S2 M4: Effigy

[Jada]

[Bridge]

Soon after finding the Jem'Hadar fragment, Jada had pinged another contact Á¢â,¬"œ this one larger, complete, and not of Dominion make. It seemed to be a whole starship; the question was if it was friend or foe? Fortunately, being in Yellow Alert, the Tempest's shields were already raised. She duly reported the find and put it on the main viewscreen.

She shifted forward in her seat. "Oh my god." She muttered. "It looks in tact." She said with a sense of excitement. "Is that the darwin? Can someone confirm?"

'There are energy emissions. I'm scanning for a transponder signal and running the silhouette through the database, but there's a strange blueshift...'

[Jada]

[Main Engineering]

's'Metra, sir.' s'Metra completed for Solluk, mentally repeating the name to get the pronunciation right. She'd lost the PADD, and with it any chance of a tip. Oh, right, Starfleet didn't do money. 'It's a large, raw, big-data file.' she clarified. The cadet was keen to show initiative and make herself look good, perhaps too keen. 'Shall I install it for you?'

[Ian Galloway]

[Bridge]

Soon after finding the Jem'Hadar fragment, Jada had pinged another contact Á¢â,¬"œ this one larger, complete, and not of Dominion make. It seemed to be a whole starship; the question was if it was friend or foe? Fortunately, being in Yellow Alert, the Tempest's shields were already raised. She duly reported the find and put it on the main viewscreen.

'There are energy emissions. I'm scanning for a transponder signal and running the silhouette through the database, but there's a strange blueshift...'

[Bridge]

Ian frowned at the report of a power source and sat up straighter in his seat.

"I'm nae likin' the smell of this Ma'am. Power after twenty years? Sounds like a trap ta me. Might be an old Dominion one, but summat that means no bloody good."

Ian made a few adjustments on his panel that brought full power to the thrusters so that he could maneuver in an instant should it be necessary.

[Solluk]

Main Engineering

s'Metra?  Solluk searched his memory, trying to determine if the name was familiar or not.

Then, setting the question aside, he handed the PADD back to her and pointed to Mister Garlande.  "If you are not needed back at your station, you can work with Mister Garlande here to set up a virtual environment for testing the predictive algorithms.  And please extend my thanks to your superior in the Sciences for lending us one of their resources."

If he got the clearance from Rylu regarding her opinion on the code, he wanted to follow-up with a brief simulation to verify the efficacy of the algorithm before going live with Ops.  It seemed logical to set up the virtual environment for that testing now, before it was needed.  Then they could proceed immediately after getting Chief Rylu's approval.

[Jada]

[Main Engineering]

s'Metra gazed at the workstation, weighing up her options like she had a choice, before agreeing. 'Alright.' After all, she was still technically waiting for an upload to complete back in Stellar Cartography, so she had some time to spare for this. Efficiency for the win! Taking a seat beside the one called Garlande, she configured the computer as a Science workstation then ran a virtual simulation environment for ship information modelling. She loaded a stock model of a Galaxy class and then began stripping back the unnecessary bits like weapons, holodecks, and life support to reduce computation complexity and time. 'Like this? she asked, showing the model to Solluk and Garlande. 'Of course, I used a stock Galaxy, but if you have an up-to-date SIM of the Tempest, it might be more accurate...'

Solluk would remember that Jada had mentioned a s'Metra while they'd explored the Nozama'kar holodeck simulation. s'Metra was her cousin, a cadet at Starfleet Academy, who'd helped compile the simulation, alongside Jada and her brother). Jada had done the landscaping and, given her interests, presumably the ecology too. Which meant s'Metra must have handled the computational modelling and algorithms, and potentially had quite a knack for it. (The third member, Jada's younger brother Rallin, had been collecting data from clan members in their new village for the simulation.) Jada hadn't mentioned s'Metra was coming aboard though.

[Solluk]

Engineering

The details of Solluk's time on the holodeck with Jada gradually trickled into his mind.  It had been a fantastic, intricate program culled from the minds of Jada and her family.  S'metra was one name that had been brought up.  Jada was no slouch, but neither did Solluk consider her an expert with computers.  Perhaps those skills had come from other members of her family.

Odd, though, that she hadn't mentioned this arrival.  He reminded himself that he needed to spend more time with her.  Things had come quickly these past couple of months, but that was no excuse to let distance grow between them.  Whether he could overcome his own insecurities or not, no relationship could manifest without adequate time invested into it.

"I regret that the most recent Tempest simulation we have is months old, and leaves out several upgrades and repairs.  An oversight on my part.  However, we are still in the high 99th percentile of adherence to class norms.  It's fine to strip out nonessential systems for the test environment, but put in a randomly fluctuating 20-25% drain on the ship's powergrid to simulate miscellaneous unpredicted operations.  Also, lower the structural integrity of all ship's materials by 2% to account for undetected flaws or weaknesses in hull materials."

He liked having a margin of error.

