Posted by Captain Rende Asam (Captain) in Main Sim [Bridge]: Belly of the Beast

Posted by Tom L in Main Sim [Bridge]: Belly of the Beast

Posted by Captain Rende Asam (Captain) in Main Sim [Bridge]: Belly of the Beast
Posted by… suppressed (2) by the Post Ghost! 👻

—[SNIP]—

“PURSUANT, PLEASE BE PATIENT WHILE WE REVIEW THESE FINDINGS.” There was an audible hum that ran through the comm line, like whispered conversation or hundreds of pensive mutterings. Finally, it died away. “WE ARE ABLE TO CORRECTLY IDENTIFY ONLY… ONLY… LY… LY-LY-LY—“

Legion’s unified voice descended into a cacophony of chaotic sounds, words crashing against each other and scattering until it cut off abruptly. A singular calm male voice purred over the intercomm. “Apologies, Pursuant, but your request cannot be processed at this time. Please consult with your local Adjutant if you experience any further delay. Unity in peace!“

“—REMNANTS. APOLOGIES, PURSUANT, THERE SEEMS TO BE EXTENSIVE DAMAGE TO OUR CONSTRUCT. COLUMNS TWENTY-FOUR THROUGH THIRTY-SIX ARE INOPERABLE. COLUMNS EIGHT, THIRTEEN, AND SEVENTEEN ARE NOT FOUND. COLUMN THIRTY-NINE OPERATING AT SEVEN PERCENT CAPACITY. TERMINATING LINK AND ENTERING DIAGNOSTIC MODE. UNITY IN PEACE, PURSUANT RENDE.“

There was an abrupt blip, then silence. Yorba tapped at the controls and shook his head.

“It broke the connection, and I’m not detecting any power to their communications array.” He glanced at the captain. “What do you want to do now, sir?”

Rende hears the break down of order and smirks, “Not so confident now are they.” She mutters quietly to Yorba. When the link closes she looks at Yorba. “I want an analysis of all that noise. What were the individual voices saying?”

Yorba nodded and set to work. “It’ll take some time to sift through all the audio, but luckily I served aboard a Liberian freighter for a few months and picked up a few tricks. There’s almost nothing more garbled than bickering between freighter captains over trade rights.”
—Jas/Jenn—

Rende nodded, but while Yorba worked on that, she wanted her senior staff to know what was said. Tapping her combadge, =/\=Rende to Attention all Senior staff. A recording of a communique with the alien colony ship has been recorded and sent to each of you for immediate viewing. Rende Out.=/\=

● Alien Ship Conversation

Rende, CO

A few moments later the turbolift doors hissed open. Markus made his way into the familiar confines of the bridge. In his hands was a letter-sized PADD. his features were twisted up with concern. Frown lines creased his face. Pausing a moment to look around, he turned from heading to the science station at the back of the bridge and instead made his way down into the pit. Crossing over to the seat on the right of the Captain’s chair he dropped into it. In truth it belonged to Kohr, and there was no way he could fill the big man’s spot in quite the same way. Nor did he intend to try. For now, he was keeping it warm and doing his best to keep things afloat.

He glanced from the PADD in his lap, then over to Rende. Then back to the PADD, then back to her. It didn’t take much of an empath to sense that his mind was like a dark storm. Nothing positive brewed behind those steely eyes. “What… the hell,” he murmured to her. “Historically, nothing good has ever come of something like this referring to itself as Legion. The whole thing gives me the heebiee-jeebies. It’s … like talking to the Borg. Not that I have any personal experience in that field.” he shook his head. “I wanted to go check that ship out again, but after that… no way. I feel like we just watched a civil war play out in about ten seconds… and I’m not sure who won, or if I like them or even trust them at all.”

