What if..

Posted on Wed Sep 4, 2019 @ 3:37pm by Lieutenant Nicole Anderson & Major General Christopher Mitchell & Lieutenant Commander Miguel Torres & Lieutenant Penelope Naroot & Lieutenant Arashi Tanaka Mr. & Lieutenant AJ Taggart & Lieutenant JG Camille Lévesque PhD & Senior Chief Petty Officer Samantha Summers & Lieutenant Samantha Raylen

3,519 words; about a 18 minute read

Mission: Plaga Navis
Location: USS Victory - Engineering/Lab/Bridge

[Main Engineering]

Over the last several hours, Lt. Raylen had been working at the sensor console trying to determine a way to isolate the warp trail of the ship which had been identified as being used to carry Captain Kennit away from the colony. They at least knew which of the ships which had departed the planet prior to the discovery of the Captain's abduction had been used. Security footage in the space port had caught Captain Torrance and an accomplice carrying the Captain's unconscious form to a sleek transport vessel of a type not recognized by the Federation starship registry listing. The ship was evidently of Mirror Universe design, but had been constructed here in this universe so that it's coil emissions and warp trail had no readily tell-tale markers to track.

To add to the already difficult task, Captain Torrance had masked his vessel's warp trail using the much larger warp propulsion systems of an automated freighter which had quite successfully made it quite difficult to follow and identify the heavily distorted warp emissions of the transport. There were multiple warp trails which criss-crossed the entire sector, the colony was a heavily traveled hub used by Starfleet and civilian ships alike for resupply, refueling, and transfer or cargo.

Sam was frustrated and angry. It didn't help knowing that with every passing hour, the trail she was trying to identify degraded further, becoming ever more difficult to detect. The chances of finding the Captain decreased along with the warp trail.

Sam had been working on a long shot trace, using data gathered from navigational markers in the sector which carried sensor systems that tracked subspace activity as ships transited through the system. Her working theory was based on the knowledge that when an ion trail was left behind by a ship at warp, subspace distortions could be detected in its wake. The radiation signature from the ions could be used to determine the type of craft and propulsion system that left it behind.

They had data which they knew was from the ship in question, collected as it originally departed the system and moved to join position with the freighter. She had painstakingly written a search algorithm which would sweep through the distortions in subspace, searching for specific indicators which related to the mass of the vessel and pull out all ships which matched the transport's size and mass ratio. Then, from that data if they were lucky they'd be able to isolate the specific radiation signature of the disturbed ions from their mystery vessel to lead them in the right direction and allow them to track the ship and find the Captain.

After a final check of her programming, Sam initiated the sensor search.

And waited.

Almost an hour later, the results came in. Sitting up straight in her seat, she checked the data and then said, "Raylen to Hunter. Sir. I think we have it. I ran a search using an algorithm programmed to isolate subspace distortions corresponding to a vessel matching the estimated mass of the transport and then ran those findings against the radiation signature of their warp trail in the disturbed ions in the subspace distortion and .. I think we have them. Transmitting the data to the bridge now.."

[Sickbay]

Nicole was in her office when the door opened and the Professor walked in quickly. "We've got it!" he said, excitedly.

"Got...what?" Nicole said, confused. "Wait...which 'it'?"

"Prion pattern twenty," he said. "The one we thought was a winner. That replicator specialist Commander Torres assigned to me helped me through a few trials, and we were able to synthesize the prions out of material from the alternate universe virus. They've literally given us the means to counteract them!"

"How much do we have?" she said.

"Enough to take out a considerable supply of the virus," Thomas said. "If we can smuggle a vial of them to the source, the prions could decimate their stock."

"Fantastic!" Nicole said. "Well done, Professor! I believe Camille is working on a plan to help us find their location. As soon as we do, I'll let you know. Continue to work on the prions and see if there's any way to make them reusable. Once that's done, take the day off."

Thomas laughed at her joke and nodded. "Yes, Doctor," he said with crisp, and slightly proud, formality, standing and heading back to the lab, Nicole actually smiling in his wake.

