Bogdonovich

Posted on Monday November 9th, 2020 @ 4:41am by Ensign T'val

Mission: The Forgotten Outpost
Location: Engineering

Lyra stared at the pile of PADDs on her desk, and leaned her head on the desk, giving them a longing look.

The emitters were working. They just weren't providing any headway.

Lyra pulled out a memory disk from her desk, and put some photographs onto the desk console.

She pulled up some of the photos of Kathleen, T'Yuna, Sirgei and the people she knew before she was committed to Starfleet Medical.

They were all gone now. All of them.

She grabbed her stuffed pig out of her desk, and sighed.

"I don't know how to fix this, Link." She told the pig. "T'Yuna would have an idea. Or Skylar."

The pig didn't contribute much.

Someone stood at the door, and Lyra looked up.

"Lost in the memories again?" T'val asked, tilting her head.

Lyra nodded in silence.

"That big a problem, huh?" T'val asked, reaching over to scratch the stuffed pig's head.

Lyra nodded. "Link don't got nothin' to add."

"Well, his wisdom and strength has always been in being the strong, silent type." T'val shook her head. "I've been looking at the sensor readings."

"Commodore Bishop would really like a serious answer." Lyra grumbled.

"I don't have any." T'val frowned. "But... I had a theory. About how they got on board."

"How?" Lyra looked up, suddenly.

"Like rats, bugs, and the occasional criminal." T'val looked pointedly at Lyra.

"Stowaway?" Lyra shook her head. "Can't be. We'd have noticed if an assimilated crew docked."

"Who says it's a crew?" T'val winked. "We use drones for surveillance sometimes."

Lyra looked up. "That's a problem."

"Why?" T'val asked.

"Because we didn't get the restrictor emitters set up until they had been here for some time. What if they are in the jefferies tubes?" Lyra scrunched up her face.

"Your emitters might not even effect them." T'val pointed out. "Kathleen pointed out that they only impair nanites. She could function just fine. If they have some kind of protective casing, we could be in a lot of trouble."

"Unless they're targeting that deck for a reason?" Lyra frowned. "Deck 29 is... crew quarters?"

"And banquet-" T'val paused. "Crew quarters. That explains it."

"People feel safe in their quarters." Lyra nodded. "Hey, they have to talk to the collective, right?"

"Generally speaking, yes." T'val's eyebrows up. "You would need a communications specialist-"

"Like you?" Lyra asked.

"In theory. Drones use a special subspace connection that is really hard to dampen or even trace." T'val tilted her head. "However. In theory. If these things are not drones, we may be able to find their control frequency, and then all we'd have to do after dampening that-"

"Is deal with the remaining borg invasion of the station." Lyra winced.

"One problem at a time." T'val pointed out. "Also, strictly speaking, that is a security and tactical problem."

"If you had to hide a place where transmissions weren't going to be easily detected, where would you hide it? A docked ship?" Lyra frowned.

T'val shook her head. "Every single ship, Starfleet ships included are under intense scrutiny while in proximity to any Starbase." T'val paused. "Administration offices? They route messages through the Starbase Comm systems every day. Hundreds of thousands. In theory, if you tapped into that network, and disguised your transmissions appropriately, nobody would notice it."

"That's why they picked Deck 29." Lyra said, eyes opening wide.

"Above the administration offices." T'val nodded. "They've got a straight line down to the communications array. One of the shortest that is not directly connected to the bridge. If you were looking for the single most innocuous place on the starbase-"

"They know the Starbase layout?" Lyra asked.

"That is less disturbing when you realize they are able to tap into our systems. Or more. Still though, it is clever. We are engineers on this base and it took us this long to piece it together." T'val gave Lyra a displeased look. "That being said..."

"What?" Lyra looked up.

"Gremlins." T'val raised an eyebrow. "In theory, if we know how they are communicating, we can do more than just dampen their communications."

"We can sabotage them." Lyra paused. "We can overload their signals."

T'val didn't quite smile.

"What would be the best place to check? Here? Main computer core?" Lyra asked.

T'val shook her head.

"Deck 1." T'val said, calmly.

T'val grabbed her kit.

Lyra almost followed. Then she shook her head. "You go. I'm supposed to delegate more."

T'val inclined her head. "As you wish."

"T'val?" Lyra sounded uncertain.

"I promise I will come back." T'val said, quietly.

"I was going to say... Stay here." Lyra frowned. "I just... remembered. You have family."

"Family that does not talk to me." T'val narrowed her eyes.

"Family you have to show you are better than what they think you are." Lyra paused. "Besides-"

"As Kathleen said." T'val inclined her head. "If you are not able to do it, and something happens to you, I can try again from another location. It is... logical. I doubt Colonel Bishop will agree."

"Bogdonovich to Colonel Bishop?" Lyra took a moment. "You asked for the point of entry. Ensign T'val thinks she has it. We're going to try to short it out. That will just leave the remaining drones. Best I can do."

Lyra took a deep breath, and stepped into the turbolift.

"If this doesn't work." Lyra gave an almost smile, as she looked up at the turbolift ceiling. "Sirgei."

---

Lyra stared at millions of bits flowing through the comm arrays. She narrowed her eyes, trying to make sense of it. Then, she opened the bulkhead.

There was a strange disc with tentacle like-legs wrapped around one of the cables.

She took her plasma cutter to the device, and cut off it's legs.

They writhed angrily on the ground, and she put her empty suitcase over the dismembered device before plugging her own PADD's connection wires into the ports.

She ran a tricorder under her butt as she sat on the suitcase, and waited patiently for any useful readings.

And that's when T'val flagged lines of code on her PADD. Anomalous communication that was using the authorization code of an officer who was presently 300 decks away, sleeping. Then another. And another.

The PADD changed. A new program was uploaded to it.

Execute overload command popped up on the screen in a big red button.

"This might do a lot of damage." Lyra winced. "T'val, please be right."

She took a deep breath. She pressed the button.

The console next to her sparked, and then exploded.

Lyra was flung against the wall. She groaned, and looked at the suitcase.

A leg was almost crawling out from under it.

Then, there was a short.

And the device fried.

Lyra laughed. "It worked."

She closed her eyes. "IT WORKED!" She shouted.

The lights went out on the deck. Lyra leaned back.

"The rest is security's problem." She laughed.

She put her hand to the back of her head, and then pulled it back.

Blood.

"And medical's problem." Lyra winced. She tapped her comm badge. "Medical emergency. Deck 1."

She took a breath. She stared down at the blood for a bit longer.

Her vision blurred. "Really. Should have brought someone." She mumbled. "Maybe. He's right."

She gave a slight laugh.

Then she fell over, unconscious.

---

Lieutenant Lyra Bogdonovich
Chief Engineering Officer

Ensign T'val
Acting Assistant Chief Engineer

Link
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