As he watched the cadet engage in fairly advanced and competently conducted computer modeling, he wondered to himself what Chief Rylu's opinion on Garlande's code was.   He wanted to implement the changes soon.  As soon as this simulation was run through a dozen times- which wouldn't take long once the environment was specced out.  It wouldn't do for their Captain and Admiral to spill her morning coffee because of hull tremors during his first stint as Chief Engineer. 

[Julia Rellek]

[Bridge]

Soon after finding the Jem'Hadar fragment, Jada had pinged another contact Á¢â,¬"œ this one larger, complete, and not of Dominion make. It seemed to be a whole starship; the question was if it was friend or foe? Fortunately, being in Yellow Alert, the Tempest's shields were already raised. She duly reported the find and put it on the main viewscreen.

'There are energy emissions. I'm scanning for a transponder signal and running the silhouette through the database, but there's a strange blueshift...'

[Bridge]

Ian frowned at the report of a power source and sat up straighter in his seat.

"I'm nae likin' the smell of this Ma'am. Power after twenty years? Sounds like a trap ta me. Might be an old Dominion one, but summat that means no bloody good."

Ian made a few adjustments on his panel that brought full power to the thrusters so that he could maneuver in an instant should it be necessary.

[Bridge]

Julia stood up as the image appeared on the viewscreen. "After all of these years, how is this possible?" She muttered. "I second your concerns Commander. K'Lizh, analyze that power signature and confirm its authenticity. Chief Jada, I want a full security sweep before we get any closer to that vessel. All stop Commander." Julia ordered. Outside of the blueshift reported by Jada everything seemed in line. If they are there, Julia couldn't help but wonder why they've remained in this nebula all of these years. Something wasn't right. Things weren't adding up in her mind.

[Ian Galloway]

[Bridge]

Julia stood up as the image appeared on the viewscreen. "After all of these years, how is this possible?" She muttered. "I second your concerns Commander. K'Lizh, analyze that power signature and confirm its authenticity. Chief Jada, I want a full security sweep before we get any closer to that vessel. All stop Commander." Julia ordered. Outside of the blueshift reported by Jada everything seemed in line. If they are there, Julia couldn't help but wonder why they've remained in this nebula all of these years. Something wasn't right. Things weren't adding up in her mind.

[Bridge]

Ian had anticipated the captain's order and brought the Tempest smoothly to a halt.

"Helm is answering all stop Ma'am."

More to buy time to think and organize his thoughts, Ian scanned his panel to ensure the ship was ready to respond should he need to maneuver if there was a trap or ambush waiting in the nebula. Once he felt what he was about to say made sense, he spoke up.

"Ma'am. We don't know if the Darwin was damaged or just cut off when the war started. Obviously, she had to fight or there wouldn't be pieces of Jem'Hadar fighter floatin' about. If she avoided damage, shut power ta minimum, she could have milked her power reserves fer a long time.

"I guess it all comes down ta, could the Darwin still be functional after so long? The answer ta that is aye, it could. The real question is why they would remain hidden fer so long. Even if she lost warp capability, I can nae imagine a Starfleet captain, or any command officer, fer that matter hidin' fer twenty years without even tryin' ta reestablish recontact Command. Even the bloody Voyager found a way ta communicate when it was lost in the Delta Quadrant."

[Klizh]

[Bridge]

Julia stood up as the image appeared on the viewscreen. "After all of these years, how is this possible?" She muttered. "I second your concerns Commander. K'Lizh, analyze that power signature and confirm its authenticity. Chief Jada, I want a full security sweep before we get any closer to that vessel. All stop Commander." Julia ordered. Outside of the blueshift reported by Jada everything seemed in line. If they are there, Julia couldn't help but wonder why they've remained in this nebula all of these years. Something wasn't right. Things weren't adding up in her mind.

"Aye, Captain," K'lizh said, activating the active scanners and accessing data from the passive sensors. The eyes, nose, and ears of the ship all focused on the vessel ahead, and did indeed detect some interesting data. "I'm definitely picking up some energy readings from the ship, but in this pea soup I can't get a more precise reading until we get closer."

[Jada]

[Bridge]

"Chief Jada, I want a full security sweep before we get any closer to that vessel." Julia ordered.

'Aye, captain, you'll have it.' Jada commenced a tactical analysis of the energy signatures and visible features of the ship, confirming its weapons and defences and their statuses, as well as its class and identification. Since she had the specs of the Darwin, she had something to compare to. Three Type-X phaser arrays, two Mark-80 torpedo launchers, CIDSS-3 deflector shields, all as expected. 'Confirmed, captain. She's armed with phasers and torpedoes, functional but powered down. Shields raised in yellow-alert status.' She looked up, watching the captain and the ship on screen as she reported the clear conclusion. 'It's a Nebula-class explorer, sensor-pod variant, transponder code confirms registry NCC-71937 Á¢â,¬"œ it's the Darwin.' she breathed, faintly in awe at the revelation of its survival.

