Star Trek: Starbase 777

She hummed along to an old song her mother used to know. The thoughts that usually streamed into her head were somewhat scarce at the moment. Ah well, no matter. Jai just finished a large chuck of work, and now had a few hours just to herself. As much as she thought she didn't earn it, a rest was certainly in due order.

Ed twirled a tool in his hand, staring off into space as he leaned against a console, before snapping back to what he was doing, continuing to scan the ship for any imperfections.

Marze was there! Being shy, as he always tended to be, but he was there nonetheless! At the moment he was messing with something that would theoretically make the shields a little more reactive -- a prototype, that was, he was not actually messing with the shields.

Tavek was currently watching as Marze fiddled with a prototype, considering he had a lack of anything better to do. A shields upgrade sounded cool, and so he thought it would be interesting to watch one of his fellow engineers fiddle with it. He wasn’t all up in Marze’s space, just quietly watching as parts and pieces came together. All in all, an uneventful day. Quiet, even.

She sighed, somehow maintain a slight smile within that. The Trill leaned on her chair slightly, twirling a tool between her fingers as her eyes scanned the room. It was sort of strange, really. Most of the people she noticed were faces she’d didn’t quite recognise yet, some were young ensigns, others who transferred over. In truth, it never fully clicked to her that she was indeed a Lieutenant. It felt like her graduation was just the other day. Oh well, everyone gets older.

Ed glanced over, putting the tool down on the nearest surface before coming up to Jay. “Hey— weird question.”

“Oh, yeah?” She tiled her head to the side, smiling softly. “No question is weird, Ensign. Fire away.”

He wrung his hands, and with a chuckle, asked, “Is it just me, or does it feel really quiet today? Like… more quiet than usual.”

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9

"Hmm." She paused, taking a moment to listen to their surroundings. "A bit, but most days are uneventful. We aren't the Enterprise, and for one, I'm glad we aren't." She chuckled lightheartedly. "I don't think we'll be getting into any dramatic escapades today. If that brings you any peace of mind." Jai smiled reassuringly, with an air of obliviousness in her expression.

4

Edgar shrugged, offering a quick nod. “Maybe I’ll finally get a chance to check out the holodecks tonight.” He joked, “I’m tempted to find out what the big deal is about them.”

In engineering was, surprise surprise, the ACEO. He happened to overheard the tailend of the ensign's conversation, and then walked over to them, raising an eyebrow in a rather Vulcan fashion. "Do we.... want it to be less quiet in here? I can put something on. You like jazz?"

6

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8

"Oh, absolutely. You should." She nodded, putting down her tool. "We've just installed a few new upgrades to it, about a few months ago. It's minor things, but it's gotten better at the quality of life stuff. Either way I highly recommend it. Sometimes you forget you're in a holodeck, and it really feels like you're in a powerful fighter jet or breaking out of a Romulan prison. It's a bit frightening."

His eyes widened, and he pursed his lips. “Might be a good time to get over my fear of holograms, then.” He only half-joked, grinning. “And… I mean— Jazz is okay. You guys want jazz?” (edited)

He looked up at the mention of music. "I have a bunch of playlists from my skating days, it all depends on what you want to listen to...!" He seemed eager to listen to something in order to pass the time.

2

"I like jazz, although I tend to listen to blues or Motown." She jumped a bit in her seat, fixing her posture and uniform Picard style. "I play a little bit of jazz on my guitar, but mainly because I used to play with some musicians back at the academy. Although I'm up for anything!" She smiled, leaning a bit forwards.

Ed nodded, giving a slight raise of his shoulders. “I’m a fan of whatever. And I didn’t know you played guitar! You should bring it in sometime, yeah?”

"Ah, maybe." She chuckled, blushing a bit out of embarrassment. "I'm not much good lately, but if you want to, I could. Do any of you guys also play instruments by the way?"

"Well, no, if jazz is just 'okay,' we can.." he turned to Marze when he mentioned playlists from skating days, grinning. "Wait, whoa, skating days? Okay, you hand over those playlists, but you gotta tell me what you mean by skating days. Hoverboard? Rollerblades? Ice?" He took out his PADD, already working bringing it up to whatever music playlist program was standard in the 25th century, as he replied to Jayrehi. "Oh, those are good, too. I play bass, we could do a pretty sick jam sometime," he said, and then turned to all of them. "Tell you guys what. We take Marze's playlist, make a copy of it, and put some blues and Motown in there and whatever else you guys want. Sound good?"

Shaking his head, he moved to sit against the console, perching comfortably at the edge. “I’m a listener, not a player, when it comes to music. And Marze’s playlist sounds great!” He gave a thumbs-up.

Marze nodded, a little flustered by the attention, but nevertheless he pulled up one of his old playlists on his PADD and showed it to the others. "And I was a professional Ice Skater... for a time at least. I won a few medals too... but that isn't important..." He blushed slightly as he pulled up an old image as well to prove his point.

He sat up straighter, eyes bright with curiosity. “Wait, for real? Holy shit— that’s awesome!?”

"Oh really?" She perked up, turning to look at Marze. "That's cool! Alright, you have to show us sometime." She smiled, feeling so much brighter than she was a mere few minutes ago. All with a little help from her friends.

"Thanks," Allan said as he copied the playlist over, eyes widening as the ensign said it 'wasn't important'. "Oh, come on, that's like - super cool. Very important, especially if it's important to you, yeah? I always love those outfits, sometimes I think about learning it just to like, wear them, but then, like - I'd have to deal with the cold, and I kinda hate the cold." He started adding the other stuff to the playlist, but before he played it, he looked at Ed and waved a hand to gesture for him to scoot off the console. "Okay, so - I'm not gonna tell you that you can't sit on the console, but I will tell you that you that you should lock the console before you do. Prevents a lotta bad shit from happening."

Marze smiled some more, feeling a little better about himself -- more confident, at the very least. "You can always wear the outfits without going on the ice! I have done that a few times to get used to wearing them -- especially when it is a new outfit..." He was speaking faster by this point.

2

The engineer had been under a console station, more specifically the one assigned to her. Whoever had previously worked here did negligence it a bit. “God… these poor power lines, did someone drop juice here?” She mumbled as she replaced some of the slightly fried cables. “Alrighty, good as knew!” As she came out from under it the mention of music made a big smile appear. “Ha! Now thats more like it!”

Ed looked down, blinking. Frankly, he hadn’t realized she was still down there, and was a bit surprised to see her. “Damn! You were fast.”

”Oh nothing some new cables couldn’t fix! Now Connor will definitely stop glitching on me.” She smiled at Ed.

He nodded, tapping his fingers against the now-locked console. “Connor?” He tilted his head slightly.

"Hmmm, good point," Allan said to Marze, "could also do like, some sort of... holodeck ice skating sim, but make it so it's not so cold, right? That's definitely a thing someone could do..." he tilted his head to look at Garcia. "Yeah, Connor..?"

She gestured towards her station at the double question. “Connor the console!”

Ensign Castelo blinked slowly, narrowing his eyes. “The console’s got a name? Are there other named consoles?” (edited)

”Well if we were gonna be work buddies it seemed only fitting I gave him a name!”

Ed pursed his lips for a second, paused to think about it, and then shrugged. “You make a good point, there.”

"Ah." He nodded in understanding. "It's a nice name. All.... alliterative?" He always thought that he didn't know that word. He definitely knew that word now after however many years. He hadn't messed it up in like.... a while, but always second guessed himself.

Ed chuckled, nodding. “The others— what’re they? Connie? Consuela? Connol?” He asked, honest excitement leaking into his tone as he leaned forward.

