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 Kvasir (Story Teller) in Main Sim [Bridge]: Belly of the Beast
Posted by… suppressed (1) by the Post Ghost! 👻

—[SNIP]—

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?”

The lieutenant gave an assent, turned back to his console. It took him a few minutes of navigating both the contemporary display and holo overlay, but finally he gave a satisfied sound. “It’s a ninety-three point one-eight percent match for Hab’rabi, so it’s either him or someone closely related.”

Rende nodded, it was as she suspected. And her perspective changed with the confirmation. What would she do, what had she done to protect her own child? What lengths had she gone to, to get him back. He wasn’t just trying to save his people, he was saving something so much more precious and valuable - his family. Rende leaned back in her chair, one leg bent at the knee, heel on the edge of the chair. Her elbow resting on the raised knee, and her thumb rubbing back and forth just under her lower lip. Rende was and always would be a marine, her oaths and loyalty were always fore front of her mind. Eldorin always came first, but the moment Tabris had come into this universe that had changed for her and El. Tabris had always come first no matter the risks no matter the consequences. Was this Ishara his daughter? Maybe his niece? Whatever the relationship was, she was dear to Hab’rabi. Rende understood that, to her core. She fought with the instinct to go grab the man and go rescue his child. They needed more information.

Yorba turned to Rende then, frustration writ large on his otherwise calm features. “Whoever embedded this recording stripped all the metadata out of it, probably to maintain the message’s overall integrity and low signal bandwidth. Whatever is going on over on Hab’rabi’s ship, Legion has locked down all transceivers—we can’t access or sync with their library to even take a stab in the dark. If I had to guess, however, it was a while ago. We haven’t been able to detect any structural damage that would account for that much background noise.”

=^= Tomlinson to Captain Asam. 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

Rende nodded, Woods was right, it was Rabi’s ship after all. She was silent staring out at the ship on the screen, you could almost hear the gears turning in her head. “Woods. What if…they are still under siege? His answers have been less than forthcoming, but what if he is still under siege, his people are hostages? How would you go about asking for help, when you can’t actually help? We’ve tossed possibilities back and forth, but what if his behavior is because he has no choice and not what he would want to do?”

A chirp rippled through the air, and a voice called through the comm system. =^=“Attention, all decks! This is Lieutenant Bowman in Engineering. Please stand by while we initiate a static warp field. As disorientation is common during field attenuation, more-sensitive species are advised to brace. The process should take no more than thirty seconds; crewman who experience prolonged symptoms are advised to report to the nearest medical team. Field will engage in ten seconds. Bowman, out.”=^=

There was a brief ripple in the air, followed by a prismatic splash of light beyond the viewscreen as the static warp field snapped into place. A faint sense of vertigo rippled through the bridge crew, but no one seemed adversely affected. Yorba gave his full attention to his workstation, giving the bridge systems a quick once-over with a Level One diagnostic. Once he’d double-checked his findings, he gave Rende an approving nod.
—Jas—

Rende shrugged her shoulders and arched her neck to each side. She took a deep breath, “Well that wasn’t that bad. Probably the most mild experiment of Eldorin’s I’ve ever lived through.”

Rende, CO

As things settled Markus groaned, holding his head for a moment then nodded. “I didn’t expect them to just do it, but to actually wait for the go-ahead,” he said quietly. The situation was sensitive and just doing it could have serious consequences. That was part of the purpose of the chain of command. But it was done. Markus turned hias attention back to Rende’s question. He didn’t answer immediately, his eyes going far away. He wanted to answer immediately in the affirmative. It felt right. But … one didn’t just leap onto a thing because it seemed right.

Closing his eyes, Markus brought up all that he’d seen and remembered since they’d encountered Hab’rabi, combined with the latest information he had. Some things were almost universal. The way parents looked after their loved ones, blood or not. Family. Loyalty. One of the things that human kind had learned since First Contact is that there were so many other species out there that were so similar, as much as they were so different. But a tribal culture like Hab’rabi’s?

Turning it over and inside out, looking at all the angles. As near as he could tell, his behavior would jive so very well for a man with a gun to his head, or the head of his loved ones. So much so that he was silently kicking himself for not seeing that angle sooner. “I think you might have hit the nail on the head, Captain,” he mused quietly to her, his expression grave. If that were the case, it changed the calculus of the situation greatly. But it also meant they had different cards to play.

Lt Woods, CSO/aXO