Posted by Commodore Drudoc Andone (Commanding Officer) in Side Sim: XO Arrives - Lt. Cmdr Itri Checking In [Tag CO]
[snip]

”..Of course Commander,” Drudoc said with a gesture to the guest chair in front of the desk. “..Can I get you a drink?” She inquired. To the right in one corner, Itri would spy a very large fish tank. In its clear waters was a surprising sight coming out of a small rocky like cave in the tank. It was spherical in shape as fish go, about 5 inches circular and about 9 or so inches long. Its large beady eyes shown with a predators intelligence and rows of sharp teeth were evident. It seemed to catch the look of Itri nearby and seemed to study her like it might want to jump out of the open top tank and turn her into a meal. Thankfully a thick wire mesh would prevent this from happening. Depending how knowledgeable Itri was on Romulus native fish, she could recognize it as a Res’lee predator fish. Since 2387 with the loss of Romulus and Remus due to the Hobus Supernova they were now an endangered species. They were known to be quite intelligent as fish go, and able to leap out of water and breath for up to two minutes to tear into live prey. In some ways they were like a much larger more intelligent version of the Terran Piranha.

Sifeda did notice the menacing fish in the tank, however, she was not familiar with the species. In response to making eye contact with the fish and it seemingly studying her she shanked away from it and shivered a little. She slid the chair opposite away from the fish tank before she took her seat. “No Commodore, I am fine.”

Drudoc who seemed quite attentive as she got her own drink from the nearby replicator, glanced at Itri as she caught her moving the chair further away from the large fish tank. Faint smile and chuckle came from her, “..Does my Res’lee pet make you nervous Commander?” She inquired, meanwhile said fish was idly swimming about now in the large tank but kept giving Itri a sizing up look.

“Very much so, it is not hiding the fact that it would prefer to eat me.”

“I take it you have prepared orders for me? However, I was also hoping to learn a little more about the Ark Angel, something that is not in the ship specs or on the ship’s Starfleet profile.” Sifeda could feel her nervousness getting the better of her, she had the urge to start fidgeting by way of smoothing her uniform, or adjusting her hair. It was a pesky human trait that she’d picked up from her mother and was never able to overcome. To help suppress it she lifted her left hand and rubbed the back of her neck.

Itri, XO

”..I do have your orders waiting yes..” She said sliding a PADD over to Itri as she rose to get herself her own drink and anything Itri would request. “..As for knowing something about the Ark Angel not in her specs from public Starfleet profile? Some of our missions have been classified for different reasons, but one I can relate to you was our recent encounter with the Q entity. They evidently this past year or so found us ‘interesting’ and were in a lively debate to see how we would react to extreme circumstances. With this in mind they flung us to the far distant GN-z11 galaxy and abandoned us. For four months we sought a means to get home under our own power, but also to explore the region we were in. Long story short thanks to some matter and reality altering black matter organisms, we were able to reshape our location from that galaxy back home here and arrive only a day or so from Starbase 243, though we had already been presumed overdue for our original mission of cargo delivery. The Q to say the least were annoyed that we ‘cheated’ in their game but nothing bad has yet come of it thankfully..” She explained.

Drudoc Andone CO

Sifeda had heard about the infamous Q, they were always causing trouble and interfering with missions. She didn’t think no entity in the universe should have as much power as they did. The most frustrating thing was they didn’t even seem to have outwitted and interfered with a number of Federation ships over the years. Sifeda’s brow furrowed, “So this Q just flung you in a far-off galaxy and called it a game?” She shook her head and then said, “Their idea of fun and games is ridiculous. Tuvok wrote in one of his reports that he believed the Q have weaknesses and only appear to be omnipotent because they possess technology that greatly surpasses the technology of the Federation. We must find a way to infiltrate them.” she said closing her left fist in a ball squinting her eyes in thought. Sifeda envisioned them being disembodied blobs of nothing with powerful minds that were able to project themselves into humanoids and create all the chaos they were known for.

Drudoc considered the comment about the Q, “..I have read similar theories. It is possible Tuvok and others are right. Any technology if sufficiently advanced even to us in this day and age could seem like magic or ‘god like’. From my own experiences, I believe they are truly evolved creatures that are non-corporal as they say, if you ask me their view of ‘all knowing all seeing’ and such is simply a simplistic view of how we view things to their level. It is not necessarily ‘bad’ nor ‘good’ it ‘just is’ for the Q and we yet lack the ability to fully comprehend or understand such a scope of knowledge and observation..” She said, pausing to take a sip of her drink.

