Posted by Ensign Ka’sora Pru’moa Daveyla (Science Officer) in Side Sim - Holodeck; Exploring History (all welcome)

Posted by Lieutenant Kaia (Chief Engineer) in Side Sim - Holodeck; Exploring History (all welcome)

Posted by Commander Shedda Mal’athar (Executive Officer) in Side Sim - Holodeck; Exploring History (all welcome)
Posted by… suppressed (20) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(do not snip this cast list please)
USS Kepler
Captain - Sebastian d’Aramis (Orville Fleet)
XO/Security Chief - Thelos sh’Reni; Female Andorian
Medical Chief - Ka’Sora
Science/Library - Shedda Mal’athar
Engineering - Taylor Weyer; Nonbinary Human
Pilot/Weapons Control - Kylie McLaren, Female Human [NPC]
Navigator/Astrogation - Satok; Male Vulcan
Communications - T’Sai; Female Vulcan

IC: Sebastian watched the team step onto the transporter pad, gave them a nod and stepped up himself.

Turning to the transporter chief, he ordered, “Energize.”

His body began to tingle as the room arounded him faded from view. . . . . .

Lt. Cmdr. Sebastian d’Aramis
CIO-USS Manhattan

The away team materialised in the room they saw through the viewscreen - the bridge, presumably. The walls were a mid-tone brown, with what looked almost like marbling of darker brown and red colours. The control stations, or what they would assume to be control stations, based on positioning, were pale spheres that gently glowed. Some had wall-displays above them, with text in the Galdori script - familiar to any ‘players’ who had visited Kaia’s quarters, but entirely alien to the characters they played. Turning around, the viewscreen showed the emptiness of space, the far-off shape of the Kepler visible. The room was lit gently by red emergency lighting, and a similar creaking sound could be heard.

d’Aramis instinctively shifted his stance as the alien bridge came into focus around them. The red emergency lighting washed the chamber in dim hues, the faint creaking of the hull echoing through the structure like an old ship straining against a storm.

The crew was quite varied, and a range of strangeness depending on how familiar Sebastian, Ka’Sora, and Shedda were with Kaia’s species and homeworld. The captain herself - Wynn, played by Kaia - smiled with relief upon seeing the crew. “Thank you for your help, kind strangers. I did not believe your communications officer when she insisted you could move yourself onto our ship without docking, but I see now that I was mistaken. Please, help my crew.”

There were six other individuals on the bridge who were obviously still living, although one was looking quite rough. Pretty much uninjured other than a few scrapes and small bruises were a laleri and hatriku - extremely tall wolf-like humanoid and average sized reptilian humanoid, respectively. The two arwan and kalaran - short goat-like humanoids and slightly tall four-armed, smooth-skinned humanoid with patches of glowing skin on their bulbous forehead - had more severe injuries, with one of the arwan clearly sporting a broken arm. The captain had a head injury, but seemed to be on her feet and functional - on her feet being a relative term, considering she was seated in a chair, leaning against one of those pale, pulsing spheres. The final crew-member, being tended to by the laleri, was an okinosian - a ambulatory fungal lifeform. The entire lower-left quadrant of its body was apparently crushed, a panel of wall-material on the ground next to it seemingly the cause of the injury.

Lieutenant Kaia
Chief Engineer USS Manhattan

Shedda immediately flipped the small screen of the large bulky tricorder open and began taking scans of the area.

Cmdr. Mal’athar, XO

His eyes moved quickly—years of intelligence training taking over before he consciously thought about it. Entry points. Structural damage. Crew positions. Potential threats.

Nothing hostile presented itself.

Just a crippled ship and a crew that had clearly been through hell.

He gave Captain Wynn a brief nod of acknowledgement before glancing toward the injured personnel scattered across the bridge.

“Understood, Captain,” d’Aramis said evenly, his voice calm but carrying the quiet authority of someone used to chaotic situations. “We’ll get your people stabilized.”

He stepped slightly to the side to give the medics room to move, though his attention never stopped scanning the room. The crushed fungal lifeform caught his attention immediately, followed by the damaged wall panel nearby.

