Missing! Pt. 2
Posted on Wed Oct 16th, 2019 @ 8:06pm by Commander Curtis Thibideaux & Commander Natan O'Donnaghue & Commander Daynah Ral & Lieutenant Day Smith & Ensign Lisa Creed & Lieutenant Rianna Repatha Thibideaux
2,994 words; about a 15 minute read
Mission:
Missing!
Location: Starbase 80 / Various
Timeline: MD001 15:20 hrs
The USS Valliant docked at SB80 after a three week shake down cruise. Once docked, the crew eager to stretch their legs and explore Star Base 80’s amenities scattered as shore leave was announced. Those tired of the cramped quarters aboard were welcomed to take up accommodations in the Bases Visiting Officers Quarters. For the first three days, the crew’s paths didn’t cross.
On the fourth day in port, Valiant received a strange signal. Routed through Commander O'Donnaghue's com-badge, a signal in old morse code was received.
Three dots, three dashes, three dots...then a short pause, dot, dot dot, dash. dot, dash. dot, dash, dot, dot... another pause, dash, dash, dash, dash, dot. dot, dash, dot, dot. dash, dot, dash, dash. Then silence. The pattern then started anew.
Day turned to face the Security officer that had been on the bridge with her, "Are you seeing this?"
Lisa looked up from her screen as she responded," Yes I am," as she remembered from her Coms training she stated, " That's old Morse code, and if I am not mistaken someone is in trouble," as she knew this was going to be a search and rescue.
Curtis was a bit rusty on Morse, but the bridge crew pieced it together.
SOS VAL ONLY.
Opening the ship’s comms suite, Curtis contacted several of Valiant’s department heads and the head nurse and dispatched them to the Captain’s quarters to investigate.
Sitting in the containment field Commander Natan O'Donnaghue looked down at the explosives around him. He sat silently looking at the door. If he were to move there would be a big explosion. Being gagged up he couldn't even call for the person at the door. He hoped someone would just override the security code and come in. He had to go after Bella. No one else could, he knew, but he had to save his wife, he didn't want to loose her. He had been with her so long.
As Commander Ral, Lieutenant Junior Grade Repatha, and Head Nurse (Ensign) Flynn clustered around the hatch to Commander’s O’Donnaghue’s station side quarters, running feet could be heard from down corridor and a soon a security detail followed by a trio of teal uniformed EMS specialists.
The five beings trotted up and the senior-most, an Andorian female stated bluntly, “Why are you gathered here? We have had a report that the occupants of these quarters may be in trouble.”
Daynah turned toward the Andorian woman and recognized her as station security. "I am Commander Ral from the Valiant. Commander O'Donnaghue is our commanding officer. We received a message that he my be in trouble. So here we are. He has not let us in and he is not responding to his communicator."
Rianna had succeeded in getting an answer but it was overshadowed by his emotions of his wife, what ever that was about. "Cmdr. Ral, the captain is in distress but alive. His emotions are extremely strong concerning his wife and he is surrounded by explosives. I must suggest extreme caution when entering. The explosives may be tied into the doors as they are breached", Rianna said worried.
Nodding as she listened, the Andorian said, “I’m Lieutenant P’ren, please stand clear.” The Andorian put a hand on her phaser and nodded to her companion, who moved to one side of the door. P’ren moved to the other, taking a cover position and touched the annunciator.
“Commander O’Donnaghue, this is Station Security. If we could have a moment of your time, sir?”
Silence hung in the air for a few moments and the Andorian reached for her comm badge, “P’ren to operations. Security override on VOQ 12-515.”
A few seconds went by and then the doors to the room started to open. Then seemed to stick before finally opening.
P’ren and her team member moved in, looking for threats and then stopped short at what they saw.
Seemingly bound to a chair in the middle of the sitting room, was Captain Natan O’Donnaghue.
Gagged.
And stark naked.
A brief glance was all the crew of the Valiant caught before P’ren waived EMS in and the other security officer moved to block the door.
Five minutes later, the EMS personnel, shaking their heads left and Valiant’s crew was able to enter to find the blanket draped Commander O’Donnaghue speaking to P’ren.
Natan sort of pulled the blanket closer as his crew walked in. He has been in more shameful positions than this, so this wasn't all that bad. But still it wasn't a great moment to find a CO in this position.
Daynah had a knowing smile on her face as she walked in to her commanding officer's quarters. She knew that somehow only Natan could get himself into situations like this. "Sir glad to see that you are okay. Care to enlighten us all?"
Natan just sighed. He really didn't want to inform the base security. He sighed a little as he rolled his eyes, indicating he would go in to details when they were on the Valiant, him dressed up, in a the senior staff lounge. Preferably with a drink in his hand. He simply said, "Nothing to concern ourselves with. Just something between the wife and I."
