Communication is Key

Posted on 15 May 2012 @ 1:41am by Lieutenant Commander Chauncey Remington III (KIA) & Lieutenant JG Kestra Orexil & Tarishiana Barel

2,140 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Episode 01 - Project Sienna
Location: USS Galileo: Deck 1 - Conference Room
Timeline: MD03: 0800 hours

[ON]

Will entered the bridge and glanced around quickly. "Kliborne," he said with a nod to the crewman, "you have ops." Without stopping, he headed into the conference room and walked up to the replicator. "Coffee, black." When the drink materialized he sat down at the table, placed a PADD before him, and leaned back in his chair, sipping his coffee and waiting for Kestra's arrival.

Kestra strolled into the conference room at exactly 800 hours, fresh from a morning of drilling her team. She'd broken up their schedules for alpha and beta shift for the day to give them all time to rest and get into fighting form, but it had been important to see how they operated when caught off-guard. Drinking her third cup of coffee, she told herself sternly that she would meditate immediately after to center herself before finishing out the alpha shift. Ruktah was patrolling the ship with her instructions to seek out possible containment zones she'd overlooked. Perhaps he'd have something for her by the time she found a solution here. She sat down beside Remington and smiled cheerily at him as she placed her PADD on the table. "No better day to tempt fate. Shall we get started?"

"Good morning, Lieutenant," Will replied with a fresh morning smile. "I'm afraid that I didn't have much time to think about this before coming. Short notice. So how do we disrupt communications? We can just scramble their frequencies but I think the commander wants something tighter."

Kestra nodded, "I had a thought about that. Scrambling the frequencies would be letting them know that they were being interfered with. Which would be seen as an act of hostility and an acceptable reason to blow us to nano bits. But... if all interstellar communications went down in a certain area - that could be seen as an act of nature. That would mean cutting ourselves off temporarily as well. Of course, I'm no tech expert. I'm not even sure such a thing is possible. Is it?"

"Perhaps..." Will said thoughtfully, "but making it look like a subspace disturbance or what-have-you? That is more difficult. We might be able to set something up with a triaxilating jamming frequency but that wouldn't fool them for long."

"The other way to create a communication disturbance that isn't automatically due to us would be a technical failure on their end. A breakdown in the hardware. But that would mean somehow getting access to their ship." She shook her head, "I'm spinning wheels here, Remington. What I know is that they can and will use subspace pings to communicate, even if we shut down their normal operating procedures. That, however, is indecipherable between vessels assuming the correct codes are used. I have access to many of the updated Klingon ping codes. Not all, though. It would be a gamble, but it's possible we could create a major miscommunication in the time they'll be relying on those encrypted messages."

"That would be better than nothing," Will agreed, "but we'd have to make sure they couldn't tell it was coming from us. This is getting complicated. We're better off finding a way to disrupt communications without having to interfere with their ship directly..." he paused as an idea came to him, "What if our ship had an 'accident'?"

"An accident?" Kestra asked curiously. "Of what sort?"

"Any number of energy leaks could disrupt communications. I wouldn't suggest leaking warp plasma or anything like that, but... do we have any compounds in the cargo hold that can release a strong energy signature?" He got up from his chair and went to the wall. "Let me pull up a cargo manifest." His hand started to glide across the console.

Kestra followed him, watching over his shoulder as he flicked through information on the console. "You think that a malfunction on our ship might be able to disrupt their communications? Wouldn't it need to be targeted?"

"Not if it's big enough. If we can have a containment leak, not a real one, of course, that disrupts communications all round us. The Klingons won't suspect right away that we're doing this on purpose because we won't target it on them."

She nodded, grinning, "Good thinking. Do you see anything in the manifest that might work?"

"No," Will said, "subtances like that aren't common cargo for a science ship. We might be able to replicate something, but we'd have to use the cargo replicators on a higher resolution. We don't have the energy to devote. We need to find a way to generate something, or synthesize it... maybe we should ask Barel to join us?"

Kestra nodded and tapped her com badge, =/\=Orexil to Barel, if you've got a minute, Remington and I could use your expertise on the bridge.=/\= She looked at Remington, "As far as the subspace ping system goes, there's no way to track where the beacons come from. The only way of identifying the source is through the actual beacon codes. We figure out what that is for whoever they might be trying to communicate with and we can easily replicate them."

"Can you manage to obtain those?" Will asked.

"I should be able to. Definitely once the systems are down. They shouldn't be expecting us to be scanning for them; Federation beacons don't operate on the same frequency. Before..." She nodded slowly, "I'll see what I can do." And she'd have to speak with Coleman. The intelligence officer might have some tricks up her sleeve. Quickly, she checked her to do list and appointment schedule for the day and typed a memo to Coleman into her PADD requesting an afternoon meeting. This wasn't the sort of thing one could deal with in detail by com badge or memos.

"Very well," Will replied, "let's see what Barel has to say."

Tarishiana had barely made it to her office before the summons from Kes had come across the COMM. She had no hope that it would be for fun, but that didn't change the fact that she would go. She didn't even set her PADD down on her desk before turning on her heel and heading towards the lift. "On my way, Lieutenant." Was all she replied as she stepped on the lift.

