Maria stared at the PADD in front of her, ignoring the view of the stars outside as they cruised along at super luminal speeds. Any other day, it would have been a sight to behold. But no, she had more concerning matters to tend to. The last encounter with the Cardassians left a bad taste in her mouth. There wasn’t much they could have done better, given the situation. Had they known what they were walking into, there were things that could have been done. Different mission loadout and prep. But given the tools they had, they’d done what they could.

In front of her were drafts of various ways to handle that situation. Including new devices, one of which she was working on currently. A ghostly image of it flickered in the air next to her from a holo projector. It resembled a slug of a bullet, with dozen smaller almost rice-shaped pellets clustered inside it, slotted into ports along the device’s long axis. Touching a button, the ghostly blue-white image broke apart, with each of the ‘rice grains’ proving to be mini-probes that expanded out into a cluster. A moment later, beams shot out from each of the probes linking to each other in a tight net. A web. A Tholian Web.

The image shifted again and the web began to tighten until it was quite small and the beams collided with a cloaked Cardassian fighter.

“Hmm, ok, good enough for the base idea,” she mused. “Need someone to code it. Ship’s computer can handle the broad strokes.” She began making notes once more. LCARS interface. What else did it need? C3 architecture. Electronic countermeasures. High-end encryption. Overrides.

Tapping her PADD she shifted to other notes. Deployment time, mission package, and duration the system could last under various operating conditions. Any potential shielding that might be needed or … possibly alter the web/field to protect the nodes from internal attack… A self-replicating element?

Idly she tapped at her lips with the tip of a finger…

Lt Beckett, COS/CIO