A Time for Scanning Part 1

Posted on 16 Aug 2018 @ 9:41pm by Captain Jasmine Somers FCapt & Captain Maia Sterling & Lieutenant Paul Winchester & 1st Lieutenant Josefina (Fina) Macapuno

2,199 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: S02 Episode 4: The Avian Flew the Cukoo's Nest (Main Story)
Location: USS Tomcat/Various
Timeline: Mission 5 Day 12.1

[ON]

- Bridge -

With the Away Team finally away she turned to the replacement officer manning the sensor station. "Keep a lock on the shuttle," Somers said.

"Yes, Captain," the Ensign responded.

Then she turned to the replacement tactical officer. "Lieutenant Macapuno, keep tactical sensors looking for any hostiles in this area. The last thing I want is to get caught unawares by Orion or Gorn ships," Somers said to Delfin's replacement at tactical.

"Yes...ma'am," replied Josefina who was now busy working the controls of the Tactical stations. oO let's see if this baby can spill her guts, and give me something to brag bout Oo thought Josefina, as her fingers deftly worked the controls. For several long minutes to others was just a few seconds as she finally finished her scan..."Ma'am... Long range and short range scanners show nothing in the immediate area. Right now I'm having the long-range scanners set for their maximum effective range, and I have the short-range scanners set to detect anything up to a km around the ship" continued Josefina. "You never know if the Orions or Gorns are using the Tomcat as a shield and hiding underneath her" replied Josefina who was actually liking the ability to play with the Tactical control...

With a nod to the Marine, she turned to the turbo lift as her First Officer returned to the bridge, "How did the briefing go Commander? and I assume they departed safely?" She asked Sterling.

"The briefing went fine, Captain. The away team launched successfully. There are a lot of very green officers on this one. I would have preferred a more experienced staff. Lieutenant Dodd certainly has his work cut out for him," Maia said affably. "Both Thompson and K'Muss seemed ready and eager, you know the look fresh-faced kids eager to prove themselves have, but its sweltering down there. It will be like working in a sauna". Maia continued.

*nodding* "yeah, it is a test for him, but we were all greenhorns until we went on Away missions, all the crew need to get experience, keep an eye on those anomalies Commander, I am not fond of areas that produce Tachyon's and Chronoton without knowing what is creating them" Somers said.

"Aye Captain. Two eyes if I can spare them," Maia replied with a smile and chuckle. Maia then nodded and stepped down to her station Science One.

As the Commander went to work she looked to Winchester at the helm station "Lieutenant Winchester, time for you to do some intel stuff for me, so I have a job for you," Somers said.

Paul swung his chair around to face Somers, He asked," What is it you want me to do Sir?" as he had plans to do for the safety of the ship, this was the first test of his intelligence skills.

"I need you to get onto the intelligence Console at the rear of the bridge and find out everything you can about those alien's, Gorn I think the report was, use any and all means, but do not get caught, understand?" Somers said.

"Understood Captain," as he rose from the helm and let a junior officer take his seat, Paul made his way to the back of the bridge and started to access the intelligence console and start to download everything he could on Gorn movements in this sector, he wondered why would the Gorn want this planet.

After being ordered to look up about the Gorn in this sector, Paul knew that he was being or going to be transferred into intelligence, but Commander Swiftpaws hadn't given him much instruction and updated his intelligence classification, So what he was doing at the moment was outside his current preview as it were.

As he typed in his security codes, the screen lit up with Access denied, he thought to himself oO Dam you Swiftpaws, Oo, He turned to face Somers once more and said, "Captain, We have a problem,"

She swivelled around to look at the back of the bridge "what is it, Lieutenant?" Somers asked as everyone on the bridge went about their tasks.

"It seems that Commander Swiftpaws never sent in my Intelligence papers to SFI" replied Paul looking back at Somers, he continued," I'm locked out Sir"

She hurumphed "Computer assign Intelligence Officer clearances to Lieutenant Jg Paul Winchester until rescinded, also assign temporary CIO clearances to said the officer," Somers said to the computer.

She looked at Winchester "Okay lieutenant, you may not be CIO, but you have full Intel access, now you should be able to do your task" she added with a smile.

As Paul turned back to the intelligence console, he noticed that he was able to access everything they had on the Gorn, from when Kirk had encountered them up to present day, including their fleet movements.

This didn't stack up, The Gorn didn't have any bases out this far or if they did, Starfleet didn't know about them, but somehow he needed to gather the intel to make his report, then an Idea struck him, do the same trick they used last time, the fighters. But that would mean sending them out into the void with the temporal anomalies in view.

"I will need to Brief you, Sir," Paul stated formally as he realised that he was no longer in the Red of Flight but the grey of Intelligence.

"Briefed on what lieutenant?" Somers asked him with a curious smile, she guessed it was Intelligence related, but she was not a mind reader, she had no idea what it was about per se.

"On the Latest Intelligence reports that I have just seen," replied Paul now taking this job on full time, which meant having to do Helm part-time, he thought oO why couldn't you have brought me up to speed Swiftpaws Oo as he was now dumped in the deep end and left to sink or swim.

"Well go ahead lieutenant unless it is highly classified, I have nothing to hide from my crew," Somers said swivelling her chair around to face him.

"Sir," replied Paul looking at him, "everything in intelligence is classified to those with my clearance and those don't have clearance," he started looking at the Captain "Don't," as he didn't know at the time how sensitive this stuff was and was not going to let it be public knowledge

Looking at him "on the Tomcat Lieutenant I trust my officers, so speak up," she said standing and walking to the rear of the bridge where Winchester was standing.

