The Search for Home

Posted on 17 Apr 2017 @ 5:58pm by Ensign Mimi & Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Petra Varelli Ph.D.
Edited on on 18 Apr 2017 @ 6:13pm

2,694 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: Episode 14 - Statecraft
Location: IKS DuJa'Q - Deck 9, Science Lab
Timeline: MD 08, 1345 hrs

[ON]

Steadily walking down the corridor keeping an eye out for J'tsec and his friend Mimi headed towards what passed for the science facilities on the Du'ja'q. She'd had an idea during the night about searching the Klingon ships database for any information on the attack on her colony and anything she could find about her homeworld, anything that might give her somewhere better to start.

As she stepped in the saw someone she didn't expect; one of the civillians that had come with them from Kreanus.

Petra was working on her rudimentary Klingon by trying to figure out the file structure in what passed for the science section of the ship's computer. She was having marginal success. She found the historic files, which she intended to point out to Marisa, and she found the planetary section. Other than that, it was still pretty much a crap shoot.

The doors opened and she looked up to see who entered. Smiling, she recognized Mimi. "Hi. Can I help you?"

"Hi... Petra isn't it?" Mimi said smiling at the older woman.

"It is." Petra was pleased Mimi remembered her name. "What brings you to science?"

"Well." Mimi started. "I had an idea last night. The Klingons I.... got into a fight with said they had been to the planet where I was found." Mimi then realised that Petra probably had no idea what she was talking about as she hadn't told her the story of how she came to Starfleet.

"What planet was that?"

"We called it Kemi. it was a small planet far from our homeworld. Peaceful, until those Klingons came." Mimi stopped before she had to explain what had happened. "I thought that if Klingons had been there maybe they had explored the space around it. Maybe even as far as somewhere near my homeworld."

"Kemi is not the homeworld? How many worlds did your people settle?"

"Just the homeworld and Kemi." Mimi replied. "Kemi was a long way away from the homeworld though, it took months for my parents and the rest of the settlers to get there."

"Well, let's see if we can find something in the database," Petra said. "Can you give me the coordinates or the sector, just in case I don't recognize the name."

"I know where Kemi is but not the homeworld I do have a few pictures but that is all. I hope the Klingons' database might have some space covered the federation database does not." Mimi hoped that she'd be right, even the slightest hint of a direction to look would be good.

Petra nodded. "Okay. "Let's see what we can find." She navigated to the planetary catalog and turned to Mimi. "Okay, where was Kemi?"

"If you start near the Mutara nebula and go..." Mimi paused looking at what way the display was orientated. ....right. It should be about here." she pointed at the rough location.

Petra looked carefully at where Mimi pointed and zoomed in on the area. Several symbols appeared, most unfamiliar to the anthropologist.

The map had only one planet listed. "That must be Kemi," she said, indicating the planet on the stellar map.

"That looks like it." Mimi said looking at the data. "Now if up and right from Kemi is Klingon space and that to the left is Federation space then we should look further right, out into open space."

Petra tried, but she could not find anything there. "It appears I do not have the access to look there. I can only access general knowledge. Sorry."

"hmm, let me try." Mimi entered the access code she'd been given. The screen refreshed but the area remained locked down, she cocked er head to the side a little as she thought what she could do. Eventually she had an idea and tapped her combadge. "Ensign Mimi to General Saalm."

It was lunch hour for Saalm and she was mid-meal in her quarters. A few short moments passed before a muffled reply came through the comm. "Yessh?" she answered, followed by the sound of chewing.

"I am in the science lab looking at the astrometric database and the area we are looking at is locked and my access code will not unlock it." Mimi replied

More chewing ensued as Saalm munched on her replicated salad. "...Okay?" It was probably classified information that they were attempting to access, and Lirha wasn't sure how much she could help. Besides, she was hungry.

"The area is unexplored space to the federation and is far enough away from the Nekomi colony on Kemi that it could have my homeworld in it, or at least give me a few clues." Mimi explained, she hoped Lirha hadn't forgotten the offer of help she'd given Mimi when they first met.

So that was what the call was about, Lirha thought to herself. She then recalled her conversation with the young ensign several days prior when she'd turned over Mimi's salvaged personal items to her. If the Operations officer was now attempting to locate her homeworld, as Lirha had suggested, perhaps there was a way for her to assist. She swallowed a large chunk of her food then prepared to leave her quarters. "I will be there in five minutes," she replied. "Saalm out."