"Captain, I am worried about about her as well. I sensed your emotions when I reached out to you telepathically.", Rianna said softly, looking at Nathan.
Natan looked to Rianna. He had never reached out telepathically in a long time, other than his wife and his sisters. Lieutenant, let's discuss this when we are back on the ship with less prying eyes and ears. He now said to her telepathically.
Commander Curtis Thibideaux stopped his pacing when a trilling noise sounded and Chief Hastings said, “Commander, Base Security reporting in. They found the Captain and he is unharmed….”
Turning to look at his old friend and their eyes met. “Apparently, there was a miss-understanding, he was tied up,” the solidly built chief of the boat remarked off handedly.
Curtis frowned at her and she shrugged at him slightly, barely perceptively. He rubbed at the back of his neck and moved to Lieutenant Smith’s station. “Keep trying to trace that…whatever it was Day.”
Day gave a bit of an awkward nod at the order, she wasn't used to people referring to her by her first name. She liked it better than the rank or her last name. With a bit of twitch she focused her attention back on the security feed. She decided to leave it in place to not tip off her knowing that it was a fake feed, perhaps that would give her some sort of advantage as she started to work in order to find out how, whomever did this, had gotten in and looped in the fake feed.
Turning back to Hasty Hastings, he said. “Give it a few minutes, then try to raise the Captain, would you. There’s something that doesn’t smell right here.”
=/\= Rianna to Valiant, I am returning to engineering. Something is not right and it needs my attention=/\= and she closed the comm.
As she materialized on the bridge, " Cmdr. Thibideaux, sorry for arriving like this but our captain is extremely agitated and is worried about his wife. Has something happened to her?", Rianna asked. She didn't know if something had happened or not and not sure if she even was correct in saying this but it was her captain and her ship and her crewmates and she felt they needed to know.
Day startled from her focused work as suddenly someone beamed onto the bridge without much warning, she wanted to remark that the announcement had been she'd return to Engineering. She looked on over to the XO, wondering if he had heard anything from the Captain's wife, "I can call up an activity report on her comm. badge, sir" It was an asset assigned to the Valiant, it was easy enough to call up. The history showed some travel across the Starbase during the days they had spent on the facility, she got a bead on the current location, "The badge was left behind in the VOQ, perhaps the science department can expend some resources to trace the Commander's bio-signature."
An alarm began flashing on the command chair and Curtis was on his feet as the Valiant's Chief Engineer materialized on the bridge. He cut the alarm off, casting a sideways glance toward the security officer on duty then back to the Betazoid. When Smith made her report, Thibideaux pursed his lips and said, "Well. Perhaps that's why the Captain is upset. We really need his take on this, but...Lieutenant Smith, you've already determined there has been shenanigans with the video feed. Do some more digging along those lines and see what can be found."
Turning to the Engineer, he stated "Thank you for the in person report, Rianna. However, as a fellow Betazoid, the Captain my feel more comfortable speaking to you than others. Please report back to Commander Ral and suggest she look into Lieutenant Smith's suggestion. Based on the message the captain sent and the condition he's in, we can only guess that Bella's been abducted and he wanted Station security left out of it."
The executive officer breathed out off is nose heavily and said, "Since that cat is out of the bag, we'll have to move quickly."
"Commander, with all due respect, I am not returning to the station. There were certain inconsistencies with the explosives that match off world depots. The only way to correctly trace them is for me to run a deep sensor scan from enginerring. I do not want the stations security knowing what I am doing. Something is very wrong on the station and I believe this whole thing began there", Rianna stated.
Curtis's eyes went up at the engineer's words. "What explosives would those be, Lieutenant? Security hasn't said anything about explosives...."
"Well sir that is exactly what was with the captain. He........his thoughts......damn it sir! Of course security isn't going to tell you everything! At least not on the station....", she said flatly trying to calm her temper.
"Security wasn't supposed to be involved at all," Curtis flared, then caught himself. "But that's neither here nor there. We'll trust Commander Ral will take things to hand, then. See if you can't track down these explosives..."
Day got a bit uncomfortable with the flaring tempers around the bridge and tried to keep quiet at her own station. She shifted her focus back to trying to trace the origins of the fake video feed.
Pavel came back into the room and Nosk looked over at him. "Security made entry boss. Given you weren't here, I used Protocol 2. The Commander's clothing is now somewhere in a secondary ODN conduit on deck 176. The explosives I moved to objective C-6."
The human stopped and then nodded to the Ferengi. "Alright. Good call." Walking up to the monitors, he glanced at some of the feeds then touched a comm button and sent out a signal. He sighed and waited a moment, then told the Ferengi, "Well that's done it. They were warned. Blow charges three through eight..."
The Ferengi grinned, his pointy teeth gleaming in the reflected light from his monitors and he touched a series of controls.
Across Starbase 80, explosives began going off....
