Ep2: Act1: Welcome Home/Go Away

[Sjet]

Stardate 2380.24.4
Pillex Star System
Welcome Home/Go Away

+++

“What...is that thing?”

That was a good question.

And two seconds earlier it had been a thing that was upside down, inverted, several shades darker and covered in polkadots. The image had been cleared up as much as they could be, given that half the sensors were working and the other half were involved in a gang war over resource allocation: by the time the spectral analyser was up and running it had been bumped off by the secondary guidance LIDAR rerouting power. Half of the 82nd Construction Regiment was involved in a holding action to keep what power they had running to gravity and life support, and it was a battle being lost.

But still, the image flickering on the large main view screen in the stations C&C was something else entirely. It had appeared from the Tangerines atmosphere like a phantom, powering up and out of the coloured ribbons of cloud like a bat out of hell. The fact it had come top a stop releative to the station 100 kilometres away had been quite worrying: there might have been some screaming. Golden, bird like, with a eerie green glow coming from some of the leading edges (though that could have been an effect of the computer miscalculating the Doppler shift). It was reminiscent of Klingon and Romulan design philosophy, though no one had ever heard of their being either Klingon pimps or Romulan multi trillionaires who would want gold plated starship.

"Oh God its the Ferengi." breathed one of the engineers, a transferee from DS9 who had spent the first half of his career working on the old Cardassian starbase and Quarks Bar: his fear of Ferengi were well founded.

"Do we have anything other than visual sensors?" asked the officer who was supposedly in charge, though how someone could be in charge of a sinking ship was any ones guess "Can we tell if they've powered weapons? Or if they're hailing us? Do we even have weapons?"

"We have torpedoes, but unless you want us throwing them out the airlock by hand they're not leaving their launchers." said one, and the image of a bucket brigade throwing torpedoes into the void came instantly to mind "As for phasers....well I think half of them would blow up if we ran power through them. Though poking new holes in the side of this station wouldn't add much to the repair estimate."

"And the other half?"

"Might distract a cat if they were bored." the officer manning the circular weapons console said, before looking abashed "Sorry Sir. I didn't mean anything by it."

Chief Petty Officer Keth Soban waved away the comment. In another world and another time he might have tried to figure out how he, a feline Huanni who was not a Catian, might be distracted by a terra watt phaser beam. Human sayings were a completely different language to Federation Standard. But right now with Commander Grantz up to his short Telleratie arms in the guts of the stations power core, Soban was where the buck stopped. Unfortunately he only had his pointed teeth to catch the damn thing.

"Maybe we could play dea-" he began to suggest, only to be cut off as the view screen flickered to reveal the alien ships bridge: apparently the hold/mute functions for the communications system were off line. That could lead to interesting problems down the line. On the bridge of the alien vessel were...well aliens, but ones the Huanni feline knew well: Bajoran, Andorian, human and a Vulcan.

"Er..." Keth stood, bracketed in the light of the view screen instead of the dead overhead lights "...This...this Starfleet Starbase 42, Shoal Sector Command, Chief Petty Officer Keth Soban here. How might I direct your call?"

Keth didn't know where that came from, it just seemed natural to say it. Well it was that or the confused list of questions bubbling at the back of his head: why were a Starfleet crew on a alien ship? Aren't half of you the crew of the USS Tim Allen? And where was the USS Tim Allen, because they really, really, REALLY, needed the ships industrial replicator in the worst possible way.

TAG-All. A small transition chapter to get us onto the station and layout the disaster that is to come. Luke, I'll PM you shortly with a plan to get you into the game as a plot element.

[Nevian]

ooc: Sorry if I'm having a lapse, but didn't the Allen offload anti-matter and industrial replicators before taking off for the ill advised mission to Tangerine?

IC: The vulcan on the screen looked ill, gaunt as if recently starved. He slumped on the deck, propped against the closest bulkhead with eyes closed.
The only thing distinguishing him from a corpse was the slow rise and fall of his chest.

After a few his eyelids cracked open and then again closed, one hand moving weakly to brace and then eyes open slowly again as he pushed by arthritic stages to a sitting position.

" Ship.. water.. please. " the rasp was dry, directed at the closest portion of bulkhead. With barely enough spittle to moisten tough and lips, he whistled a few short tones.

From the deck near his hand a faceted container, almost wide a bowl, formed from the deck and filled from the bottom with clear pure water.

Sai'tan slowly leaned forward to brace his upper body and submerged the lower half of his face in the water, swallowing enough to drop the level by a liter.

[SabrinaPandora]

There were smarter officers to deal with the starbase and explain how they had lost the USS Tim Allen. The security chief would speak up if necessary, but at this point it hardly seemed so. Plenty of smart people around to handle tasks which required thought and delicacy and diplomacy, none of which were Talla P'Trell's strong points.