”Wow, you guys are so weird.” She commented with a serious face that lasted a few seconds before a grin appeared. “Perfect!” (edited)

He grinned, covering his mouth for a moment before regaining his usual amount of very little composure. “I don’t think anyone comes to engineering to be normal.”

”My dear I can guarantee you no one joins Starfleet to be normal. We all got a little something.”

"That's very true," Allan nodded, because, well, the way he joined here itself was absolutely not normal. "Alright, 'My Way' by Frank Sinatra next, anyone know this one? It's like, reaaaally old, but it's still pretty good."

Ed raised an eyebrow, not fully recognizing the name. “Sinatra? What era?” He questioned.

She was about to start singing her heart out as soon as the song came when the sound was interrupted by a very loud “YELLOW ALERT”. “Uhm… this is not good. Maybe Frankie will have to wait a little.”

He furrowed his brows at the yellow alert, looking upwards at where the noise came from. “What’s that about?”

Tavek had been just chilling up until now, since there was nothing to do, he’d zoned out to save battery. Until the yellow alert. “Oh damn, yellow alert! What’s going on?”

Dezyim, who had been there the whole time, stood up from underneath a console holding his head. The yellow alert had startled him, making him hit his head on the console. “We should… probably get an update on coms soon. They can’t really keep engineering in the dark for long.” He chuckled, nervously.

He hopped off of the console, leaving the wrinkles on his uniform for now. “Hoping they tell us where they need us soon.” He said, “Or is it a stay-right-there kind of deal?”

"Uh, 20th century, I think? Oh-" He paused when he heard the yellow alert, looking at everyone in the room, making a verrrrry quick head count, "Shit. Right, well - yeah, he'll have to... wait..." he said, pausing the music. Hopefully that wouldn't unpause at a very inopportune time like a certain other 20th century song that played during a Section 31 attack on the station years ago. "Until we get information, we should ... lock all the consoles, first of all, so - you actually have to get off of it, now..." he said to Ed, and then he did in fact get off. "Awesome, perfect. Yeah, stay here until we get more stuff. Yeah." A little smile on his face hopefully gave the impression that he wasn't panicking too much?

He raised his hands, glancing at the console. “Ass is off the screen, sir.” He saluted, giving a bit of a laugh.

2

”Sir if they take too long to update us, comms could be compromised. I would advise setting a time limit before we attempt communications with them ourselves. And with that I mean you, sir, and the other seniors.” Garcia addressed Allan with a serious tone way different from what she had been acting a couple seconds ago. It was easy to forget this woman had been serving for over 20 years.

"Right, but if the comms are compromised, we can see if they are by sending a message up to see if we get a reply, right? Just real simple, right, so, like... 'Heyyy sir, anything for us to know down here in engineering right now?' And then he sent that comms message yay!

”Well yes, it is that simple. I was under the impression you wanted to wait for their contact, sir.”

The drone of the intruder alert was drowned out by the sound of a multitude of transporter signals appearing in Engineering - as a squad of Tal Shiar beamed into Engineering! Weapons raised, the man at the front stepped forward, his voice made static-y by his helmet. "Surrender now, and you will be spared."

8

Ed froze, eyes wide, staring directly at them, stuck in place. He glanced towards his fellow officers, unsure of whether to act or freeze.

“Uh!” Dezyim replied, suddenly standing straight as a board. They certainly had the element of surprise. He put his hands up, glancing at his fellow officers to determine what to do next.

”Oh…. Great.” She held her hands up, palms empty. “I was not expecting action so soon on my just-started job.” She said in a low tone. In a sense she was both positively impressed and shocked.

He hesitated, before lowering his head. “Look, uh, we don’t—“ He stammered, “You guys aren’t—“

Tavek’s eyes locked onto the intruders. Tal Shiar uniforms. He knew them anywhere. You would think, after being tortured by them, after seeing comrades killed by them, after being shot and burned and abused by them, he would be scared. He would be cowering. But no. The only thing coursing through him now was pure, unbridled hatred, and the only thing keeping him from turning their skulls into mush with the nearest tools was the fact that doing so would risk everyone else- damn his own life if it meant getting even for everything. So, he just stared, hands visible, waiting for someone to make a move. The nerve of them to step foot in his territory, Starfleet’s territory.. darkly, he wondered if any of them would recognize him. He’d killed a few of their kind before.. he wondered if the personal animosity was mutual. His face was neutral, almost cold.

Well, at least the consoles were locked. Getting the comms back from Mo saying they were the only ones who could do something and then Vara'l said they should have sidearms handed out... welp. "Uhh.. hi mysterious guys I've never met, hello... everyone... let's... please.." He hopefully sent that to comms right enough as he acted like he was talking to the folks who just beamed in. The first letters of those last words just happened to spell HELP, which he really hoped someone up there would catch onto! "Everyone, um... stay still," he said, to the other engineers, then looked back at Pelmor, "is there... anything in particular you need, here..?" (edited)

1

Ah shit. She immediately jumped out of her seat, her back against the work desk "Goodness..." She muttered under her breath, her eyes darting between her fellow officers and anything that could be of any use in the room.

Ed took in the details of the invaders, if only to know what they were capable of, but he found that he couldn’t put much focus into it at the moment. “Hey, uh, guys…” He muttered, “Let’s be civil, yeah? Only engineers here, no one who’s gonna… be dangerous…”

"Nothing you can provide." Pelmor raised his hand and directed some of the officers behind him. "One and Three, go to the computer core and pause the lockout. Two, Four and Six go and secure the Engineers. Five and Seven on me." The Tal Shiar squad dispersed into Engineering, three of them moved towards the different Engineers, zip ties in hand. Two Squadmembers moved to the side console with a laptop-shaped device, plugging it into the main console. Pelmor and two squadmates moved forward towards the fusion core and began setting up various devices.

Ed bit his tongue to keep himself from blurting something out that would surely get his ass kicked. But watching the officers, intruders, or whatever they were, marching towards the computer systems, it made him want to do something, and fast, although he had no clue what.

”Hey Im not resisting! Thats no way to treat a lady. Did your parents teach you nothing?” Garcia said as one of the squadmembers - was that Two, Four or Six? - got very aggressively close to her. She followed his very unkind instructions to get closer to her colleagues.

He narrowed his eyes at the two dubbed “four and six”, muttering beneath his breath. “Couldn’t’ve chosen a better career path? Maybe a baker, or something?”

“Zipties? Were we not deserving of real restraints?” He sounded vaguely offended, backing up a step. He slowly took his glasses off of his shirt, placing them on his face so at least he’d be able to see.

1

(coming from #dining-district Ellie scrambled across the floor, her hoof like feet digging into scrapes along the shimmering halls. Skidding across like an ice skater on dry frozen floor. She played into her momentum the best she could, kicking off walls and pressing her heel against them. The phaser in her hand ft cold despite the boiling energy that charged inside it. Protect people that was her purpose, and the fear of failure pierced her skull with medical precision. Another turn and she was bounding towards engineering, seeing the outlines of people, panic, and struggle. She furrowed her brow and tried to silence her booming steps as the Golem hurriedly approached an optimal position that gave her an angle, and whoever intruder a temporary disadvantage. False Alarm was looking like a pipe dream she wished was reality.

For the record, Tavek was only going with this because everyone else was at risk too. But, because he had a vested interest in keeping his new comrades alive, he didn’t resist. He just mentally promised himself that, when he got the chance, he would not hesitate to attack whatever Tal Shiar were stupid enough to stand between him and freedom. They would regret this, he promised himself that.