Lt Woods, CSO/aXO

Rende looked directly at Woods, “What indeed? And no nothing like that is ever good. We do know however that Hab’rabi’s people are very militaristic, so the term is not surprising. It also may not be accurate. Just as close a translation as can be managed. I do think it would be ill advised to make another trip over at this point. I’m not sure Legion would be happy with visitors. What concerns me more, Lt, is that it thinks that we are beneath it, worthy of patronizing, maybe teaching, and a bit of contempt. Legion claims that the remnants can not act independently or influence the living, but it also claims that they are made up of remnants. So, if it is not lying, as it professes, that means that perhaps alone they can not, but in groups they can. It might explain the combined energy signature. Before I could ask, it dropped into utter chaos when I presented it with the four different energy signatures. Almost as if it couldn’t figure out how I called it’s bluff.” Rende taped on the arm of her chair, “Something either is happening or has happened on that ship. Legion said it scanned Hab’rabi and he’s going to be fine. So he should be waking up soon, hopefully, and perhaps will shed some light. Legion also said it would not provide information that would allow us to bring harm to the ship or crew. That’s pretty standard procedure, but my concern is who said it? The part of Legion that is the crew, or the pirates that seem to be trying to take over?” Rende didn’t know if pirate was the right word or if a take over was going on, but it certainly seemed that someone had damaged their ship. And there were no signs of a space battle on the hull so it had to come from inside.

Rende, CO

“Captain,” Yorba murmured from his station, eyes fixed on the console before him, “I think I’ve got about all I can get from the transmission. Not only are there over three hundred fifty-seven distinct voices all talking at once, but I can isolate no less than one hundred eight electrical, mechanical, and other miscellaneous sounds. I’ve had the computer scrub incidental noise, such as animal calls and singing voices, and compiled what’s left. Honestly, Captain, it sounds like their database malfunctioned.”

Rende turned to look at the back of the bridge where Yorba had been working, “Play it over the speakers, Yorba.”

The lieutenant tapped in a few commands, and a subtle hiss began to play over the intercom. “You might want to brace yourself for a bit of extra noise, sir. I had to increase the volume gain to make some of the pieces audible. It’s… the best I could do.”

“…cessing Column… ty-Seven. Err… ystem malf… ction… Attem… o reroute via… lumn Twenty-Eight…, an elderly woman stated, slightly confused.

A bass voice thundered, “…xillary batteries are failing! We don’t… time to… tain needless ques…! Scan for… rabi!…“

“…tainment fail… Deck Ele… a young woman murmured, “…trol units are inop… Estimated casual… ty-seven percent. Standing…“

“…logs not found. Attem… bypass… rol. Column Eight… ot found. Rerou… to second… ystems. Rerouting fail…“

“…vigational array inop… able to verify head…” another voice said, “…trogational char… ot found. Auxillia… ck-ups not found…“

“…iority containm… olding.” A solemn voice announced. “Security field at… cent and holding. Temper… ithin standard param…“

“…n’t we find these fil… ouse the engineering te… asis tubes and…” A brief pause. “Insuff… ower to rouse eng…“

Rende listened quietly. The problem with play backs was there was no way to ‘read’ the emotion of those recorded. “It seems, Lt,” she looked at Woods, “There is quite a bit of damage to the ship, damage they weren’t aware of it would appear. The voices of Legion sound panicked, desperate, and scared to me. If they were supposed to be maintaining the ship while the crew was in cryostasis, how did it not know it was damaged?” She shook her head, “Stasis tubes and insufficient power, percentages of casualties. Now Hab’rabi told the original away team there were only four current survivors…this sounds like more than four.” She turned to Yorba, “Based on our scans, the data package, and information gleaned from the away team, can we determine which systems are damaged? Maybe whatever is damaging our systems did the same over there. And if it’s the same systems I’d put money on sabotage.”

Yorba pressed a key, and the playback stopped. He looked gravely between Rende and Woods before he said anything. “There’s… one more snippet I was able to fish out of all that audio garbage, sirs, but… well, it’s a little disturbing. Not just because of the content, but because of how easy it was to retrieve. The audio file is almost completely intact, just buried in the lower regions of the EM band where you’d find most stellar background noise. If I didn’t know better, I’d say someone wanted us to find it.”

