Star Trek: Starbase 777

Here, a large mill was built - once working as a miniature hydraulic station, now defunct, it's wheel no longer spinning. By the banks, a line of peculiar looking boxes could be seen, satellite-like dishes pointing upwards. Huh... what was their purpose?..

They beelined toward the weird boxes. Some sort of technology? "Engineers, over here," they called.

Five picked up to catch up after being left in the house, now carrying their tools in both hands and severely regretting not bringing a backpack or bag of some kind. "What's up?"

Farrah, who'd been sticking close to Thalass for most of the mission, approached too, having no knowledge of engineering beyond the basic facts about herself, but ready to help haul stuff around, hold things for people, and making herself useful otherwise. "You have pant pockets, Chief," she pointed out for Five, looking at their tools and their legs.

1

Kya took position near the top of the path they came down to the river as overwatch. Nothing about this screamed good. “Maybe a comms setup?”

"Ah. So I do." She glanced down at her bag and contemplated how many she could stuff into her pockets. "I'll take note of that, thanks, Farrah—"

1

Allan had been sticking around Saren, but when he heard Thalass call out for engineers, he took a step backwards to be facing Saren and Eshen, nodding behind him, "I'm ... gonna go check out what that is," he said before heading over there, looking at one of the satellite-like dishes and getting a little closer to it to inspect the feedhorn, hoping to see if it could be taken apart to reveal a low-noise block, i.e. the thingy that made the satellite receive things - or the controller that sent things out.

Phoenix made his way over with the rest of the group as he surveyed the area that was in front of him. Curiousity setting in as he stared at satellite-like things as he found it truly fascinating with the way it was built and thing that it was made from. "What if it's some sort of device for detection?"

By looking around the box, Allan would find what looked like the control panel of these boxes. Popping open the lid near them, would reveal something that looked like it could be the feedhorn.

Huh. The construction of this thing was interesting, but then again - this was a colony, and tech tended to differ a lot between those. He took the feedhorn and started to open that up, hopefully to find a low-noise block and controller in tact since it seemed like the rest of the device was doing okay. If the circuit board on those devices was okay, then he decided to take his tricorder to try and find the frequency of either part - essentially, trying to find if there was any data left on either the outgoing or incoming data.

While Allan was busy disassembling the box, there seemed to be some damage from the heat, as well as damage done by... what could only be described as huge amounts of blunt force. Someone tried smashing these things to pieces?.. Vulcanoids were known to be stupid amounts of strong... Still, it seemed that these things were build with that in mind. Also, looking at the control panel, there seemed to be an option to switch between two modes. Currently, it was set for incoming data.

6

"That's... an interesting way to set it up," he thought out loud as he looked at the switch. Was it there just to be old school or for a specific purpose..? "Someone wanted to smack the shit out of this shit," were the very eloquent words he told the rest of the group as he set the larger, smashed lid of the box aside. "I'm gonna try, uh, reading what they were trying to get," and then he did that, scanning through frequencies on his tricorder to determine 1) if the satellites were set to receive incoming data from a specific place or frequency, and 2) if there was any leftover data that had already been received left on the device's memory.

"Oh. Right. We can do that." They were only half Vulcan, but they utilised their strength so little, using it only to lift heavy fish tanks and things like that, they forgot they had it most of the time. Seeing that Allan was occupying himself with the machines, they said, "Someone should probably investigate the mill," before they approached the riverbank and took a few samples of the water.

Kya took a breath. “I can go with whoever goes to the mill to make sure they’re safe.” She said with a small nod.

"I am able to go towards the mill, but I don't mind staying here either. Wherever I am useful." Phoenix looked towards Kya as he didn't mind doing a bit of investigating round the mill.

The poor satellite clearly took some beating, but after checking the frequencies, Allan could conclude that the satellites were pointing up at the area of the skies above the colony. With the fact that the boxes were set up to read incoming data, it painted a peculiar picture. He could also scramble out some of the newer files still left from several years ago. Huh. Perhaps worth a(n attempt to) listen?..

Hell yeah, he was going to attempt to listen to it, going across the polarizations and through the file system to see which one was most recent, setting his tricorder to record as he attempted to play the file back on the tricorder speaker or whatever audio output the tricorder had.

She looked to Phoenix with a nod. “Let’s wait for one of the ah, smarter people to get free.”

