Posted by Commodore Drudoc Andone (Commanding Officer) in Main Sim - Bridge - En route to J17
[snip]

“What about holographic projections?” Kyle asked, “Surely Engineering can work out away for the images to not be degraded by the time loop?”

-Lieutenant Kyle Anders: Chief of Security-

“Prosthetics are about useless at this point,” Doctor Stacey said waving his hand in defeat. “For all we know, they might have evolved into gods’ know what.” The CMO wasn’t prepared to allow anyone go down to the planet without knowing what affects it would have on them. Were they going to get trapped in whatever is out there?

“Do we have access to the mobile emitter specs that Voyager’s doctor used?” Gavin asked the XO. “If our Engineering team could create one, we could use one of our EMHs to beam down and investigate on our behalf.”

Stacey CMO

Drudoc sat quietly and began to listen to things going on around the bridge, to gather all relevant information on the current situation.

Drudoc Andone CO

“We’d need to be ABSOLUTELY sure that the holograms wouldn’t degrade inside the anomaly. I’m no Engineer like, but I imagine technology can be damaged by a temporal loop too, right?”

-Lieutenant Kyle Anders: Chief of Security-

The turbolift opened in the midst of the conversation and Demil walked out, slightly flustered. He quickly straightened his uniform and composed his expression, then walked over to Sifeda and stated “Ensign Lis reporting on behalf of Lt. Belmont, Ma’am. She is currently indisposed. I apologize for the delay.” His foot tapped incessantly inside his uniform boot, betraying the nervousness his face and tone hid.
Ens. Lis, Science

Sifeda trusted the advice of the doctor, if he said prosthetics were now useless then they were. She pressed her lips together in thought then said to the Doctor, “I am not 100% sure about the mobile emitter specifications, however I am sure Engineering can assist you. Why don’t you connect with either Lieutenant Hobbs or Mr. Buchanan to obtain what you need, then report back to me the solution you settled on after you gather your information? Also I am sure you have already considered”, she briefly held her hand out in the direction of the COS as she continued, “Lieutenant Anders concern about the degradation of the holograms?”

“I’ll head down to check with Buchanan,” LtJG Stacey replied, leaning over to look at Ensign Lis’s appearance. “Since time is of the essence, I want to be more than 50 percent sure that this will work before risking one of our EMH programs.” The CMO stated.

Then she turned to Lieutenant Anders and said, “I will have you remain on the bridge for now at the tactical station. Don’t hesitate to consult with Dr. Stacey and Engineering about any security concerns you have.”

Gavin nodded at the XO’s statement and then swiftly made his way over to the turbolift and disappeared inside.

As Ensign Lis approach her she couldn’t help but notice his nervous demeanor. Sifeda placed a gentle hand on his left shoulder and said in a calm low tone, “At ease Mr. Lis. I am sorry to hear about Lieutenant Belmont, however now we must rely on you as you are the next senior science officer on this ship. Now first, do you have any data or observations to share from the science simulations and second, have you had a chance to review the transmission that was sent to you earlier?”

Itri, XO

“The most relevant information that we discovered is that the society is very communal and cooperative, developing from their early packs and maintaining a similar mentality,” Demil reported. “The data would be in line with the transmission - the estimate is roughly a year of standard development per day. We didn’t notice any evidence of a time warp or anything similar, but I am unwilling to rule it out. If the projected development rate is accurate, I doubt we’ll have to wait long for them to notice us.”

CMO

“A year of development within a day.” Sifeda repeated. The information was confounding but nonetheless sensible in that they could not argue with the data and they had seen it with their very eyes.

“Aye Commander,” Kyle said with an affirming nod, crossing the bridge to what felt like his second home, the ArkAngel’s Tactical Console. Anders had undertaken a lot of physical training for ground missions of late, but felt very comfortable sitting at Tactical once more, “Doctor, let me know what you find out,” he said addressing Stacey.

-Lieutenant Kyle Anders: Chief of Security-

Though Kyle’s arrival had brightened her smile slightly, Mar had remained silent through the whole exchange. But now she shook her head and spoke up. “I don’t think going down would be feasible at this point. But perhaps we can send a probe with a message for them to come and join us? We can make it clear that while the message will seem aged by decades, time outside their meteor belt is slower and we’d still be here.” She glanced at the others now as she continued. “It’s possible moving into their time loop would kill us and mean no one comes out. But one of them coming out would slow them down just as considerably. So either will mean someone being left behind so to speak. If we go there, we’ll be dead before anyone comes out. But if one of them comes here, everyone they know will be decades gone by the time they go back. I think whatever we choose, we need to take that into consideration.”

Sifeda nodded. The counselor’s advice was sound and logical but she looked at the science officer and asked, “What do youu think Mr. Lis? Do you think they are a hostile race? Should we attempt to make contact with them?”

“I don’t believe they would be immediately hostile if we made contact, so long as we did not appear to threaten their society,” Demil theorized. “Much of their societal mindset, according to the simulation, involves doing what is best for the group as a whole. If we could show that we came peacefully, they quite possibly would be willing to assist us in our endeavors. They may even see the Federation’s values as somewhat akin to their own.”

