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Mission: Whispers in the Clouds
Part 1 - Timeline: Day 3 - 1700
- Location: Unknown Sector, USS Unification
Jacob looked over the reports coming from the various departments of the Unification. The computer systems were starting to fail all over the ship. He walked over to the helm, one of the few fully functional systems left on the ship. Ensign Calder looked up from the console, as it began to beep.
“Incoming communication from the Cassiopeia, Captain.”
“Report Ensign.” He asked.
“We have secured the bridge. Reports are coming in from the security teams. There appear to be no more active hostiles on the ship. Some of our teams met up with teams from the Cass, which helped contain the boarder’s. Lieutenant Ra-Havrix thinks he can get the engines online within the hour. Using a command code that the XO of the Cass gave us before he died, I have transferred command of the Cassiopeia to you. Also, one of the hostages from the bridge turned on us, and killed Lieutenants Dobbs, Zander and Ensign Rice. We haven't completed our investigation yet into how, or why he attacked.”
Lambert started going over the various diagnostics and reports being transmitted to the Unification. Now that he was officially in command of the Cassiopeia, they were quite thorough. “This is worrying, if we have to start worrying about our own attacking us.” He tapped once more on the console. “Lieutenant Commander Masterton will be beaming over momentarily to take command of the Cassiopeia. The computer has already been sent instructions. Lieutenant, you have acted diligently during this unprecedented situation. You are to be commended.”
A look of confusion flashed over th’Iroth’s face. “Sir, I am only an Ensign.” He replied.
“Not any more Lieutenant. Once this situation has been put behind us, we can start the paperwork…” He paused as static crossed the screen. Then is went blank. “Report Ensign Calder.”
“It looks out systems are starting to go down.”
“Lieutenant Traylor to bridge. Captain Lambert, all of our systems are beginning to shut down except for life support and transporters. I am working on keeping the transporters online for now, but I don't know how long I can maintain them. Communications are also offline, which is why we can't raise the Cassiopeia. The warp engines are powering up, and the core is running 2% above normal.”
“What do you think that means?” Jacob asked.
“If it keeps building up the way it is, it's going to overload the core, giving us a breach.”
“Level with me Lieutenant. You seem to be a step ahead of everything that has happened so far. What do you think is going on right now? And if communications are down, how are we talking?” He asked, his concern showing in his voice.
“Honestly, Captain, I have no idea what's going on right now. And that is itself, a terrifying thought. I am on board my runabout, it's systems are isolated from the Unifications. The transporters are down, and there appears to be a dampening field on the Unification, meaning I can't get a lock on anything on board. However, I can beam from my runabout on board the Unification. I'm using an independent console connected to the Unification to keep transporters online. My recommendation is to beam over the crew to the Cassiopeia, before anything happens to the Unification. The core is now 3% above normal. Commander Benson is aware of the situation. And I am sorry to report, but transporters are down now too. I'm working on a small algorithm to bring them online, but I can't promise anything.”
“Dam.” Jacob muttered under his breath. “We need to get everyone on to the Cassiopeia. Can you use you patch me through to the Cassiopeia using the Runabout's comm system?”
“Yes sir, one moment please.” The Lieutenant Commander replied. “You are on with the Cassiopeia Captain Lambert.”
“Commander Masterton, this is Lambert. Our systems are going offline all over the ships. We need to evacuate the crew from the Unification, to the Cassiopeia. Can you assist at all? Our transporters are down, and we need to get people off the ship. We can get maybe 20 crew off using the 2 shuttles.” He asked hopefully.
“Aye Sir, our transporters are back online, if you can get everyone to their transporter rooms, we can beam them from there. And we can prepare the shuttlebay for arrivals.” The Commander replied.
The Captain felt a warm feeling inside. They weren't out of the woods yet, but at least something went right for a change. “Excellent” he replied. “Let's get our people out of here. Lambert out. Commander Traylor are you still there? Can you run intra ship communication through the runabout?” He asked hopefully.
“Yes, I anticipated this, and I am already working on it. You should be able to communicate within the ship now.”
“Thank you Commander, please make sure you leave the ship as soon as possible. Can you assist with the evacuation?”