“Commander Mal’athar,” he said, glancing toward the XO and the open tricorder. “See if you can determine whether that panel failure was structural fatigue or something more… energetic. If the hull is under pressure like it was reported, we should know if more of the ship’s interior is about to start collapsing.”

“Aye, Sir,” Mal’athar said as she continued her scans.

d’Aramis then crouched near the fallen panel, careful not to interfere with the laleri tending the okinosian.

“Easy,” he said quietly to the injured crewman, though he wasn’t entirely sure how much the being understood. His tone carried the universal language of reassurance.

He tapped his combadge.

=&=d’Aramis to Kepler. We’re aboard. Multiple injuries, some severe. Medical is beginning triage. Engineering should be aware we’ve got interior structural failure on the bridge—looks like a panel collapse caused at least one critical injury.=&=

He paused, glancing toward the strange glowing control spheres around the room.

=^=And tell someone in engineering we might need guidance on this ship’s systems if we’re going to help them get out of this anomaly.=^=

He rose again, looking back to Captain Wynn.

“We’ll do everything we can to get your crew patched up,” he said. Then, more quietly, glancing at the strained bulkheads around them, “But I’m going to need to know exactly what happened to your ship.”

Lt. Cmdr. Sebastian d’Aramis
CIO-USS Manhattan

The tricorder scans show life signs… in the walls? Putting that anomaly to the side for now, the structure of this vessel is made of a material that is softer than what the Kepler is made of. From what you can tell, the Da’ryn is a vessel built for the vaccum of space, and unlike Starfleet ships, it doesn’t have built-in tolerances for atmospheric pressure. The surroundings are still a vaccuum, but the spacial anomaly is putting pressure on the hull. The hull is being twisted and pushed, and it’s simply not able to resist. You estimate, from the stress it’s currently under, if you don’t find a way to get it out of the spacial anomaly, the Da’ryn has about ten hours before total structural collapse.

“Captain, whatever material the hull is made of is too soft to withstand the atmosheric pressures of space. The pressure of the anomalee is twisting and pushing the hull. I estimate roughly ten hours before complete structural collapse,” Mal’athar reported.

The injured crewmember wiggled its feelers at d’Aramis in a way that probably meant aknowledgment of his presence. Oddly, or perhaps not oddly considering the fungal nature of the okinosian, there was no blood. A little bir of translucent white fluid leaked from the injured area, but not nearly as much as one would expect if a similar injury had occured to a human.

“Thank you, Captain,” Wynn pushed herself up a little. “Da’ryn is a long-range exploratory Hashem-class. We were pushing the boundaries of explored space, and trying to enter the great expanse beyond known space, when we encountered this anomaly. We, uh, swam straight into it. It was like hitting a cliff. One moment Da’ryn was travelling at warp speed, the next moment he was dead in the water. The shock of the impact knocked out his nervous system, and this anomaly is putting a lot of stress on his structure.” Wynn/Kaia winced, a little bit of blood leaking from the corner of her eye. “He’s in a lot of pain, but I’m doing my best to isolate it so he doesn’t effect you as well.”

Lieutenant Kaia
Chief Engineer USS Manhattan

Mal’athar turned to look at Wynn and then back at her tricorder and back at Wynn. “Your ship is… alive?”

Cmdr. Mal’athar, XO

Wynn gave a slightly confused look to Mal’athar. “Of course?” After a moment, she asked, “Are your ships… not?”

Lieutenant Kaia
Chief Engineer USS Manhattan

Ka’sora let them deal with the captain and sussing out events, but she kept an ear open for clues. For now, her job was triage, at least that much she could do with some knowledge. Pulling out the tricorder from her shoulder bag and moved over to the group with the possibly more severe injuries. “Hello, I’m Ka’sora. I’m going to assess your injuries,” she said, scanning them each in turn. In truth, she had no idea how to manage their varied physiologies, but this was the holodeck and she’d go along and do her best.

~Ensign Ka’Sora

“Thank you, Doctor,” the kalaran spoke. The arwan with the broken arm nodded quietly, while the third simply groaned in pain.