Four and Six ignored the taunt, and continued to tie the Engineer's wrists together - Two went to go tie Deyzim's hands together. Pelmor, five and seven had finished setting up the device and Pelmor called it in.

"Squad Two to Command, EMP device is secure and primed, Engineers are tied down. We don't have Computer control but we're working on it."

Internally, and externally, Jai was really sweating. She had never been in a situation like this, and whilst she composed herself well, her emotions were definitely on her sleeve. Since that last time she encountered the Tal Shiar, she'd mostly hoped they wouldn't ever encounter them again. That day was not today.

"I mean, y'know, I could just give you the password, if you want it," he called out to Pelmor with a shrug.

Pelmor turned to Allan, his face almost filled with disgust and contempt. "I'm happy with our methods, now stay quiet."

The Tal Shiar officer marked as One piped up from the computer core. "We have access to the Backup System! Trying to get the rest of it now." One by one, the screens in Engineering shut down, then lit back up again with an interface only known to few. (edited)

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8

17:56

Starfleet B.C.A.R.S. <Backup Computer Access and Retrieval System> v1.43 (Installation date: 2387; Last opened: 2414)

<BCARSACTIVATION = TRUE>

[ADMIN LOGIN REQUIRED]
/service number/ 99-126-778 <RECOGNISED - T'SHAI>

/password/ ***************

[USER ACCEPTED - WELCOME, LIEUTENANT COMMANDER T'SHAI]

[ENTER COMMAND PROMPT BELOW]
>_

(edited)

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6

The ensign looked to Allen, gesturing towards the invaders with a sort of what-the-fuck-do-we-do expression, uncomfortably shifting.

Ellie leaned at an angle and looked around the corner to see them. Overhearing their conversation. Intruders and backup system wasn't good, but it was probably better then hearing people actively being shot. The visual of the new interface made her react quickly, they had hostages. She had... a single gun. Against... seven, or six she counted. Buying time was the call at the very least. There wasn't much else she could do. "Security CM! We have your exits covered!" She bluffed, her monotone expression and lack of visual appearance made it atleast sound believable. After several seconds she finished another contemplative response. "We will be entering if you don't cooperate with negotiations!" She boomed, and she prayed her tone was more confident then she felt. She was a Detective, this was crisis-management work, and not her specialty. (edited)

2

She kept a close eye, or as close as she could since she was tied in a corner with her fellow engineers, on the guy on the console. Had she seen this type of access before? She heard the warning outside the door. Oh, things were about to get even more messy.

*He huffed, shifting from foot to foot as he watched the chaos ensue. The only thing going through his mind was a voice, repeating over and over, ”we are SO fucked.”*

Honestly, Allan was at a loss here. He nodded when Pelmor told him to stay quiet, and so he did, but when Ed looked over at him, he looked at him for a moment, then took in a deep breath, held it for a bit, let it go. Then another one. Essentially, he was telling the ensign to just breathe. Stay calm as possible. Right? Despite the... security officer at the door. Fuck.

Ed, swallowing his pride, did the same, drawing as deep a breath as he could before letting it out. (edited)

2

The man perked up like a cat at the sound of Ellie through the door. Almost immediately he began barking orders. "One and Three continue working on the Computer - Two, Four, Six and Seven post up on the door. Five, with me on the EMP." The Squad once again moved around like bees, setting themselves up by the door to Engineering. Most importantly, leaving the now-tied up Engineers unguarded for the time being.

Being as close as she was to them, Garcia whispered as low as she could. “Too many. Stay low. Stay calm.” She addressed the ensign, mainly, remembering her own younger days at the position. And then nodded towards the door. “Things might get ugly. Brace for conflict.”

“Can’t we just book it? Run and get out?” He asked, his voice hushed.

She also saw the possible opportunity. “Risky…. As soon as the door opens, either side might shoot first with questions later.” She looked over to Allan waiting for any reaction of his part.

"Unless we have a real opening, no. It's too risky, like the commander says." She muttered, hushed with her eyes focused on the others. "Since security is here, we let them take care of the situation. If we try anything, it could make it worse."

He exhaled, shaking his head. “I’m not qualified to say any of this, but there’s more of them then there are of security right now, isn’t there? It feels like we’ll lose.”

”No way of knowing…” Garcia whispered as she focused on One and Three when the others dispersed. Would it be possible to reach any energy port close by without them noticing? Also, did they take her belt tools?

Dezyim blanched, looking at the other ensign. “Don’t- don’t say that. I’m sure they’re quite qualified and will easily be able to take care of this.” He eyed their attackers nervously.

"You stay right where you are! If so much as one of you take another step we will open fire!" Ellie panicked. Praying the boots of enlisted Security were only a hallways distance from giving a real unveiled advantage. Two options presented themselves: 1. Bluff harder 2. Blind fire Being a Golem had its advantages, she could calculate distance and angle faster then most, but she could only base it off peaks and hearing. Plus, she could miss, hit an engineer. Getting hit, even with a non-lethal variation hurt. So option 1 was her best call. "You are all out of cover! You so much as trip wrong and it'll be your last! Don't be stupid!" She warned, readying herself in case worse came to worse and she'd have to shoot, taking atleast one out might delay them... maybe.

Ed frowned, looking towards Dezyim. “They are, but they’re also outnumbered.” He sighed, “We just need to see.”

"They're the ones right by the door," he whispered back to them, plainly. Of course, there were other exits further away, but.. even then, them running would instantly cause them to turn their attention back to them and stun 'em all before they could get there, surely. Quietly, he leaned over to where he'd left the remote playing the music and hit unpause. Then leaned back. Very stealth. Suddenly 'Le Festin' from the Ratatouille soundtrack was playing, and it was playing quite loud, actually, because he'd also hit the volume button by accident. Woops.

5

One of his zip-tied hands flew to his mouth, poorly disguising the snicker that escaped his lips. Wrong time, wrong place, but damn it if it wasn’t laughable.

Vanik, who had been there the whole time in the background, winced at the sudden introduction of an odd Terran song to his very sensitive ears. He had stayed back at his console, hands bound at the behest of the enemies, and eyes and ears watching and listening steadily as the situation unfolded. He knew that with his decades long training in suus mahna he could possibly defend himself in a fight, even bound, but also that it would be dangerous to instigate any violence with hostage takers. Hostage takers with phasers. That rarely ended well, from what he'd learned in the academy. He was not entirely sure what to do, but had taken the ACEO's lead and remained calm, or as calm as he could appear outwardly, to deter the any violence. An eyebrow raised as the UT translated the song for him. A fascinating choice. Perhaps hope could be maintained...

It's safe to say that Pelmor was definitely startled by the music - combined with Ellie's commands he had decided enough was enough. "Alright, we are out of here! One and Three, start marking the Engineers - everyone else keep trained on the door. Five, is the EMP ready?" Pelmor asked. "All good here, the device is set and primed, they won't be able to follow us immediately." Replied the Agent known as five.

“Marking?” He mumbled, a crease appearing on his forehead as he listened. (edited)

Dropping what they were doing, the Agents who were working on the computer core walked over to the tied up engineers and began placing devices on them. Starting with Allan, who got beamed away a few seconds later. Next was Edgar, the same happening to him. Afterwards, they moved to Deyzim and Tavek, marking them for transport. They managed to beam away Jayrehi before being interrupted by one the squad members looking at the door, who had pulled out a scanner to check for numbers (he was pleasantly surprised. One of the squad members on the door took out a scanner and suddenly piped up. "Sir, there's only one of them out there!"

The man would have done a spit take if he was drinking anything. "Then go and get them then?"