Five snickered a little at the mention of 'smarter people'. She didn't think of herself as such, but.... "I'll come with. I think Allan has these things handled."

The recording lasted for about 3 minutes - silence. Then, in the last 30 seconds or so, the unmistakable, ghostly howl of an uncloaking Warbird could be heard, before the recording abruptly cut off, drowned out by the sound of a plasma cannon going off.

7

Whew, okay, that sure was.. something. So now he had a recording of that on his tricorder! Very cool. Not really. But it was more evidence, he supposed, as he went a few files down, picking one at random out of the next most recent three or so. He put an earbud in for that one, just in case people thought he was over here blasting plasma cannon sounds like white noise or something. At the same time, he thought about sending a test output.. maybe after this.

Having thus far found herself somewhat redundant, yet all the same useful, Dagis decided to make her way down to the river to see what the others were up to. It was as she approached the group that she froze in place, though, at the very distinct sound of a Warbird uncloaking. If it wasn't for the fact she'd heard it coming from where the group themselves were she would've immediately panicked and looked up at the sky. Continuing her approach with a soft sigh, she came to a halt to the side of the ACEO. "What is that thing?" She questioned. It seemed recognisable, yet different all the same, so she didn't want to make assumptions.

Kya sighed as she heard the sounds of the plasma cannon. “Damned butchers.” She said before letting off a string of curses in Bajoran and Cardassian that weren’t necessarily translatable.

Some more silence. It was calm, this time.

Hm. Silence, okay. He exited out from the files and took off his earbud before answering Dagis's question. "This?" He asked, gesturing to the control panel, unaware that the COO was asking about the noises from the recording earlier. "It's some sort of satellite listening thingy? The outside looked pretty banged up like someone hit it a whole bunch or something, but her insides are doing just fine. Has audio recordings of its surroundings and whatnot, seems like, I'm uh, trying to figure out the output now, see if that goes anywhere?" He said as he set his tricorder to record the frequencies again, but this time switching the manual switch on the control panel to output. The goal was to see, like with the input but the output version, if the output was centered on any specific point as he sent a file through the output, if he could - a small test beep (he had to scroll down past his normal test audio, which was not really appropriate for the situation).

"Don't we risk getting noticed by Tal Shiar if you send a message to who-knows-where?" Farrah asked genuinely. Surely a sudden blip on a radar would call attention to their presence. She didn't know if anyone was close enough to be here within a few hours to come investigate.

Kya nodded. “Yes I must agree. I would prefer not to get into a straight up fight with Tal Shiar when most put away team is science based.”

Their ears twitched and they perked up as they thought they heard the word 'Thal' being said, before they properly registered that what Farrah had actually said was 'Tal', as in Tal Shiar. That certainly wasn't them. Or was it? Thal Shiar. They finished collecting their water samples and wandered over to the people investigating the strange machines. "Why are they here along the river? Were they powered by hydraulics?"

"It's uh.." he paused to think about how to explain how it worked, in like, normal terms. "I mean, other than the Eventide being like, right above us right now, this is going to go in a sort of um, circular motion..? Like, it's going from my tricorder through the feedhorn to my tricorder, but uh, if it works like it should, it's going to get the frequency of where it's supposed to go before it completes the circle - like uhhh.. letting a bug go to some food and then picking it up before it can get there, like, you know where it's going because it heads there, but you stop it?"

Kya took a breath and nodded. “Okay, I will trust you on this idea because you are vastly more qualified on this then I am. Just…be careful please?”

"As long as you're not worried. That didn't make any sense to me, but I trust you understand how it works," Farrah agreed easily. She just wanted to have asked the question before anything had the chance to go wrong.

1

Rehszan came in late with a corpse sample, either by scraping a little bit of bone or scooping a little rotting flesh, whatever was easiest. "What's going on?" he queried, already bright with curiosity about the new area.

The setup was ready - all that was left for Allan to do is press a button and send his blip of a message...

Vara'l followed the other group that came in silent as he continued to watch their surroundings. His tricorder hadn't turned up anything that would have concerned him at all so far, so while he was tense.. he wasn't as tense as he had been. Not that this hadn't shaken him at all. This wouldn't be pleasant to go over later, part of his mind reckoned.