Sifeda nodded in agreement, “That makes sense. However they should not annoy or torture us with this knowledge. “

”..As for infiltrating them? You may recall that Voyager and her crew did find a means to exist and travel to the Continuum’s level of existence temporarily and modify their own hand phasers while their to effect them to rescue then Captain Janeway during the Q’s Civil War. However, as I recall from the debrief records, beings like ourselves can not exist there for long because we lack the understanding to do so physically and mentally..” she said.

After she cleared her thoughts about the Q she said, “I heard you just encountered some type of blob creature on your last mission?”

Itri, XO

”..Blob may be an oversimplification, but yes we did. Our original orders had been to follow up on a distress call from the USS Synthesis a Unity class heavy cruiser variant of the Daedalus class cruiser first built at shortly after the Earth-Romulan War in 2162 after the Federation’s founding. The vessel at the time had been tasked with a deep space exploration and survey mission to The Barrens. Shortly after arriving on scene and sending a comm burst of arrival they vanished. As you may know many other ships and even a pair of colonies had vanished since then when they entered. The four light year spanning massive nebula was deemed as off limits by the Federation by 2260s, though other major powers even up through the Dominion War also lost ships that entered that region..” She explained.

”..Suffice to say when we entered what we thought at the time was a massive stellar nebula, and found the Synthesis intact, undamaged and more to the point from their view only having arrived to this system inside The Warrens less then a day before. We were at first quite confused. Their distress call they had sent that had brought us here speaking of loss of control of their ship had not even been sent nor was there any problems picked up. We carefully explained the reason for being here, and hinted that we came from a time further in the future. The Synthesis were surprised of course but agreed to investigate this strange happenings, especially since they wanted to avoid a loss of their own lives and ship..” She went on.

”..The away team we sent by shuttle, did some investigating and found eventually a pair of the smaller ‘blobs’. They had been ‘feeding’ on several energy, computer, and organic sources on the Synthesis. They had the ability to not only move or disguise themselves visually but also on scanners and move temporally and physically out of sync with our reality giving them the appearance of extreme speed. We realized that the Synthesis would never have a means to detect such creatures, and it was only by chance our own tricorders were able to do so at extreme close range. After a quite heated chase through the ship both blobs were contained in a modified forcefield and contained in the Ark Angel’s science lab. Here is where we learned there was a third blob on the Ark Angel by now, but it was stronger then these ‘younger’ versions and so was able to escape our ability to track it. Meanwhile we learned these organisms were just tiny specks of the massive singular life form around us. They had the ability to not only feed on organic material and technology but absorb, understand, and manipulate or appear as such things when they wished. Eventually we were able to establish contact with the one in the science labs. But the third large blob showed back up on a security check through the ship having by now fed strongly on our Flea’tan Jump Relay core. It had grown considerably and efforts to contain it failed. For some reason it decided to go to the Arboretum and began to feed on the organic plants there. While doing so it seems it had a bad reaction to a poisonous hybrid plant used for low antiodes by the medical staff in emergencies. It went.....psychotic, tearing up much of the Arboretum and even itself, the senior Ensign on the scene was able to help the transporter chief get a lock on it and beam it into space. To not do so would have meant critical danger to not only themselves and other NEs but also the ship. During this the Ark Angel had picked up some strange energy emissions which we soon found were a pair of lost late 23rd century Romulan T’liss Warbirds. I tried to reason with both ship Commanders but a fight ensued, we were eventually able to disable both and reach an agreement to find a way to return safely to our own times and minimize any impact on the past present or future as the cases may be. But at the same time the infected creature was out in space it was absorbed by the main body of the creature which made up The Warrens and soon the entire 4 light year spanning organism was infected and crazed. With no other recourse all three of our ships left on a return course to how we entered. The hope being we would return to our time periods safely. We were able to do so as you can imagine, but from a historical check both the Synthesis and the Warbirds never were shown to have returned. I can only surmise they are either in another time period, or more likely an alternate reality from our own or destroyed. The Warren’s creature as we escaped it seems either killed itself, repositioned itself somewhere else in our universe, or some other point of time, or maybe another reality. I personally hope it killed itself somehow, because a 4 light year spanning psychotic organism like that could cause untold damage to where or when it ended up. The smaller organisms that remained became one and then requested to leave the ship. After a day they did so out an airlock and soon vanished from sight to parts or places or times unknown..” She explained.

Drudoc Andone CO

“I am sure that made an interesting post-misdion report, especially making contactwith the crew of the Synthesis and then how they vanished, not even showingup in history. So you were able to establish contact contact with the creature? Did you learn anything particularly useful?”
She sipped her tea and said, “Do you really think its destroyed, it seemed to be accustomed to survival even under the most extreme circumstances. I bet we have not seen the last of the entity.” Changing the subject a little she said, “I heard you have a child. I cannot wait to meet her.”

Itri, XO