Knowledge is Power

Posted on Sat Oct 8, 2016 @ 4:17am by Commodore Michael Aravan & Lieutenant Commander Alex Rho

Mission: An Orion to Die For
Location: USS Victorious
Timeline: MD 2 || 1630 Hours

Orion Sector Tactical Command was gone. That little gem was likely to start something big. And when the news starts rippling through the quadrant and Starfleet and the Federation, who knew what would happen. Alex had no idea, though, how he was going to brief the Captain on this other than to present the report and tell him outright. Speaking of briefings... "Nanrun, let's have that debrief. Ready Room, if you will. Dal, you have the Bridge."

"Aye, Sir," Dal said as he looked over his shoulder. With a bridge as small as the Victorious had, it wasn't needed that he get up from the helm to take control of the Aquarius Class Destroyer.

Nanrun had been talking to Delorean before she nodded to Alex and came to her feet after accepting something from him. She followed the Chief of Intel to the small ready room and waited for the Lieutenant to join her.

Alex made his way around the small desk which matched the room perfectly. He sat down and leaned back, making himself at home. Or at least appearing to do so. Alex looked from Nanrun to Max and then back to Nanrun. "What happened over there?"

"Simply put, that station was taken without so much as a fight, Lieutenant," Nanrun said. "That's what it felt like to me, but we didn't have time to analyze everything. Whoever had been there had sabotaged the main computer and activated the self destruct, while hiding the fact that the self destruct was active. I don't think that the pirates that we found there had anything to do with that."

"First, it's Alex. I may the ranking officer, but we're both still Intelligence officers," he said, smiling. "Second, you did get something and that's what counts. But what makes you think that the pirates you found there had nothing to do with the sabotage and self destruct?"

Nanrun held up the Intel data retrieval device. "Delorean...Max managed to get most of the information off of the computer before we had to beam out. As for how I know the pirates didn't do it? All of the isolinear chips that I examined had been removed, deliberately burned out and put back in. Whoever was there knew exactly what they were doing. The self destruct was activated and then buried and it was set on a delay as if they were waiting for the Federation or someone to show up. It was an ambush, Alex."

Alex looked at the device. "We need to get that to our analysts as soon as we get back to the Triumphant," he said. "In that meantime, it sounds like someone knew their way around Starfleet computers all too well. It would be one thing if this had been a Federation outpost. But this was Starfleet's Orion Sector Tactical Command. Those computers shouldn't have been that easy to sabotage or the self destruct that simple to activate and bury. I wonder if there was someone on the inside involved in this ambush?" He paused and thought about that for a second. "The delay on the self destruct wouldn't have destroyed the incoming pirates, though. They were still too far out for it to do severe damage. But if the Triumphant itself had shown up...well, the ship could've been close enough to sustain severe damage if not destroyed. Could this have been for us?"

"I can't say if it was for us in particular or the Federation in general, but the fact that the station was hit so quickly that no one escaped from it and only got off a brief message that they were under attack indicates that it was a well organized and fast," Nanrun said. "The fact that the computers and everything else were compromised, I'd be willing to bet that it was an inside job. That means that it could very well have been a trap laid for us. You said that other ships were incoming, but too far out to get any damage?"

"Yes," he said. Alex waved his hand over the small desk and activated the holographic terminal. His fingers danced around the display until the sensor logs right before the explosion came up. A final tap flipped the holo-image so that Nanrun could see. "According to the sensors, the incoming ships veered off in different directions after the explosion. So the question becomes, if it was a trap for us, or the Triumphant, then why were there four ships of various configurations inbound? To clean up the mess or 'salvage' as they put it?"

The Trill operative looked at the images and cocked her head to the side as she listened. "Honestly, how could they have known that we were coming, or the Triumphant?" she asked. "It's not like we even had a lot of time to prepare before we launched. We didn't even have a Chief Medical or Science Officer when we departed Utopia, so who would know that we were on our way or where we were being sent? I'd be willing to bet that the other ships were just scavengers looking for easy plunder, which means the word had already gotten out about the station."

"Very true. It was a quick departure, wasn't it? So, back to the computers, the self-destruct, and the possibility of an inside job...." Alex let it trail for a second. "We could sit here and speculate all the way back to the ship and it would do us no good. We need to know what was on that station's computers. But I don't want to connect our retrieval device outside of the Intel Department's dedicated Network Data Center and Computer Complex. So, what physical oddities did the infiltration teams find that might help us interpret the data on the device in context?"

"Honestly, we didn't have much time," Nanrun said. "There was a pirate group on the station and we didn't have time for much more after we took them out. Unfortunately, we didn't even have time to get them out, but I doubt they would have been very willing to give up information. I should have kept one of the burned out isolinear chips, but everything happened too quickly."

"That's understandable. You can't guess what pirates are going to do when you find them. And then there was the self destruct," said Alex. "But don't beat yourself up about the burned out isolinear chip. Hind sight is twenty-twenty, as the humans say. What matters is that we were able to get some information from the station's computer." Sometimes situations didn't allow an infiltration team to gather everything that was wanted. It was all part of the business. "What else do you have, Nanrun?"

"A lot of experience that's telling me this is a bad situation and it's going to get worse," the Trill said with a lopsided grin. "Not that you need a century of experience with this hot mess we've been thrown into."

Alex chuckled. "I agree. This whole thing is going to get a lot worse. And we're going to need your century of experience more than once before it's over. Not to mention every talent in the department." He smiled at his Infiltration Officer. "Shall we join the others on the Bridge?"

Nanrun sighed and came to her feet. "We should," she said as she gave him the data retrieval device. "You might want this, too, Alex. I'll loan my experience as much as it's needed and some times when it isn't needed."

Alex stood and took the proffered data retrieval device. "Thank you. And I wouldn't have it any other way, Nanrun." He smiled at her and walked back onto the bridge.