And you know this bitch sent it! That is to say, Allan sent the blip of a message to get the transmission output code in the manner he had previously described.

The blip came back with an error - it was unable to reach it's satellite, supposedly positioned above the colony.

3

"Okay, so I think there's, uh.." he looked up at the sky, as if that would help anything at all. As if his human eyes would be able to just see a satellite out in orbit. Spoiler alert, they couldn't. "Tried to send to a satellite up there above the colony, so I can.. try actually sending it through, if nobody's opposed to that..? And then we could like, go to that satellite to get the things off of that..?"

She nodded. “I have no objections.”

"I think we should probably let the Eventide know what we're doing..just In case, but other wise I've no objections either." Vara'l chimed in as he finished walking over, noted what was being done..and then overheard what was said. Not that he quite..understood what the box was, some form of transmitter? He'd missed a bit being back at the other area.. so continued to occasionally check his tricorder for any lifesigns that weren't the away team in between occasional glanced looks at what was happpening.

"In the meantime, have we taken all the samples we need to? I have some soil, and I know Thalass took some from the river," Rehszan asked the fellow science-oriented folks. (edited)

"Yeah actually, that sounds like a great idea. See if we can't get anything off of it." Five, too, looked up as if their human eye could see a satellite in orbit. It didn't. Or did it?

Kya hummed slightly as she looked over the smarties down near the river. “If you need to go anywhere to get samples I can cover you.”

"Ah, yes, we could use some of the local flora. I'll stick around here, though, I'll be able to grab a few things." Rehszan flashed a big toothy smile.

"Not that I am completely against taking samples of the soil and so on - but now that we have definite proof that the Tal Shiar was the cause of this tragedy, and that somehow or other that information was concealed from us so as to misrepresent the scope of our mission." Bellona added as she glanced around them. "Should we not be wasting as minimal time as possible?"

"With all due respect, Lieutenant, we were given direct orders to collect all the information we could; samples, air quality, any mementos left behind. So if you don't mind, I'm going to continue doing my job, until directly asked otherwise." Rehszan's voice was calm and polite, and he still had a smile on his face.

"I have indeed taken samples from the river. Unfortunately, I did not see any fish while I was doing so." If they were an emotional person, they would be very sad about that. Where alien fish :(

2

"I feel any wildlife, including fish, may have a hard time surviving here," Rai said, looking a little sad when Thalass mentioned there was no fish. He looked down at the river still, hoping to see an organism of some kind but there was none.

Clearly Bellona wasn't best pleased about what her colleagues feel they should do. However, she seemed to acquiesce and walk down the riverbanks in search of wildlife and, possibly, some plant samples to bring back.

"We heard birds earlier, but I haven't seen any. The same with insects. I think they're just shy after being alone for so long." This could be generations after the initial incident, for all they knew, after all.

Kya nodded in agreement with Rehszan, those were by definition their orders and there wasn’t much of a tactical issue with letting the big nice dino man do his job. “I’m no expert on wildlife, but couldn’t some have theoretically migrated underground after the bombing above ground?”

2

"Perhaps," Rai watched as Bellona walked down the riverbanks and then at the others, a little confused why she was leaving the group. Rai stood with his hands held behind his back as he observed the running water and looked to see if there were any insects around. "Where are you going, Arrain?" Rai took a few steps as if to follow Bellona, but he wasn't going to wander too far from the party.

"To look for samples. I did not plan to walk far." Bellona said to the Romulan. She stopped in her tracks to examine the ground for any flowers or weeds that might be growing there.

"Oh, that's very kind! I think some of the flowers around will do just fine, thank you!" he called from where he'd also been hunting around.

They also gathered some riverbed plants, keeping an eye out for any small fish, or maybe bugs on the plants that they could show to Rehszan.

3

“I have been collecting data via my tricorder since we beamed down.” T’Kastrir stated plainly. “I believe it will be of use.” He added, before going off to scan some more. Clearly, scanning was his passion. (It wasn’t, it was music followed by stellar cartography, but that wasn’t helpful right now.)

"I got some scans too, Call me the scan man, I do those scans -- man!" Lama did a little salute, holding his tricorder in hand with a smile on his face.

Kya let out a laugh as she continued to overwatch, oh this was a funny crew. “Well have fun with your scans.”

