Star Trek: Starbase 777 - sec-briefing-room

Upon seeing the bulletin board post Alyssa was immediately eager to join this one. Given she had just finished paperwork for the day, she made it an effort to try and get involved with missions where she could. And this was no exception. A sort of 'chop shop' situation, she considered, maybe others called it the same thing. Alyssa ensured that she was at her sharpest, she kept her focus crisp and her mind awake. This certainly wasn't the first mission she had gone on, but this was the first aboard 777. She'd be interested to see what the vibe was like here for missions, especially of this nature. Thankfully neither she nor anyone else needed to go anywhere off the station to do it. So, without delay, Alyssa entered the briefing room and awaited the other members to join in.

Liaxaho walked into the briefing room after checking the post on the bulletin board. It was something within her job description after all, and perhaps it might be best if did her job. And so, she joined the group in the briefing room, finding a place to sit and pulling her PADD from her arms to take notes when the time came.

Pel waited silently, resigning herself to the corner of the room. The Cardassian-Ferengi had a disgruntled air about her - she was as stoic as ever, but her hair and uniform were the slightest bit rumpled. Had she just woken up? The world may never know. Perhaps her military experience weeding out terrorists could help in this effort - she’d gotten the notice, after all. They might need her for something. If not, well, she’d probably just go back to the desk nap she definitely hadn’t been taking.

Phoenix was in the process of reading the bulletin board as he walked into the room. This was his first ever official mission that the higher ups had sent him on, perhaps this was going to be an interesting experience or not. But he was up to the challenge to prove himself to the others. Giving them a slight nod as he chose one of the chairs in the center of the table as he waited to hear more of the information regarding the mission.

Vovvi was already in the briefing room, since she sorta helped organize the whole meeting, sitting somewhere near the front and nodding to everyone as they entered. She was preparing the briefing mentally, choosing the words carefully.

Vara stepped in with a pep in her step. Finally! Something happening in her neck of the woods. Murder? Tactical intrigue? Nah, this was crime! Vara sat to Vovvi’s left. Intel team gets the best chairs.

6

Upon already seeing how full the room was, she began to wonder just how series this all was. She took an open seat, and took a moment to look around the room. So far she was the only one from engineering.... which wasn't all that comforting, but her face remained neutral and her back straight. She will help however she can.

Vara'l quietly slipped into the briefing room and headed to the area of seats seemingly taken up by people from Tactical. Once there he slipped into one of the seats and waited for the briefing to start, his face impassive.

Five scooted in behind most of the group, sticking to the back of the room. Time to attend to their Important ACOO Duties, she supposed, eye up front while she waited for directions.

Llinos had come more out of morbid curiosity than anything else. Nothing like this had happened at any of her previous postings, so even though she was still slightly space-lagged, she dragged herself to the briefing room. She stood propping up the wall because if she had to sit through a long speech or discussion, odds were that she wasn't going to be staying awake very long. The thrum of emotion wasn't helping, but luckily there wasn't much spoken discussion. Llinos drew in a few deep breaths and pulled on her meditative training to help manage all of the mess that everyone in the room was putting out and resisted the now far-too-familiar urge to rub at her temples and pinch the bridge of her nose while she waited for someone - anyone - to call in some sort of order here.

Okay, so that's what the rumors and reports about missing parts were about! Mystery solved. Well, mystery solved enough to solve the actual mystery, more like. At least it was nice to know that it wasn't some rogue engineering ensigns fucking things up. Well, that was still a possibility, but... usually organized crime wasn't done by rogue ensigns. Speaking of ensigns, though, he walked up to the only other engineering officer in the room and sat next to her, doing a little spin around in his chair before leaning his elbow against the table. "So uhh, have I said #EngieSquad to you yet? Maybe not, so uh, #EngieSquad. Even though uh, from the looks of it, kinda not looking the best right now, buuut... we're gonna figure it out, yeah?"

