Day 4 - A Destination?

[Azaria]

“I suppose all of that is true, the first part anyway. I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone use the term ‘ducky’ in that form. That’s what happens when your first language is French I suppose.”

Jai smiled knowingly. Russian was her own mother tongue, but luckily had learned English among... colourful linguists.

Then the dreaded question, how was she? Ci sighed and tossed her own PADD onto one of the consoles that actually was working.

“Complicated question there. A lot on my mind and a lot I wish I could get off my mind.”

Jai leaned against the console and made a face that portrayed commiseration. "No doubt, eh? Things are... well, to call a spade a spade, things are fucked up."

tags

[Ciara Mei]

“The understatement of the century, Jai. Believe me. Things at home that I wish I could have brought with me now that we’re out here.”

Ci shook her head and sighed.

“But nothing I can do about that right now. We’ve got work to do, and a lot of it needs to be done in here. If Matthews sent you, then you must know your stuff. Honestly, I’m a little rusty with engineering parts so...Some things I’ll be willing to do as you tell me.”

That was hard for Ciara to admit, that she was rusty at something. But at the same time, she knew she had to stay there and help out. So Jai was going to have to tell her what things needed done where.

Tag: Jai

[Azaria]

"Of course, you're not an EO, no reason for you to be lubed up," Jai quipped with a wink.

She clapped her hands together and flexed her shoulders. "Right. Where shall we start?"

tags

[Ciara Mei]

Ciara rolled her eyes at Jai’s comment but shrugged it off for now. Her mind was on so many different things in that moment that she wasn’t going to let it bother her. As much as she knew this work had to be done, deep down she wished she could keep it within her team.

But, an engineer was needed in this. And she knew that Matthews wouldn’t have sent Jai had she not been good at what she did.

After hearing the question of where they should start, she let out a sigh.

“Well, we’ve got half the controls in here working, half not. The ones that are working have no sensors to communicate with to give us any readings on anything. So...the controls need repaired on top of the sensors themselves. I can handle the controls if you can handle the sensors.”

Tag: Jai

[Sjet]

Akimo Nagiama was a beautiful name, for a beautiful woman. It was a great pity that Jai’s affections for Arkady battled against his own for a ghost nearly ten years dead.

Her death had been as remarkable as the thousands of others that had perish that day above the airless husk of Charon. In the end there wasn’t even the closure of physical remains to bury and mourn: radiation soaked bones needed a lot of lead and tended to leak out into local water tables. So all that Arkady had ever had to remember his wife of two months by was a name laser etched into a stone wall along the River Seine. A name that was easily hidden and buried amid the thousands recorded there for all time.

She had been the only person worth a damn in all the universe in his estimation. Pity the pedestal he’d put her on hadn’t stopped the reactor pressure vessel from splitting open along a hair line seam during the Battle of Charon. But he’d been there at the end, like the endings of so many lives he had known: he had sat with her and helped her on her way. Better to keep Jai at arms distance, keep her safe from the legacy of violence and death that seemed to dog his heels.

“You okay over there chief?” came the buzzing hiss of a voice. The speaker, like the other six space suited figures clamped to the hull, was an invisible presence within the golden fishbowl of their helmets. But as Arkady looked up and over at the figure clearly indicating to him with a pointed arm, his eyes tracked across the helmets HUD display and triggered a comm laser. Instantly a small bracket appeared around the pointing figure, and a small Anime avatar picture appeared next to it.

“Am Doctor, not ‘chief’, Hakim.” Arkady groused as he pushed off with one foot and reached out with his right hand for next hand hold. He quickly snapped the safety line into that hand hold, before swinging his left arm up with the second tether: scrambling across the hull mountaineering style. The suit had an EVA thruster pack attached to it, his licence certified him for free flying if he had need. But life in a low pressure environment taught you quick and taught you young to stack all of the odds in your favour.

One tether might fail, but two is unlikely.
A thruster pack might fail, but your two tethers would not.
Space walkers liked to joke they cheated death on a daily basis, and they were not far wrong.

“Ah huh. And I am camels buttock wart.” Came the cheerful Arabians witty retort. The other EVA workers on the hull had a chuckle at that, but kept on working on the exposed gravitics detector that rose out of the hull like a nightmare Christmas tree. Gunners Mate 3rd Class Hakim Said, who those who knew him well merely called Gunners Mate Funk for reasons of poor musical choice, snorted into the live mic. “This is scut work and no mistake. If the communications array was faulty we’d see a lot more signal bounce, random distortions in the red/blue Doppler Effect. Grav sensor’s the most delicate piece of kit we have on board for observing the exterior universe, but it checks out good as when the boys at Luna 2 installed it.”