8

All she could think was “SHIT THEY ARE KIDNAPPING US” and then upon hearing One: “SHIT IT WAS A BLUFF”.

Ed thrashed for a moment, trying and failing to knock the device off of him.

Second location… this couldn’t be good. But.. he did have one thing going for him. He’d recently undergone a total memory backup. All 15 years, stored very securely on external drives. If he had to… he could delete EVERYTHING. Resistance, Academy, Starfleet, all of it. He was basically immune to torture due to his ability to turn off his pain, but even if they forcibly tried to pry into his brain, they wouldn’t get shit. But, he didn’t do it yet. It was only a last resort. Knowing he had that tiny sliver of “fuck you” against them, he wasn’t resisting. Better to save his strength.

Ellie knew she was done for the second they mentioned "marking". The best she could do if she wanted to keep herself alive on the ship was run or surrender. Kill time. Abandoning the engineers went against her training though. She charged the phaser and decided to use her legs to her advantage. Buy Time just Buy Time. She was used to pain, so getting shot with a phaser didn't scare her. Failure did. It absolutely scared her, and that's what drove her to drop to the floor try and fight back.

With the marked Engineers having beamed away, One and Three were about to mark the next one for transport before they were interrupted - by Ellie fighting back. Unfortunately it didn't last, as each squad member who was looking at the door fired on her when she appeared. Four separate stun blasts hit the Security officer one after the other, then one of them moved to secure her for transport. When Ellie was safely beamed away to wherever the engineers went, Pelmor spoke up.

"That's enough, we're done here." The squad members nodded and tapped a combination onto their wrists, and they too beamed away - leaving Engineering empty of threats... And also most of the Engineers.

6

”Damn it! They got Chief Allen.” And not to mention a bunch of others. She looked around to find whoever was left. “Are the rest alright?” Her eyes also looked for any tool she might use to force the zippers on her wrists open. (edited)

"I am present, Commander." Vanik said from somewhere amidst the other remaining Engineers. "Ensign Vanik, Warp Specialist. I may be able to break free from these restraints, given adequate time or leverage."

”Find a way. I think we have time… by the way they left, I don’t think they plan on returning.” Her hands, even if they were bound together, went to her comm to deliver a message.

"Yes sir." Vanik said, and began to try breaking free from his ziptie restraint. First, he leaned his face forward and pulled his hands up to his mouth, grabbing the little rectangular part of the ziptie where the excess tie had come through (and possibly cut off) with his teeth and pulling it to the center, facing him. The ziptie was very tight, he wasn't entirely sure if it was tight enough to break the way he was going to try, but he figured he had to try. Using the adrenaline from the last few minutes, he raised his hands above his head, forming fists as he reached up, and then brought his arms down and threw his elbows back and his hands down as hard as he possibly could with the entirety of his Vulcan strength. "Ragh!" He grunted as he attempted to break the restraint.

The restraint snapped off, they really weren't for long-term binding, just to keep people from using their hands.

He let out another grunt and moved immediately to find a tool to cut the rest of the zipties off of everyone. "I am free, Commander. I will help you as soon as I find a tool to break the rest." Shears? A small laser tool for Engineering Modifications on a console? Anything?

Vanik found an emergency toolbox, which helpfully included a wire cutter.

”Operations is not responding… this can’t be good.” She felt her heart rate pick up. If they had taken the engineers and Allan among them, could they have taken others as well? The other seniors? The Captain? Or… her hands went to her comm again pressing it different this time. There was no answer. “Oh God, Tarsek….” Dread showered over her.

Vanik grabbed the wire cutter and ran to Garcia in a few long strides. "Commander, your hands please." He asked politely, almost too polite for the situation. Then he cut the restraint on her hands, and moved to the other officers to remove their restraints. "Perhaps we should contact security, Commander." He suggested as he worked, his voice tinged with a hint of anxiety. He'd been in a few serious situations, but this one was definitely worse.

Was that a suggestion? Her shock was washed away as she looked around to the others. Who was supposed to be in charge now? Was she the highest ranking among them? If so. Fuck.

At least until Alizati got online, yes - Garcia was.

4

Well. Fuck. She took a calming breath. Yes, half of them had been kidnaped by the Tal Shiar. Yes, they had no way of knowing what happened at ops. Yes, Tarsek had not responded so that either meant he was taken, incapacitated or dead. Yes, she had been in this starbase for less than a week and was now in charge for the time being. With her hands now free, and she would be sure to thank Vanik later, she cracked her knuckles loudly. It’s not like she had been doing this since yesterday. “Alright! I need whoever is free to check on the consoles. Get us anything useful. Any sign that controls are being diverged or any weird activity, so we might know if they are still on the base with us and in our system. We also need to try and end the whole maintenance thing.” After saying that, her hand went to her badge. She was going try and reach security.

Vanik freed everyone from their restraints. After that, he followed the commander's orders and stationed himself behind a console. "Yes sir." Was it even accessible to him, or completely disabled? (edited)

”Change of plans. Operations responded. Our XO and ACTO have been taken. They need us to track down any ships that might be or have been around.” She paused briefly. “It’s… our only hope of getting our people back. They also need someone to go free them, cause ehm…. They are also tied up there.”

Vanik nodded. "Yes sir. Would you prefer me to track down ships or take the wire cutter to OPS? I am an efficient runner."

*Hm... weird. Did one of the console screens just start flashing? *

”Better to focus on tracking, we are already shor….” She had meant to say they were short in numbers, given the last abductions. However the strange sight cut her. “What is this?” She approached the console. ~~Was it Connor?~~

Over and over, it was a rather short message: "777 ARE U HERE ? IF Y , CONNECT ."

”Who…?” She hesitated on the request. What if it was a trap…. And then immediately she face-palmed herself mentally. What more traps could there be? The Tal’Shiar had already invaded and taken what they wanted. It was a gamble, but she had a sense they needed to have SOME luck today. She connected.

The screen's color turned dark green; on it, a few pixels began to move in a crude, minimalistic depiction of a bug. What. Then, more text: "CONFIRM U R STARFLEET : OFFER CODE ? OFFER TRUST IN TURN ." (edited)

1

”Uhrmm… what is happening, seriously….” She observed the bug for a few seconds. The thing almost looked cute. If it wasn’t for the weight of the dire situation they were in. Offer code. Offer trust. She offer trust or they offer trust? Whoever “they” were. A huge leap of faith, but when reaching the pit bottom there was no way to go but up, right? Well, she hoped so. “Alright here goes nothing.” Her fingers moved to type out [Garcia] [Eta] [Pi], her officer code. She better not get court martialed for this.

"--f no one answers, then we sh- oh!" It was a somewhat raspy, feminine voice, her speech bearing a heavy accent that sneaked through even with the universal translator still enabled. "Gar...cia? Hello! What the hell happened on 777? Why are your security measures down?" probably not a good idea to immediately bombard the poor engineer with questions, but her voice sounded urgent.

”Whoa! Pump the breaks buggy!” Garcia couldn’t help but try to stop the flow of questions. “First off, who are you? Or should I really just call you buggy?”

"... Sorry, I'm bad at talking with people," she sounded outright sheepish. "Refer to me as Whisper. We're affiliated with the Romulan Republic... loosely. 'Fraid I can't say more. We have some friends here, and recently we've been keeping a closer eye on your station... seems for a good reason, huh?"

2

”Alright Whisper. Nice name for intel, gotta say.” She, of course, assumed this person was associated with some sort of intelligence branch, acting under the sheets. Probably not field agent though, based on the lack of social skills. “Well yeah. You chose the perfect time. We have been breached, several officers were taken. It is why our security, and a bunch of other really useful systems, are down.”

