Star Trek: Starbase 777

Senang walked ahead of his group, ducking into a branching path that would be easier to defend than the open hall they'd been in before. They looked at the people with them, who they'd have to protect... why were they the only combatant here? No matter. They'd get it done.

At least Five was pretty okay with a phaser? Emphasis on pretty okay. She stuck closer to the back, hair on the back of her neck standing up.

T'She was there! Following, one hand on their medical bag with another on their phaser -- hoping that they wouldn't need to use either.

Ato was there too. He was growing fond of working away missions with T’She, who had been on every single other one he’d been on since being stationed on 777! He was pretty ok at defending himself but much better at running away. It wasn’t out of cowardice, just tactically advantageous what with the long legs. He also had his med bag and a phaser ready just in case. They were in a Borg Cube after all! He was hiding behind a bulkhead or something, following Senang’s lead!

The scientist followed suit, focused yet quiet, albeit still slightly annoyed by what he'd heard. He decided to channel that disappointment into making sure that his teammates were okay instead - or more specifically, right now, the one specific teammate, who was sticking by the end of their group. The Romulan's gait slowed down, just a little bit, to get closer to Five of Eight, giving her a careful look: "How are you doing, Lieutenant? Not too regretful of volunteering for this mission, I hope?.."

Rifle against her shoulder, Senang was watching the others closely, keeping her ears peeled for the sound of presumably the drone, to see whether it was getting closer at all. The opposite seemed to be the case though; the sound was getting further away, from them at least. And just for now. "We need to find more information on this ship. I would say the consoles are risky, but the drone knows where we are anyway, so we should probably try another console to see if we can find anything on that."

T'She nodded again. "That seems like a good plan. The more knowledge we have... the better..." They seemed wary, almost on edge, their surroundings definitely getting to them a little, but they were being doing their best to hide it.

He turned his head to look at Senang, then nodded: "I agree. We need the information to be able to do anything. We'll just have to be quick about it." If anything, the Borg were very generous with their console placement around the cube. Saren decided to take a good look at them, trying to deem if there were any visual differences between them - perhaps hoping for a non-tactical console this time.

There was nothing that visually distinguished consoles from one another, unfortunately. It seemed like the hivemind also caused drones to just know which console did what, which was fair enough, but wasn't very helpful. It was a game of chance, essentially.

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"We can try another console," Five agreed, trying to recall — she couldn't remember if every cube was built the same, or just had similar patterns of endless hallways. "I'm.. doing alright as I can, sir. Thank you," she answered Saren, a weary smile under the mask evident by the corners of her eyes turning up. She just had to focus— to stay useful. She made her way over to a console to see if she could get into it, or distinguish what kind of was like she had the last one. "I can try to show you what symbols mean what, to speed up the process?"

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Sorry for the late reply. Outwardly again, not much to distinguish it, but upon touching it it seemed that this was an engineering related console.

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"What symbols mean what... that could be good, actually. Maybe if I then write them into my tricorder, I can make it read things out automatically..." he mused out loud. Something worth trying, at the very least?

"This one is engineering," Five gestured to the console to allow Saren and whoever else to scan, before plugging in her credentials (and allowing those, too, to be scanned for future replication) before proceeding. Could she disable shields from here? Or at least find out where the console to do so would be? Flight records would be cool too, but that was probably more of a command-type job. "What other information should I look for, Commander?"

"Another map would be good, or anything related to the functioning of the ship. But I'll take whatever you can find," Senang said, not actually looking at Five as he scanned their general area. It wasn't out of malice, Fives, I swear. He's just trying to keep everyone safe.

She would honestly prefer him to keep looking out for anything nasty. No offense taken. She went digging for maps as asked, as well as whatever else she could really scrape off this console.

Another map wasn't too difficult, giving about another 100 meters in all directions. Additionally though, it could see energy flow in the different parts of that 200 meter cube. From how it looked, the entire ship had a low-level current powering everything, except for small parts where the currents weren't regular, flickering in and out of sight. This was probably what was keeping the life support and lights online the whole time. And, of course, the parts where their party had been or currently was, where more power was diverted to activate the sensors to track them, and the consoles to allow them some access to the ship.