And here to greet them was Mo, who had been informed before everyone else and arrived early. He definitely hadn't spent the few minutes waiting for them spinning on one of those spinny chairs. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, lacing his fingers together, looking a little like an evil villain about to explain his grand plan (or perhaps Mr. Burns), but all he said was, "Hello, 777." Then he picked up the coffee on the table in front of him and sipped it. Mysterious.

7

Being slightly taken off guard as she didn't know what Mo looked like, upon seeing his pips Alyssa's adrenaline eased. She gave a polite nod and even a little bit of a smile to Mo. "Sir."

She was actually surprised at how... chill Allan seemed to be when the engineering section was under the microscope at the moment. It was more shocking to hear #engiesquad out loud... Wow.. maybe she's been to serious around here? Did she really need to relax that much? Turing her chair to face him she spoke in a low, almost monotone voice "You haven't actually.. With how busy its been I don't think we got a proper introduction to each other. Thank you, though... for the encouragement considering the circumstances"

Vara'ls posture tensed into something that could be called an attempted 'at attention' stance while sat down as the Captain arrived. The Romulans military training something so hard baked into him that this was something that occurred without him realizing at all. His words simple as he greeted them. "Sir." He also nodded in formal greeting.

"Yeah! I mean, like, you're right, I don't think we have! Like, you're Ensign Mitchells, and I'm Allan, but like, it's nice to meet you like, actually! I'm sure you read about it in the department newsletter a bit ago, but we're so totally having the watergun fight event, just know that, for real, okay? And then you'll get to meet like, everyone. And be wet just for fun. And shoot people with water just for fun, so like... good times, all around, and - that's what we have here! You know? Like, obviously, the circumstances, and - really, I shouldn't be talking as much as I am because if I talk like too much, it'll be bad for me, but-" he stopped talking then as he saw the Captain out of his peripheral vision lacing his fingers together as he so-often did, and the engineer did a small little two-fingered salute, as he often did. "Hiii, Cap'n," he said with a grin before he turned back to Coda, "all good, really. Tends to be."

Vovvi cleared her throat and rose to her feet. "Thank you all for attending," she said a little loudly in order to get everyone's attention. "It has been brought to our attention that there has been an organization stealing and likely reselling important parts from starships. The operation has been traced back to our starbase. Meaning, of course, it is our duty to shut it down." She looked around to the group. "Engineering and Operations, we'll task you to track down the stolen parts and reunite them with the proper starships if you can. Lieutenant Morgan is searching through customer complaints for clues and will have a list out for you shortly. Security and Tactical, we'll be devising a plan to track down those involved in the organization and take them into custody before things get out of hand. Everyone else, on standby until further notice. If we go on yellow alert, we risk alerting them that we're onto them and letting them slip through our fingers." She took a breath. "Any questions? One at a time, please."

Phoenix cleared his throat as he stared directly at Vovvi as he felt like he needed a timeline of events for him to make sense of it. Slightly raising his hand in case, nobody had heard him just to be polite in front of the team. "If you don't mind me asking, do we know if it's been done to any other ships and if it has, when has it dated back towards?" Phoenix took his PADD out of his pocket as he got ready to input some of the data that the case had. Phoenix had a ton of questions but felt like others should have a go before he spouted into another question.

Coming in just a tad late was Sodor, called to duty by the compelling desire to help... Despite the fact they had no idea how they'd even come in handy. Walking into the briefing room with a holocamera slung over one shoulder and a satchel slung across their body to the other side, the Ferengi looked around with a friendly smile as they made their way to an empty part of the room.

"The operation has, as I have said, been reported on multiple accounts, according to our source. We were not given a specific timeframe, but we are working on an approximation based on customer complaints." Vovvi folded her hands behind her back.

She actually didn't know about the water fight that Allan was talking about, but she didn't have time to respond as they were now given each of their responsibilities. She didn't have any questions, but tracking down the stolen parts will be a pain... Where to start on the list of complaints.... Well.. she hoped it wouldn't be completely impossible to find everything.