[Bridge]

Commander Hunter was on his feet, tension radiating from his frame as he looked at the data on the display. "Verify that information, see if you can pull up their course variables. Someone tell me when that damned transport from Starfleet is going to get here! We are wasting time waiting for them!"

Miguel looked at the screen from the XO's terminal. He started looking at the information that Sam had just transmitted to the bridge. "Commander, the information looks solid." he said. As for the transport that was on the way he had no idea.

"Initiate a long range scan, input the data from Lt. Raylen's findings and see what we can come up with." Hunter ordered.

Miguel nodded as he got up and walked over to the science officer. Lt. Lévesque wasn't currently on the bridge so one of her science officers would have to do. He watched as she began to input the data that had been provided into the sensors.

Summers looked over her shoulder at Miguel. "Need an extra pair of hands Sir? "

"Nothing at the moment Senior Chief." Miguel stated as he started to walk around the bridge. He was feeling a bit antsy at the moment. But he was also trying to stay out of everyone's way and let them do their jobs.

[Camille's Lab]

Penny followed Camille into the science lab and sat down in a chair. "Okay so this is good. We can start working on the masked freighter theory and find the Captain faster."

Camille sat in her own preferred seat in front of her usual console. She opened a map of local space and put it on a larger viewscreen that they could both see and gesture to. "I'm bringing up the freighter's logged flight plan now." A curved line appeared on the map, starting at Golemon and heading roughly rimward, avoiding certain systems and known gravitational anomalies.

Arashi came in, looking at his padd. He was looking at reports of the quantum scans that his personnel went through, so far he had no one in Security that were Mirror Universe operatives. "So anything yet?" He asked.

“We’ve just started,” Camille answered. She pointed to the image projected on the screen. “We!re virtually certain the ship that took the Captain followed this flight plan for some time, trailing a freighter. It diverged from this flight plan at some point along the way. We’re not sure where yet.”

She smiled at Arashi. “All this time and I’m not sure we’ve actually spoken before. I’m Camille Lévesque.” She reached her hand to him.

"Vous devez être Camille. Je suis d'Arashi. C'est un plaisir de vous rencontrer." He said in what little French he knew from the Academy language courses that he took. "Anyhow, where do you think that they may have taken her? There cannot be many stations around here. They had to have met a ship somewhere." Arashi sat down at a station himself and brought up the data that they were looking at.

Camille’s smile grew wider. “Enchantée, Arashi,” she replied. “As for where they took her, I’m wondering if there’s something in the environment along this flight path that would mask their warp trail. They might use it and follow it to their next rendezvous. If we found something like that...well we couldn’t follow the warp trail but we could make educated guesses.”

"When I find this guy, I swear that I am going to hurt this guy. But what I am going to do pales in comparison to what I assume that the Captain is going to do to him." He said angrily. He was responsible for the safety of the crew and he felt a bit responsible for what had happened.

Camille reached up and put her hand on Arashi’s shoulder. “We’ll get him.” She looked to Penny. “If you were following this freighter and wanted to break off, where would you do it?”

Arashi had thought about it for a moment. He decided to ask the computer about what he was thinking. "Computer, are there any anomalies within the flight path that was on the freighter's path?" He said and the computer listed a bunch of anomalies within the area. "Now subtract all of the anomalies that are possibly dangerous for ships to pass through." A few of the anomalies disappeared.

Camille could only nod as the number of potential hiding places dissipated.

"Not sure that these are the only places that he could hide but if I were to meet the person that kidnapped who I asked them to, I would try and hide out somewhere that I couldn't be detected like one of these anomalies though." Arashi said. "Barring that, I would try to find a station or somewhere that is out of the way and isn't patrolled by a militia or some form of law enforcement. What do you think Penny?"

"I could totally see them skipping from spot to spot to avoid detection," she said. "But building a base there? That'd be pretty tricky. Anomalies aren't reliable places. Plus they'd want a place that has a stable position." She pointed to a few anomalies. "See those? They'd be in a relatively straight line away from the colony. If the ship managed to get a good head start it could get a pretty good distance before being exposed."