Mimi was a little surprised that Lirha had agreed to help so quickly given how much had changed recently. She breathed a small sigh of relief and resumed searching the database


Five Minutes Later...

The door to the science lab parted to allow Lirha to enter. Dressed in her unique Klingon-Orion duty uniform, she observed both Petra and Mimi in the laboratory then proceeded to walk over to them. "How may I assist?"

"Thank you for coming Ma'am." Mimi said before turning back to the console, pointing out the locations as she spoke again. "We found Kemi in the Klingon database. Over here is federation space and up here Klingon, now down here is unexplored space apart from right here. A large area that the data is restricted."

Lirha stepped forward and examined the screen Mimi was looking at. It was a standard cartography display similar to those aboard Federation starships, but obviously with Klingon glyphs and a different layout. Her eyes focused on the sector of space the ensign had pointed out, then she reached forward to the console in order to input several commands into the computer.

The stellar cartography display shifted to the left then down towards the outer edge of the Milky Way, then zoomed in on the checkered sectors which were grayed out. "Yes," Saalm mused, "this does appear to be a portion of Klingon territory that the Federation has not explored. It would make sense that they do not want us to gain access to the data." Stellar cartography data was highly valuable because the information it contained often pertained to colonization, trade, manufacturing, and exploitation possibilities. Every major political faction secured their own discoveries as standard protocol, and the unauthorized dissemination of such information was usually considered treason in both the Alpha and Beta quadrants.

"Do you think your command codes would unlock it?" Mimi asked. "I doubt the Klingons would have something like this in the ships database without it being able to be unlocked by the CO."

"Possibly..." Lirha mumbled to herself. "This appears to be classified data..." she then cautioned, turning to both Petra and Mimi. "It is not our place to review Klingon data logs for the purpose of gaining a political advantage."

"She doesn't want political advantage, she's trying to find her people's homeworld," Petra said. "If the information is that confidential, I don't know why it's in this ship's computer."

Lirha wasn't about to begin speculating about various reasons why restricted data hadn't been purged from the computer core. It could quite easily have been an oversight by a Kreanan Operations officer during starship preparation, or possibly the Kreanans felt the data was more secure aboard the vessel than in the colony's server architecture. And perhaps, in the most simple of ways, it could have been a test manufactured by Medara to determine the Starfleet crew's true intentions. They had all been implanted with subdermal tracking devices on the colony that only a handful of people were aware of, which meant their actions and conversations were no doubt being watched and transmitted to the Romulan colony commander.

"The data is encrypted," the Orion replied with a light shrug. "That alone should speak for itself." She proceeded to examine the nature of the data access restriction then stepped back to shake her head. "Access to these logs requires Kreanan command codes. I do not have those."

"Even if she did, there's no guarantee there would be anything there for you," Petra had to admit. "But we might be able to get more information on what happened to Kemi. There might even be some clues about the homeworld there."

"hhhmmmm." Mimi scrolled randomly across the stellar map as she thought, so far her plan hadn't gone how she'd hoped. "Kemi was what we called a Roos Varld Gold world. It was perfect for us. Heat, water, gravity. Perfect.

"That's what we generally type as M-class. Proper temperature, atmosphere, flora and fauna, water, gravity. Able to sustain life."

Mimi was about to speak again when she caught something "hhmm, what's this." A large section of space was highlighted and had a un-encyrpted data file attached to it. Acessing the file a new screen popped up and small stream of Klingon appeared on it, she tried to read it but could only figure out a few of the words. "Can you translate this for me Ma'am? I heard you're familiar with Klingon."

Peering in to view the data on the new data tab, Lirha began to read the survey report and translate it in her head even before Mimi had asked about its contents. "Yes...I believe I can," she answered, then tapped a command into the terminal to allow the file to scroll all the way down to the bottom. "It reads,"

"This approximate area is patrolled/protected by a species of tall thin humanoids with pale skin like Terrans who wear limited clothing and have blue tribal like markings on their faces, necks and across the shoulders.

....

Attempted recon under cloak but they were able to detect our ships with ease within 100,000 km. Minor skirmish resulted in heavy damage to our vessel, their weaponry seems to match ours but they broke pursuit after we left their territory. Recommend further recon before further confrontation.

....