Instead the old pointy-ears on the deck looked like death warmed over, and from the looks of things he was going to drown in a bowl of water.

Hustling to his side, the mostly blue-skinned security chief pulled the aged Vulcan out of the bowl and propped him up. He was tall and lanky, but Talla was strong and determined, with an understanding of leverage that made her impressive strength that much moreso. For now, she planned to put it to good use here. Wth the engineer propped up. she picked up the bowl and held it to his lips, tilting it carefully so that it would flow slowly to his lips and not overwhelm him. She wasn't terribly fond of Vulcans- they were all so smart and they tended to lord that over people. And Talla did not need help feeling stupid- life handled that for her quite handily.

But Lieutenant Sai'tan had risked his life to help them understand the vessel upon which the crew had come to rely for salvation, their port in a storm, quite literally. And that was something Talla respected- self-sacrifice for the greater good of others.

Talla suspected that when he awoke and was himself again, the Vulcan might be abrasive or condescending or any number of big words that boiled down to looking down his nose at the stunted security chief. But for now, he was a crewman in need, a fellow Starfleet officer injured in the line of duty. Which meant that until he recovered, it fell to others to carry him until he could carry himself. And that was most definitely Talla's department.

"We will get you home, Lieutenant Sai'tan, where you can rest. For now, do not worry. I have you, and I will take care of you."

Hopefully with a little help from Doctor Zuub, she did think.

~tag Zuub or anyone else...

[Ciara Mei]

Zayna sat against what she hoped was a normal wall. Though she’d been there for a little bit now, her heart was still pounding from what had happened earlier on the other decks. Her phaser was still gripped in one hand, her tricorder laying beside her, still scanning.

After everything, she was exhausted. She wanted nothing more than a warm bed to sleep in and forget about this day. But she knew that whenever they did get somewhere, she would be in Zuub’s hands, getting her back repaired properly. Ryler had nothing against Zuub. In fact, she’d listened to a rant a day or so ago. But all the same, she just hated doctors.

She watched everyone else, doing similar to her or doing their own thing. There wasn’t much they could do at that moment.

She watched P’Trell take care of Sai’tan, who looked only a little better than death warmed over once he got some water inside him. No one else was really speaking.

But Zayna couldn’t blame them. They’d lost most of the crew to this ‘ship’, and didn’t know what really was going on outside. Were they ever going to get back to where they should be?

[Nevian]

Sai'tan pushed away the water, having for the moment re-hydrated and now needing calories and nutrition to begin restoring his energies.

He looked at P'Trell's hand, the molted blue and white of her healed tissues recalling their previous interaction.

" P'Trell.. so far we've been speaking to the ship and it's responded.. but, you.. the ship.. or one of it's subsystems, spoke directly to you. "

His fingers touched the back of her hand lightly, his warm flesh a sharp contrast her cool. " This is important I think. Can you find that part of you that heard it's words again? "

[SabrinaPandora]

[SabrinaPandora]

Um, hello? Ship? It is me, L-lieutenant Talla P'Trell, chief of security and tactical of, uh, Starbase 42? I am... I, ah... c-c-can you hear me...?

There was silence. And then there was noise.

It was like hearing a tidal surge rolling up a canyon, the sound of crashing waves echoing and reverberating from rock face to rock face turning the surge into the roar of a primordial beast. But it wasn’t a sound she heard in her ears, but one she heard in her head as her antenna flailed about even as her eyes darted from point to point, trying to take it in even somewhat on the numerous sensory level available to her.

The rush of mental noise continued for what could have been an eternity but was in actuality only half a second before a resounding silence suddenly took over.

Within that silence was a presence, not the same presence she had felt before that had sewn her hand and foot and a few internal organs back together again like a modern blue humpty-dumpty. This lacked the warm caring qualities of that presence. If anything the presence reminded her of an older Andorian she had known in her youth, a strident and scarred warrior that had had as much time for the genetic oddity that was P’Trell as everyone else had.

The presence judged her in its silence, but it did not rebuff her instantly. It waited.

This looked like the being in charge to Talla. A chosen follower, she recognized a leader when she encountered one, and this was definitely an encounter. The smurf paused waiting for the presence to address her, then recalled that she had contacted it.

What... what do I want to say? It... there was a pause as the little lieutenant realized that she had obeyed Sa’tan’s orders, but forgotten to ask him what to do should she succeed. The station will not recognize us as non-hostile if we do not communicate. That is a number of general orders... yes, hello, our people are out there and we should let them know we are here and alive thanks to you I think?

The presence, The Soldier, listened to her thoughts and mulled them with suitable gravity. And then found them lacking and insubstantial.