Vara'l tapped his combadge as he proceeded to inform the ship of the intended transmission attempt using the device thing that Allan had worked on. Given what they intended and how the Tal Shiar was like, he reckoned they needed to know.

A small flash of color in the water darted towards the shore, before promptly swimming away at very high speeds. Zoom.

"Fish!" Rai exclaimed a little too loudly, pointing towards the water with eyes wide.

Bellona glanced in the direction Rai had just pointed in. It brought some light to her eyes to watch the small sliver of color dart through the water - slowly but surely this place was coming back to life. She picked up plant samples in a few sample bags and brought them back over to her box of books and journals to be placed together.

Having overall remained quite quiet throughout the mission, it was as they were collecting samples that Dagis went off to do just that, or rather went to try and find something interesting like a bug or small rock that was a different colour to the rest of them. She didn’t know much about collecting these things, but she knew they’d be helpful. “I also got scans of the buildings if that’s of any help.”

Thal's eyes widened, a sparkle in them. It was the closest a Vulcan would come to a smile, combined with the alertness of the ‼️ emoji. "I saw it," they said softly. Day made.

3

Allan nodded at what Vara'l had said about letting the Eventide knowing how they were doing before he sent the communication. "Yeah, totally, you uh, wanna do that while I configure it and all?"

Rai looked at Bellona and then at Thalass. The Vulcan specifically, Rai caught his Vulcan 'smile' and responded with a thumbs up.

2

"I think I got a picture!" Rehszan's faceted eyes flickered for a moment before he nodded. "I did!"

3

"I've let them know." Vara'l responded simply as he looked to Allan. "Now they're aware."

She smiled at Rehszan. “Oh very good work! I’ll have to take a look when we get back to the ship.”

With Vara'l having contacted the Eventide, Allan did the satellite test again, but removed the jamming signal so that it would go straight to the satellite it was trying to reach. "Alllright, thank you sir, that's sent!" And now he just had to see where it reached.

The signal was sent off ...before pinging right back with an error message.

3

"Annnd an error message." Well, that was weird. He went to open up the details of the error message.

ERROR: SERVICE UNAVAILABLE. CONNECTION NOT FOUND

Five peered over Allan's shoulder curiously. "Was there something wrong with the connection before, when you intercepted it?"

Having rummaged around in some nearby foliage for a little bit, Dagis soon came across a very shiny, very fancy looking, very colourful and smooth rock. Picking it up, she observed how it almost shimmered in the sun, before pocketing it for science to use. That had to be something of use, right?

"Yeah, it was supposed to go to another satellite up there, but it came back 'cause I stopped it, so I just assumed it only came back because I stopped it, but.. well, that means there's probably not.. well, I could ask the Eventide if there's any satellites hanging around?"

Kya hummed. “I mean, I suppose it could have been destroyed by the warbird that bombed the planet? Or at least rendered unusable.” She suggested.

"I think we're in a good enough place to prepare to beam back to the ship, and see for ourselves?" Rehszan offered, tail swishing behind him. He was still very pleased with himself for catching a picture of the fishy. "Ah, wait, actually.." He glanced back to the colony. "There is still the matter of the body. I got a DNA sample, but should we.. should we bury it, or..." (edited)

"Yeah, even if it's unusable, that's a good case scenario because there might be some things left like on this.. I'm gonna copy over the files and then I'll be good to go," the audio recordings from the satellite, that was, which might take a few minutes, but was probably worth it. Why not just take the feedhorn? Well... there probably wasn't anyone left here, but if there was, they could find some use of it, perhaps. So it felt safer just to take copies, especially of the unfortunate audio of the warbird that had been the most recent.

"Good shout," Five chirped, standing up straight and tugging idly at the sleeve of her uniform. This place was pretty, and terribly sad, but it was time to go. She hadn't seen the body. She glanced around at the team for their input.

Kya nodded softly as she looked to Allan. “I’ll cover you while the others bury the body.” Kya sighed softly. “Damned butchers.” She muttered.

Allan was really not.. enthusiastic about the idea of burying a body, period, mostly because he'd never done it before, but.. also... hm. "We could," he whispered, before catching on to 'DNA samples' again, "you took DNA or uh, fingerprints from the screens back in the houses? If there was any." And then Kya had offered to stay with him, and he nodded. "Maybe... I dunno if it would even really be possible, but maybe they could be buried without the uniform..? I - again, I don't really know anything about um, burying people, or anything, but I like to think, if ... I like to think that without the uniform, they might have ended up being, um-" a better person? Where was he even going with this? "Like, uh, separating the individual from.. you know?"