AJ walked into the lab as silent as a ghost, his boots not making a sound and watched closely as the other officers reviewed the available data. Watching the anomalies disappear as Camille adjusted the sensor resolution, he spoke up. "Lieutenant, forgive me as I'm not a scientist but are those anomalies in that area emitting any form of Gravitational Cherenkov radiation?" he asked

So focused was she on her work that Camille hadn't noticed AJ come in. She turned to face the new voice and froze. She hadn't seen a photo of him, but Penny's description did not do him justice. Ho boy. "Lieutenant. My apologies for not seeing you come in. I'm Camille Lévesque, Chief Science Officer. And let's take a look." She tapped some commands into a console and four of the anomalies still on the screen were highlighted. "There. These four emit some kind of Cherenkov radiation. What are you thinking?"

Removing a small digital stylus from his pocket, he drew two deliberate lines between the anomalies, revealing a bright blue 'X' and another curved line that nearly matched the path of the masked ship. "Gravitational Cherenkov radiation reduces the range and resolution of our sensors if I remember my astrophysics classes correctly. What I mean is that if I was a kidnapper with a well-shielded craft to avoid radiation poisoning, that's where I'd run and hide. Judging by the size of the space between, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a small base there for them to lay low for a while and restock. When I ran anti-piracy patrols, the Orion syndicates did the same thing except they had floating generators to throw us off." he said, turning to Camille and smiled slightly. "So rude of me- I'm AJ Taggart. I'm here as an advisor, I guess." he said, slightly sheepishly.

Arashi had an idea. "Computer of the four, based on the location of the station that the captain was kidnapped from, where is the closest that ship could go to offload the captain?" He asked the computer. The computer eliminated 3 of the other possibilities and left one blinking. "There, that would be it. He is there or at least he left from there." He said pointing at the scan.

AJ tapped the stylus against his lips for a moment and looked over to Arashi. "This'd be a good time for a little stroll through their territory, wouldn't you agree, Lieutenant?" he asked Arashi, a bit of slyness in his voice. His team was itching for a mission and hopefully, this would be their time to get one.

"A reminder that we have no idea what's over there," Camille added. "It could be the location of a very well armed battle station. Or a minefield that only the kidnappers know how to navigate."

"Well, are never going to find out what is over there just sitting here. Besides I am sure that we are going to have a plan by the time we get there." Arashi said. "Let's go talk to whoever is in charge and let them know what we found." He was anxious to find the captain and make that Torrance guy pay for what he did but to do that he knew that he needed to find the right bloody bastard first.

"I could chart a course through here," Penny said, finally speaking up and pointing at a secondary path through the sector, "and use the sensor blindness against them. We could sneak up and they wouldn't see us coming, just like we won't see them until it's too late." She blinked. "I mean..till we get there." She looked over the chart. "This system," she said, highlighting one of the star systems towards the end of the path. "Big asteroid belt." She stared at it for a second. "I remember reading about a smuggler ring that was using a large asteroid as their base. It's a good place to hide when you want to blend in. We should probably scan that system first."

"That sounds like a good plan; let Ops know. We need to make sure that they know what is going on and what we are going to do." Arashi said and checked the readout one more time to be sure. "I want this to go as smooth as possible and get the captain back."

"Roger that," Penny said. "I'll start charting the course and have him begin scans and adjust the sensors. Call me if anything changes." She turned and half ran half skipped out of the lab.

AJ sighed slightly. He'd forgotten how unfailingly energetic and positive Penny was and it never failed to take him slightly off guard. Looking over to the group, he motioned to the screen. "I have another idea- why don't we take a shuttle, like an Enhanced Ops Craft and do a quick recon run before we take the entire ship in there? We'd be a much smaller target and if there is something out there, my Alpha Team can deploy and get us a better lay of the land. The only drawback is those radiation fields- I don't need one of my team getting fried during an EVA if there's a corona." he said, leaning forward.

"Get your team together and get them to that shuttle. We will do recon first before we do anything else." Arashi said and headed to the bridge.

Camille followed closely behind Arashi.