Vara hummed as she remained silent examining the room. She doubted most of these career starfleet officers were part of it, they likely wouldn’t have appeared at the meeting if they were involved but still. It wasn’t a unreasonable possibility.

Phoenix waited a while as he briefly looked up and down the room just to check if anyone else had any questions regarding it. Slowly raising his hand up again as he wanted some more clarity regarding the situation just to get a better understanding of it. "Is it possible to tell if theres multiple people doing it at this stage, just because a single person in my eyes couldn't manage this. Not without getting outsiders help on the job, so couldn there be more than one saboteur onboard this station?" (edited)

"It has been identified, as I said, as an organization, meaning there are multiple people involved. This is why it will be necessary to have a full team rather than just a few people. Are there any other questions?" Vovvi turned her eyes to the rest of the room.

Alyssa figured she'd ask given that she and Vara'l would handle Tactical happenings. "Over here," Alyssa politely raised her hand. "Do we have any intel as to specifically where these operations are taking place on the starbase? The notice said stealing parts from starships, which obviously are held in the drydock, but are there any traces of encrypted communications linking the sales of the stolen parts to any specific location on the starbase? For this sort of operation to occur the criminals would need to consist of those who actually do the stealing, and those who supervise the illegal sales of the stolen parts, unless it was just one or two people handling all those aspects. If we have a paper trail on where they're basing most of their operations we can predict where the criminals have their, for lack of better words, 'headquarters,' and likely which ship they plan to steal from next."

Vara'l, having listened for a while, turned slightly as the Lieutenant commander proceeded to ask what they did. He had a question of his own that would likely be covered in part by the answer to this. So he was quite interested in what the response would be. He was certain that it'd likely be something that informed the exact format of his own question. (edited)

1

"They're mostly operating out of civilian shuttlebays. They're mostly targeting small craft, from what I've been told so far." Vovvi nodded. "A part of the reason I don't want to go into yellow alert, since it possibly puts civilians in danger."

5

Huh. Welp. This was going to be either easier or much, much harder than Alyssa thought. "Sounds like a wild goose chase to me. At least that gives us a baseline. Let's hope they don't move anywhere else. Thanks, Lieutenant Commander." (edited)

Vara'l frowned at that. That wasn't good, what they'd just said. Proximity to civilians like that meant potential hostages and also happened to mean that there were places for them to hide, especially if they discovered that Starfleet was aware of them before Starfleet identified the entirety of the organisations membership onboard. "Do we have any plans proposed or otherwise in place at present to extract uninvolved civilians from the area or whatever area they're located in at the time whenever we do finally identify the members of the organisation?" Vara'l asked then simply, after he raised his hand.

Today was Dagis' day off, hurrah! But today was also the day that Intelligence decided to inform the starbase that some people were literally stealing ship parts aboard her starbase, booo. In the middle of walking her as yet unnamed dog the Ferengi had read the notification on her PADD with a sigh and decided it was probably a good idea to just make her way over to the briefing room as is, dog and all. Arriving quite a few minutes late in civilian attire and now carrying the worn out Old-Time Scotch Collie puppy, of whom had decided to give up walking, the COO looked around with a sheepish grin. "Sorry I'm late. I was, well, you know." The dog and lack of uniform probably spoke for itself.

3

1

"Yes, we're going to do our best to keep civilians uninvolved and unharmed. The last thing we want is a hostage situation. Security and Tactical, we'll be trusting you to the raid in question -- once we locate the operation, box them in, approach from both sides," she gestured with her hands, bringing them together, "so they don't have anywhere to go. Engineering and Operations, you have your orders and will be receiving details of the stolen parts shortly. We'll have Medical on standby in case of emergencies, and Intelligence, distribute yourselves where you see fit."

Vara'l nodded once at that as he indicated his having understood and his mind commenced consideration about the situation and what would be needed by him and the CTO unless the CTO entrusted this one to him, to sort this matter. As his mind considered that, Vara'l turned his focus in part to listening as the other continued.

"Those are your orders, and you're dismissed." Vovvi nodded to the group. "Good luck."