The scanner displayed interpreted read-outs, for the benefit of someone not trained in medicine, declaring that the arwan with the broken arm had several broken bones and bruises, the other arwan was suffering from internal bleeding and a punctured lung, and the kalaran had internal bleeding and a mild concussion.

“You all have serious injuries, but we will do triage and treat the most serious first,” the Zaharan said. The two with internal bleeding ranked higher for her just now, but she needed to get them to a medical facility. This was not something she could just treat on the bridge, as far as she knew

d’Aramis didn’t answer Mal’athar immediately.

His eyes had gone distant—not unfocused, but processing—as the pieces settled into place with a quiet, almost unsettling clarity.

“Alive…” he repeated under his breath, not with disbelief, but with recognition.

He stepped closer to one of the warped bulkheads, lifting a hand but stopping just short of touching it—like one might hesitate at the skin of a wounded animal.

“That might explain the life signs in the walls,” he murmured. “They’re not in the structure… they are the structure.”

His gaze shifted back to Captain Wynn, sharper now, more urgent—but still controlled.

“Captain, I need you to stay with me on this,” he said, voice low but precise. “If your ship has a nervous system, then what we’re seeing isn’t just structural failure—it’s systemic trauma.”

He gestured subtly to the strained hull around them.

“This anomaly didn’t just stop your ship—it injured it.”

Wynn tilted her head, then nodded in agreement.

A beat.

“And right now, it’s still happening.”

He tapped his combadge again, more decisively this time.

=^=d’Aramis to Kepler. Update for engineering and medical—this vessel is a bio-integrated organism. I repeat, the ship itself is alive. Structural damage should be treated as widespread physiological trauma. We’re not just dealing with hull failure—we’re dealing with a patient in critical condition.=^=

He crouched again, this time closer to the injured okinosian, watching the slow seep of translucent fluid with clinical focus.

“Your crew…” he continued, glancing between Ka’Sora and the others, “they may not be separate from the ship in the way we are from ours. Injury to one could be affecting the whole system.”

His jaw tightened slightly as he looked back to Wynn.

“You said the impact ‘knocked out his nervous system.’ Is that localized… or is your ship currently experiencing something equivalent to total neural shock?”

“It’s a little hard to tell,’ Wynn replied. “His consciousness is faint, but his autonomic processes seem to be functioning - we are still breathing, so the air filtration is still functioning. And the artificial gravity as well.”

He rose again, tension creeping into his posture—not panic, but the weight of narrowing options.

“Because if the Da’ryn is in shock,” he added, “then pulling it free of the anomaly might not be enough.”

A brief pause, then—

“We may have to stabilize the patient before it can survive the extraction.”

“He,” Wynn corrected softly.

His eyes flicked once more to the groaning, twisting bulkheads.

“And we’ve got ten hours before the patient dies.”

Now, finally, he looked to Ka’Sora.

“Ensign—prioritize anything that looks like neural or signal pathways. If we can identify how this ship ‘thinks,’ we might be able to reduce the systemic stress.”

“I will try,” Ka’sora said. “We also have some high priority patients who need more extensive treatment.”

“I don’t want to sound cold, but If we can’t get the ship. . . .him, out of here, helping the crew is going to be a moot point.”

Then back to Wynn, quieter, but steady:

“Captain… tell me how you heal your ship.”

Lt. Cmdr. Sebastian d’Aramis
CIO-USS Manhattan

Wynn closed her eyes for a moment, and there was a rumble throughout the ship, a shudder that could be felt even by those who were not psychically tuned. The holodeck couldn’t replicate telepathy, but it produced a deep rumble that vibrated their bones and replicated the discomfort the crew would have felt on the day. She winced again. “He is not responding, I think you are right that he is in shock. I am a pilot and commander, not a physician. My ship’s medic is, erm,” she gestured at the fungal officer on the floor, “indisposed.”

Said ship’s medic made a few noises that sounded like cricket chirps, and a synthetic voice played from a small device on one of its limbs. “Neural structure damaged, injuries major.”

