IKC FHew 7C6110
Bugging Out – Eight Ball, corner pocket
by HoD Ro' Matlh & Lieutenant JG Linx Moonshadow & Ensign Israna Haan & Sogh Germite Ephilom & Ne' Michelle "Mike" Young & Ne' Mariaa'n Si'van & Soghla' Marie St. Helene & Soghla' Jared & Soghla' Terri (Tell) Hope & Soghla' HIchop Matlh
Post Details
The system was all but empty. A million years ago there had been habitable planets with rich eco-systems. Then the star had grown to Red Giant, swallowing the inner planets and boiling all but the most remote. Finally it had gone Nova, throwing off huge amounts of gas, dust and the last of the planets. All that remained were a few newly captured comets and the tiny dot that was the White Dwarf remnant.
The approach had been through ionised gas left from the nova, which had played havoc with the cloak, but Maria'an had managed to keep it operating. Now they were inside the clear space again. In fact they had been for three hours.
"Scan again," Ro' growled in frustration.
Jared ran the standard sweep but there was no sign of any artificial structure larger than a shuttle craft. A station of the size and specification Jeeves had provided should stand out like a sore thumb just from it's radiated energy signature.
"There's warp traces and ionic residue from a number of ships entering and leaving the system. Hard to get a fix on where though - they seem to trail away towards the system's sun, but the trace is scattered pretty badly by the white dwarf's solar winds. I'm not reading anything like a space station, or any other obvious point of origin or destination."
Ro' ground his teeth, "So we know something is here, yet the Corporation do not have access to cloaking technology large enough to hide an entire station. So where is it?"
He glanced around at the rest of the command crew as if accusing one of them of stealing it.
“If vessels are coming and going,” Marie offered, “then presumably they’re coming and going somewhere. Can we triangulate their destination? Some might be going elsewhere but my guess is most will be heading for the same place as us.”
Bruce shook his head, "We can track them neatly till about 0.025 AU. Beyond that the gravity of the White Dwarf disrupts the trails. It has to be close to the star, but..."
Ro' snorted, "I wouldn't expect it to be that easy. We have known since the Khitomer incident that we need to baffle our exhaust to stop us being trailed while cloaked. They would no doubt be doing something similar. I don't want to have to sit here for months waiting for the next chance encounter with one of their ships. Move us in close to the sun."
“Yeah,” Marie said, not wanting to let what she considered to be a good suggestion go that easily, “but even if we only get an approximate destination, once we’ve got that we could shadow one and follow it in.” One look at the faces of ‘Ro and Bruce told her to quit while she was still ahead.
HIchop stepped up to Science, "Jared, determine if the material of the orbiting comets could conceal technology?"
"Rock, dust, water ice, Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Monoxide, Methane, and Ammonia. Not reading anything unusual in the rocks or dust, either. I don't see how they could noticeably affect our sensors."
He looked thoughtful for a moment.
"Actually... that might be useful to us. The comets have been gently spraying out stellar material all across the system. There should be a predictable spread of... comet dust, if you like. Obviously affected by the gravity of the star and the passage of the planets, but all in a predictable way. A single ship wouldn't disrupt that pattern very noticeably, but a lot of ships travelling along the same path would begin to leave a noticeable distortion in the comet-dust."
"Like tracking an enemy through snow?" May'Bel responded thoughtfully. "One set of tracks would be covered with the next snow-fall, but a regular pathway would compact the snow and leave a visible furrow."
Jared blinked.
"Umm... sort of. I mean, we're talking about a few dust molecules per cubic meter of space here, but... I guess that analogy works. I mean... it wouldn't be enough to tip someone off unless they already knew there was a base here, but if you're really looking for it, you might just be able to notice a difference. Jeeves, is it possible to..."
"I'm already working on a stellar dust scattering model, Mr Jared" Jeeves interrupted politely. "I should have a workable mathematical model for comparing to sensor readings in a few minutes."
"Oh... good."
Ro' nodded, "Away team, prepare."
As the F'Hew swept through the system gathering sensor data, the team began preparations. Jared stayed at science, and as Jeeves' mathematical model became available he began a game of high tech "Hotter" & "Colder" with the helm, letting Mr Air know as they seemed to be closer or further away from where ships had regularly travelled.
After a few minutes, sudden blipping alerts sounded simultaneously across the tactical and science stations, and the Conn.
"Captain!" Jared called excitedly! I'm reading a massive space station only a thousand Kelicams..."
Then the alerts suddenly went silent again.
"... or... not" Jared finished lamely. He looked at his sensor displays in confusion.