End Report"

Mimi cocked her head to the side a little as she took in the report. "....Tall, thin, blue tribal markings..... they sound a little like Bespiri."

"Who are the Bespiri?" Petra hadn't heard of the species by name.

"It came to mean 'Protector' in Nekomi." Mimi said after thinking all the way back to what her teachers had told her about the Bespiri "They were like the Vulcans were to Humans. Very advanced compared to us. They helped us develop warp drive and they protected us from all the other species nearby that would try and take what we had."

"Are they also in the classified area of space?" Petra asked.

Mimi looked at the distance between the classified section and the possible Bespiri space. "They could be but I do not think so, I was told the Bespiri stay much to their home systems just like the Nekomi did."

"Hmm. So, we're back where we started from, which isn't much," Petra said. "Maybe we can focus on the data the Klingons have about Kemi? I still think there might be something in there. At least a clue to your homeworld."

"That is a clue right there." Mimi said with a happy smile on her face. "If they are Bespiri they would know exactly where the homeworld is.

"But how do you get in touch with the Bespiri?" If they were even still around. Petra wasn't sure. Yes, the Klingons had been thwarted in their attempt to take over Bespiri territory, but how old was the data?

"That I don't know." Mimi replied. The possible Bespiri space was a long way from federation space.

Lirha took the Nekomi's question as an opportunity to interject with her own series of inquiries. She was a former Communications and Intelligence officer, after all, and the methods of information interpretation she'd learned over the years before her command of Galileo might be useful. "Does this species -- the Bespiri -- have any known trade partners within the Beta Quadrant?"

"I have no idea." Mimi replied. "I do not no much about the Bespiri, only what my mother told me about them; and she had only met one once.

"Your mother?" It seemed Mimi was at a disadvantage and was relying upon older, possibly outdated information. But it was clear to Lirha that finding her homeworld mean the stars to the young Nekomi. "What exactly did she tell you?" Maybe there was information that Mimi had never thought relevant, that might lend some clues.

"They made first contact with us a few years after we put a big station in orbit of the homeworld." Mimi said thinking hard, the many knocks to the head she'd taken weren't helping. "They were really advanced compared to us, we were still using chemical engines for our shuttles while they had low warp drive. We had found what they told us was Dilithium on our moon but we did not know what it could be used for yet."

"Do you know what year it was?" Petra asked.

"Maybe.... 50 earth years ago." Mimi said after a long pause, it was a extreme guess.

"So there's a chance they're still around," Petra said, considering the possibilities.

"A very good chance I would think." Mimi added "They were a lot of Bespiri and their technology very good"

"So, now you have to find a way to contact the Bespiri and see if they can help you--without getting in trouble with the Klingons," Petra said.

Lirha agreed with Varelli's deduction, but unfortunately, now wasn't exactly the best time to attempt such communications. "If we weren't attempting to violate the Neutral Zone and journey to Qo'noS, I would suggest that we could do it once inside of their territory. However," she paused momentarily to lightly shake her head, "we cannot risk compromising our position or the safety of the rest of the crew."

"I understand." Mimi said, she'd expected not to be able to do anything right there and then even if she did find some information. "I will think of something after we get home."

"I'm sorry, ensign," the Orion sympathized. The data was there, somewhere in DuJa'Q's computer core, but there simply wasn't any way to gain access to it. "But now you have a lead to pursue and are closer to finding your people than before."

"And maybe you'll have another chance to learn something from the Klingons before we get back to Federation space." Petra added hopefully.

"Maybe." Mimi said. Drawing a PADD from her jacket she made a note of the spacial coordinates, there was little else she could do right now. "Thank you for your help, both of you."

Lirha took that as her cue to leave. She'd done as much as she could for the ensign, and while they'd run into several roadblocks attempting to access information, she felt Mimi was much more informed now that she had been before the Orion had stepped into the room. "Of course," she replied, then began to move toward the exit. "I must return to my lunch."

"Thank you, general," Petra said. "Ensign, I wish I could have done more to help."

"You have done a lot to help already Petra and again I thank you for it." With that Mimi slipped the PADD back into her jacket and headed for the door.

[OFF]

--

GEN Lirha Saalm
Commanding Officer
IKS DuJa'Q

Petra Varelli
Forensic Anthropologist
IKS DuJa'Q

Ensign Mimi
Operations officer
IKS DuJa'Q

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