"Fuck. Sorry," came an elegant reply. "Who were the intruders? Are they still on the station?.."

”I was hoping you knew, cause then it would mean you could actually help, dear Whisper.” She said, her voice almost sing like. “And for the second question, I am not sure. But it seems I better focus on doing my part here instead of gossiping. It was good talking to you…” A bluff. She was trying to make it seem like she would cut the connection.

"My way of help is highly unpopular with Starfleet, unless you're giving me a go-ahead for hacking your currently weaksauce security system to take a lovely scroll through the footage?" the eyebrow raise was practically audible. Or eyeridge, let's not make hairy assumptions. "Focus on getting your station back on it's wobbly lil' legs, then. Whoever got you, they got you good."

2

”Well duh?” She laughed, an honest full laugh. The way this person spoke might have been derogatory, and another officer might have been pissed. But it was the truth! This had been another level of Starfleet failure, few missions she had been in the past had been so disastrous. “Is that why you got in touch? To ask permission and hack our systems?” She laughed a bit more. “Could have done it already Whisper, might have done it already actually! But now seriously, why did you get in touch?” The sound of red alert coming right then. Well at least someone was doing something! (edited)

"Pay attention! Your officers have been imprisoned and possibly killed or taken away right this instant, and you're not paying attention!" it was a frustrated hiss. Clearly she preferred code over humans.... "We just saw your starbase's security crack open like a dropped nut. Which can only mean that there's been sabotage on the inside. Your command hub is also not responding. Is there a senior officer nearby I can talk with?"

Well now THAT did it. “No Whisper, YOU PAY SOME GOD DAMNED ATTENTION.” Her voice rose. “Yes our systems are down. Yes we have been breached. No, we are not total idiots as to not know who did it. And the senior officer you are referring to got TAKEN right before my eyes so that means I am the closest thing you got now. What I am asking is the simple courtesy of: what do you want and why should I tell you anything else?” Why this stranger did not get what she meant or why she had no incentive to talk, she couldn’t phantom. “Jesus Cristo!” She muttered taking a deep breath to calm herself.

4

3

"Trust a fucking Fleet person to waste our fucking time, Ce," it was said somewhere to the side, as if the person leaned away from the screen. A lower voice replied with a note of objection in their tone, which prompted a raise from Whisper - one that quickly was cut off with a sigh. Peculiar, but the language used between the two was not one of Earth. Nor was it Romulan. "You might've been breached by Tal Shiar," she finally responded, disgust by either "wasted time" or the aforementioned secret police entwined with her tight voice. "We do not like them. Clearly you're useless against th--" "Cut it out, Wisp," in came the second voice, the warning clear as a cloudless sky. "Fine, gods! We want to help against the assholes who wiped out our Senate and oppressed our people. Satisfied??"

3

”Yes, thank you!” She let out a soft breath, now calmer. It was amazing how her humor could modulate so fast. “We know it was Tal Shiar, Whisper. Saw the uniforms myself. Also, sorry for your Senate.” Reman? They did spoke of oppression… but again the Tal Shiar had already done quite a lot to quite too many. “What can you do to help? Hacking as you said before?”

"It's fine. It's whatever. We can only protect what's left of it, anyways," she grumbled with barely any heat. Ouch... "We can try and help you kickstart some of the station's systems back faster. It will be us messing with your precious systems, so you'll have to trust me on this. There might be invisible warbirds around your station, and if they realize that you're back in the fighting corner... yeah-h-h, you'll need all of the defenses you can have. You guys also have a ship, right? Do you think it might've been sabotaged somehow?"

”It is one of the assets they disabled, I was about to attempt fixing it when you called. You might hate me for this Whisper, but Im gonna need to waste another minute of your time. It will be worth it though, promise.” And with that she did whatever needed to mute her way, while still maintaining connection, so she could move her hand to her badge and comm ops.

Unfortunately, Garcia was missing out on the most heated Havrannsu squabble ("MAN you act like an ASS" "Do I LOOK like a diplomat to you?!") of all time.

5

The talk with ops was fast enough - and damn, Garcia had thought it would have taken a lot more convincing - that when she came back she could very much obviously notice the incomprehensible discussion. “Alright not need for fire! Good news is, we are doing this. Better news yet, no hacking necessary, just let me know what you need in order to work together in getting this boat back in the sea.”

"I was being called a tactless dipshit, don't worry," Whisper sighed. "I just need to know what places are down, and which of them are being handled by you guys, so we're not stealing each other's glue stick, so open communications could be nice. Full freedom in the systems themselves would be nice as well, bu-u-u-ut I'm not even gonna dare dream about that.... Oh, and-- I imagine your sensors are also screwed. We can try and locate if there's anyone hiding in your proximity."

”Help with locating the vessels would actually be perfect! We don’t know if Tal Shiar got all they wanted, they might still be here.” She commented. “Whoever was the bastard double agent, what they very smartly did was schedule weapons, shields, fighter bays, sensors and our ship for maintenance. In 999+ years. Why the hell our systems even have that option BAFFLES me. The scanning will be useful. We will focus on the shields and the ship first and try to counter the scheduling. We will need our defenses if our friends realize we are coming back online, and a ship to follow if they flee with our officers. We can focus on offensive later. Say, you get the ship and we manage shields. And don’t worry, the big boss allowed collaboration and access inside those specific systems.” She said. “After any of those are back up, we report and go to the next: order of priority is shields, ship, sensors, weapons and fighter bays. Sounds good?”

Marze perked up when he heard that there was something that needed to be done with the shields! He could help with that. "Yes! That sounds good. I know... how to work with shields..." he might have underplayed it somewhat, but that was just how he did things.

"Aight," came the simple reply. Whisper seemed to be much more amenable when there was a task set out in front of her. "We keep in touch as we do all of this. The scanning will take a moment..."

”Alright Ensign, you’re up! Im not a shields specialist but I do remember a thing or two from classes.” Plus all the times she had to help out outside of her field in the last 20 years. She had become quite versatile. “Lead the way.” With the answer from their new allies, Garcia nodded, even if they couldn’t see it. “Yes. Any problems or news, we let each other know.” She then cracked her knuckles again, reading herself in front of the console as if she was about to start a fight. Well, she kinda was. Along with the Ensign, she started with the shields.

Marze smiled slightly before he dove headfirst into working with the shields, trying his hardest to get them back up. He might have had a good deal of training in this matter, but he was still expecting the problem to be nothing like anything he had ever seen.

It was, admittedly, a bit of a jumbled mess. It involved overcoming senior staff authorization codes - "T'Shai" managed to snatch quite a few for this specific task - and basically convincing the systems to exit that aforementioned maintenance mode. "Man, they did ground your ship," Whispers voice crackled a bit. "The hell's their problem? Oh well, means that they might be overconfident and still hang around the station..."

”Im not sure if their agents even left for good. Who knows what they were trying to accomplish here. Well, intel or ops or command might know already, Im just an engineer.” Though the thought did not leave her mind for a second. Who else had they taken? Why? Why Tarsek? Yes he was second in command now, but the captain was still here. Had he been a dumb self-less Vulcan again? Focus. She needed to focus on the shields. Her hands typed fast as she took routes to bypass the higher rank codes, meeting dead ends and diverting, like walking on a maze. A very irritating maze.

At the very least this irritating maze began to give in. They could start on the sensors or the weapons in the meantime?..

With shields starting to give in, Marze decided to say something, maybe get some input on what he should work on next -- since he was one of the few Engineers who seemed to remain. "Do you think it would be a good idea to start working on getting the sensors online? That way we can figure out where people have been taken... maybe..." He did not seem so sure of himself anymore.

