Making Plans

Posted on Sat Feb 13th, 2016 @ 3:06pm by Captain Tim Williams & Lieutenant Commander Ciaran McIntyre & Lieutenant Commander Jean Reynard & Lieutenant Griffen Tanol & Doctor Rikka Takanashi M.D. & Counselor Melony Taylor & Lieutenant Ryan North

Episode: Lost Property
Location: USS Highlander - Briefing Room
Timeline: MD02 1130hrs

Now back out of his EV suit and into his normal uniform, Tim couldn't quite shake the feeling of something creepy being around the next corner. The state they had found what once had been the crew of the DeSalle was like something out of a horror movie, and it sent a shiver down his spine whenever he thought about it. Nevertheless, the situation needed dealing with, and as soon as Doctor Takanashi had beamed back and changed out of her EV suit, Tim had called a staff meeting.

"I'm sure the rumour mill has informed you all already anyway," Tim said, looking at everyone sat around the table. Everyone was in a decidedly more sombre mood than they were earlier when they had discovered the ship. "But just to state the facts, we appear to have found the remains of the crew of the DeSalle. We found uniforms and biomatter against the walls and consoles in the ship's main engineering. Doctor; what can you tell us from your analysis?"

Rikka looked up, she had been staring at the table for the entire start of the briefing. What she had discovered was shocking, and she knew that she was the one to report it. "The crew were literally thrown against the starboard bulkheads" she explained simply. "From what we can tell the ship somehow jumped to sport at maximum warp, however the crew were left standing where they were. Unfortunately the impact of hitting such an object at speed crushed them instantly, the pressure would have been several million tonnes per square inch. They were literally crushed into the stains on the wall that are there now."

She pulled out a PADD from her pocket and quickly reviewed her notes. "However life support must have failed shortly after, there isn't much decay from what was left. I believe that the ship had functional life support for a week from the decay rates" Rikka explained. "Ultimately, they were the subject of an instant death. They probably didn't even feel it, and if they did. Then it would have been so quick their brain wouldn't have had the time to register it as pain. It would have just ended for them"

Jean winced. He was well familiar with the various failure modes of space stations since birth, but inertial dampers were still one of the things that gave him the heebie-jeebies. "That would be consistent with what data we've recovered from the automated logs so far. A number of systems reported sudden failures, and everything switched over to automatics when no human input was received. Most of it can be explained by sudden shock or flying objects. I can even give us a fairly precise moment of when it happen, if not why yet."

Given his time in the MACO's it certainly wasn't the most grisly thing that Ryan had ever seen, although it did rank up there. Given the

"My department is working with ops to and sort out the sensor logs, they're a bit of a mess," Ryan explained. "Maybe it wasn't the ship jumping to warp at all actually."

"If the crew were all thrown onto the starboard side of the ship, that would suggest some sort of accident," Tim said, thinking the problem through. "Whether they were just going to warp or not, if they were travelling normally they'd have all been thrown onto the aft bulkheads. Something made that ship travel sideways really fast."

"There are any number of astrological phenomenon that could cause that," Ryan spoke up. "Subspace eddy, quantum filament, an encounter with dark matter; and given the ships of that era its doubtful that they could detect some of those."

"A near miss with a gravitic mine is another possibility, creating a tidal force strong enough to kill the crew but not destroy the ship," Jean suggested. "Although that wouldn't explain how it got so far out this way."

"The ships own gravity and shielding should have protected it from something like that even back then." Grif said shaking her head, "We already know of a few species that have the power to pull starships from where they are to somewhere else, the Caretaker species Voyager ran into for example. Something that could pull a starship across the galaxy could have done quite the number to something like the NX."

McIntyre winced slightly at the notion that there could be some malevolent being knocking around the decks of the DeSalle. "They'd have to have been mighty unlucky to run into something like that."

"Well, something like this is statistically rare enough to be unlucky by definition," Jean observed. "The question is exactly what kind of bad luck they ran into."

"Whatever it was it appeared to leave the ship intact and the crew nothing but smears on the bulkheads," Ryan pointed out. "I'd like to divert some more power to the ships long range sensors and astrometerics, if it was an phenomenon native to this area of space then I'd like to make sure we don't get caught with our pants down."