"Wait..." Phoenix spoke up again, he hadn't had enough questioning after all this time. "Forgive my questioning before, in my line of work I need a tiny bit of clarity and I mean no offence with that. The question I want to ask is to do with the components themselves since I want to know whether each component stolen from each vessel is related in some way. Say for instance part of an engine, parts of a weapon." Phoenix quickly did a few searches on his PADD just to make sure that this line of questioning was alright. "Is there anything that points to a specific thing being sold or is it just random parts being flogged to these people around the quadrant? Sorry if this question isn't on the ball here. First meeting and all that..." He responded, feeling the need to defend his questioning after wanting clarification.

Liaxaho nodded and turned to some of the other security and tactical officers, ready to file out of the room and group up with them to plan their raid.

Alyssa nodded to Vovvi, taking in mind everything that was said, before turning to Vara'l. "Well, sir, we have our orders from Intelligence. Your orders for me?"

Allan nodded along to the briefing details, it all made sense for the most part - however, he did notice the COO walking with a dog - wait, wait, that was the dog, wasn't it? Seeing as engineering and operations were told to start working together on tracking down the stolen parts, Allan went up to Dagis, trying to hold back a bigger smile than he had as he looked down at the dog and then back at her. "Sorry, um - is that like, the Dog? Sorry, um - Giles told me about him, um... he's so pretty! Do you have a name for him yet, or like, naw, because like, totally cool with still calling him Dog, I love him either way, isn't he cute?" Doing a great job at both working and not talking. "So um, working together on the searching for parts and stuff, yeah?" Okay, there was the working part.

7

Vovvi turned to Phoenix as everyone began to file out, ready to answer another question. "We don't have specifics on where the parts are being shipped off to, but it doesn't look like they're being used to build anything in particular. Odds and ends. No less important to the ships in question, and still putting plenty of people in danger."

"Once again I apologise, I didn't mean to make you repeat questions. I just wanted clarity regarding it since I rather have clear information when thinking of a hypothesis. Thank you for having me at this meeting." Phoenix stood up from his chair, not really wanting to leave the room at that moment in time. Walking to the corner of the room as he studied his PADD for a bit as he tried to keep an eye on things since his sector wasn't needed for anything, but knew that he would be possibly having to take this case into court when they had caught their people.

1

Watching the Lieutenant (whom previously saved her life that one time in the brig) approach, if Dagis could raise an eyebrow at his initial question she would do, but at the explanation that Jadriel was responsible for this knowledge being passed onto Allan made it all make a lot more sense. Keeping the expression on her face perfectly straight, she replied. "No, I stole him from the parkland while his owner wasn't watching." She deadpanned, only for the smile she actually wanted to give breaking her ability to continue that joke any further. "Yes, this is the dog, of whom decided to be lazy and not want to walk any further. I still haven't figured out a name for him yet." Usually that would be an issue, given that dogs learn to respond to their name, but being as The Dog™️ was deaf it posed less of an issue for training him. Names really were tricky... Work mode was needed now, though, despite the fact she was literally wearing tan trousers and a pastel coloured shirt and carrying a ball of fur. "What I'd like to know is how they managed to get away with this under my nose for so long."

6

“I would think the parts are being sold to make money, or traded for something. If they aren’t building anything, that’s the only thing I can think of. I wouldn’t think a buyer is on station, but something to keep an eye for.” She said from her left hand seat.

With no other engineer inside the briefing room, she supposed she had to work with someone from ops... probably. Though it was difficult to work with people she didn't even know yet. Feeling a little awkward, she trailed behind Allen since she assumed they would be working together. She didn't interrupt while Allan was admiring the dog. She had done the same to a different dog a few days ago.

3

"My job here is done," he declared, as people shuffled out. But he didn't do anything! That was fine, though - all he was supposed to do here was observe. "Got to finish my coffee, though." He wasn't coming on the away mission with them - oh shit, a dog. He hadn't seen many of those until he joined the Federation. And not only was it a dog, it was THE dog. Wow. He'd never say this, though, but he was a little intimidated by them, so he let Allan handle the pup. He'd talk to him afterwards, having responded to him earlier with not much but his own two-fingered salute.