“No chance grav sensor might be throwing off the random noise in comm array, masking mechanical failure?” Arkady enquired.

“This beast has been off line for near an hour now: signal strength and duration is the same, no appreciable drop in coherence.” Hakim raised his arms in a zombie like fashion, a space walkers version of a shrug “Face it, we are not alone in this galaxy much like we were not alone in the last one. How shocking.”

“Your lack of surprise is a mystery to me.” Arkady groused as he came level with the exposed monster of a sensor array.

“Allah provides infinite possibility in infinite configurations.” Hakim said with a smidge of pride in his voice “Why would it different here in the Pin-Wheel than it was in the Milky Way? We’ve always know there had been precursor civilisations to the ones that currently in power back home from what the Vulcan’s hinted at. Why would it be so strange to stumble upon the first life forms in this young galaxy? Perhaps they are like us: explorers?”

“I am not fan of coincidences.” Arkady said “Neither were the Romulans.”

“Nor theological debate it seems my friend.” Hakim chuckled again, before leaning back and admiring his work “Work Party One to Bridge, we’ve finished inspection of the gravitics sensor. We are go for retraction and storage.”

After a moment of spoken words the massive glossy black ceramic Christmas tree of blade like fronds and super conductive material lowered back into the hull of the Horizon. Once it had sunk back into its redoubt, hull plates slowly lowered back into place to ensure the Horizon’s aerodynamic spherical command section remained smooth.

“And that is that.” Hakim said solemnly, before speaking on the all hands frequency “Okay guys, time to head back inside. Remember to log all those pesky LOC’s and atmo malfunctions with the duty book when we get back into the ship.”

That got a groan from the work party. LOC’s, or Loss of Consciousness, were a common side effect of prolonged zero gravity work in worn space suits. New suits were safer but the Horizons stores were growing steadily out of date even with repairs and patch work. They leaked slightly, their environment systems malfed, and so all EVA workers were to log reports of strange goings on to help weed out defective and dangerous space suits.

But if you can find a thrill seeker willing to go walk about on the hull of a star ship breaking the laws of physics who loves paper work, you’ll never win the lottery again.

“A pity Wells could not be out here with us.” Hakim commented as he, Arkady and the other suited workers began to drift back towards the main air lock “I had thought she would be joining us today to make sure we didn’t bruise any of her fancy toys?”

“The Commander turned down my gracious offer. I should not have told you to expect her arrival.” Arkady apologised. Whilst their meeting in the corridor out side of sickbay had been pure chance, he had been about to ask her to join him. His intentions had been honest, and whilst his attitude could have been better his attempt to build a bridge between them had been sincere. It would have been a golden opportunity to show Wells that Gary might be a powerful ally within his old Starfleet fraternity, but that there was a far friendlier and welcoming collation of people to watch her back.

But maybe she preferred to have someone, a very specific someone, watch her front instead?

“Think nothing of it.” Hakim said, turning slightly to look back along the trailing line of space suited workers he led “Her suit is in better condition than most of the ones my team use: less wear on the pressure seals and joints. I put Svetlana in it to save time after we prepped it. How’s the fit back there Svetlana?”

Silence.

They all looked back now, to see someone still dangling from a safety tether from the Gravitic’s sensor hatch. Arms and legs splayed out, unmoving and still. To their credit none of the EVA workers panicked, but they moved with purpose. As a team the other workers grappled their way back to Svetlana, whose suit name tag read as “WELLS, Cmdr”. They tried comm laser’s, they even butted helmet to helmet to let the sound vibrations rattle through the glass and atmosphere of the two suits.

Nothing.

“Suit reads a nearly full Atmo pack and no dent in the Co2 scrubber. Suits also saying her Atmo mix is bang on Terrestrial normal.” One of the EVA workers commented as they began a fast transit back towards the airlock.

“Okay we make the call.” Hakim said in a brisk fashion, before moving from his private channel to the direct bridge emergency line “Work Party One to bridge, medical emergency! We need a fast entrance to main airlock! One crewman down, cause unknown!”

A fast transit would disengage all the safeties on the air lock, allowing it to be re-pressurize at twice its normal speed. This put wear and tear on sensitive equipment and, in some cases lead to both the inner and outer lock doors blowing open at the same time with disastrous effect. It was why it was one of the few things that only a ships captain could authorise. But with a unconscious, and possibly dead spacer on the wrong side of a steel wall and medical care, it was a easy call to make.

