Posted by Captain Arialla Bovar (Captain) in MAIN SIM pt 1: Intriguing Nebula - Bridge

Posted by Commander Jonathan McKnight (Executive Officer) in MAIN SIM pt 1: Intriguing Nebula - Bridge

Posted by Commander Wulf Baumann (Intel Officer) in MAIN SIM pt 1: Intriguing Nebula - Bridge
Posted by… suppressed (1) by the Post Ghost! 👻

<Snip>

Liz watched what Baumann was doing and smiled. Using his trajectory, they could narrow the field faster. It was odd to think that merely experience watching could be a teacher. But she knew, next time they had to do a similar sweep or search, she’d have this idea in her head even if no one else did. She watched the scans of the probe and the ship as they others talked around her.

Prescott
Sec/Intel

Baumann entered the directions and sent them to Fleet. “Helm, see what you can do with that. Prescott, scan all frequencies and try and lock the signal coming in. If you cannot, tell me when signal strength increases and when it begins to consistently decrease.”

Baumann, Intel

Ari listened and watched the console at her hand as the ship moved in the route Baumann had suggested. She was already playing ‘hot or cold’ with the signal as she heard his voice tell Prescott to do the same. She smiled to herself as once more, their like minds clicked. Sometimes she wished he had been willing to step away from intel and be her XO. But this was where he excelled. He had never asked her to step away from the science or the Command chair, so she couldn’t ask him to do the same with his choice of path.

Glancing at the new XO, she shifted her smile, but it remained just behind her eyes. He was proving to be supportive and out spoken. He had suggestions and didn’t just ‘yes ma’am’ her when she said something. It would be interesting to see how he did, being tossed into the mix, so to speak.

Ari
CO

Jonathan smiled back at the Captain from where he was watching the bridge crew. This was definitely a unique assignment so far.

Prescott nodded to Baumann and set her console to mark the incoming frequencies. Setting the ship to play the child’s game of getting warmer was an interesting choice on how to catch the signal if she couldn’t pinpoint it.

After a few moments, she frowned. “Sir,” she glanced at Baumann. “The signal seems steady.” She gave him the coordinates from the last several minutes and frowned. “I thought I heard a difference in the message that had been repeating earlier. But I can’t get it back.” She wasn’t sure if she had heard it so many times that she was missing or inserting her own mental tones into the cadence, or if it truly had changed for just a moment.

Prescott
Sec/Intel

“How was it different?” he said as he stepped forward. “And how long ago did you hear the change? Maybe we can pull it back from the computers buffer before it gets purged.”

Hopefully it hadn’t been that long ago, because every minute they waited the more that was getting purged from the computers memory. Especially if they were going to try and recover whatever it was that Prescott heard.

Cmdr. McKnight - XO

Fleet slowed down the ship a little, thinking that if they moved back to where Prescot had sensed the odd signal they might be able to catch it again. He careully monitored the probe’s position and status.

Fleet, Helm

Baumann looked at the readings and then sent Fleet the location of where the signal spiked momentarily. He then began filtering the background noises and isolating anything that may be unnatural noise.

As the ship got close to the spot, Baumann said “There… yes… There. I have it. Playing now.” and he tapped a few commands and rhe bridge speakers activated.

At first it was the first signal they received, Morse Code that translated as ““Earth ship Macalister. Distress. Distress. Please… save the children.”. But after the short and long beeps came a verbal communication. A man’s voice, speaking the Earth language English in an obvious recording. “Mayday. Mayday.. This is Captain Nelson of the Earth colony ship Macalister. We are without primary propulsion and are adrift. Secondary power has been diverted in its entirety to the cryo-pods. If anyone is receiving this, please… we have dozens of children on board. Please assist.”

Baumann, Intel

“Is there anyway to tell how long the ship has been sending out the distress signal? I will have to look at the specs for that class of ship to understand just how long a distress signal could last.

“Is there any indications that there is anything else out there, or anything trying to scan for us? Because it would be nicer to get closer to that ship so we could get some actual scans of it.”

Cmdr. McKnight - XO

Ari got up and started pacing. Her stalking of the bridge stopped when Baumann announced finding the signal. As she leaned on the center railing to hear the Captain’s plea for the children on his ship, her heart ached to the point she actually raised a hand to her chest. Swiftly dropping it, she his the motion with a rub to her neck as she rolled her head with fatigue. “I don’t want to move too close yet. Let’s find out how old the signal could be before we we start chasing what could be several hundred years of nebula bounce back.” She didn’t like the idea of leaving kids in possible danger. But she liked the idea of the crew being wiped out by super humans, even less.

Ari
CO

Liz listened as the message was played and everyone reacted. As the age of the signal was being researched, she spoke up in the moment of silence. “I’ve set the recorders not to erase anything. This way if we happen across something and ‘miss’ it, it won’t disappear.” She went back as far as she could in the current recordings to be sure they weren’t lost during the switchover.

Prescott
Sec/Intel