"This one shows energy flow as well as another small map," Five reported. "It's almost as if the ship is tracking us. Diverting more power to the area as we enter and leave... " She shuddered. In the best case scenario, whatever was here would turn out to be friendly and just in a bit of mishap, like Kinaen. Worst case was, unfortunately, more likely. Was there any way for her to manually divert power around? Not that she wanted to right now, but just out of curiosity. "To my understanding, the way these vessels work is almost like.. those building blocks that stick together. If you take a piece apart, you can still use the rest of the vessel. That is why everything is so self-contained within 100 or so meters. If you take a chunk out of it, it would be able to seal itself off, and be fine."

"It's basically shining a light on us, keeping us visible..." he followed along, furrowing his brows a bit. "From what you've said, I'm worried that if we even succeed in disabling one section of the ship, it won't affect the rest of it. But... it could still win us some time, if we manage to fool it for a while."

There didn't seem to be a way to divert power manually, at least for her, or right now. It's not that the console shouldn't do it, actually. It looked like it should be able to just fine. It was more like that part of the interface was... deleted. Or hidden.

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Hmm-mm-m. "She doesn't like me poking around in here, I think..." Five mumbled, just barely inclining her head to one side. "I can't access anything that allows me to divert the power, which I should be able to do from this console. I imagine the same would be with every one we come across, which means if we find a shield generator, we'll have to take it out by force." Unfortunate. At least they had another map. Any points of interest?

On the map, there aren't any points of interest currently in range, but you could go look for whatever's causing the power fluctuations. That's about the most interesting on the map, currently.

Definitely! Thank you, Mr. Narrator, Mari did not process that. Oopsie. Five pointed to the little disruptions in the energy flow, to show the rest of the team. "We should see what's causing those," she said. "It's relatively small compared to the overall energy flow, but worth investigation."

"Understood. It might help us figure out... something about what is happening here," T'She commented as they noted down what they were told mentally.

Cool! If no protests were given, she would start wandering off in that direction.

Absolutely! It's fairly easy to find, a little ways down the walkway the small internal lights that differentiate one part of smooth green-grey metal from another are flickering and weak, even weaker than in the rest of the ship, like an old man choking on his final breaths.

"Here," Five pointed, getting a little closer. Maybe giving it a scan, to see just what was causing such a weakness? Or looking for anything obvious, like scratches, signs of damage...

Having followed Fives, Saren angled his trusty tricorder to give the peculiar area a scan.

While it might have been assumed to be actual damage sustained, surprisingly, there was very little visible of that aside from a deeper scratch here and there. What was a lot more visible was just... Normal wear and tear that had never been repaired. Under normal circumstances, you'd never see something like this on a Borg vessel.

"General disrepair, it appears," he tilted his tricorder to show the readings to Five and anyone else curious. "Given the Borg tendency for effectiveness, I guess this is unusual?.. Maybe as the result of the lack of drones on this cube..."

"Definitely odd." Ato chimed in from the back, arching his head to see what lay beyond. "Why aren't there drones on this cube is the question, I suppose. Why is there just that one? And has Starfleet ever encountered a borg vessel with only one drone aboard in the past?" He couldn't really recall anything like that being mentioned in his classes but it had been a while since he was in the academy and his specialized classes were a bit unrelated.

"That leaves a high likelihood that whoever's left is a tactical drone, or something else," Five said quietly, not very fond of the idea. "Not to my knowledge... It's always been a collective." And didn't that sound familiar? She thought of One, back on the Eventide, and was very glad they didn't hear their discussions earlier.

"Is it possible to identify such a thing by sight?" Senang asked, which was kind of only the tip of his iceberg of questions. "Also, does anyone know what system this feeds power to? And, are there any guesses as to how long this has been in disrepair?" Yeah dude, overwhelm your poor investigative team with questions.