If only Gary could make it.

TAG-Bridge interested observers.

Arkady Sjet
Ships Physician
USS Horzion

[Melissa Richards]

[Amanda Rose]

[Amanda Rose]

EVENING

But yes. Yes! There it was, like an immense ball of yarn tangled for miles that had suddenly been identified as a mere slip knot twist... everything unravelling, everything falling into place... absent-mindedly she pressed the comm button for the Captain. "Sir," she said, the computer showing the modesty that Dr. Talia Flowers obviously was completely unaware of, "if you have a few minutes, I'd like to ask you about something, if it's not too much trouble."

At least that was better than blurting out, "Eureka!" Wasn't it?

Gary was frustrated. Not only did he spend an entire day on the bridge doing nothing but waiting for Flowers or someone from Science or Engineering to give him a bit of good news, but Mary had also told him that she was not going to spend the night. Women! Gary thought rather frustrated.

He debated contacting KAT and having her spend some extra time with him. After all, he could truly relate to KAT. However, for her protection, he knew that he would have to likely keep his communication for the night to personal chat through the PADD or via intra-ship communication.

His mind vaguely trailed to wondering whether KAT was interested in video-sex when Flowers' face appeared on the screen. Looking at her neckline, he could almost certainly guess that she was naked. Well, that's certainly a promising start to an evening, Gary thought with renewed hope. He gave her a winning smile as he faced the screen and asked, "To what do I owe this pleasure, Talia?" His smile hinted at more with the question.

“Something that can’t be discussed on an open channel,” Talia replied and smiled to match the Captain’s. If there had been anyone listening, they could surmise whatever the hell they wanted to from that statement. She leaned forward and felt a breeze, and her eyes widened in some surprise before she laughed aloud, a deep, warm and infectious one.

“Please let me know where you’d like to have a meeting, Captain?” Her eyes sparkled just a little. “And when?”

“No better time than the present,” he replied, mischief in his voice. “Seems that you may be a bit too preoccupied to stroll the corridors to my cabin, so why don’t I take a walk to yours?”

“Perfect, Captain,” Talia replied and stood up, killing the comm channel, but not before the briefest flash of breast.

Gary smirked at Talia’s flirtation. At this moment, he wondered if the news was whether she wanted him over for another lay or whether she had something more to tell him regarding progress on the beacon.

He purposely strolled at a controlled pace, excitement building with each step. He could feel his uniform starting to tighten below his waist. He did everything that he could to try and force his excitement down which only had the opposite effect.

Arriving at Flowers’ door, he rang the chime.

Dressed was a loose term when referring to Talia Flowers. She had been out in the field so often that her regular state of dress had gone the full gambit from barely anything at all, to full arctic regalia. She wasn’t really particular at this point, and threw on something that would cover mostly… because this was going to be a discussion that dealt with the signal. Not the mixed ones she was sending.

Anything to keep the others wondering, and the rumour mill churning…

Going to the door, she opened it. “Captain,” she said quietly, “please, come on in.”

Gary entered Talia’s quarters. They were much smaller than his but that was to be expected for an ensign. The door closed behind him after he entered.

He eyed Talia up and down. Disappointed that she had thrown something on, he told Talia, “There was no need to dress on my account.”

Shrugging, she grinned widely. “It was more for the wagging tongues aboard,” she said calmly. “Besides, I have quite a bit of news for you.”

“Quite a bit? Now that’s some rather enticing foreplay, Talia.” He found himself a seat and lowered himself on it. Giving Talia a glowing grin, his eyes lighting with excitement, he asked, “You have have figured it out, haven’t you?”

Without waiting for Talia to confirm his suspicion, he gestured towards her and said, “Well, out with it, you! This is not the time or place to be discreet.” A chuckle escaped as he purposely encouraged the double entendre.

“It’s a warning,” she said, tugging out her notes. “Repeated over an 18 hour period in, what I can figure, over 3,800 languages and dialects.” She sighed deeply and pointed to the scribbled notes she’d made. One thing about Dr. Talia Flowers… no one could hijack her work sheets. All on paper meant out of the system. Out of the system meant, untraceable. “That doesn’t mean 3,800 planets, Captain, but it does mean a diverse population of several variations on similar species.”

Gary considered and then whistled. “3,800 languages? How can you be so certain that it is that many? How were you able to break the code?”