At that point, Vara popped her head out of a tube. She was wearing her purple intel uniform, she jumped out of the tube with an acrobats grace. “Yo, Vara Zh’rahlor. How can I help?” She said, both officers would notice the pair of knives clipped to her belt.

”Thats a good idea.” The new officer arrived just then. “Oh you! Vara, nice to meet you, Im Garcia. Grab a console and start coding if you can. We are trying to get sensors back online now.” She made a point of nodding encouragingly to Marze. Sensors indeed were next, after shields.

Vara nodded and moved to help, typing quickly, she was a fast typer (thank you years of B&Es).

With a bit of work, sensors came back online, and— "Gotcha," came the almost soft reply, sounding nearly like a snarl as the scans on Whisper's end completed. "They're still hanging around, not too far off. One big bird, two smaller cruisers," she reported, and a moment later, they would show on the engineers' end as well. Cloaked and lying in wait for ... something. Good progress was being made on freeing Eventide from her confines as well! They'd have her spaceworthy in no time.

She raised an eyebrow at the voice. Outside help? Her bosses might throw a fit at the breach of security, but she’d much rather be able to make up for getting Vovvi caught then throw a fit over help. “Who’s your friend?”

”Alright people! Time to start on the offensives. Let’s get our weapons back!” She announced with an excited and proud voice. “Oh yeah! Long story. They hate the Tal Shiar, we hate the Tal Shiar. They want to help in stopping whatever plans they have here. Don’t worry, captain is aware and gave the ok signal. And by the way, Whisper?” She addressed. “Captain sends his thanks!”

Marze nodded and got straight to working on the offensives that the station had, going as fast as they could while also being as careful as they could. They could leave the talking to the others.

“Oh I wouldn’t care if the cap gave the go ahead, if anything I wanna hire these guys for a gig.” She said, a joke for herself and nobody else.

1

”Don’t mind if I do it first!” The small victories were doing their job at elevating Garcia’s spirits back to her positive self. Though the battle was not won, and she kept on typing and prodding until she could find a solution for the weapons system.

"Um." A stiff pause. "Cool, I guess." Anyway, back to work. " Your ship's back on her feet, by the way. Obviously I can't see if she's been damaged, but.." None had been reported, so it was safe to assume Eventide would now be good to go. Being kidnapped and taken to a second location was always dangerous, after all.. Now for the progress on weapons. Anything particularly being scanned for at the moment, in the meantime? (edited)

1

Vara hummed as she made a quick scan for any remaining Tal Shiar agents on board, and scanned the lead Warbird for well, anything.

As far as the sensors could tell, the station was now Tal Shiar free, thankfully. Some sort of sensor blocker was keeping Vara from poking her nose into anything, but it was clear that (given the size of the Mogai class) that was likely where the prisoners would be. Meaning there was still time to catch up to them.

“Fucking fascist ass Tal Shiar.” She mumbled at the lack of scans. “We’re clean of Tal Shiar bt dubbs, can you send that up the chain?”

”Yep. Also, captain is gonna start a chase.” Deep within her, Garcia wanted to run as fast as possible to the Eventide. Tarsek was not the only one with the right to be dumb and selfless is this friendship! Fucking Vulcan… Unfortunatelly, they still needed their weapons back and they were short on engineers thanks to the Tal Shiar, which made her needed here. “Tarsek…. Merda!” She mumbled, now visibly frustrated.

“When the call goes out, I’m going to go help them. Unfortunately for them, I like my coworkers.” She said simply as she continued to work.

Weapons good to go. Be free, my scarab.

4

2

”ALRIGHT!” Garcia all but shouted. “We got our weapons back! Yall make sure those systems keep active from now one! Whisper!” She called. “Thanks for all the help, Im gonna take my leave but operations and engineering will keep in touch!” She took her tools, her jacket, that had been all this time on her chair, made sure her ponytail was tight and high and then sprinted off faster than a gazelle. A feat impressive for someone with such short legs. “I HAVE A VULCAN TO RECOVER!”

2

Marze nodded, deciding that it was best to stay on the station in order to work with any residual issues that might come up following this whole mess.

Vara too, left in a hurry.

She stepped into the room with the same urgency as the day before. It had been three days. Three days since they failed in following the Tal Shiar and saving their comrades. Three days of God knows what those bastards were doing to them. Three days of not knowing if Tarsek was still alive. She shook her head. He was. They were. They had to be! Tal Shiar could extract a lot from them and she did not think they would have cracked so fast to become useless. Three days of coming here non-stop. Taking small bites of protein bars and dozens of coffee cups. The person that could have intervened and gotten her to slow down far away from reach…. She went through damage reports. Asked for diagnosis on all the systems. She needed to know how to fix the ship, because they would need it. But most importantly, she needed to find whatever trigger those Tal Shiar agents had managed to plant into it.

Gene stepped through the doors, hot mug of raktagino in hand. His brows were furrowed, eyes narrowed tiredly. Sighing, he headed over to his station and took a large swig of his mug, pausing to swallow with a strained wince. "How we doin'?" He murmured , then cleared his throat, "Sir." He corrected.

”Huh?” She had not noticed someone else getting close to her, too focused on Connor The Console’s screen, where a multitude of diagrams and numbers made themselves present. It was the ensign of before. The one that had handled the deflectors and shielding, at least till the Tal Shiar had disabled those. She took a deep breath. Her frustration was no one else’s problem. “Im sorry, I didn’t notice you coming, Ensign. Its…” She paused a bit. “Well, the fixing is doing fine, we’ve had good progress, so thats the good news. The bad is that we still haven’t found whatever device was planted to allow our systems to be messed with remotely. And I am afraid we can’t have the Eventide back into action if we don’t find and neutralize it. It would be suicide.” She signed. Her uniform had deep creases. Her hair, although tied up, was disheveled and she carried deep bags under her eyes. A worried look ever present. Still, she managed a small smile towards him. “I believe I did not get your name in the middle of all that chaos. Im Lieutenant Commander Beatriz Garcia Moraes. But Garcia is enough.“

1

Gene's eyes trailed the floor as he listened intently to her status update. His mind was already reeling with solutions, but he momentarily put that train of thought aside. * *His eyes raised to meet hers after a moment, and he became aware of the frown plastered on his face. The ensign quickly pulled himself out of his daze and blinked, meeting her smile with a strained, awkward, but genuine one. "G-..Garcia-...Nice to meet'cha. I know the circumstances ain't all that great but heh-ha--ho-wait, my name- my name is Gene. Dwyer. Gene Dwyer. Ensign. You already knew that -haha..." He laughed, cheeks flushing with embarrassment. He cut himself off, and turned towards his console again, pulling out his PADD. "-I...I'm gonna run some diagnostics, see if I can help you out here.." He attempted to lessen the awkwardness with a more professional tone.

”Ensign Gene Dwyer. Pleased to meet you, despite the circumstances.” During her Starfleet years she had met many kids like him. Shy and obviously socially anxious, at least from the way he spoke. “Alright! Try to focus on the energy redirection modes, we might get a clue there and map out the source of the trigger. It’s good to have your help actually, you did an excellent job with the deflectors back there.” The comment was casual, Garcia knew how to praise others as if she was ordering a cup of coffee to the replicator when necessary. And for shy people, that was a good call.

Gene exhaled, Garcia's casual tone relaxing him almost instantly. "Oh, well thanks, lieutenant- Garcia." He chirped, then grinned to himself. Not too shabby, Gene. "Good to know I can come in handy." Right, now it was focus time. Time wasn't on their side, he had to run every diagnostic he could think of to rule out any unlikely possibilities. He leaned over the console and began scanning through the system.