Within a few minutes Tarishiana emerged from the lift on the bridge and to the conference room. You rang Kes she thought to Kes as she greeted Will. "Commander, what can I do for you?"

You answered, Rishi, Kestra thought with a slight smile.

"We want to disrupt the Klingons' communications if necessary" Will began, unaware of the mental conversation, "but we can't let them know we are doing it on purpose... we were thinking that if a cargo container 'malfunctioned' it might leak just the right energy type to disrupt communication for a good ways around. I don't suppose you know of something we could synthesize that would fit the bill?"

Tarishiana instantly went into science mode. Granted her science mode had more to do with mathematical equations then with chemistry, but that didn't stop her from trying. "To be honest, I am sure there is one. Not sure if I can think of one of the top of my head." Her eyes glanced down at the PADD in her hand lifting it up and punching in a few variables as she searched for something. "We could try something low tech like some form of ionized radiation."

"That would work," Remington said, "it has to be convincing, though. The Klingons have to think we suddenly had a cargo accident disrupting communications. It has to be strong enough to knock out communications but not dangerous to the crew."

"That can be arranged." Tarishiana replied with a little grin. "We just have to determine what we have that can be faked easily." She began to do the math in her head to figure out the amount of radiation that they would need. "I am just doing this in my head but I think the level of radiation will be tricky. I know that medical can inoculate the crew quite quickly to buy us a little wiggle room."

"As long as the Klingons don't get a chance to do autopsies on us..." Will said with affected gravity, "and if they do, knowing we lied about a cargo leak will be the least of their issues."

"If they do, we've done everything wrong," Kestra murmured. "The point is to stop them from attacking us, and from being able to coordinate attacks on us. For long enough that we can get out of range. Just that. The question is, with inoculations, how much wiggle room does that buy us? Getting away doesn't do any good if half the crew dies or risks permanent damage from radiation exposure. Is there a way we can seal off the room? If we blew out the security hatch in cargo bay two, we could seal off exposure of the radiation to the rest of the ship, couldn't we?"

"Maybe..." Remingtone conceded doubtfully, glancing at Barel from the corner of his eye. "We could get a couple hours if we inoculated the crew, right? We'll be stretching resources to do it though."

"The joy of having a small compliment of crew members is that between the science staff and medical we would be able to inoculate the entire crew in I would guess two hours if not less." Tarishiana started as she closed her eyes to do the math in her head for the other suggestion, Kes, would the radiation do anything to the ships sensors?. She shook her head slightly. She was quite for a moment. "I would gather with the inoculation we would have three hours of safe exposure if I air on the side of caution. I would gather that would be enough time to escape...if that is our intention."

"Two hours would take too long to inoculate everyone in an emergency," Will said, "if we do this, we should distribute inoculations beforehand. The entire crew could then be inoculated in a few minutes."

Tarishiana nodded, "That could work...actually." She smiled as the plan seemed to be coming together, at least what she knew of it.

Will looked at Kestra. "Lieutenant, what do you think?"

"I wonder how long the inoculation would last and what the side-effects might be," Kestra said slowly. I'm not entirely sure, but Commander Remington seems to believe it would have an effect. "Who knows when and if we'll need to use this effort..." She frowned at the console. "Right. First thing's first, let's find out if it would work." Rishi, would you be able to give us a realistic analysis of the sweep of an ionized radiation blow out from select points on the ship? I can give you a plausible framework for where the Na'vi will be based on its flight patterns as I get them. She looked at Remington, "Can you come up with a list of possible expulsion zones on the ship? And hopefully a hypothetical on what effects the ionized radiation would have on the Na'vi's sensors and for how long? The more we know going into the this, the more likely we can do this smart and stealthy."

"The more realistic we make it the better," Will noted, pulling up a schematic of the ship. "I'd say if we are inoculated just leak it in the cargo bay. But that's risky all the same. If we vent it right, we may be able to mask the exit point from the Na'vi's sensors so they don't know it's a trick."

"How would you suggest we do that?" Kestra asked.

"I'm not sure... yet."

"Coordinate with engineering?" Kestra inquired. "I'm confident we have the means to accomplish our goals; it's just a matter of how. And that's where I bow to your combined greater knowledge." She spread her hands, including Tarishiana in the statement. "Meanwhile, I'll organize the transport inhibitors and find a way to acquiring those ping codes. Am I forgetting anything?"

"No, that sounds good," Will said, "I'll develop a dispersal pattern that will fool the Klingons into thinking we had an accident. Barel, can you synthesize enough material for us and coordinate with medical for the inoculations?"

"I can try." Tarishiana replied honestly. I can have the report to you by the end of my shift. she thought. "I will also get with medical to find out how long the inoculations will last, that should help us determine the best way to disburse it."

--

[OFF]

LT JG Kestra Orexil
Chief Security/Tactical Officer
USS Galileo

Lt. Cmdr. Chauncey William Remington III
Chief Operations Officer
USS Galileo

MWO Tarishiana Barel
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

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