"Aye Sir," replied Paul looking around the room," What I am about to say does not leave this room," as he knew he was about to make sure they understood, "If I or the Captain find out then there will be consequences,"

"They know the score Lieutenant," Somers said with a smile "please continue" she added.

"As you may know of the treaty with the Gorn," replied Paul as he knew how this might have affected the relationship between the two powers, Paul continued," However, the Gorn are not supposed to be out this far, But Starfleet does not know of any bases out here, but Intelligence seems to think there are hidden bases that they haven't revealed to us,"

*thinking for a moment* "interesting, but still as Starfleet Officers, we are bound to answering distress calls, but we will be on alert, so what do you propose to do to remedy this lack of knowledge?" Somers asked.

"I'd say do what we did on the last mission, send the fighters over to check the vessel," replied Paul as he looked back at the Captain, " also they can gather intelligence from the data link they did as well,"

She was giving this idea some serious thought "Sheela when she was here had some nifty bypasses installed to search alien computer systems, as you have the clearances, use those to get what information you are able to get, the bypasses are such that they are undetectable to alien systems, use those. As for the fighter screen, launching the alert fighters I would say two to do a flypast and get a reading" Somers said.

"It works better with four Sir, faster transmit of the complete data," replied Paul as he remembered how quick they had retrieved the data last time," if that is ok with you Sir?" he asked the Captain.

*Thinks hard, then looks back up at Winchester* "make it happen Lieutenant, and make sure the fighters will only fire if fired upon, but their mandate is to scan and report back" Somers instructed.

"Then I'd better get down to the flight deck and get this seen to," replied Paul.

*Nods* "okay," Somers said and watched Winchester leave the bridge, she returned to her seat.

Maia sat down at science one and locked onto the source of the temporal wave displacement. She ran several scans and was able to adjust the sensor scans to pierce the considerable interference. "Captain I've been able to pierce the temporal wave interference. Looks like whatever is causing the temporal wave distortion is powered by the planets abundant geothermal energy. Looks like whatever it is, is tapping directly into the core of the planet". Maia stated.

Looking at her First Officer with a raised eyebrow "interesting, notify the Away team of this and keep scanning Commander, I want as much information as possible *then it hit what was said* how in blue blazes can a geothermal reaction cause these anomalies? To my knowledge Maia geothermal activity means the heat of the core, I have never known such energy to produce the anomalies, is there an explanation for this difference here?" Somers asked.

"Aye Captain", Maia said sending a tight beam transmission to the away team of these findings. "Captain the device is emanating the disturbance, obviously whatever it is can convert one form of energy for another. Exactly how it does that would be mere speculation at this point. At least until the Away team has had a chance to get up close and personal with it. There may yet be another mechanism that we haven't discovered yet. Although according to my readings the structure has been there on the order of 5 billion years". Maia said.

During this moment Winchester had completed his tasks at the intelligence Console and had returned to the helm station where he continued to adjust the ship's position to avoid any anomalies.

"Very interesting indeed," Somers said to no one in particular.

"Captain," remarked Paul "I am moving us to a safe distance from the temporal disturbances," as he tapped in a few commands on his console as he didn't want to end up on another trip through a portal like last time, he finished," Do you want Fighters launched for a CAP Sir?" he asked.

Her attention brought back to what was happening she looked at Winchester "huh! Oh, good thinking batman, as for the CAP, yes launch the CAP, but make them aware that they are to avoid those anomalies at all costs" Somers responded.

"Permission to leave the bridge to brief the fighters, Sir," asked Paul as he swung his chair to face the Captain.

"Granted get yourself down there," Somers said and watched Winchester leave as a replacement officer too over the helm, then she accessed her display screen on her chair arm some important updates arrived before they entered a disruption field which cut off interstellar communication to Starfleet.

- Engineering -

With Dodd off-ship on the away mission, Nicci was keeping everything in order down in engineering. She was trying to keep up with sensor readings and keeping the ship's systems up to snuff.

"What've we got, Southern?" asked the Assistant Chief Engineer.

PFC3 Lauren Southern tapped a few controls and brought up the sensor diagram of the immediate vicinity, and saw a number of troubling areas of chronitons and tachyons, more than normal.

"We have a number of regions of elevated temporal disturbance," Southern answered, pointing out the orange blotches, representing the temporal disturbances. "A disabled Gorn ship is in range and it looks like we might be helping them."

"The computer cores are more resistant to temporal effects already due to the low-level subspace fields they operate within," Taggert said, thinking out loud. "Let's get Johnson, and the others on pre-damage control. Better safe than sorry. If we have any spare repair techs, let's prep them for the engines, weapons, and shields, in case we go into combat. And get Pril working on making sure we have good comms with the away team. I want a steady line in case we need to send another shuttle down to them."

"You got it, ma'am," Southern said as she nodded. Nicci still wasn't used to being called 'ma'am.'

[OFF]

Captain Jasmine Somers
Commander Officer
USS Tomcat

Commander Maia Sterling
First Officer/Chief Science Officer
USS Tomcat

Lt. Jg Iria Walon
Chief Counsellor
USS Tomcat

Lt. Jg Nicole Taggert
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS Tomcat

Lieutenant JG Paul Winchester
Intelligence/HCO
USS Tomcat

2nd Lt. Josefina (Joe) Macapuno [PNPC: Delfin]
2nd Platoon Leader
USS Tomcat

 

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