She glanced at the planet and tried to see if it was the only thing inside the meteor belt or if other planets were as well. Absently she added, “I think we need some meteor samples as well.” She had an idea, plain on her face to those who knew her, but she didn’t complete the thought.

Mar CNS

“You think the phasers could break them up lass, at least to get us enough to beam aboard a sample?”

-Lieutenant Kyle Anders: Chief Security Officer-

Ens. Lis, Science

Again she conferred to the science officer as to whether Lieutenant Anders’ idea about using the phasers to break the meteors up and beam them aboard made sense. “How do you propose we collect the meteor samples, Mr. Lis. Does the Lieutenant have a sound plan or would you propose another one?”

Itri, XO

“While Lt. Anders’ plan is a sound one, I believe it may be more prudent to use the tractor beam to sling one meteor against another and beam aboard the resulting fragments, rather than use the phasers, to minimize potential sample contamination. The phasers could accidentally eradicate things from the sample or leave nadion radiation that would interfere with our analysis,” Demil responded, shooting an apologetic look at the security officer.

Ens. Lis, Science

OOC: Ok i’m back everyone from my LOA. Seems we lost a bit of very important detail in my earlier post about the probe. In addition to the obvious time dilation oddities, everyone mostly seems to have missed that the Volgograd was literally RIPPED APART by SOMETHING in addition to it being thousands of years old. PLUS inside the system of J17 the ships present there also were RIPPED APART BY SOMETHING and were only a few decades older then the early three warp ships picked up by the Volgograd! Again these ripped up hulks were showing having been out there in J17 for almost the same amount of time as the Volgograd. Another VERY important and missed detail is that the planets are now all lifeless hulks, including the Class M world, no atmosphere, no life no vegetation nothing, utterly stripped of anything of use or organic etc. As if something swooped down and stripped it all away. Finally the last VERY important thing to note is the last image the probe sent was SOMETHING HUGE literally enveloping and EATING the probe with what might be sharp teeth! Since everyone has already moved on with this missing detail its fine, don’t worry about retconning or changing your replies so far. I’ll run with it for now and use Drudoc to steer us back on track!

Once everyone had gotten through things, Drudoc reviewed the logs on her own, she felt like there was something possibly being missed here. While she reviewed this playback she said to the helm NE, “..Helm, drop us from warp and bring us to a halt, we need to hold station and evaluate everything before proceeding further to J17..” She said.

”..Aye ma’am, coming to all stop..” the NE said as the Ark Angel dropped from warp about now 3 hours from J17 by warp and came to a full stop.

Speaking up then after reviewing the play backs Drudoc spoke to those still present, “..Ok it seems we have missed some important details of the probe’s data that no one has mentioned yet. That being the Volgograd and the Forseth ships inside J17 have been ripped apart physically as if by some giant beast or hands. Also the planets are now all lifeless hulks and stripped of their atmosphere and any organisms or the like, as if a swarm of Terran locusts swooped in and raised everything to the ground. We also got the final image by the probe showing it being swallowed by something with what might be claws or teeth..” Drudoc said, one by one showing such things in freeze frame on the ship’s bridge screen.

”..Clearly there is some kind of temporal anomaly going on here. But is not one that is giving off normal chroniton or other expected particles or signatures that we know of. The only constant seems to be these old echoing radio signals that have a slightly higher variance frequency then we might be expecting for most sublight natural or artificial radio traffic in space..” She said. “..There is also the issue that the Volgograd was up till the cut out seeming safe and in our own sense of temporal alignment, this to me implies that up to that moment we were within sync with them. So up till that moment the Volgograd was not effected by the rapid evolutions of the Forseth inside J17. There’s also the fact that whatever happened to the Volgograd shortly after say within 10 years also effected J17 but yet all this has happened several thousands of years ago..” She went on.

”..So we must ask, was originally the Volgograd outside the influence of a temporal echo that was showing normal development for the Forseth but only to our unaffected perceptions and sensors seemed vastly sped up, meaning that what we were seeing was in fact events happening in the past thousands of years ago which then the Volgograd somehow got caught within transporting them into the past where they were ripped up and destroyed before roughly 10 years later the same event befell the Forseth and J17? Personally I have not heard of any exact temporal anomaly that comes close to this. There are some things similar in our databanks but nothing quite like this. We must also consider that if the event did somehow expand or has a radius of effect is it expanding further and how far could it spread? Not to mention its source and what sort of creature or anomaly could rip apart a ship like that and whole planets.” She said returning to her seat.

”..Comments or thoughts?” Drudoc asked.

Drudoc Andone CO / GM CockRoach

“Surely a life form of that size could be no match for a Federation starship, we need the combined efforts of a fleet. As for the temporal anomaly question, I’m afraid I’m stumped.” Kyle adopted his typical ‘lost in thought’ pose, leaning across the tactical console with one arm on either side.

-Lieutenant Kyle Anders: Chief of Security-