“I can fit in maybe 20 people or so.”
“Excellent. Let's get this done. Lambert out.” In all his years he had never had to give the order he was about to give. He took a deep breath in. “This is the bridge to all hands. We are abandoning ship. Please report your designated emergency transporter room immediately. Once on board the Cassiopeia, report to Commander Masterton. Bridge out.” He closed the channel, then opened another. “Bridge to Engineering, Benson, what's the status of the reactor assembly. ?” He asked, knowing that the answer was going to be not good.
“It's currently 4% above normal and still climbing. Current estimates put an overload in about 13 hours.” He replied frantically. It sounded like he had his hands full, presumably working on the overload, and trying to lock down everything for evacuation.
“OK, that gives us a little time to work on it. Evacuate your staff, I can remain behind with you, and hopefully we can get this situation under control.”
“Aye Sir, I'll try to route what I can to a PADD and automate what I still have control over. The warp engines are drawing in more power too, I think they are preparing to get us underway. Iv slowed them down as much as I can by re-routing some key subsystems I had access to. But that will only give us maybe 15 minutes.” Benson replied.
“OK, I'll be down there as soon as I can. Lambert out.” He looked to the bridge crew. “Lieutenant Wilder, Ensign Calder, Crewman’s Andrews, Alexander and Forcier, proceed to the Shuttlebay, and get the shuttles underway with anyone you find along the way. Anyone waiting for transport on the cargo transporters, get them in the shuttles, or on board Commander Traylors runabout.”
He turned and walked towards his captains chair, and sat down. He took a second as he watched his crew leave via the turbolift. Jacob thought about time he had spent on this ship. It had only been a little over a year, and he certainly didn't want it to be destroyed so soon. So working with Benson, they had to fix this little problem.
He pulled up the systems reports looking at the warp core. It was definitely building up to jump the ship to warp. But it was like the ship had a mind of its own. Where the hell was it going to go? He thought to himself. He began to make final preparations for evacuating the ship. While evacuating a ship was usually done in emergencies, one of the silver linings of this situation was that the evacuation wasn't necessarily time critical. In fact, it wasn't even required at this point. It was more of a precaution. He began to lock down the non-vital systems. Most of the vital systems were already down because of the virus. So it was relatively easy to lock everything down. He tapped a few keys and launched the emergency log buoy. The one thing the buoy wouldn't have was anything from the last 12 hours or so. As soon as they had realised the virus had hit, the Unification from the Cassiopeia, they locked down the buoy system, to prevent the virus being saved in the log buoy.
He was still in his chair when he grabbed a PADD from side of his chair. He began to download all the personal logs, mission logs systems logs to the PADD, being careful to isolate the PADD once they were downloaded. Jacob knew that there was still a chance that the virus could have saved itself to the recent logs, and the last thing he needed was to infect another ship, or worse, infect another ship or New Bajor.
He froze, a sickening feeling began to grow in his stomach. He tapped the console on the arm of his chair, and performed some quick calculations. His sickening feeling deepened when he confirmed what he thought. He tapped his combadge. “Lambert to Traylor and Benson.” They both acknowledged. “I just did some calculations. At maximum warp, we are just over 13 hours from New Bajor.” He heard one of them, he presumed Benson, take a sharp intake of breath. Commander Traylor spoke first.
“That’s what the virus is doing. The ship warps to New Bajor, the core overloads, the explosion would take out Gamma Command. And depending on how close to the surface it detonates, it could do serious damage to the Compound as well. That's what it was attempting to do on the Cassiopeia. But the engines…”
Benson interrupted him. “The engines were damaged after the initial attack. Lieutenant Ra-Havrix sent over his initial report on the engines before we lost communication. It looked like someone had taken a phaser to some of the manifolds. The ship could no longer go to warp, rendering the virus with nothing to do, until we showed up. So it moved to us.”
“This ship can NOT make it to New Bajor with the virus intact. We either eradicate the virus, or we blow the warp core. Agreed?” They both agreed. “Commander Traylor, you need to get off the ship as soon as any passengers are on board.”