Taking a deep breath, the lieutenant tapped the console once more. A steady hiss sizzled through the comm line, reminding Rende of early Terran recordings from back when mankind was first able to achieve such a thing as immortalizing one’s voice. It was clear that the quality of the transmission was very poor—likely to maintain signal integrity, if Yorba’s theory was correct—but the sounds that rang out distantly were crisp and recognizable.

Klaxons. Explosions. Weapons fire. And screaming. So very many terrified screams. Closest to the source of it all was a ragged panting, as if someone was running… or fleeing. A wet smack, a grunt and a heavy noise. Snarling, scrabbling, metal clashing against metal. A crisp sound followed by the pattering of a thick liquid and a shuddering wheeze. Heavier footfalls, and a soft scraping. Finally, a voice choked thick with fear shuddered across the comm system.

“Father, please,” It was a girl’s voice, little more than a child. “Please don’t go. I’m scared.“

A deeper voice, hauntingly familiar made a soothing noise. “They must be contained, Ishara. I cannot do this if I need fear for your safety. Stay here. I will find you once it is done. Mother will watch over you.“

A scraping, metal on metal. A heavy thunk, muffled silence. Heavy breathing, crisp and confined. A pause so long it felt as if it would never end. Then, an explosion and a squelch as the transmission ended. Yorba didn’t look up from his fingers, splayed across the console as if it were a lifeline.

“That’s… all I was able to find, sir.” His voice was distant. “I can… scrub through it again if you’d like, but I’m not sure what more there is to salvage.”
—Jas—

The sounds of battle and fear didn’t really phase Rende, on the outside. She’d heard it, caused it, been victim to it, too many times to count. She focused instead on the closest sounds, that of the ragged breathing and the voices of the little girl and her father. The little girl’s plea and the father’s response pulled long held memories to the forefront of Rende’s mind. She closed her eyes, seeing something from so long ago, super imposed upon the words of the recording. She let out a long sigh and made Yorba play it again. “They were under attack, inside the ship. Mutiny or maybe boarded? There is a obvious lack of attack damage on the outside of the hull so it makes me think Mutiny.” She leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped and stared into the middle distance. “Yorba run a voice recognition on the male against Hab’rabi. If that’s negative, run it against individual voices from Legion. How old is this recording?”

=^= Tomlinson to Captain Rende. The guest is awake. =^=

NE Tomlinson, Security

=/\=Thank you Tomlinson. Tell Lt Forgrave and Lt Cmdr Sigmundsson to notify me when they are done. I’ll want to speak to our guest as well.=/\=

She turned to Woods, “So now, based on conjecture, do we send him back, alone and unaided, or try to save, even the memory of that child?”

Rende, CO

“I think, depending on his condition, we have a conversation. It’s his ship, his crew. He at least deserves an update. He’d know more about the lay of the land than we do. And might be able to help us make sense of this situation. But we don’t have time for games or bull out of him. It’s like having an overdose and being taken to a doctor. They don’t care what you did, and aren’t trying to get you in trouble. Just tell them what you’re on. Screwing around with that lowers chances for survival drastically. The faster they can work the better. He doesn’t really have a reason to trust us, save that we haven’t killed him, blown his ship out of the sky, or any other factors. Thing is I’m not sure how to get through to him. At least by anything else besides being honest. I’m all for some good subterfuge, but right now… ” Markus broke off, shaking his head. But then again, with someone that had spent a lot of time seeing through people, and had the mental abilities to further that, maybe he’d just given up on deception and lies a long time ago.

“It can’t hurt, at least,” he offered. Lieutenant Commander Korh might be up for a very vigorous debriefing though with Hab’rabi. The thought drew a wry smile across his face, just for the briefest of moments.

Lt Woods, CSO/aXO