"Shouldn't be a problem, as long as we don't stretch it too long," Jean said, mentally tallying up the power supply and wear-and-tear on the scanner units.

"It's worth looking, though if it was I'd expect it to have moved off to somewhere else by now - two hundred years is a long time for it to go unnoticed, considering the region we're in," the captain observed. "In any case, I want us to be alert to anything on sensors. This ship has spent who knows how many years drifting undetected in this nebula, but we may not be the only ones to have detected it emerging. I don't want us to be surprised by any scavengers that might come looking for some souvenirs.

"Our best chance of finding out what happened over there is to bring the ship's systems back to life and see what they have to tell us. But before we send anybody else over there, I want to make sure we see to the DeSalle's crew. Doctor; I want you to organise their removal. Try as best you can to separate individuals; we should be able to match up their DNA in our historical database. Utilise whatever extra personnel you need. We'll... try and arrange a fitting funeral for them."

Rikka nodded. "Yes sir. It's going to be a gruesome task, but I believe we can remove them and identify each of them" she explained. "It will also give me more samples to analyse to discover what caused them to end up like this"

"Until the doctor is done with that task, repair work on the DeSalle will have to wait. Ethan, Grif; use the time to study the ship's schematics. We noticed when we were over there that the warp core looks to be in mostly working order, but is out of dilithium. Our own fuel supply will likely be too pure to be able to go straight in, so see what you can do to remedy it. Ideally I'd like to preserve the core's original configuration, but if you can't come up with a substitute, look into ways to modify it to be able to run on our supplies."

"Giving some of our dilithium to that old thing would be like giving espresso to a baby." Grif mused as she nodded at the order from the captain, "We'll get a plan together by the time the Doc gets all of the crew squared away Sir."

"Everyone else is going to be assigned to either looking through the data that Ryan brought back from the DeSalle's databanks," Tim continued. "Or looking through our historical database for any information you can find about the ship and its last mission; we need to try and figure out what happened to it, and hindsight may provide us more answers than Starfleet had two hundred and thirty years ago."

"On the off-chance they were thrown here by some mystical force," McIntyre was holding his hands in front of his face and wagging his fingers like a terrible magician, "I'd feel more comfortable if we posted security teams."

"That seems..." Jean tried to search for a polite way to phrase it without saying 'useless', "Somewhat optimistic, given the scale of what happened over there."

"It's unlikely that we're going to run into any trouble over there, but it can't hurt to be cautious until we know what did happen," Tim said. "You can post security teams over there, but make them minimal; they're also to obey any constraints Doctor Takanashi puts on them to prevent any further damage or decontamination to the crew until they're removed."

"You call it cautious, I call it unhealthy paranoia." Mac said with a wry smile. The feeling of that grimy substance on his suit was still playing on his mind. He had wiped it away like it had been spilled coffee and, as it turned out, it had once been a person. He wanted to make sure that nothing else would defile the memories of those crewmen.

"Speaking of unhealthy paranoia, I am going to insist on debriefing those that go aboard." Melony informed "I know I have a hands off approach usually but it’s non optional this time, any concerns anyone has involved directly or not I expect you to drop by, or if you have concerns anyone else is acting oddly." She paused trying to think of a way to stop too many people being exposed to this without outright saying something about triggers and bad ideas for anyone to be there simply for the nightmares alone. "It may also be an idea if I give the Doctor a list of those I think would be most suited to going aboard, if only to point in the right direction."

Melony smiled reassuringly "Captain for the funeral you might want a bit of help with phrasing and what to say, this situation is a bit hard to define and talk about. Unfortunately it could trigger previous traumas without intending to." She mentally reeled so much for not mentioning triggers, her eyes quickly darted to Mac, and she reminded herself to have a quick talk with Mac about this whole thing before much more happened.

"It's also likely to increase anxiety, depression and could lead to nightmares for some members of the crew that are exposed to this situation, I'd like everyone to be aware of that, and that it’s a perfectly natural response" she added, looking around ensuring everyone had to some degree taken in what she had said.

"Agreed on both points," Tim said, pushing himself to his feet with both hands flat on the tabletop. "You each have your assignments so let's get to it. Dismissed."