“Cartography, linguistics and logic,” Talia said, affecting the whole professor posture without looking one inch of one. Her demeanour changed slightly, and she brought out her notes. “Sounds I translated phonetically into phrases based on pace, timbre and rhythm,” she said, a copious amount of scribbles made sense to at least her. “Some were similar, but still repeated, here,” and she took her finger and struck through quite a number of sections, “through this length here.” She sighed a little, remembering the time it took to unravel the one piece of the puzzle. “Since there were several such groupings, I took them to be variants on the same language… quite possibly regional dialects, similar to old Earth China, and India.”

She went on for another few minutes and then shrugged a bit self-consciously. Until she saw the language written down, there was no way to confirm her information. “For now, this is a working hypothesis, but it seems the most logical given the details.” She sat down, finger pressing her PADD as the lights dimmed and a myriad of stars twinkled inside of the room as though space had invaded the Horizon’s hull. “In this area of space, there seems to be quite a large number of habitable planets according to the scans we managed to get from the Sol system. We would have to confirm them here, but we can’t do that until our sensors are fully back online.”

Her finger traced circles in the air, leaving swirling coloured lines in its wake. “There’s a planet beneath the beacon, Captain. Not sure about it fully, but when we can get the probe up and running, we can confirm. But, there is something there, and the warning has to do with…” Talia sighed, half excited and half concerned, “Well, for lack of a better term, I believe that the warning has to do with a Prison or Jail Facility.”

“Tell me, Talia,” he said becoming thoroughly engrossed in the conversation, his index finger and thumb forming an L shape which supported his chin. His lap supported the elbow that had the L shaped hand. “Tell me, is there any way to tell how old this beacon is? Or whether the message is being relayed into the beacon or whether the beacon’s message is self sustaining, more like a buoy?”

He then stood up and paced across the small room. “And if this beacon is at a prison facility, should we not assume that it has some sort of defenses? Perhaps we can move to the edge of our current sensor range to get some ideas…?”

Talia blinked repeatedly, processing the question while simultaneously collating the material to discern possible ways of determining such things. “Age… hm…” There were a few thoughts rummaging around in there… “Decay rate of the signal, orbit spin… and even the carbon dating if they decided to use one of the most prolific substances known to their home galaxy, then we might get an idea…”

“Output of energy source,” Talia began speaking more to herself than to the Captain, “Yes, if we can determine the energy source for the beacon, we can determine its age, through half-life analysis of the elements.” And quite possibly determine a new resource out here as well…

“I guess that settles it,” Gary said with some determination. “The only issue now is what, if any defenses this beacon has or the prison.” He firmed his lip. “We will set course for it in the morning.”

He then looked at the distracted Talia. “It seems that you are rather taken by this project. Should I let you be?”

Talia cocked her head sideways, and her green eyes focused more clearly on the Captain. “If you wish, Gary. I might require a minor distraction to allow for my subconscious to work on the issue… but I can only imagine the demands on your time…”

“My time is your time, right now, Talia. I had no other plans this evening,” he explained with an omitted truth.

Both Talia’s eyebrows shot up and she cocked her head sideways, considering the Captain’s words and the honesty behind them. “Well, don’t let me keep you from no other plans,” she said, her eyes twinkling slightly. “I’m sure a diversion will present itself, regardless.”

“Oh, I’m quite sure of that,” placing his hands on Talia’s shoulders and pushing off her clothing. “Oh, look,” he told her with a mischievous grin. “A diversion. Your clothing has gone astray.”

FADE TO BLACK

[Ciara Mei]

This was the one time that Ciara wished she wasn’t wearing the uniform that she was. She’d spent most of the day underneath one console or another, trying to get them all working. On top of that, there were others working on the actual sensors. But those were going to take time. There were a few pieces outside the ship that had to be repaired, and she always hated space walks.

Coming out from underneath the last one, she glared at the few other officers that had joined the room at the shift change over.

“Eyes to yourselves!”

They quickly looked away. Well, all but one, Mark Trumbell. She couldn’t really blame him, after the previous day. But today was a day to be serious, and get her emotions in check the best that she could.

She was focused more on getting home than she was filling a desire that her body held. The desire she had wasn’t for anyone on this ship, though they helped a little. She’d dimmed down her ‘sleeping around’ a bit, as she really only had her eyes on one person, who wasn’t here. She did wish, at this point, that she was. Or that she’d taken him up on his offer to stay back on Earth.

Ci would have given anything to be back on Earth with him in that moment, the moment when all the guys were trying to look up her uniform.

Hitting a few things on the console after she pulled her hair back away from her face, she smiled.

“Finally! Perlit to Captain, we’ve got systems up down here!”

Tags: Captain, or anyone hearing it.

[Azaria]