[Jada]

[Main Engineering]

"I regret that the most recent Tempest simulation we have is months old, and leaves out several upgrades and repairs.  An oversight on my part.  However, we are still in the high 99th percentile of adherence to class norms.  It's fine to strip out nonessential systems for the test environment, but put in a randomly fluctuating 20-25% drain on the ship's powergrid to simulate miscellaneous unpredicted operations.  Also, lower the structural integrity of all ship's materials by 2% to account for undetected flaws or weaknesses in hull materials."

'Okay.' Working carefully to Solluk's specifications, s'Metra made the necessary adjustments to the parameters, as well as a few of her own devising. 'I added an average mass of cargo distributed among the bays, to account for the shifted centre of mass and effects on torque and angular momentum.' From a physicist's point of view, these old Starfleet ships, with their top-heavy discs and long slender struts might hold up beautifully in vacuum and zero-gravity, but as soon as they suffered an external force off their CoM, they were at risk of spinning apart, without structural integrity fields to hold them together. It was part of why newer designs were more compact. For her part, s'Metra enjoyed creating little worlds like this, in the holodeck or computer, using models to predict the future or make a home.

[Kyle Briggs]

[Main Engineering]

Robert was very impressed as he watched the young, Orion cadet key in her programing and run the simulations. Being on the Enlisted track and taking Engineering as a secondary course, he could only wish to master the same skills some day.

"That's very good work, Cadet." he said as he ad Lieutenant Solluck looked on.

He turned back to his own terminal to see if Chief Rylu had replied. Nothing yet. He looked back over at the simulations being ran on the next screen.

[Julia Rellek]

[Bridge]

'Aye, captain, you'll have it.' Jada commenced a tactical analysis of the energy signatures and visible features of the ship, confirming its weapons and defences and their statuses, as well as its class and identification. Since she had the specs of the Darwin, she had something to compare to. Three Type-X phaser arrays, two Mark-80 torpedo launchers, CIDSS-3 deflector shields, all as expected. 'Confirmed, captain. She's armed with phasers and torpedoes, functional but powered down. Shields raised in yellow-alert status.' She looked up, watching the captain and the ship on screen as she reported the clear conclusion. 'It's a Nebula-class explorer, sensor-pod variant, transponder code confirms registry NCC-71937 Á¢â,¬"œ it's the Darwin.' she breathed, faintly in awe at the revelation of its survival.

"How in the hell does a science vessel with minimal armaments survive a Dominion encounter. And this was before we had any intel on the Dominion... they would have been flying blind." Julia looked behind her. "Chief is there any indication, i dont care how small, that this is some sort of trap?" She asked.

[Bridge]

Ian had anticipated the captain's order and brought the Tempest smoothly to a halt.

"Helm is answering all stop Ma'am."

More to buy time to think and organize his thoughts, Ian scanned his panel to ensure the ship was ready to respond should he need to maneuver if there was a trap or ambush waiting in the nebula. Once he felt what he was about to say made sense, he spoke up.

"Ma'am. We don't know if the Darwin was damaged or just cut off when the war started. Obviously, she had to fight or there wouldn't be pieces of Jem'Hadar fighter floatin' about. If she avoided damage, shut power ta minimum, she could have milked her power reserves fer a long time.

"I guess it all comes down ta, could the Darwin still be functional after so long? The answer ta that is aye, it could. The real question is why they would remain hidden fer so long. Even if she lost warp capability, I can nae imagine a Starfleet captain, or any command officer, fer that matter hidin' fer twenty years without even tryin' ta reestablish recontact Command. Even the bloody Voyager found a way ta communicate when it was lost in the Delta Quadrant."

"I agree, none of this makes sense. Take us in closer, nice and slow Commander."

"Commander K'Lizh, hail them." Julia ordered.

[Klizh]

"How in the hell does a science vessel with minimal armaments survive a Dominion encounter. And this was before we had any intel on the Dominion... they would have been flying blind." Julia looked behind her. "Chief is there any indication, i dont care how small, that this is some sort of trap?" She asked.

"I agree, none of this makes sense. Take us in closer, nice and slow Commander."

"Commander K'Lizh, hail them." Julia ordered.

"Aye." He was almost afraid to. Imagine if his cousin was alive after all this time. Or, and he knew this was completely irrational, imagine speaking to the voice of someone long dead. But he was a professional, and he swallowed back his nerves and transmitted the standard hails.

"Nothing, Captain," he said after a while, then turned in his seat to face the rest of the bridge crew. "Is it possible they're trapped in some sort of temporal anomaly? Perhaps twenty years for us has only been a few days or even minutes for them. Naga, scan for chroniton signatures."

[James H. Hawk]

[Bridge]

James didn't like this. Not one bit. Ian was right, something was off. No one would spend twenty years without trying to contact anyone. It reeked of a chat to James, who still very much thought like a Tactical Officer. K'lizh's mention of some sort of temporal anonmaly couldn't bare well for the Tempest either. Whatever was happening, it can't be good.