Station inoperable. Hostile resistance quotation: non existent.

N-no! We left personnel and equipment there, a Starfleet corps of engineers. They are clever and they will maybe be a little afraid of you if you come out and the USS Tim Allen does not I think. I am pretty sure on this one. Unless... they are not still there?

Thermal plumes consistent with carbon based mammalian life forms detected. They do not match known templates. They are not allies of the Transenlightenment. Non-allies are enemies. Enemies are neutralized.

Panic rose in the Andorian officer as her skin flushed to full sapphire in alarm. Those expressive little antennae shot straight bolt upright and remained there for a few seconds as she shook her head. Nuh-nonono! We are, we come in peace! We are Starfleet. Explorers. We come as part of the United Federation of Planets. We come in peace and mean you no harm. If you require aid, we will try to provide it. We are not enemies I do not think.

Sitting on the floor the cerulean-skinned officer held out her odd left hand, considering it as a part of her answer. You saved me. You are not bad, so we are not enemies unless you make it so.

That threw it for a moment: Explain ‘explorers’. Explain ‘peace’.

Desperately Talla wished that Captain S’jet or Ensign Ryler or the old pointy-ears were there for this. Even Zuub, who never seemed to answer a question save with another question as a deflection. But none of them were here. Just Talla. So she had to make the best of it.

Explorers. We... we left our homeworlds to see what more the galaxy had to show us, its peoples and lifeforms and phenomenonon. We explore to see the... the wonders of the universe. To try to understand them. And to learn from them, and join with them in a peaceful federation of worlds and systems who agree on how the people of the universe should treat each other, and that is with... respect. The struggling security smurf was reaching for her words, but she did understand both Starfleet and the Federation’s missions.

Peace is when all life forms respect one another and they live together in harmony and... for mutual... um... Talla snapped her fingers a few times as she struggled to find an encapsulating word in her somewhat limited vocabulary. Advancement. Yes, that is the word. To make everyone’s lives better so we can explore more and go further and oh! And saving worlds from disasters and things like that. That is why peace.

While she had wandered a bit off course there at the end, the tiny tactician had plead her case to the sentient starship for weal or woe.

You represent a coalition of species? An armed military alliance? And you, as their representative, are a member of a reconnaissance force?

For a moment there was more silence as The Soldier thought on this. There were similarities between the Trans Enlightenment of Metastatic Migration, but there were vestigial at best. But that could be down to the sample size: there was not apparent caste system in place, and already genetic analysis had delivered a stunning report. The aliens were not only not a branch/root society of species, but had members of the elder caste and sub standard examples. These were all suboptimal.

I, I am not THE representative. I am just... um... I am the one here. I very much wish I was not the one here but I am, so, um... yes. We are not a militia though, we are peaceful? Come in peace?

Peace...the cessation of hostile action when there is no more threat? Is this statement correct?

No... no... Talla thought furiously. If you wiped out your enemies in a smoking crater then they were no more threat and hostile action had ceased. That was not peace. Peace was... teamwork?

Peace is... peace is not cessation, it is achieving cessation of hostilities through negotiation and mutual respect and sometimes stopping the other party from hurting you. But that only applied as the least measure needed, and... Military history was bedtime storytime along with Starfleet rulebooks for P’Trell. But she retained very little, and while she enjoyed military etiquette she lacked any real depth in military philosophy. Sun Tzu went in one antenna and out the other.

I do not know! Talla fairly wailed. Floundering about with her hands the frustrated fighter spewed out, Peace is coming with an open hand, not a weapon. To greet a friend, not to fight a foe. That is peace I think?

Peace...is unacceptable. Enemies abound: competition for resources and living space lead to innovation. Further complication is the presence of intelligent life: threat to escape unacceptable. Current resources available do not allow for ‘Peace’. Idealised resources: seventeen charm weapons distributed across the breadth of this spiral galaxy in preparation for the arrival of migration fleet. Detonation would occur fourteen kilo years before fleets arrival, allowing for all side effects of multiple sterilization supernovae to be mitigated.

Weapons? That caught the lost little lieutenant’s attention. Detonation? Sterilization... that meant to clean something, to remove everything down to one-celled organisms. Sterilization supernovae... this was... very not good.

A image appeared in her mind of a galaxy. It was not the Milky Way, as instead of numerous spiral arms trailing out from a compact core this galaxy had only two arms. Along the arms of the galaxy six stars hidden among trillions began to blink rapidly before flaring with a sick greasy light. What followed was a flickering way of stars glowing bright, and then fading. In the span of a minute the galaxy was little more than a scattering of star clusters, an after image of a breathing beating heart of creation.