Lieutenant Kaia
Chief Engineer USS Manhattan

Ka’sora heard the comment and added that to her tally as she moved over to the consoles, looking to make sense of how things functioned. She glanced at the readouts and began the process of systematically working through which system was which and how they might be able to identify key ones to heal.

~Ensign Ka’sora

d’Aramis exhaled slowly, tnchoring himself as the situation shifted from unusual to unprecedented.

“Neural structure damaged… injuries major,” he repeated, absorbing the medic’s assessment without hesitation.

He turned toward the nearest console where Ka’Sora was working, then back to Wynn, his mind already moving three steps ahead.

“Then we stop thinking like engineers,” he said quietly. “And we stop thinking like conventional physicians.”

He stepped toward the bulkhead again, this time placing his hand against it with careful intent. His fingers splayed slightly, as if feeling for something beneath the surface.

There was a gentle rumble that traveled along his bones, deep and heartbeat-like in its regularity.

“If this vessel is in neural shock, then its systems won’t respond to standard input. Not propulsion, not structural reinforcement… not even self-repair, if it has that capability.”

“He has some self-repair, but not on the time-scale we are dealing with,” Wynn answered the implied question.

His gaze shifted to the fungal medic briefly, then back to Wynn.

“But autonomic functions are still active. That means some part of the nervous system is intact—primitive, perhaps, but functional.”

“We don’t need to wake him up,” he continued. “Not yet. We just need to keep him alive long enough to survive extraction.”

He pulled his hand back and turned decisively.

“Captain—when your ship is injured under normal conditions, what initiates healing? Is it conscious? Instinctive? Chemical? Electrical?”

“Regular healing is included under autonomic systems, as it is for us.”

“Ka’Sora, shift your focus. Don’t look for control systems—look for patterns. Anything resembling signal repetition, rhythmic pulses, feedback loops. That’s your nervous system equivalent.”

He moved closer to her station, scanning over her shoulder.

“If we can identify even a fragment of its signaling network, we might be able to stimulate it—bypass the damaged pathways and trigger a localized response.”

His tone sharpened.

“Think of it like jump-starting a heart… but distributed.”

He straightened and tapped his combadge again. pulled out his communicator. (2250s, we’re working with TOS technology)

=^= d’Aramis to Kepler. We need cross-disciplinary input—xenobiology, neurology, and engineering. Priority one. We are attempting to induce a controlled autonomic response in a bio-integrated vessel suffering from systemic neural trauma. =^=

He lowered his hand, then looked back to Wynn.

“Captain… if there’s any way you can interface with him—even partially, even instinctively—we may be able to amplify it.”

A brief pause.

“Right now, you’re not just his commander.”

His voice softened, but didn’t lose its edge.

“You’re the closest thing he has to a functioning mind.”

Lt. Cmdr. Sebastian d’Aramis
CIO-USS Manhattan

Wynn/Kaia stepped up to the white orb at her chair, which had a dull glow that was more-times off than on. “I will try, captain,” she spoke, sitting down in the chair and placing her hands on the orb. The glow intensified for a moment, then settled. “He is in pain, so much pain,” the captain said in a strained voice (think spock in a mind meld). The walls creaked again, and Kaia pulled her hands off the orb, a little more blood leaking from her nose.

[Initiate commercial break, followed by short montage]

A few more engineers and scientists were transported over to the Kepler, in different locations along the ‘spine’ of the vessel, as directed by ‘bob’, the injured medic. As the crew of the Kepler began to work, they were able to find isolated groups of Da’ryn’s crew, doing their best to fix what they could. The main issue, beyond the major damage he’d sustained, was a lack of communication between the isolated pockets. Comms in the vessel were hard-wired, and dependent on Da’ryn’s systems being in working order.

With Starfleet communicators acting as relays, emergency repairs went much more quickly, and the combined efforts of the two crews were able to get basic propulsion to activate. In combination with the Kepler’s tractor beam, they were able to escape the region of anomalous spacetime, into the interior of the ‘egg’.

From the inside, the region of anomalous spacetime was semi visible, like a slight haze on the stars.

