Suspicions

Posted on 28 May 2012 @ 6:07am by Captain Jonathan Holliday & Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm

2,110 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Episode 01 - Project Sienna
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 1 - Ready Room
Timeline: MD07 - 1100hrs

[ON]

With the senior staff meeting out the way, John felt it was his duty to feed back his findings to their commanding officer with all due haste. Luckily, the briefing room, like any other location on this ship, was not a million miles away from Commander Saalm's Ready Room, in fact the walk was that quick, the XO realised as he pressed the door chime that he hadn't really had much in the way of time to gather his thoughts together into one concise report. This was going to be a little more "on the fly" than he would have usually done, but it worked well enough.

Inside her ready room, the familiar the door chime sounded in the room causing Lirha looked up from the PADD in her hands. She straightened herself up in her chair and her eyes traveled towards the door. "Enter." she called out, then placed the thin silver device down on the nearby desk.

With the ok to enter being given, John again pressed the door controls and allowed them to slide open before heading inside to greet his green-skinned commanding officer. He was slowly growing more and more accustomed to serving on a vessel this small, and day by day, was getting over his intiial apprehension about serving on a vessel of this size.

"Good morning ma'am....if you've got a few minutes, I'd like to bring you up to speed on today's senior staff meeting?"

The captain watched as the brown-haired lieutenant commander entered and made his request. It was rather early in the day for them to be seeing each other but she welcomed his company nonetheless. "Of course," she replied in a quiet voice with a friendly smile, then motioned with her hand to the nearby chair. "Please have a seat. Can I get you anything to drink? a snack?" she offered, her green eyes glancing at the nearby replicator.

"Raktajino would be nice ma'am. Thank you for the offer."

John was grateful at the thought of a strong cup of Klingon coffee...whilst he might not be overly fond of the people, they certainly knew how to make a mean cup of java. The warm liquid would hopefully go some way to waking him up after a rather difficult night's sleep. For some reason, the current mission had kept going over and over in his head, and slumber was nothing on the top of his priority list at the time.

"We...seem to have a problem on board...how far it goes I'm not sure, but I know it warrants the attention of the ship's captain"

Lirha rose from her chair and walked to the replicator, returning several moments later with a cup of Raktajino and a mug of her favorite, hot chocolate. She set his drink down on the table in front of him then returned to her side of the desk, taking a seat back in her chair followed by a long sip of steamy milk chocolate. "Mmm.." she muttered silently as she delighted in the flavors, then looked back up at John. "What sort of problem?" she finally asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Just ever since we launched...there've been a few too many errors for my liking....the warp cascade issue....the replicator malfunction....the EMH....those systems aren't even interconnected but still the number of system failures is a little too high for my liking...."

John gratefully received the mug and took a long drawn out gulp before continuing. The warmth of the coffee was helping to settle his mind into a more streamlined and concise thought process.

The captain leaned back in her chair and listened to him speak, then considered his assessment of the situation. With a shrug, she finally spoke. "Galileo is a new starship and we've only been in space for seven days." she began in a light voice, "Don't you think these problems would have been found and fixed had we the appropriate time for a shakedown cruise?" she asked.

"I'd like to hope so" John agreed, taking another sip from his mug, savouring the strong, earthy flavour as it danced across his tongue. It was true that with enough time before leaving the Sol system, most of these errors would have been found and corrected, but it was still unusual for any starship to leave with quite an impressive snagging list.

"But it might be woth investigating a little further. I've got Quinn and his team checking over the component records for the areas that we're experiencing malfunctions in. If it isn't something as simple as a manufacturing flaw, we might have to consider the fact that they might not have been accidental malfunctions"

Lirha listened intently to the lieutenant commander's words. At first thought, what he was suggesting seemed absurd. Not accidental malfunctions? she repeated in her head. That last thing she would have thought of would be a possible saboteur on board, especially a Starfleet officer. "Is there something," she paused to think of the word, "Particular, which you have found to be suspicious?" she asked, wondering if he had any concrete evidence or was just speculating.

"Well...I'm still getting the finer details pulled together, but our devoted security chief found some....irregularities in the main database, files missing, corrupted, that sort of thing. A little unusual for just a system malfunction, but I suppose if there was damage to the main computer core it might have an effect along those lines"

The captain sat quietly for a moment and stroked her chin in thought. "I agree, that does sound a bit odd." she finally remarked. "And I cannot deny that we took on a lot of new personnel at Two-Three-Four, but I would hate to think that one, or even a group of them, has other motives." she added, now sinking back into a deeper state of thought. Being a former intelligence chief herself, Lirha was rather knowledgeable about covert operations and knew that it would be foolish to think the Klingon Empire would not use every resource at their disposal if they discovered Sienna's existence.