"Sorry Captain, I don't quite understand it. There was a whole massive space station there for a moment. Now... the space is completely empty. It's literally like it vanished out of existence. Didn't seem to phase, or cloak either. It just... was there, and then it wasn't."
Jared was still working furiously at his station.
"Wait a second! I'm reading some pretty weird subspace refractives just near where we saw the station... helm, double back along our own course. When we get near the point we saw the space station, drop to one tenth impulse."
"Aye, sir," Bruce said, "Backtracking."
There was a tense pause on the bridge as Air brought the ship around and retraced their steps. A few seconds after they dropped off speed, the same alerts rang across the bridge stations.
"There! All Stop!"
The F'Hew thrusted back and came to a halt. This time the sizeable space station stayed on the tactical readouts.
Jared was working furiously at his station. The readouts he was working on had the not-quite-so-Klingon look of systems that Jared had tinkered with and upgraded to sense things most people didn't know existed.
"Oh... I see! That's cunning!"
"Captain, They've... somehow folded a tiny pocket of space in on itself - perhaps two thousand kilometres across. It's almost completely separate from normal space, but there's a tiny opening - a kilometre or so wide - that you could fly ships through. But the station's undetectable unless you're looking right down the opening. People couldn't detect it with normal sensors, and even if they did pass the opening by blind luck they'd probably assume a sensor malfunction. The odds of people finding it unless they already knew it was there are... pretty steep. Perfect location for a secret lab."
Hichop wanted a chance to ride a torpedo right through the crack and deliver it to the corporation but that was probably not the best corse of action. "Captain, if the Corporation has one of these bases then they may have more. If Jared can connect to their computer we may learn more about how they fold space and how many of these bases there are. If we are lucky we might be able to determine a way where we destroy the base simply by expanding the folded space"
Jared offered again, "Recommend we go in cloaked and get inside any potential shield perimeter. Then we teleport to one of the outer docking sections. They'll be designed to have people coming and going, so we'll be less likely to trip any alarms by infiltrating there.
All this talk of folded space was messing with Marie’s head. It was bad enough that they flew past a station that was there then it wasn’t. Then, when they returned, it was there again. It was like pulling a rabbit out of a hat or some other fancy magician’s trick. Even though Marie had just watched it unfold she could make neither head nor tail of it. It was unlike any trick she had ever seen.
Jared caught her look of confusion.
"Imagine a bottle that's invisible on the outside, but not on the inside," he said helpfully. "The whole thing would be invivible unless you happened to get a look right down the neck of the bottle - at which point you can suddenly see the inside of a bottle and five mugs worth of bloodwine. That's sort of what we're getting, here. They've twisted off a little bubble of spacetime so it's mostly seperate from our universe, but there's still a tiny gap to fly through."
Marie wasn't sure that helped.
“HIchop,” she said. “I want to be on that away team.” At least that might take my mind off whatever else is going on here, she thought.
Ro' Felt the same as Marie with all the 'sciencing' going on.
"You heard the lady, HIchop," he said, "She is in the away team. So is Jared, in case of surprises, and Tell in case of mechanical complications. Pick yourselves some marines, too. Germite, you can take Mike and help her test out her new clothes. Show her how a Klingon Medic does things. Israna, we will need your stealth and expertise. Marria'an, your eyes for good salvage, and to keep Marie from pocketing the best things. Naturally Linx will want to go to make sure everything is done to the Federation standards. I don't know about any folded space, but if worst comes to Worst we can pepper the hull until she ruptures. Remember the mission. We need to find out if we can shut it down or blow it up. Expect heavy resistance. Suit up!"
"If that's V's research base, I'm willing to bet it's a lot better defended than it might look," Jared said as he headed off the bridge. "I'll bet six months' wages that all our weapons won't even scratch that station's shields."
Germite went down the ladder to sickbay. He started packing his kit. Germite nodded when Mike walked into the room. "There's not really a lot that we need to take. Just a few things to do some basic first aid to keep the away team on their feet. It's not like we'll be doing battlefield surgery."
"I'll deal with the tricorders." Mike points to her helmet. "You can thank Tell for all the extra 'additions' she made when she built the armour." Mike starts throwing gear into a bag also.
That sent a pang of jealousy through Marie. Tell hadn’t made her any special armour. She ran to fetch the basic stuff that was standard issue on the F’Hew. That is, cheap, ordinary and probably not up to the task. Going on the away mission was beginning to sound like it was not such a good idea after all.
Jared was in the computer core, stuffing a large backpack with tools and other bits of kit.
