached the twenty first cypher, he frowned. This one was proving to be more difficult, he mused, as he continued to attack it gently. Of course, this wasn’t taking long, per se, but it was definitely going to be difficult. He began a program to run to try and crack it as he focused on the rest of the cypher.

It wasn’t too long before he had made progress on the rest of the code, and as he came near to cracking the final few parts, he received an alert about the twenty first. He frowned, and went back to it, finding that he was close to being detected.

Working quickly, he needed to move his attack, and stop it from being traced, so he put up a mirror, so to speak, which deflected the detection, making the program think everything was normal.

His mind on that part, he smiled when he was able to crack it. Moving forward, it took him less time to crack the rest of the code than he thought. Finally, he reached the final level, and smiled. He had succeeded.

“I’m in. I have full access.” Jacob said. His smile then dropped. “And this is where the bad news comes in. I’m detecting several ships, they look like they’re on a patrol of sorts. But I’m picking up a cluster of ships, can’t tell you exactly how many but I doubt they have friendly intentions." Jacob said.

Though she was not in command, Athyle was not surprised as to the heavy presence of Romulan ships. They were, after all, in Romulan space. For them to leave a vast section of space unguarded would be out of character for them. She kept her eyes on the sensors and the power grid, ready to boost power to wherever the Colonel deemed necessary.

They were but one ship in a sector of space where the enemy held most of the keys, most of the cards and were on the home turf. "Helm plot a course into the nebula, set a spiral rise of 10,000m on the axis." The nebula would at least hide them but that worked both ways, he couldn't detect them but they wouldn't detect him. While some would consider that a level playing field S'er'in'e didn't.

"Relay message to the scouts, skirt the edge of the nebula, monitor and observe enemy movements and if possible relay situation report to Triumphant." He looked at the arm of his chair and called up a map of the nebula. "Helm, We will exit the nebula here in 4 hours so watch drift currents and vectors inside the nebula, have one scout in position to watch for us. I'd like a laser point to point transmitting go or no go for exit." S'er'in'e knew there was a margin of error in his plan but any plan that they could walk away from given where they were was a good one ultimately.

Turning his head to one side slightly to hear his instructions the Andorian turned back to face the viewscreen again once the Caitian Marine had finished speaking.

"Aye Colonel" Gaalen responded.

The Andorian then commenced his task.

Zander's voice came over the com. =^=Hey Colonel, we're sucking a lot of juice with this cloak, but I think I can reroute more power to it so we don't suddenly appear with our pants down.=^=

=^= Keep it going for as long as you can until we enter the nebula, then route power to the engines. =^=

=^=You got it, Boss,=^= Zander replied before he cut the com with the beginnings of a belch.

Athyle kept an eye on the sensors and power reserves as the helm initiated its movements. Nearly forty signatures registered on the readouts coming from the relay, including several Breen, Cardassian, Romulan and Federation signatures. It would take her a while to fully tag and run each vessel, including the Federation ones, through the database to check for abnormalities. Until she had more information, she would wait to report.

==Star Fighters==

The idea of playing support, being a glorified relay buoy for the next 4 hours appealed to her about as much as taking orders from a marine during a deep space operation. To the cat's credit, called "the cat" in her head as contemplating how to pronounce his name gave the pilot a headache, his commands thus far had been sound in her estimation. Fighters could lower their emissions to almost zero and make a pass while scanning passively, but a cloaked ship's emissions were practically zero without sacrificing maneuverability.

Then again the Vic' may have top of the line cloaking for the Federation, but Romulan war doctrine was defined by the cloak. They might already have her zeroed in based on any additional emissions the device released. She knew that if it was her decision she'd be of two minds on relying on cloak, her own bias towards fighter reconnaissance aside.

Marisa leaned around her flight stick to see the comms console, making sure her coms were offline before she sighed with exasperation, her lips vibrating, making her sound like a horse.

Once her moment of catharsis was over she opened up her flight channel. "Akula, take position near their exit point and be ready to receive tight beam from Scratch Post. Hammerhead and Mako run escort. Ratel and I will maintain current vector."

After a roger the three ships accelerated out of formation and flashed out of sight when they had a clear vector.

TBC