2

Plasma damage, plasma damage, a rogue torpedo, plasma... the damage report was so, so frustratingly normal, save for the fact that the amount of damage done to the poor vessel was worth of a long, arduous battle - not a near instant, crushing blip. Said "blip" occurred suddenly, around the time when the Eventide crossed the invisible line between the waiting cloaked warbirds as it gave chase to the Temhruuhi. The shields just... went off, like a magic trick with a disappearing coin. The only problem is... usually the coin would reappear. Somewhere. Somehow. Nothing suspicious was reported by Whisper during the "revival" of the Eventide. Deliberately? A mistake? Or she really didn't notice anything worthy bringing up? The diagnostics of the shields specifically reported some odd numbers. They went up, and stabilized... only to suddenly flip. As if they were inverted.

”Wait…. Up, stable… inverted?” Her brows furrowed. Shields could be thought of as magnetic fields. Fields of flowing energy. Increase the energy and keep the tide centrifugal-wise and it would interact with energy – and therefore matter - around them, throwing away and deflecting anything that came by the field. If the flow was inverted however, instead of centrifugal you would get centripetal, which meant attraction of energy and mass…. Which meant the Eventide would not have been only a huge unprotected target. It would be a giant projectile and plasma magnet. She quickly opened a new window and started to code. She needed to run a simulation, something that could prove that, in fact, that was what had happened, or what could happen if their shields had been tampered with in this way, comparing a normal shieldless attack to an inverted-shield one and assessing the difference in damage.

3

Marze, who had been there the whole time mind you, was helping trying to figure out what was going on as well. After all, if there was something that he knew, it was shields and their effects, and this was an excellent puzzle to... puzzle over.

4

3

Silver, who had also been there, and was still absolutely pissed- now both for the kidnapping of her friends, and the dishonor done to her beloved ship Eventide, was also trying to puzzle out the problem with their shields. Hadn’t they received help in getting everything up and running? Were they all being tricked yet again?

"Huh..." Gene's Romulan brows knitted together, his shoulders leaning back as he opened his mouth to speak to the others, eyes still fixed on the readings in front of him. The deferred Processing Stack...perhaps the backlog of data had been...altered somehow. "I'm gonna sound real stupid here, but are the readings we got here all...I mean- " He sighed, frustrated with himself "Are all the readings from the attack actually here. Are some..missing maybe?" He asked, trying to come up with solutions.

It took multiple simulations, but after some tweaks here and there... yes. If you also took into account the way Tal Shiar would likely be able to lock on to the ship despite the cloak... the ugly picture painted itself. * *But still - how did this happen?..

4

Her mouth opened a bit as the simulation aligned with reality. “Filhos da mãe!” She soon heard the suggestiob coming from Gene. “Actually Gene, they are perfectly correct. Everyone!” She called over their little team. “See this simulation right here? This is the probability of being hit without shields.” She proceeded to run it, and they all watched as the counter went off with every hit. Still, not nearly close enough to the real damage they had received. “Now, this one.” Then, the inverted-shield scenario. Anything thrown into the Eventides way was quickly pulled into orbit and attracted, some impacts even being magnified. This one, much closer to what had been left of their ship. “We were wrong out there, the shields weren’t exactly turned off, they were reversed! What happens when you reverse what is meant to repel?” A giant Tal Shiar hit magnet. “We couldn’t make sense of it then because, well, no one thinks about shields being used this way! Tricky little smartass bastards they are to have pulled this off.”

Marze nodded along, taking notes about what had been discovered. He knew he probably wouldn't come to the answer, but he wondered if there was some kind of hidden code that was planted that would go off when they approached a certain area. That made sense... right? Maybe he should say something about it...

Gene gasped, eyeing the data with equal parts awe and frustration. At least now there was a definitive answer! But the solution? Now that was a little more complicated. "Right, shit--that makes sense..." He sighed "But how the hell do we stop 'em from doin' it again? I mean we could do a reversal of the reversal...flip shields back to standard polarity...but if they keep modulating, we'd be in a literal tug-of-war..." He placed his fingers on his chin "...Or we could maybe...I dunno- deliberately introduce interference- Like- controlled bursts from the deflector dish-.." Perhaps he was over complicating it, but his mind was reeling a little too much, his thoughts were tumbling out of his mouth before he could stop them.

”Hey Gene!” She called. “Stop. Think. Assess. Breathe. Then speak.” Garcia knew someone thinking too hard for their tongue to keep up when she saw one. (edited)

"Maybe we could figure out what happened, that way we could combat it somehow. Like... how were they able to mess with our systems and all that. Like... some sort of code that activates with proximity... that was planted into the Eventide..." He actually said something, feeling like that might be useful. Maybe he could go into the shields code or something like that!

”Good!” She pointed towards Marze approvingly. “I had thought of a device first. But our scans would likely have picked it up and there is limited physical space and places where it could be planted. A code, however, can run free and avoid our scans much easier!”

3

Dwyer blinked, then nodded, his ears flushed from embarrassment, but that was a short-lived moment. He looked towards Marze, listening intently, then his eyes gazed down at the floor. A few moments passed, and he looked up again. "It has to be...so how do we block it...we could isolate shield control process from external command inputs. Or is this an ops issue..?"

"I think we should isolate different processes and comb the code for anything that seems... out of place...? If that makes sense?" He offered, thinking about how best to work through this.

3

"Ah...yeah! We could open the system's display and get a detailed visual of emitter segmentation..." His eyes lit up, then he got out his PADD, isolating system data on it. "Whatever the case, it sounds like the Tal Shiar to me.."

3

Isolating the system data - done! Step one! Now, they would have to go about isolating it further... how would you go about finding rogue elements somewhere where they don't belong?

5

"Ummmm... do we have a basic template of code we can compare against? Like... take code from a similar starbase and ship and match it up?" He asked, starting to think of ways they could actually find out what is wrong.

Alright, think Garcia. How can you tell apart a capybara from a rat? As soon as Marze spoke up, lights went on her head. “Yes! You are onto something. She said. “We can take data from our last maintenance scans and coding. It should not have changed so much.” She eyed them. “It’s like this: we get the sequences, we line them up, run them together, like DNA sequencing and I cannot believe I am quoting my biology classes right now. At some point, somewhere we get our rat!”

“I can run that for you, it would be easy for my systems to spot the differences, even if they’re minute or difficult to notice.” She offered, wanting to be at least somewhat useful in this situation, knowing all her friends were probably suffering right now.

1

"Then we can cut it off from everything else, isolate the node so it can’t reach the data sequence..." Gene nodded, shifting closer toward's Silver's console curiously following her offer to help.

Blip, blip, blip - one by one, scattered pieces began to be pulled out. When put together as is, one after another in the order said pieces were pulled out, it didn't seem to make much sense.

”Well we got our rats…. But it’s a gibberish…” A frustrated frown. Of course nothing would be easy here, it was just puzzle after puzzle. If it weren’t for the fact her best friend’s life depended on them solving it, she would actually be having a great time. “I don’t think it’s supposed to be linearly read… but how do we discover the order? Maybe the Tal Shiar trigger was to put it in an order that makes it active?” She begun to think loud. “Or…. Or theres junk pieces? Just like exons and introns in DNA? Things to be ignored? Only we don’t know what is garbage and what is actual code. Computer! How many different lines of code can be obtained through recombination and exclusion of these pieces?” (edited)

Gene nodded along even though she was clearly speaking to herself for the most part. The strength of his Romulan side's emotion was beginning to crawl back into his consciousness, and he pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to focus. How could they de-scramble the code? Identify repeating byte patterns, control sequences, or syntax markers...patterns just had to emerge, right?