"Are you sure you don't want me to replicate you some defensive toys?" Jeeves asked politely. "You know the facility will be defended with very advanced weaponry and equipment. I have a number of schematics on file that might be useful - many of which don't qualify as weapons. The pact wouldn't come into effect."
Jared paused for a moment. If ever he had need of special tools...
"No," he said after a pause. "Any special-issue schematics you have on file, Jarvis will know about. I don't want to tip him off that we have you on our side."
"As you like. I will recommend, however, that you resist the temptation to rescue any... children you encounter within the facility. I possibly can't stress that enough."
Jared blinked. Children? Why wouldn't they...
... then he thought for a moment about the sort of "Children" V's special-projects lab might be interested in.
"Right. No rescuing children. Got it."
He finished stuffing gear into his bag and made for the transporter chamber.
Israna was busy packing all of her supplies and gear for the crews departure for the space station. After readying herself, she made her way to where everyone else was meeting.
Tell packed what ever she thought necessary for an away team mission. Engineering tricorder, screwdrivers, rachets and some flick bolts would come in handy. Tell thought twice about taking some emergency duct tape but one can never be sure if it might be needed.
She was armed with her knives strapped to her wrists and then strapped a shoulder bag across her, grabbing something else useful on the way out.
Marie walked briskly down the corridor, feeling much better now that she had weapons strapped around her waist. She only had one disrupter but it was her favourite. She had had the handle specially moulded to fit her hand. It felt comfortable and easy to use. It also packed a double charge inside the handle which gave it extra punch if she needed it. Kill setting on this beauty really did mean kill and stun could bring an elephant down and leave it senseless for days.
She also carried a throwing knife. It could double as a normal knife if needed but its prime purpose was a sneak attack when she didn’t want to make her presence known. The energy discharge from the disruptor invariably did that.
She saw Tell ahead and hurried to catch up. “I see you brought your duct tape,” she said.
Tell smiled "Well as long as I don't go down in history of this ship for remembering to bring the duct tape. All will be well as long as we have duct tape with us."
“Hey, it wouldn’t be the real Tell if you didn’t have duct tape somewhere on you,” Marie quipped.
Tell knew that Marie envied the suit of armour she had made for Mike and the engineer wondered what she could make for Marie. But what do you make for the girl who could get everything at at a bargain? It would take some thinking about.
by HoD Ro' Matlh & Lieutenant JG Linx Moonshadow & Ensign Israna Haan & Sogh Germite Ephilom & Ne' Michelle "Mike" Young & Ne' Mariaa'n Si'van & Soghla' Marie St. Helene & Soghla' Jared & Soghla' Terri (Tell) Hope & Soghla' HIchop Matlh
Post Details
| Title | Eight Ball, corner pocket | |
| Mission | Bugging Out | |
| Author(s) | HoD Ro' Matlh & Lieutenant JG Linx Moonshadow & Ensign Israna Haan & Sogh Germite Ephilom & Ne' Michelle "Mike" Young & Ne' Mariaa'n Si'van & Soghla' Marie St. Helene & Soghla' Jared & Soghla' Terri (Tell) Hope & Soghla' HIchop Matlh | |
| Posted | Tue May 27, 2014 @ 9:17am | |
| Location | Apothis System | |
| Timeline | One week after departure |
The approach had been through ionised gas left from the nova, which had played havoc with the cloak, but Maria'an had managed to keep it operating. Now they were inside the clear space again. In fact they had been for three hours.
"Scan again," Ro' growled in frustration.
Jared ran the standard sweep but there was no sign of any artificial structure larger than a shuttle craft. A station of the size and specification Jeeves had provided should stand out like a sore thumb just from it's radiated energy signature.
"There's warp traces and ionic residue from a number of ships entering and leaving the system. Hard to get a fix on where though - they seem to trail away towards the system's sun, but the trace is scattered pretty badly by the white dwarf's solar winds. I'm not reading anything like a space station, or any other obvious point of origin or destination."
Ro' ground his teeth, "So we know something is here, yet the Corporation do not have access to cloaking technology large enough to hide an entire station. So where is it?"
He glanced around at the rest of the command crew as if accusing one of them of stealing it.
“If vessels are coming and going,” Marie offered, “then presumably they’re coming and going somewhere. Can we triangulate their destination? Some might be going elsewhere but my guess is most will be heading for the same place as us.”
Bruce shook his head, "We can track them neatly till about 0.025 AU. Beyond that the gravity of the White Dwarf disrupts the trails. It has to be close to the star, but..."
Ro' snorted, "I wouldn't expect it to be that easy. We have known since the Khitomer incident that we need to baffle our exhaust to stop us being trailed while cloaked. They would no doubt be doing something similar. I don't want to have to sit here for months waiting for the next chance encounter with one of their ships. Move us in close to the sun."
