Posted by Gamemaster Nosferatu (Gamemaster) in Main Sim - Bridge
Snip

“Thank you for the update, Lt. M’Mera,” the Captain replied. “If we can’t go back… yet, then I suggest we go forward. I don’t know if there is any malevolent forces active here or not. I’m not feeling it but my gut feelings only take us so far…”

Sitting at her station, scanning and observing—watching the other bridge crew respond to their circumstances, Elyss felt anxious again. She was the one with the science background, but she couldn’t explain how the situation outside the ship, the Veh R’hun, was still influencing them. What would happen when/if the influence was suddenly pulled away? Destruction of the Merrimack? Would they be given any warning? How perilous was their situation, really? Should they continue trying to contact the city, even though the danger aspect was high?

Glen couldn’t tell if they were being influenced by the Veh R’hun either. Maybe his gut feeling that everything would be okay was a falsehood; a suggestion deliberately put there by the Veh R’hun so that they wouldn’t question. Being inquisitive was what they did. Questioning everything was in their very nature. One way that he could obtain some hard facts would be to get an update from Sickbay. Earlier Sickbay had been filling up with crew feeling nauseous. Had that improved since they had achieved full synchronisation or was it worse now?

=/\= Sickbay. Bridge here. Captain Glen speaking. Can I have a status report please? What is your mix of casualties and patient numbers currently? =/\=

Lieutenant Elyss Zavey
Chief Science Officer USS Merrimack

• Glen, CO

The answer came back =/\= Captain, Lieutenant Grahams here. I’ll put it this way, one more patient into Sickbay and I think the walls will just about burst but there’s no casualties here, sir, just a lot of headaches. I’ll your timing is impeccable though, sir, we’ve just started to release treated officers, not many are going to be able to resume duties this shift though. I’d say a few more are a bound to replace them yet though. =/\=

There was a brief pause, and then. =/\= I recommend all essential staff get checked out too, sir. Whatever has been going on up there has tried turning a few brains to mush. Anyone feeling even slightly off should come down here now. Otherwise, once this rainfall is over, I’ll be sending an available staff member up to do those checks.=/\=

Lt. Kahu Grahams, CMO

Rana was feeling a bit trapped by everything. He had just come back from below decks and while everyone had been feeling a bit odd and frightened no one had seemed as bad as was now being reported. And then there was the ship itself. There was simply too much to try to deal with at once. So, he worked on a common root cause of what might be going on. ” Sir,” Rana began as he tried to make sense of everything. ” Is it possible that us and the ship itself are being influenced on a deep molecular or even smaller level?”

Rana Singh Number One

Stella sat her console listening to the chatter going on around her as she simultaneously listened to what was going on outside the ship. She found that it was becoming increasingly difficult to pin down anything like a signal that wasn’t naturally created. She frowned then as she picked up the harmonics. They had used these earlier. How could she have forgotten that? She gave herself a light tap on her head and focused on her incoming signals. Anything that sounded too much as if someone or something had crafted it.

Stella Gagnon Lt.Jg. Comms

The low murmur of bridge activity continued around Lieutenant Gagnon as the Merrimack drifted deeper along the stabilized corridor. Outside the ship, the copper-red glow of the Veh’lan Aperture pulsed faintly against the darkness like the heartbeat of something impossibly vast.

Then Stella’s console chirped.It was not random.

A narrow-band harmonic emerged from the surrounding interference — faint at first, buried beneath gravimetric static and subspace distortion. But unlike the chaotic noise saturating the Expanse, this pattern repeated with deliberate precision.

Three rising tones. A pause, then two descending pulses.

The signal repeated again… and this time the ship answered.

Across the bridge, multiple LCARS panels flickered in synchronization with the harmonic pulse before stabilizing.

OPS STATUS:
EXTERNAL HARMONIC LOCK DETECTED

SCIENCE ALERT:
NON-RANDOM SUBSPACE MODULATION IN PROGRESS

Then another realization struck. The signal was no longer coming from a single point in space.

It was surrounding the Merrimack

GM Nosferatu
Your Darkest Nightmare

Thanos felt a little out of place on the bridge right now , there was nothing to shoot at or an aggessive situation to diffuse , this was a science/engineering problem , he couldn’t help but look over at Elyss, they had spent a wonderful evening the night before and he had hoped they would do so again but right now she was looking really nervous, he chose not to say anything for now.

Lieutenant Thalos ch’Ravik
Chief Of Security
USS Merrimack