"Agreed....as much as I would rather lean towards this being simply...bad luck...on the part of the Galileo's shipbuilders, I'd rather we still know for certain whether or not we can trust our fellow crewmembers....especially with something as vital as Sienna"

John took yet another sip from his coffee, feeling the caffeine finally starting to get to work on his mind, speeding everything up as if his consciousness had just made the jump to warp.

"I've had the computer set up a trace on anyone accessing anything restricted to level five access or above...anything out of the ordinary, should send an alert directly to me. I have every confidence in Lieutenant Orexil to monitor ship's security...but you know what's its like...once a tactical officer, always a tactical officer....ship's security is in my blood"

"I understand." she replied with a nod. "Perhaps we should begin looking into the crew files." she suggested. In her opinion, it wouldn't be a bad idea to look over some of the new personnel's files, and the captain had to admit that she had been rather hasty during her initial review of the updated personnel manifest. If someone had indeed infiltrated their vessel, time was working against them.

"It wouldn't be a bad idea...see if there's anything in there that doesn't quite add up....I'd lean towards excluding the senior staff ma'am....I don't have any reason to think any of them are anything but on the level....for now I think we should be examining our lower ranked crew members, the enlisted men, or the ones newly transferred....that should narrow the search down to only a few dozen people"

Lirha stroked her chin in thought and her green eyes finally settled on the lieutenant commander. "Is there anyone in particular who you are suspicious of?" she asked him in a quiet voice.

"Right now? Based purely on the facts....a few. If, and I stress if...we have someone on board who's working for someone other than Starfleet, then they'd have to be pretty good at covering their tracks....the level of manipulation in the main computer files would have to be top rate...we could narrow our search by anyone with a rating of level 5 or above on computational disciplines?"

John had to think through the best way to narrow the field. Right now he was thanking whichever god or goddess was out there in the cosmos that he had been at least blessed with a relatively small vessel on which to search. If this had been a larger vessel, something like a Galaxy class with a complement of over one thousand, then it would be a very different matter to less than the one hundred souls aboard Galileo.

"That sounds like a good idea," she agreed, then brought her personal computer terminal to life with the tap of a button. "Who exactly has sparked your suspicion?" she asked, wondering which particular crew members he was wary of.

"Well....young Ensign Cho has been spending plenty of time hanging around near the main computer systems....and she knows her way around the operating systems as well as anyone else....not to mention she's only been on board a short time, but her transfer orders match up pretty well with our list of errors.....what do you think ma'am?"

Lirha silently pondered the young ensign for a moment. Strangely enough, she was one of the few personnel aboard who the captain had not had a chance to interview upon coming aboard. She knew very little about the woman outside of her duties aboard Galileo, and had to agree with her XO that she had sufficient knowledge of the ship's computer systems. "I'm afraid I haven't spoken or interacted with her outside of regular bridge operations, but I think it's worth having a talk with her. If only casually, it could give us a clue as to her intentions." she proposed.

"Agreed Commander" Jonathan finished, standing up from his chair and heading over towards the replicator, before depositing his now empty cup and pressing the key to instruct the system to deconstruct the item and return it to the matter buffer.

"How would you like to proceed?"

"I will have a talk with her once you depart." she answered, picking up her mug and taking another long sip of hot chocolate. "It will be an excuse for me to meet a new crew member." she said with a mischievous wink as she set down the cup on a coaster. "When her and I are finished, I'll inform you and we can consult further. In the meantime, is there anyone else we need to speak with?"

"For now? Nobody.....I'll have the computer set up a trace on her actions just in case she starts poking around anywhere in between your meeting with her and the conclusion of your meeting....will there be anything else Commander?"

John began to head towards the doors, crossing the ready room floor towards the doors but stopping a few feet shy of the automatic door sensors tripping it open until he was given the word.

The captain shook her head, her dark hair bobbing across her shoulders. "No, thank you, Commander." she said with a small smile, grateful to have been informed of the strange happenings aboard her vessel. It was a rather disturbing report, but one which she hoped would be quickly resolved. "I'll be in contact with you shortly. In the meantime, please keep this matter restricted to ourselves and Lieutenant Orexil." she said.

"Yes ma'am" He nodded in acknowledgement before turning and heading out the door. It seemed their captain was as cunning as she was an effective leader, a combination that John knew was going to stand them in great stead during this investigation.

Lirha watched her XO head out the door, then slumped back in her chair and rubbed her green hand over her face in frustration. As if they didn't have enough mechanical and operational problems to deal with at the moment, now the threat of an operative had been brought to her attention. With a final long sip from her mug, she downed the rest of her drink and turned back to her monitor, where she brought up Ensign Cho's Starfleet file and began to read through it.

[OFF]

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CMDR Lirha Saalm
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo

Lt Cmdr Jonathan Holliday
Executive Officer
USS Galileo

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