“Yeah,” Marie said, not wanting to let what she considered to be a good suggestion go that easily, “but even if we only get an approximate destination, once we’ve got that we could shadow one and follow it in.” One look at the faces of ‘Ro and Bruce told her to quit while she was still ahead.
HIchop stepped up to Science, "Jared, determine if the material of the orbiting comets could conceal technology?"
"Rock, dust, water ice, Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Monoxide, Methane, and Ammonia. Not reading anything unusual in the rocks or dust, either. I don't see how they could noticeably affect our sensors."
He looked thoughtful for a moment.
"Actually... that might be useful to us. The comets have been gently spraying out stellar material all across the system. There should be a predictable spread of... comet dust, if you like. Obviously affected by the gravity of the star and the passage of the planets, but all in a predictable way. A single ship wouldn't disrupt that pattern very noticeably, but a lot of ships travelling along the same path would begin to leave a noticeable distortion in the comet-dust."
"Like tracking an enemy through snow?" May'Bel responded thoughtfully. "One set of tracks would be covered with the next snow-fall, but a regular pathway would compact the snow and leave a visible furrow."
Jared blinked.
"Umm... sort of. I mean, we're talking about a few dust molecules per cubic meter of space here, but... I guess that analogy works. I mean... it wouldn't be enough to tip someone off unless they already knew there was a base here, but if you're really looking for it, you might just be able to notice a difference. Jeeves, is it possible to..."
"I'm already working on a stellar dust scattering model, Mr Jared" Jeeves interrupted politely. "I should have a workable mathematical model for comparing to sensor readings in a few minutes."
"Oh... good."
Ro' nodded, "Away team, prepare."
As the F'Hew swept through the system gathering sensor data, the team began preparations. Jared stayed at science, and as Jeeves' mathematical model became available he began a game of high tech "Hotter" & "Colder" with the helm, letting Mr Air know as they seemed to be closer or further away from where ships had regularly travelled.
After a few minutes, sudden blipping alerts sounded simultaneously across the tactical and science stations, and the Conn.
"Captain!" Jared called excitedly! I'm reading a massive space station only a thousand Kelicams..."
Then the alerts suddenly went silent again.
"... or... not" Jared finished lamely. He looked at his sensor displays in confusion.
"Sorry Captain, I don't quite understand it. There was a whole massive space station there for a moment. Now... the space is completely empty. It's literally like it vanished out of existence. Didn't seem to phase, or cloak either. It just... was there, and then it wasn't."
Jared was still working furiously at his station.
"Wait a second! I'm reading some pretty weird subspace refractives just near where we saw the station... helm, double back along our own course. When we get near the point we saw the space station, drop to one tenth impulse."
"Aye, sir," Bruce said, "Backtracking."
There was a tense pause on the bridge as Air brought the ship around and retraced their steps. A few seconds after they dropped off speed, the same alerts rang across the bridge stations.
"There! All Stop!"
The F'Hew thrusted back and came to a halt. This time the sizeable space station stayed on the tactical readouts.
Jared was working furiously at his station. The readouts he was working on had the not-quite-so-Klingon look of systems that Jared had tinkered with and upgraded to sense things most people didn't know existed.
"Oh... I see! That's cunning!"
"Captain, They've... somehow folded a tiny pocket of space in on itself - perhaps two thousand kilometres across. It's almost completely separate from normal space, but there's a tiny opening - a kilometre or so wide - that you could fly ships through. But the station's undetectable unless you're looking right down the opening. People couldn't detect it with normal sensors, and even if they did pass the opening by blind luck they'd probably assume a sensor malfunction. The odds of people finding it unless they already knew it was there are... pretty steep. Perfect location for a secret lab."
Hichop wanted a chance to ride a torpedo right through the crack and deliver it to the corporation but that was probably not the best corse of action. "Captain, if the Corporation has one of these bases then they may have more. If Jared can connect to their computer we may learn more about how they fold space and how many of these bases there are. If we are lucky we might be able to determine a way where we destroy the base simply by expanding the folded space"
Jared offered again, "Recommend we go in cloaked and get inside any potential shield perimeter. Then we teleport to one of the outer docking sections. They'll be designed to have people coming and going, so we'll be less likely to trip any alarms by infiltrating there.
All this talk of folded space was messing with Marie’s head. It was bad enough that they flew past a station that was there then it wasn’t. Then, when they returned, it was there again. It was like pulling a rabbit out of a hat or some other fancy magician’s trick. Even though Marie had just watched it unfold she could make neither head nor tail of it. It was unlike any trick she had ever seen.