5

3

Vara'l nodded softly at Alyssa. "As a raid of this manner is mainly within Security's area of responsibility, we will likely be coordinating with Security to plan for the raid and augmenting their personnel with tactical teams." The Romulan responded simply. "For now, we head out with everyone else and group up to plan." He then paused. " I'll need to update the CTO on this also." *He proceeded to stand up as he then started toward the door. * (edited)

Alyssa understood the order and politely followed Vara'l out. "Aye, sir."

Oh, right. The last time he'd spoken to this woman was when he saved her life that one time in the brig. Huh. Allan kept that same smile he'd had on his face as she made her joke, but at the end he couldn't help but break out into a little laugh, it turning into a bit of a cough after a second or two. "Oh, man, I -" he took a deep breath to get his bearings again, "so glad to finally meet him. Whatever you decide to name him, it'll be spectacular." He nodded to her statement about the operation getting away with things, looking back at Coda to let her know she was In This Conversation™️, too. "Yeah, no clue how the fuck they managed to do that one. I'd like, seen the reports about things, and you know, they go to security, and I suppose it went up to intelligence, and now it's back down to security, back down to us, and - yeah! A little hide and seek work, we've got this, just gotta like, find a starting point, I suppose?"

4

Five scooted to the rapidly accumulating yellow group. "Are we all going together?" she asked quietly. "I think we should be getting the information shortly, but we should scoot down to Ops so we can get this going."

1

Frankly not having much of a clue about what was going on, Sodor looked around to try and figure out who, if anyone, they should be going with. Frankly they didn't have a clue, so they decided to just wait and metaphorically twiddle their thumbs.

Looking over at Five with a friendly smile, the COO gave them a nod. "Chief." They greeted. "We should probably get down to Operations and start working on a plan. I presume we're getting a list of the stolen parts?"

Phoenix turned around to see somebody was still standing there, slightly staring at them for a few seconds before walking over towards them. He tried to keep his distance away from the dog as he slightly hugged the wall to get towards Lt. Jg Sodor to touch base with them in case they hadn't paid attention to the debriefing. * "You alright there, you seem a little lost." *He asked just to make sure that they were okay. He may be emotionless but he knew how to check on people. (edited)

Five returned the tentative smile. "Aye, sir, that's what I meant. See you all there." She moved to do just that.

Feeling a bit useless in the conversation, and assuming that the group would be going down to OPS together, she didn't say much as they began to leave the briefing room, making sure to follow the group, because.. she has to be honest with herself here... she has not gotten the layout of the station down at all.

The moment the dog came into the room, Llinos had clocked it. A beacon of pure, uncomplicated, simple emotion that she just wanted to embrace and drown in. But it would be unprofessional to go over - especially since she hadn't been introduced to the owner or anyone from that department. A few more questions and the pressure building behind her eyes had her giving in to the urge. If only so she could run her fingers through that long, silky border collie fur and maybe toy with the urge to press her face into it. Why couldn't more members of Starfleet be animals? She made her way to the little knot and hovered on the edge for a moment, waiting for a gap that wouldn't be odd for her to insert herself into (although she knew this was just a joke on herself - she was a stranger, this was a high-security briefing. Of course it was going to be weird.) "Is this your dog?" she asked, and damn it, that was too blunt, wasn't it? Fuck. Damn it. Fucking - space lag. "I'm - I didn't arrive long ago."