"To be honest with you, sir, I'm not terribly enthusiastic about stripping a uniform off of a decayed corpse," Rehszan said quietly, fidgeting with his pointed claws. "And I don't think it's our place to make a judgement of their character, or take something they may have been proud of...no matter how horrific it was. Even so, I can do a lot of the heavy lifting if need be."

Kya sighed. “While my first thoughts would leave them to rot without a burial, better judgement wouldn’t let me make that call. I know how to bury the dead, I can do it if neither of you would prefer.”

"Riight, yeah, no, it's.." he stopped, and then looked back down at the loading screen on his tricorder as it copied over the files. Years worth of data ought to have taken a bit, but it was going pretty fast.. "Yeah, I'll defer to you on that, then." He said to Rehszan.

Bellona returned with two salvaged shovels in hand and held them out to the others stoically. "Perhaps we should let the Romulan among us conduct the appropriate rites, if any." She murmured. "I do not know Romulan culture well enough. But I believe we can at least put this individual to rest."

"I don't know if that's exactly necessary." Rehszan squeezed the shovel in two hands. "Just... burying the body is enough, I think."

Kya nodded as she took up a shovel. “Yes, I’m hesitant to even bury the fellow, much less give him a full ceremony.”

"Off we go, then." Probably best that he did, anyway. He could turn off his nose. Poor Kya probably couldn't say the same.

Kya took a breath as she stepped after him. “Yes, off we go.”

Thal would help, but digging with one arm was actually kind of annoying. Spades were really meant to be used two-handed. "I will wait here by the river." (edited)

Vara'l followed the others in the direction of the body. He wanted to be there for the burial.

After a short moment T'Kastrir went to follow the others back to deal with the body.

Having only found one shiny rock of great importance, Dagis made her way back over to the ACEO. "Need a hand with anything? I'd rather not have to bury a body, otherwise I'd be helping the others." She said sheepishly.

"Umm, really it's just loading the files over, it's almost done," he said, looking up at the COO, "but um, you know, after that I wouldn't mind a hand in putting it all away and back together, since I sorta just.. took all of it apart," he gestured to the mess of parts near him on the ground.

Looking over the device that had very much so been taken apart, Dagis gave Allan a soft smile in response to what he said. "It just so happens that fixing things is one of my specialities, and that includes putting stuff back together. I'd be glad to help."

"Thanks," he said with a smile in response, hitting a few buttons on his tricorder as it finished downloading the copies of the audio files and putting it back into his bag, placing the actual pieces of the feedhorn back in and handing it over to Dagis. "This'll need to go back into there, which goes back into..." he leaned over a little to grab the larger console box and hold it open, "here."

Following a combination of logic and the ACEO's guidance, Dagis began helping re-assemble the device, kneeling down to do so. Reassembling something was easier when you knew exactly how it was disassembled, but that's where her love of puzzles came into play. It was like a giant puzzle, at the end of the day.

2

Vara'l quietly returned to the rest of the group and assumed a position covering part of the permitter around the group. It seemed it'd not be long until they were beaming back up to the ship, even so he felt he needed to continue to keep watch, just in case.

Kya stepped back towards the group with a breath. “We have completed the burial. Unless anyone else has anything they wish to do, I feel like we will be good to leave.”

"All set to go. Everyone make sure you have everything, don't leave anything loose behind." No littering, please! (edited)

Vara'l remained still as he waited for people to finish up. He was ready to go, if anything he very much wanted to be gone from here.

"We're ready," he confirmed, choosing to be somewhere near his two conspirators. "One last thing to see, yeah?"

"On it." Five moved to be the one to make the call. Ops rights, and Dagis wasn't fast enough, so sucks to suck.

"Yup! Satellite," or that's what he was assuming it was! After he put everything with the data and such back into his bag, and made sure the physical bits were all put back together down here as they left it - he went over to Saren and stood by him to beam up, holding his hand, of course, now that his hands were free!

3

And, of course, Eshen was by Saren's other side, holding his hand.

3

The team was beamed back to #etd-transporter-room, leaving Ishai V behind.