Trials and Tribblations

Posted on Saturday February 6th, 2021 @ 6:42pm by Lieutenant JG Talerian Maxx

Mission: The Forgotten Outpost
Location: DS3
Timeline: Current

OOC: "During the Lairuit Lasso, Part Two Post"


The watch officer said, “Auxiliary reactors are coming online. Shields are operational.” The last part seemed a bit hesitant.

Meanwhile Lt. Maxx was in the middle of sorting out the mess that was the Science department when his coms went off loudly,

"Yellow alert." Olivia narrowed her eyes. "Lieutenant Trensu, I want you and the flight control officer ready for possible hostiles. Lieutenant Maxx, trace that signal." She paused and tapped her comm badge. "Commander Bishop to operations, please. We may have a situation brewing."

Lt. Maxx almost dropped the handful of datapads in his arms since he was not ready to be interrupted so abruptly. He quickly switched screens to see what Olivia was referring to and saw the commotion involving the Battleship. "Oh this won't end well," muttered Lt. Maxx as he began pushing many buttons at a fast rate.

He had already memorized the keyboard format from his prior memories from the past lives of hosts. He sent a message for them to drop their shields and accept their hail under Starfleet protocols or they will be seen as a hostile force in all forms of languages. Then he ran a multitude of scans on the battleship to see if he could get any clues on what he was dealing with. He needed to know as much as possible in case he had to disable the shields ASAP in case things escalated.

So Talerian decided to use the same underhanded tactics to even the odds as he studied the shield energy signature along with the signal Olivia wanted. So Lieutenant Maxx studied the polarity and possible patterns he could use to disrupt the shields even if temporarily. Maxx then hailed Oliva, "Working on counter measures if needed ma'am."

Alie had her squadrons ready to launch and was just waiting for the order. If this was going to get hairy, she would need her full 1st and 2nd tiers of fighters out there.

"Bold of you to assume they're the ones doing the taunting." Olivia grumbled. She looked up at the screen, and cursed as a second ship appeared, and struck the ship with something. It's power went completely out. "RED Alert. Battle stations." Olivia paused and looked around. "Operations to Commander Bishop, we definitely have a situation. Somebody get me a sensor reading on whatever the HELL that was. We've seen the end results of it before, and I do not want it happening to our station."

Lt. JG. Talerian Maxx Was tapping screens and keys to aid Lieutenant Commander Olivia Lorrietta in their dangerous predicament. Luckily the other officers were pitching in to her aid. Lt. Maxx then heard a lot of chatter outside his office which was very distracting. He had barely been onboard and was already dealing with his MIA commanders, incompetent staff, messy office, and to make it worse he had no idea where his room was so his bags were still in his office. It was frustrating and overwhelming to say the least as he turned around to see what his crew was up to now instead of going through decontamination. What he saw was something one would imagine out of a really bad television sitcom as one of his Ensigns was running around like a like a panicked child covered in fuzzy balls as if it was a costume. The other Ensigns were doing their best to calm the panicked Ensign down with no success. Lt. Maxx rubbed his temples as his headache returned with the knowledge knowing this was only the beginning of his command with this sad excuse of a crew.

So Lt. Maxx locked down the Science Department to keep the contamination from spreading out. He had a good ide what they were dealing with since he studied a lot of old bizarre mission reports for fun. Then he walked calmly out of his office and proceeded to clothesline the panicked Ensign as he was blindly running by. Upon impact the Ensign spun in a 360 degree motion as his feet flew over his head before falling loudly on the ground. The impact knock him out cold and surprisingly the fuzzballs seemed uninjured as they cushioned the Ensign's impact. Naturally this shock his crew as they had a deer in headlights expression on their face. Lt. Maxx then looked sternly at them and told them to put him in the decontamination chamber and prepare to find the rest of the fuzzballs.

A female Ensign then asked, "What are those things?" Lt. Maxx replied, "Tribbles. Almost fifty percent of the creature's metabolism is geared for reproduction. Do you know what you get if you feed a tribble too much?" A male Ensign answered, "A fat tribble?" Lt. Maxx shook his head and replied, "No. You get a bunch of hungry little tribbles. So I can suggest we remove them unless you all want to open up a maternity ward." The other Ensigns seemed very concerned by them as they asked a lot of questions. Lt. Maxx told them they are not dangerous, but they do multiply like crazy and will consume the ship if they get out of hand. So the unorganized crew agreed to aid Lt. Maxx in his purge of the Tribbles. Then Lt. Maxx opened up a few compartments and more Tribbles came rolling out onto the floor. The crew began collecting the Tribbles into several empty drums as Lt. Maxx was collecting various ingredients and tools. Then Lt. Maxx took his supplies to a lab station and began preparing a solution. The other Crewmen glanced at Lt. Maxx as they were opening up compartments and retrieving Tribbles. At this point some of the Tribbles seemed to be very colorful like parts of a rainbow as opposed to their usual brown, black and white colors.

After a a lot of delicate work Lt. Maxx made a powder and corked it before he made his way to the food dispenser in his office. There he filled several bowls of grain and returned to the crewmen. He then poured some grain into the barrels containing Tribbles along with the powder he made. The Tribbles went crazy eating the grain which confused the crewmen a lot. A female Ensign asked, "Why are you feeding them sir?" Lt. Maxx replied, "Its bait to get rid of them." A male Ensign asked, "What is in that powder sir? Is it poison?" Lt. Maxx, "Yep its quadrotriticale. Tribbles seemed to like it to." The other crewmen were a bit torn by the idea of poisoning the cute tribbles till Lt. Maxx explained that if left alone they will take over the ship and reek havoc to the controls. He also mentioned they don't like Klingons and make a nasty sound when near them. The Klingons see them as parasites and fear them. Lt. Maxx then showed the crew how to set up the poison traps to lure out the remaining Tribbles. He was tired and his day just started. he was worried the Commander might give him a hard time for not helping her much, but stuff happens and they all needed to deal. So after he gave his orders to the crew he made his way back to his office to see if the Commander made any progress.


TBC