2

Vara'l headed out and, as he paused close to the security officer Liaxaho, proceeded to say. "I'd like to propose we gather in the security hub for now, it's got enough room in it to be suitable for joint planning purposes." As he proposed this, Vara'l slipped out a PADD as he started to compose a message to the CTO to inform him of the situation that they'd just been alerted to and of Tactical's outlined part in it and to request instructions. Once he'd done all that, Vara'l headed in the direction of the security hub. (edited)

Allan also nodded at Dagis as she said that they should probably get down to operations and start working. "Yeah, pretty sure we're going together and getting a list, yeah," he followed Five out, trailing behind just a little so that he could be side by side with Coda. "You know, also, speaking of #EngieSquad, when we do this whole thing with OPS and stuff - and like, sometimes we include security too, but it's on a selective basis," he chuckled, "we've got this other little coinage too, um, it started on this mission where Saren, uh - science officer, real great guy, um - anyways, he said I had a little group of ducklings, and then Five there," he nodded his heads forward to Five as they walked behind her, "literally just quacked. And so yeah, we're #EngieSquad, but we're also ducklings, that make sense?"

4

Alyssa nodded respectfully and followed Vara'l to the #security-hub.

In all honesty it was a little hard to follow what Allen was saying, with all the added pauses they sounded... hesitant? Excited? It was hard to place, but she followed along anyway. "Ducklings sound cute at least."

2

Following the rest of the Yellows out despite the lack of a yellow uniform currently being worn, Dagis was half tempted to make the puppy walk but decided against it, taking pity on it from how much it had already walked today. “He is.” The Ferengi replied to Llinos with a friendly smile.

Phoenix briefly took his attention from the Lieutenant for a few seconds since a theory popped into his mind, perhaps he was onto something. Perhaps not, but he wanted to make sure that the theory had basis before he tried exploring the avenue since he hasn't been quite up to date on his engineering terminology. "Can I ask something before you go, any engineer?" He asked generally just to make sure that there was still an engineer in the room.

"They are! Awfully cute-" he turned last minute to look at Phoenix, raising his eyebrows as he stopped briefly, "yeah, what's up?"

Looking at Phoenix the expression on Sodor’s face turned to a friendly smile. “Yeah I’m good. I just don’t know if or where I’d be of any use for this so I don’t know who to go with.” As the Ensign spoke to the Lieutenant they listened, curious about what the question would be.

"When you are doing your engineering, how would you go about cutting out a part?" He walked up towards Allan for a brief moment as he pondered about on his feet as he looked like he was deep in thought. "I ask this because I want to know if I were to steal out an internal part, would it leave a noticeable bump or perhaps scarring that would be visible to the normal eye?" Phoenix turned back at the lieutenant as he briefly nodded his head for a little bit before saying. "If I am right, I could have a theory on how this has all transpired..."

"Um, well, it.. depends, actually, I know that's not the answer you really want to hear, but- it really depends on the part, some parts are pretty much made to come out super easily without any noticeable damage, in fact, honestly, that's most of them. So, for the most part, no? But if they're super inexperienced or something, or if it's like - if for some ungodly reason you wanted to like, take apart a part of a part that usually isn't, then yes? Sometimes if you're using the improper tools, that'll also do the job of leaving some damage, but... yeah, the answer is... mostly no. Um, if you've got any further questions, you can follow though, but gotta get going," he said as he headed onnn over to #upper-engineering .

Phoenix turned back towards Sodor for a brief moment as he did a few steps backwards and forward for a few seconds as he tried to think of a possible cause. "You see the theory fits in with the random parts, but perhaps I need a little more evidence before I can come up with a conclusion. That's why I am walking in Hypothesis right now, say for instance our person isn't on the engineering team and has no knowledge of what parts do what... hence why the parts are random. Are you following what I'm saying right now, what if no engineers cut into the ships to claim the parts."

After a while, Phoenix decided to leave and head to the Security hub so he could get a little more information on what they were doing.

[COMMS] "ACTO tr'Hara to the Captain, report to follow, we've a situation in the Entertainment complex and the Jeffries tubes following the raid, personnel from engineering have gotten into a firefight with escapee's from the raid, we've individuals at large in the entertainment complex also."

Having replied to Vara'l's message with, "Noted - I trust you to handle the situation, but keep me updated," and then stayed for a bit longer while finishing his coffee, he put the mug into the replicator and then left the sec briefing room, intending on heading to the command deck.