[Bridge]

Logan sat at the Ops console and initiated several long range scans and waited for results. Information began to return finally. The warp trail of the suspect starship lead across the sector into the adjoining sector of space. There was nothing there according to the navigational library. No star systems with active civilizations. No starbases. Nothing. It didn't even register as being utilized during travel by anyone. This part of space was quite empty, with the except of a dark nebula which stretched across 4.76 trillion kilometers. There were no active stars within the massive cloud of gas, dust and radiation. If the long range sensors were reading the trail correctly, the suspect ship had traveled straight toward the unnamed nebula.

Penny jumped through the lift door and onto the bridge, rushing down to her chair, tapping Marcus to vacate. She dropped into her seat and pulled up the navigation charts, then looked at Logan's board. "Oh, good you're looking there too." She brought up the system with the asteroid belt. "Okay, so, we put together what we think may be their path based on some anomalies that would shield their actual path from our sensors. I'm thinking they might be hiding in this asteroid belt." She pulled up the system chart on the viewscreen alongside the nebula he had up. She looked at the nebula and her eyes narrowed. "You think they could be in the nebula instead?"

"The ship's warp trail leads towards the nebula." Logan looked at the asteroid belt readouts. "If they had a secret base on one of the asteroids, something that was shielded against our sensors, then they could be there....but I'm thinking the best bet is that they entered the nebula...we can't scan within it's boundaries...and there might be more ships or even a base inside that we can't detect."

Arashi entered the bridge and walked to the ops to talk to Logan. "We should send in a shuttle to do recon. I got a suggestion from AJ to send an Enhanced Ops shuttle to do that. That way we aren't going in totally blind and we'll know what is in there before we send the ship in." He said and waited for an answer.

"So two final trails, and we know they're good at laying false ones," Penny said. "So which do we investigate?" she looked back at Commander Hunter in the command seat and then back at Logan and Arashi.

Miguel had followed the conversation easily enough. He looked at the Commander from the First Officer's seat. "Two warp trails, fifty-fifty odds." he stated.

Penny's head was tilted in her 'thinking pose'. "More like fifty-seven-forty-three," she said. "But we can beat that. If we send the shuttle to the asteroid belt, it can navigate the belt quicker than the ship, and the ship can explore the nebula faster."

"Not sure about sending out a shuttle. The enemy is well equipped, don't think a single shuttle would survive an encounter with an enemy starship or even a small fleet of them. Also the fact that it is a shuttle would only further draw attention to them...." Miguel paused. "There is another ship that we could use. The Ranger." Miguel suggested to the XO. The Ranger had been the Captain's vessel when she was undercover working for Section 31. It had been modified heavily, and he had recently upgraded it after it had been brought on board.

"Sounds good to me. You should take AJ with you if you do and make sure that you scan your people. We may have infiltrators in our midst. Make sure that they are not with the Terran Empire. The Victory will investigate one trail and the Ranger the other. That way we have a chance of finding whoever took the captain." Arashi said. "If it has stealth capabilities use it. We are doing recon right now and it wouldn't do to give ourselves away. If you guys find what we are looking for, then one way or another we will know that we are either on the right track or fooled yet again. We were tracking quantum signatures as well since they are from the Terran Empire so if there is a quantum signature of any sort report it to Penny. She'll hopefully know how to track it. No offense intended, Penny."

Camille had made it to her science station and began bringing up data on the nebula and the asteroids. “Recommend the Ranger does the asteroid field, while Victory goes after the nebula. The gases in this particular Nebula will do more harm to the Ranger’s engines than to ours, and the asteroids are dense enough that Victory will have difficulty navigating even with the best pilot in Starfleet at the helm.”

Hunter tapped his fingers on the armrest of the captain's chair. "Penny, plot two courses. Mister Tanaka, assemble a team. Consult with Mister Taggart. Mister Logan, continue scans of the nebula and see what else we can see.

"Aye Sir!" Penny said, leaning over her console.

Logan didn't turn, but just nodded and replied, "Aye sir.". Because of the mission, it's be days that he hadn't seen Bryanna. They were both busy with their jobs, but once the mission was over, he would have dinner with her...cause he missed her...and he thought he might be falling in love.

Arashi left to get his team together. He was ready to take this Torrance to task and would do anything to get his captain back.

"If you want sir, I'll contact the shuttlebay and have them get the Ranger ready." Miguel offered.

"Do it," Hunter said, nodding.

 

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