“Aye sir. I will depart as soon as my doors are sealed.” A loud whooshing sound, followed by the Commander shouting, suddenly made Lambert’s heart jump. Before he had a chance to ask Traylor what happened, he spoke “Captain, the virus, evidently had adapted again. As soon as the two shuttles left the shuttle bay, it decompressed. There were no casualties, as the passengers were already in the sealed compartment of my runabout. The Cassiopeia confirms they have transported everyone from the transporter rooms too.”
“Leave as soon as you can then Commander, remaining is no longer necessary.”
“Aye Captain. Before I leave” The sound of a transporter beam caught his attention as a tricorder materialised in front of him. “I wrote a small algorithm. It will give you transporter access, but only for a limited time. We are talking a minute or less. And even then, it's limited to one person at a time.”
“I will make sure to get myself and Benson off the ship. Now get over to the Cassiopeia and report to Commander Masterton.”
“Aye Sir, Traylor out.” The channel was closed. He picked up the tricorder, and grabbed the PADD, heading to the turbolift. Now that the Rangitikei, Traylors Runabout, had left the Unification, the comm system was down again. He told the turbolift to head down to Engineering. He was outside engineering, when he heard footsteps running towards him. He looked wondering what Benson was doing outside of Engineering and was horrified when it Ensign Calder.
“Ensign, what the hell are you doing here?” As far as Lambert knew, there was only Benson and himself still on board. “Why weren't you beamed aboard the Cassiopeia?”
He was panting, clearly he had been running for a few minutes. “I on my way to the shuttlebay, but the doors sealed and it decompressed, I ran to one of the transporter rooms, but communication went down. So I figured you would be coming to engineering to work with Benson.”
“Come on, let's help out Benson.” He said to Calder, as they entered Engineering. “I found a stowaway” He called out to his Chief Engineer, and turned to Calder. “May as well put him to use. Monitor the warp system, I need to know we are going to warp, before we jump.”
Calder nodded to Lambert, and sat at a console, next to Benson. Benson looked to Lambert, with a look of apprehension in eyes. “Build up is up to 8%, I don't know if can stop it. The virus has basically re-written the code for the engines. For all intents and purposes the only part of the engines that is still completely recognisable is the hardware.”
“What can we do?” The Captain asked his Engineer.
“I honestly don't know, at least not yet. It looks like the build up is being caused by the plasma intercooler. It's slowly failing, which is going to cause an overheat, which gives us our breach. But it's failing in such a way that engines are still fully operational, which is probably why the virus re-wrote so much of it, I can't even begin to imagine how many safety subroutines would have been erased to allow it.”
He thought for a moment. “Is there nothing we can do? What about removing some of the warp plasma conduits?” He imagined that Benson had already thought of removing components.
“One of the first things we thought. They are behind force fields, now anyway. We thought of ejecting the antimatter storage pods, but the ejection subroutines no longer exist. And the manual release is located deck 7, with the core ejection system, and they are now both inaccessible. Force fields and bulkheads have been erected, and life support has been disabled with the existing atmosphere removed. This virus, Jacob, it's smart. It has thought of everything.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Honestly, if it wasn't designed for what it's doing, it's an engineering marvel.”
“We can write a paper if we manage to slow it down.” A smile across Jacob and Benson’s face relieved the stress and tension, if only for a moment. Calder called over, breaking the peaceful moment.
“Captain, Commander, it looks like we are about to jump to warp. Sensors, the still functional ones at least, show the Cassiopeia is still unable to jump to warp.”
“Thank you, Ensign.” The Captain replied. “Last chance for now, is there anything you can do to stop us jumping to warp?”
“Except for causing a breach ourselves, there's nothing we can do right now. Given a few hours, I can maybe come up with something.”
“Well we better come up with something. Otherwise, that's our final option.” He looked to Calder, and Benson, who both had a sombre look upon their faces. He knew what he was asking of them. “If you want me to try to beam you over to the Cassiopeia now, I won't think any less of you.” Neither man moved at all. “Thank you, both of you.” He looked at the warp core, as he felt the subtle but telltale sign that the ship had jumped to warp. “Now let's see if we can get rid of this damned thing. I, for one, am done being on the defensive to a computer virus.”