Jared caught her look of confusion.
"Imagine a bottle that's invisible on the outside, but not on the inside," he said helpfully. "The whole thing would be invivible unless you happened to get a look right down the neck of the bottle - at which point you can suddenly see the inside of a bottle and five mugs worth of bloodwine. That's sort of what we're getting, here. They've twisted off a little bubble of spacetime so it's mostly seperate from our universe, but there's still a tiny gap to fly through."
Marie wasn't sure that helped.
“HIchop,” she said. “I want to be on that away team.” At least that might take my mind off whatever else is going on here, she thought.
Ro' Felt the same as Marie with all the 'sciencing' going on.
"You heard the lady, HIchop," he said, "She is in the away team. So is Jared, in case of surprises, and Tell in case of mechanical complications. Pick yourselves some marines, too. Germite, you can take Mike and help her test out her new clothes. Show her how a Klingon Medic does things. Israna, we will need your stealth and expertise. Marria'an, your eyes for good salvage, and to keep Marie from pocketing the best things. Naturally Linx will want to go to make sure everything is done to the Federation standards. I don't know about any folded space, but if worst comes to Worst we can pepper the hull until she ruptures. Remember the mission. We need to find out if we can shut it down or blow it up. Expect heavy resistance. Suit up!"
"If that's V's research base, I'm willing to bet it's a lot better defended than it might look," Jared said as he headed off the bridge. "I'll bet six months' wages that all our weapons won't even scratch that station's shields."
Germite went down the ladder to sickbay. He started packing his kit. Germite nodded when Mike walked into the room. "There's not really a lot that we need to take. Just a few things to do some basic first aid to keep the away team on their feet. It's not like we'll be doing battlefield surgery."
"I'll deal with the tricorders." Mike points to her helmet. "You can thank Tell for all the extra 'additions' she made when she built the armour." Mike starts throwing gear into a bag also.
That sent a pang of jealousy through Marie. Tell hadn’t made her any special armour. She ran to fetch the basic stuff that was standard issue on the F’Hew. That is, cheap, ordinary and probably not up to the task. Going on the away mission was beginning to sound like it was not such a good idea after all.
Jared was in the computer core, stuffing a large backpack with tools and other bits of kit.
"Are you sure you don't want me to replicate you some defensive toys?" Jeeves asked politely. "You know the facility will be defended with very advanced weaponry and equipment. I have a number of schematics on file that might be useful - many of which don't qualify as weapons. The pact wouldn't come into effect."
Jared paused for a moment. If ever he had need of special tools...
"No," he said after a pause. "Any special-issue schematics you have on file, Jarvis will know about. I don't want to tip him off that we have you on our side."
"As you like. I will recommend, however, that you resist the temptation to rescue any... children you encounter within the facility. I possibly can't stress that enough."
Jared blinked. Children? Why wouldn't they...
... then he thought for a moment about the sort of "Children" V's special-projects lab might be interested in.
"Right. No rescuing children. Got it."
He finished stuffing gear into his bag and made for the transporter chamber.
Israna was busy packing all of her supplies and gear for the crews departure for the space station. After readying herself, she made her way to where everyone else was meeting.
Tell packed what ever she thought necessary for an away team mission. Engineering tricorder, screwdrivers, rachets and some flick bolts would come in handy. Tell thought twice about taking some emergency duct tape but one can never be sure if it might be needed.
She was armed with her knives strapped to her wrists and then strapped a shoulder bag across her, grabbing something else useful on the way out.
Marie walked briskly down the corridor, feeling much better now that she had weapons strapped around her waist. She only had one disrupter but it was her favourite. She had had the handle specially moulded to fit her hand. It felt comfortable and easy to use. It also packed a double charge inside the handle which gave it extra punch if she needed it. Kill setting on this beauty really did mean kill and stun could bring an elephant down and leave it senseless for days.
She also carried a throwing knife. It could double as a normal knife if needed but its prime purpose was a sneak attack when she didn’t want to make her presence known. The energy discharge from the disruptor invariably did that.
She saw Tell ahead and hurried to catch up. “I see you brought your duct tape,” she said.
Tell smiled "Well as long as I don't go down in history of this ship for remembering to bring the duct tape. All will be well as long as we have duct tape with us."
“Hey, it wouldn’t be the real Tell if you didn’t have duct tape somewhere on you,” Marie quipped.
Tell knew that Marie envied the suit of armour she had made for Mike and the engineer wondered what she could make for Marie. But what do you make for the girl who could get everything at at a bargain? It would take some thinking about.