Do you ever feel like you're being watched...

Posted on Wed Dec 16, 2015 @ 9:33pm by Fleet Captain Rhea Kennit & Lieutenant Commander Miguel Torres & Lieutenant Cassandra Kennings

1,295 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: All this has happened before...
Location: USS Victory, orbit above Abora Colony

Bridge

The hiss of the turbolift doors opening heralded the return of Captain Kennit to the Bridge. Seeing her step out of the 'lift and onto the Bridge, Lt. Davenport called out "Captain on the Bridge!"

*Eager beaver,* Cass thought, giving him a glance.

Kennit's response came automatically, "At ease.."

"Mr. Taggart," she said as she crossed to where he was seated. "I need a complete comprehensive sensor sweep of the entire sector.. I want to know what's out there.."

Taggart nodded and answered without turning his gaze away from the control board before him, "Aye Captain.. Initiating a comprehensive sensor sweep of the sector. Estimated time to completion is .." he paused for half a beat, "4 minutes."

While Taggart was running the sensor scan, she said "Lt. Evans, I need for you to run a full spectrum scan of the comm network as well, all frequencies. See if there's anyone out there talking.."

"Aye Captain, scanning all frequencies across all bands and channels.." Evans replied. "No unidentified chatter. We're only picking up standard Starfleet nav beacon pings at this time.. no identifiable communications chatter on primary channels, still scanning.."

Miguel had stood up from the chair as he watched her come out of the lift and issued her first orders. "Everything alright Captain?" he asked since he still wasn't fully aware of what the away team had found on the planet. As such he wondered if they had found something down there.

"I don't know yet." The Captain replied. "I won't know until I get those results .."

"We ran scans while you were on the planet. We even managed to track what we think is the impulse wake of the vessel that attacked the colony. However when it got to a certain point it just disappeared. At first I thought it might be that it jumped to warp, but we couldn't see any signs of that or any other sort of FTL travel that's in our database." he told her.

She turned and walked toward him. "Show me." the Captain said.

Miguel pressed a few controls on the command chair and brought up the sensor information for her to see on the main screen.

The data displayed on the screen showed a sudden, intense increase in energy emissions from the unknown vessel that just cut off abruptly - as if someone had simply turned off a switch. "That is quite interesting..." Kennit said softly as she watched the data display run the scan timeline across the screen a second time. "Can we track it's energy trail showing it's course into the system?" Kennit asked.

"We've been working on that and we think we found a way; since their engines don't seem to give off the same emissions as our impulse engines do, in fact it's like nothing we've ever seen before. But now that we know what we're looking for it shouldn't be hard." he told her.

"So then lets look," the Captain answered. Standing next to Torres, she watched as the Chief Engineer ran the modified sensor scan and the results appeared on the display. The unidentified vessel's emissions trail appeared just outside the orbit of Abora's moon, with residual traces of an energy burst similar to the one discovered at the end of the trail.

Cass watched them and quietly put her earpiece in her bag and stood up, relinquishing Commander Hunter's seat to him. "Kept it warm for you, Sir," she said as he walked onto the bridge.

Approaching the chair, Alec smiled at Cass, "Ah. Thank you Cass. A warm seat is so much more pleasurable than a cold one." Alec quipped as he sat down, taking note of all that was going on around him. His eyes on Rhea as she stalked the bridge.

Whatever it was the Captain was thinking, she kept to herself for the time being while awaiting the results of the sector sweep and full spectrum communications check to be completed.

Torres noticed that the Captain wasn't saying anything just looking at the screen. "Well Captain if you don't need me for anything else.. the Doctor asked to see me in sickbay for some reason." he told her.

Kennit turned and looked at him, expression hard. "What? Why?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "She didn't say...I can only assume it has something to do with Lt. Naroot." he said. It was just a guess, but it was the only thing he could think of. Maybe she needed him to put something together that would help heal the Lieutenant.

Cassandra froze by the turbolift door, her ears pricking up.

The Captain was of a mind to deny the request, and said so, "I need you here on the Bridge."

Not sure what else he could really do Miguel just nodded and waited for the scans to be completed and the Captain to give him something to do.

The Captain continued to slowly walk the bridge, waiting for the results of the sensor and communication's scans. It wasn't hard to tell that she was worried about something.. she just wasn't saying what. The fact that the incoming data from both scans being conducted showed everything clear, and nothing was turning up as abnormal didn't seem to do much towards easing her controlled anxiety.

"Captain," Cassandra said, stepping back towards the center of the bridge. "Lieutenant Davenport and I were having a conversation earlier that might have some relevance. I was mentioning that sometimes we hear silence as much as we hear noise. Perhaps we should focus our analysis of the sensors on what isn't there, but should be? Even if their engines don't put out an ion trail like we're used to, they must have some effect. If something's missing, masked or used up, that could be our path."

Yarin entered the Bridge and took up his position at the science station.

Kennit gave a curt nod, "It's worth a look. Get with Mr. Yarin and see what, if anything, you can come up with."

12/13 Tags All

The Captain retreated to her Ready Room (to the likely relief of the entire on-duty bridge crew as she was no longer present, stalking the bridge restlessly). A message from Sickbay resulted in a quick call via the comm, "Mr. Torres. It appears that Sickbay can not function without your assistance. Please get down there and see what the Doctor needs."

Ten minutes later, when the Captain returned to the Bridge she was surprised to see that Mr. Torres was still on the Bridge. "Did the Doctor decide she didn't need your assistance after all Mr. Torres?" the Captain asked. "Or are you just stalling from having to go down there.."

"Not at all ma'am in fact I'm on my way there now." he said as he finished signing the fuel consumption report that he had been given to review while he was still in command and then handed it back to the Yoeman that had give it to him. Then with a nod to the Captain he made his way to the turbolift and to sickbay.

Making up her mind, the Captain said "I'm going to call it a night. Maintain current station and position in orbit and continue the analysis of the sensor readings.. If we haven't come up with anything tangible by morning we'll break orbit and get underway to return the survivors to SB900. At our distance, unless we drop our current mission the fastest way to accomplish that will be to rendezvous with another ship and transfer them for the trip back. There are several supply ships within a few days travel, we'll arrange that in the morning as well. If you find anything.. give me a call."


~*~

 

RSS Feed