"Not... particularly? Assignments are interchangeable by necessity. Fitting parts like you would one of those repair robots," Five shrugged. It was fine, she had lots of questions too, and the faster she got to the bottom of it the better. She'd take a look at what it was connected to. " If I had to guess, this level of disrepair doesn't exactly happen overnight. It had to be over at least a few months... Likely more?"

"Curious." Ato looked around, trying to see if there were any visual cues of cords or conduits attached to the system to at least begin answering Senang's question. He wasn't really sure, and would defer to Lt. Five, of course, but he was very observant and trying to see if anything stood out. "Yeah, it doesn't seem...recent, exactly."

"Alright, that all makes sense," he nodded, actively listening to the answers. "So could it be that this is a repair drone, but the upkeep on the entire cube takes so much effort that it's just decided to let certain things go? Or, more like, been forced to let certain things go?"

"Your guess is as good as mine... I would imagine forced. The logical thing to do would be to maintain core systems, and let less necessary or efficient repairs go undone." He frowned, imagining being a lone Borg, on a ship, by theirself, for months. He couldn't imagine how lonely it must feel.

"I hope we can help them..." Five sighed, continuing to try to trace the energy to see where it could have gone.

"It's a viable theory, and I agree with the core systems part. Still... makes you wonder what happened for this to be the case..." Where is everyone else?... Somehow, the idea of there being just one drone was more uneasy than a swarm. Borgs were, in a twisted way, a social species... Saren moved his trycorder, trying to pinpoint the vector of the energy's flow. Something, anything to help out.

"Me too, Lieutenant." Ato said, nodding at Five. "Starfleet has liberated Borg before... perhaps since there is only one, we could find a way to disable their weapons and get them back to the Eventide to begin the liberation process." His antennae wiggled at that, a ray of hope in a particularly spooky place to be.

"That seems to be the best option. For that to happen though, we need to find a way to get back to Eventide, too." Senang seemed curt, but in reality they were cautiously optimistic.

As for the scan Saren was doing... It was a little hard to tell, but generally, these wires were robust, and most likely meant for supplying large amounts of energy somewhere for extended periods of time. Options were limited to, essentially: shields, life support, and propulsion systems.

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Ato's eyes widened at Senang's tone just a little bit, getting used to how the officer spoke. Sometimes people were a bit forward or blunt, but he could take it. He shook it off, not taking it personal. Often people had more beneath the surface than what they showed. "Of course." He looked to Saren, who had been scanning. "What'd you find, Lieutenant?"

"These seem to be the big veins of the ship, distributing a lot of energy for long and heavy tasks. So..." he looked somewhere into the Depths of the walkway, perhaps searching for ways for this roleplayer to re-tell GM information without just copypaste quoting them, then back at the tricorder, "So things like shields, life support, and systems that keep the cube moving in space."

"Life support... is also tied to it... so maybe it isn't the best to mess with it too much -- even if we could also mess with shields... strange... that there are fluctuations there though..." T'She offered their own thoughts, thinking that messing with life support was... bad.

"If it was life support, it would be fluctuating a way we would notice, no?" Five made a move to start following the wires. " So.. either way, it could be beneficial? "

"That is also true. We could at least investigate further." They conceded with a nod.

“Hmmm.” Ato could understand both Five’s and T’She’s reasoning, and noticed Five’s eyes following the direction of the wires. “Ah, we could follow them. You’re right. I’ll go where you all go,” he said, still looking down the hallway where the wires ran, wondering what they would find in the dark. “But perhaps we make sure we won’t run into the lone drone if we go this way? Check for life signs first?”

"I'm pretty sure the drone is somewhere behind us, where we came from. We should be okay for the time being." Senang couldn't hear any creaking anymore, which meant that telling where specifically the drone was was impossible to tell, but at the same time, it wasn't moving any closer towards them, either.

“Well, I guess we’re good to move on, then.” And he moved to follow the group down the hallway, presumably further into the dark and creepy Borg Cube.

"I will periodically run scans to make sure nobody can ambush us. That should... make us feel a little safer." They commented before they started to do just that, searching for life signs and focusing on life signs that were separated from the rest.