The response from the Computer on Garcia's input was just as jumbled as the mystery code. Perhaps all of these pieces were valid. Maybe they were just... made to look a certain way to be less noticeable.

Silver looked over the response, trying to put together the jumbled pieces. Even she struggled, and she was made for this sort of thing. Still, the gears in her mind continued to click and turn, you could actually hear a sort of whirring sound from her as she thought in overdrive about it all. “It might not be junk data. It might be arranged in a way to appear as junk to anyone pulling pieces out to investigate. So either we are actually supposed to read this linearly, which even I cannot understand as this looks like gibberish to me too, or the order is actually the trigger, like you suggested.” She said, pushing some hair away from her face as she thought it over.

"Makes sense." Gene hummed, stepping closer towards the other two, "Maybe we can run a simulation, see how it works so we can understand it better?" He shrugged with a huff, clearly frustrated by his lack of know-how in this situation.

Marze nodded, thinking that running some simulations did sound like a good idea. "Maybe the code is scrambled too... so if we run simulations we can try to unscramble it..."

It took a good few minutes... but the Computer spitted out a couple of options it deemed as the most likely solutions!

She let out a huff of air. “Okay… now I guess we need to test them?” She took a look at the options, seeing if her herself could now make sense of them after the computer did the hardest part of the job.

They looked up when the computer spit out its list of options, eyes bright as they tried to think of a good simulation to throw them in. "Maybe... we can use our simulation of the Eventide from earlier? Make a little battle and test each option?" They asked, finger on their chin.

Gene frowned, brows knitting together as he tried to make sense of the data. "Yeah, I second that." He muttered. "Then maybe run a diagnostics program alongside it, should be able to cook up some quick work-arounds?" The ensign leaned against the side of his console, head at a slight tilt as he watched the screens.

"Running diagnostics at the same time sounds like a good idea I think..." They said with a nod as they thought of all the possibilities in front of them.

“Divide and conquer? I can start the diagnostics.” She suggested, of the opinion that the less time was wasted, the better. Efficiency while remaining thorough was the name of the game.

”The problem still stands: it was activated from the outside, not the inside if the scans are any indication…. When we crossed the cloaked ships.” She commented. “We don’t know what kind of signal they sent to activate it.”

"Well maybe we can set up some kinda firewall based on the data we do have knowledge on, based off these sims." He folded his arms, his forefinger and thumb pinching the material of his uniform as he tried to stay poised.

"Maybe there is something in the code that reacts to a certain trigger? The Tal Shiar probably would not make it obvious though..." He spoke, feeling a little silly voicing his thoughts.

While the engineers were thinking their thoughts, the simulations ran one after another; and while one of them bore some very promising results, the question of how to go around this trigger was still open...

”As stated before it would be a tug of war…” She nodded to Gene. “…if we tried to reverse it every time it was activated. We need to either purge this code from our system or stop the trigger signal, whatever it is, from reaching it.”

"This is a little bit of an out there idea... but if we find the trigger, could we make some code that turns it around on our enemies? Wait. That wouldn't work, they would need some code that we would have to exploit..." He had successfully managed to talk himself down from his own idea. Good going Marze.

“I wish we had their code. Or knowledge of structural flaws in those Mogai-class ships that we can exploit.. oh, that could be viable. What do you say, should I run a quick search for anything we can use against them before returning to our own flaws? She asked, voice eerily cheerful at the thought of going for the throat and attacking what was weakest. Survival of only the fittest, like they would be after they excised this curse of code put upon them. She would help bring down the hammer and watch it smash a ship in the vast expanse of space until it could cause suffering no longer.

The prospect of giving those bastards a taste of their own medicine brought a big smile to Garcia’s face. “Oh search away, ensign!” Everything had flaws, if they were lucky enough to find it and smart enough to use it.

“Computer! Get me as detailed a copy of a Mogai-class ship’s schematics as possible, please! Special focus to the engines, shields, and weapons, thank you!” She politely (as ever) ordered the console she was at. There was a wide, almost innocent, joyful-looking smile on Silver’s face as she said it, but her eyes were blown crazily wide in order to take in the most information possible as fast as possible, giving her a horrifically crazed expression as her eyes flicked across whatever results came up.

While Silver was focused on the console, Garcia turned to the other ensigns, pointed and mouthed “I really like this one”.

“Nothing useful except it moves a bit slower.” She finally said, smile dropping off her face. “Back to the grind with the code purge on our end. I can compare any saves of Eventide’s systems before this all happened, and purge anything that doesn’t match that.” She said.

Gene grinned, emboldened by Silver's enthusiasm. He stood by her, looking at her screen as she worked. Generally speaking, engineers seemed to hate people watching them while they worked; Gene too; but he couldn't help himself. "Hah- alright, lemme give you a hand." He hummed, pulling out his PADD, tapping away as he prepared his console for purging.

Making a reverse code that would target a Mogai, while a good idea, was also a tad bit risky - for it assumed that, if this situation repeated, their attacker would be that specific class. However, a full purge of the code from Eventide's systems... might just work! Was there anything else the engineering team wanted to do?

”Wait!” She said. “Before we start the purge…. Computer, try to find the exact time, authorization and console used when this code was inserted in our system. Please.” (edited)

2

Garcia, this narrator is officially joining your fanclub. The Computer showed not just one, but MULTIPLE instances of code insertion, all of them done during scheduled maintenances, with the names of the people responsible for shield check-ups attached. A Trojan horse, separated into a manageable herd, to make the intrusion just so much less noticeable..

6

Her hands slammed on the table - in front of the console, not on the console - as she sported the most victorious grin on that day. “Gotcha little rat!” She quickly compiled all of that information: dates, the exact time and names. Prepared the data transfer and commed the command hub. (edited)

"Ha! Nice one, Lieutenant!" Gene chirped, clasping his hand together. Perhaps being thrown into the deep end like this on his first few days as an ensign was not so bad after all. The satisfaction that came with witnessing moments like this one was well worth it.

“Now we have the little traitors! Good one, good work, good work!” She cheered, voice giddy with excitement. Her inprogrammed happy-go-lucky nature made her sound insane, but she made no move to change it- she was too locked on. She pulled up a previous version of the code, without the traitorous additions, and began deleting anything out of the current version that matched the herd of Trojan Horses that had been injected into their systems.

With the deep cleanse completed, the current engineering team would be done with their task. At least, their current one. Would there be anything else to do, while the poor Eventide is getting it's repairs?

The wide teeth-showing smile diminished until it became a half one in Garcia’s face. They did it. They managed to recover control so that the Eventide would be far from Tal Shiar’s influence. The code was clean, as they performed sweeps not a trace of it was left behind. Their little team even managed to get crucial information for security on who was responsible. Little team… so many of them were gone. That came weighting right back, along with the exhaustion of 3 days of non-stop work, barely any hours of sleep and a diet consisting of coffee and protein bars. “Hey, excellent job everybody!” She told them. “It’s… kinda weird and unexpected since this is my…” She counted on her fingers. “Seventh official day of work on the station… and suddenly I’m the stranger giving orders after our chief was abducted. Thank you… for your work. I’m gonna take a break, eat something good and get some hours of sleep…. And frankly I think you all also deserve one.” She grabbed her jacket, throwing it on her shoulders. “Let’s take a small one until we are desperately needed again. If anyone needs me, I am at the nearest bar on dining district. Or just comm, of course.” She nodded to them all and left with heavier than usual steps.