Rianna's console lit up suddenly. "See I told you......dear god!", she said as she ran to her console and began to work her sensor sweeps for structural damage. 'I told you damn it I told you.....I hope the Captain is ok', she muttered under her breath.
Curtis stood and checked all the Valiant's status readouts and his glance dropped on the Chief Engineer, "As you were, Lieutenant Repatha. Comport yourself. For the short term, we're all going to have to multi-task. Computer, get me station Ops."
The screen flickered and a harried looking Lieutenant Commander Day's image appeared, "Operations. What can I do for you Valiant?" The dark skinned, bald headed man's voice was rushed and more than a little irritated.
"Where can we help, EZ? Curtis said plainly, "We've recalled crew and Valiants standing to, ready to clear the station if needed. Since we haven't been asked to, I'm guessing whatever mess is happening hasn't required an evac yet."
The station's XO regarded Curtis a moment and nodded, "No. Explosives went off in five sections. Two along different levels of the promenade, one in the Diplomatic wing, two at transporter control nodes and the last in one of the botanical gardens. Preliminary right now analysis makes it seem random, but it's way too early to tell. Poll your crew, see if anyone saw anything and we'll go from there. Now I need to go, Ops out."
The image winked out and Curtis turned to the Valiant's operations officer, "Day, EZ mentioned transporter nodes?"
There was quite a lot going on at the same time, when the explosions had gone off Day had immediately tried to make sense of the information coming in, she recognised that there was a randomness to the explosions. It wasn't energy surges or anything power-related, someone was setting off charges. When she noticed one of the sections blown was the transporter pads she realised something she had noted and filed away in the back of her mind earlier.
There was an unusual amount of residual background energy from transporters, "That was definitely not random, sir. The feeds have been hacked, whoever did it was good, but they were in a hurry, couldn't clean up after themselves." She sent her findings over to the personal console of the Commander before continuing, "I chased them all around the Starbase, I guess when they stopped at the transporters they actually used that opportunity to do some stuff as well." She looked over at the Starbase that was shown on the big screen in front of them, "Do you want me to share this information with them, sir?"
Rianna was scanning for the explosive residue when she found something interesting. It seems that there was a discoloration consistent with argine when used. Examining it further she found another explosive component as well, sorium. When you combine the two you get a very powerful explosion. She went through the files to see if it had been documented and found that it was used on DS9. Yes this was powerful enough to do this damage here on SB80. Double checking her findings she patiently waited for the confirmation. The console beeped and sure enough there it was, argine and sorium were used on DS9 in an assination attempt. She had her answer, now to tell the XO.
"Commander Thibideaux, I found what they used. A combination of argine and sorium", Rianna said.
His eyes flickered to the Valiant's operations officer and he hesitated only briefly, "Yeah, but send it as a heads up to their Operations control and let them filter it to Security. I'm guessing they have their hands overly full without our help," Curtis decided. At Rianna's words, he scowled, trying to think. When nothing happened, he asked "I'm guessing you're referring to the explosives, Lieutenant?"
Day collated the data gathered and forwarded it to the station's main Ops. They would probably come back with questions about how she had access to the information, but that was a secondary concern right now. They had explosions to stop, their CO to save and people to catch.
"Yes Commander. The explosives were argine and sorium combined. Powerful enough to cause damage and confusion", Rianna said flatly.
"Easily made from freely tradable resources as well." Day added to that, it made the people even harder to track.
"Which means," Curtis said thoughtfully, "That it probably won't help us in the here and now. Share the information with station security as well as the suspicious transporter linking. That's more for a longer investigation."
Frowning, Curtis slipped into the command chair again and said, "Hopefully when the Captain gets here, we'll be able to tie things together and get some answers."
Natan had found his communicator and activated it. =/\="Commander Thibideax, this is the captain, I am returning to the ship, please make sure there is a cold drink waiting for me in the senior staff lounge, and have the senior staff report in immediately." =/\= He then turned to everyone in the room. "And now everyone out, that's an order!" He wanted to get dressed now, he was embarrassed enough for the day.
Slumping with relief into the command chair at the captains voice, the executive officer touched the comm, =/\= Aye aye sir, the crew is mostly recalled and the ship undamaged. We'll be ready for you. And, it's good to hear you, sir. Valiant out."
Standing, he nodded. "Alright people good work so far but we're not done by half. We still need to find out where Lieutenant Commmander O'Donnahue, is. That's our priority." The blonde man really wanted to pace, but slipped his hands behind him and instead said, "Day, compile a quick report on that transporter information and prepare to present it. Lieutenant Repatha, the same with the explosives and anything else that occurs to you. Lieutenant Creed the status of the ships scans and an analysis of the tactical situation we're facing in finding Bella."
He paused then, "She's one of us. Part of our family. We need to find her...
"Agreed sir, it was and is the captain's biggest concern right now. My findings will be ready", Rianna said calmly.
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