Intelligent life attracts the Contagion. To ensure survival of the Migration Fleet, and the Trans Enlightenment of the Metastatic Migration as a species, stealth is key. Radio waves and crude warp field interstellar travel are the hallmarks of useful prey. The Migration Fleet brings ‘peace’ before it.


Taking in a galaxy at a glance can be a heady experience. Watching one die was similarly impressing as one of those moments of witnessing Things Intelligent Life Was Not Meant To Know. And as Talla P’Trell’s ever-delicate psyche took another slight hitch to the left, her left eye twitched i time with her antenna, then she snapped to. Who-who-who are you talking about? Are you going to blow up the galaxy or-or us? I do not understand I do not think. I just... I just wanted to make friends...?

With childish simplicity the sapphire-skinned sprite reached out to the entity, that was saying so much she did not understand but knew just KNEW was important. In the material world all she could do was speak, but this was in her head. And in her head she could feel her heart as well, her little clockwork heart.The ship had saved her life. She wanted, more than anything, for it to be a friendly life form, because she genuinely was an optimist at heart and wanted, with childlike naivete, to believe in the good of the universe, and the nobility of the lifeforms of the galaxy.

Then she encapsulated all of that and communicated that swell of teary-eyed emotion to the entity within the Golden Hind, with whom she was speaking in her empty little head which wasn’t eerie at all.

Your psychological profile falls below the parameters needed to provide command information. You will be removed.

First came the flood of relief. being forced into command had resulted in at least two nervous breakdowns in a previous command, and talla had n desire to ever be considered command material. Then as that mild relief flowed into her she realized a genuine panic was rising in the anxious Andorian. Removed? Removed did not sound good she did not think.

Wuh-wuh-wait...! was all she managed to get out before the walls and the deck reached out in that way that reminded many of the surviving landing party far too much of a microbiology hologram of an ameba gobbling up a microbial snack, and for an instant they all were travelling. That was perhaps the best way of describing the sensation of movement without inertia.

Of course the truth would come out that, much like a transporter beam it was their individual cells and atoms being whisked from Point A to Point B: But instead of a stream of energy it was a cloud of chemical and electrical bits beamed across space and through solid matter to come to reside in the mess hall, which was currently a partially pressurized area with a leaky bulkhead venting atmosphere. The corps of engineers had yet to repair this sector as yet, having had a thousand other tasks more pressing to attend to in bringing the station online..

Both are terrifying, and it’s perhaps best we never think about that again.

Instead while gravity held sway, the thin air threatened to suffocate our intrepid heroes in the darkened main mess hall of their new duty station, Starbase 42.

Home at last.

Andrew & Sabrina

~Tag reactions to being sucked into the walls and spit out in a half-depressurized mess hall with emergency lighting. It was Andrew's idea! >points the finger of guilt<

[Ciara Mei]

It was the oddest feeling. One minute, they were all just there, pretty much watching each other. The next moment, they were all being sent...somewhere.

Zayna tried to grab onto something, anything, that would keep her there. Where was it they were going, and what caused it in the first place? She hadn’t been paying that close attention to everyone and almost wished that she had. She felt as though she was being force through a wall. But why?

It was soon after that she realized it was more like a transporter. Not one of their own though, probably one that this ship created. And it was sending them somewhere. It wasn’t until they ‘landed’ that she found herself gasping for breath.

They were on their new home..their yet to be fully repaired new home. She wasn’t sure what room it was they’d been placed in, but the air was far to thin for all of them to breathe. Ryler did her best to find the energy to crawl, and then realized how dumb that was and instead reached for her combadge.

“Ensign...Ryler...to anyone who can...read me on...Starbase 42. We...we need help. Mess hall…”

She could feel herself fading out due to the lower oxygen. She wasn’t good in lower oxygen, in fact, she hated it. No doubt the others would be feeling the same.

Tag-Anyone?

[Aoife]

"WaaaaahoooooOOOOOO!" The yell was swallowed by the sensation of being transported to the station. Emerald threw her hands wide and flung her head back as they spun into nothingness and rematerialized on the station. It took one breath for her to scowl. She began to breathe long and slow, using the faint oxygen to her best advantage.

If nothing else, whooo, what a rush this was going to be.. She didn't bother to try calling the people on the station. She could hear someone nearby doing exactly that, so there wasn't any point. Instead, Emerald concentrated on getting an idea of where they were, what was available and how to get out of it. With a sinking feeling, she realized that they were pretty far away from anyone who might be able to help easily. She flipped open her tricorder and took a quick reading of the air.

"We've got enough air left for fifteen minutes at our current use. Don't talk." There, that would be enough to give them warnings. She pointed first at her chest, then to one of the doors, making a waggling motion with her other hand to indicate that she was going to head in that direction, and did anyone want to come with her?

[Amanda Rose]