“Thank you, Captain d’Aramis,” Wynn leaned against the console, dried blood on her fur. “We’re not in the branches yet, but we’re off the ground. Now that we’re a little more stable… I suppose a welcome is in order. We represent the Interstellar Alliance. I am Wynn, of Galdor. You all are… species that are not known to us. I presume you come from the stars beyond?”

Lieutenant Kaia
Chief Engineer USS Manhattan

He watched Wynn—not just her words, but the way she held herself against the console, the residual tremor in her hands, the faint but unmistakable lag between her focus and her recovery. Whatever connection she had formed, it hadn’t been metaphorical. It had been real… and it had cost her.

Only then did he allow himself a small breath.

“Beyond,” he repeated quietly, as if testing the word against his own understanding. “Yes… that’s one way to frame it.”

He stepped forward, posture straightening into something more formal—less the diagnostician now, more the officer.

“Captain Sebastian d’Aramis, Commanding Officer, Federation starship Kepler.” A slight inclination of his head. “On behalf of the United Federation of Planets… you have our thanks as well, Captain Wynn. Your ship didn’t just survive that anomaly—you fought it. That gave us something to work with.”

His eyes flicked, briefly, to the softly pulsing orb.

“And him something to hold onto.”

“You’re correct. We come from beyond your known stellar boundaries… though not as far as you might think. Our territory spans multiple systems—diverse species, unified under shared principles of cooperation, exploration, and, when necessary…” a faint edge crept in, “…mutual defense.”

Lt. Cmdr. Sebastian d’Aramis
CIO-USS Manhattan

Shedda studied the ship, it was fascinating, but she was more interested in the interactions of the different people. The only other culture she knew of where the planet had developed multiple sentient species was the Xindi. She could only imagine how exciting meeting this crew would have been for the first time.

Cmdr. Mal’athar, XO

“We are the same,” Wynn gestured to her ‘bridge’ crew. The fungal physician was receiving medical care, but seemed remarkably stable for having been partially crushed. As she spoke, she indicated the crushed physician, then the four-armed alien with the concussion. “People of three star systems. My home, Galdor. Bob’s home, Okinos. And Rain’s home, Kalar. United in cooperation and exploration. Although, I admit, there has not been a need for mutual defense. As far as we were aware, our three systems were the only ones to birth sapient life. clearly that is not the case.” The captain gave a wry grin.

She looked out the viewscreen, staring at the ‘beyond’, and began to speak in a tone that suggested she was talking to herself. “I must have made a navigational error. We are the first crew to enter the haze and live to tell the tale… that will be a story to tell my grandkits, not to mention the first contact with alien life from beyond!”

Now that the danger was behind them, the crew was more relaxed. They were still focused on their duties, but less urgently. One spoke to the comms, trying to get a connection to any other ships to request back-up. The plan was to limp Deryn back home, but if they could get another ship to help tow him home, it’d make their journey quicker.

Lieutenant Kaia
Chief Engineer USS Manhattan

Ka’sora was equally fascinated and remembered reading her own people’s first contact recollections. “”How far have you been able to travel away from your home worlds?” she asked.

~Ensign Ka’sora

Wynn considered the question, then got a bright look on her face and touched the interface orb for a moment. On the viewscreen, a star map appeared, showing the region of space that her people have explored. It is shaped like a rough wedge, wider on one end. About four dozen dots are displayed, in four colours. Three are large, red, and labeled in Wynn’s peoples’ script, which the Universal Translator hasn’t yet figured out. Two are closer to one another, while the third is further away at the other end of the wedge. Sixteen more dots are pink, and have much shorter labels that, based on how they repeat, are clearly numbers. One unlabeled dot is green. Finally, the remainder, all unlabeled, are tiny white dots. “This is a map of explored space. Our homeworlds, the stars with planets we have been able to establish colonies on, and the stars without any colonies.” The shape of the explored space maps pretty exactly to the shape of the shell of crumpled spacetime.

https://sites.google.com/view/gok-alliance/maps

Lieutenant Kaia
Chief Engineer USS Manhattan