What We Know

Posted on Fri Jan 16th, 2026 @ 9:46am by Captain Shran dh'Klar & Commander Jonathan Grayson & Commander Samantha Howard & Lieutenant Commander Callie Raven-Grayson & Lieutenant Inara Senn & Lieutenant JG Kate Kono & Lieutenant JG James Phoenix

2,092 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Not All Orders Are Easy
Location: Conference Room

The Washington continued at high warp towards its destination. Everyone was at stations; the captain had placed the ship at yellow alert hours ago. Those that were needed were now gathering in the conference room, Deanna was there preparing everything for the full brief.

Phoenix entered the briefing room. He hadn't expected to be paged but nonetheless he was prepared. In one hand he had three PADDS, all security and tactical related. In other other hand, he had a cup of steaming coffee.

"Morning ma'am" James greeted Deanna before taking his own seat.

Walking into the briefing room Callie offered a warm smile to both Deanna and James as she walked around to her seat.

Kate skipped into the briefing room with an outwardly recognized happy stride, her quarters unseen since her intelligence staff gathering. When the Officers meeting was called, she was almost to her door. The Washington's sudden jump to warp wasn't routine—something urgent lurked beneath the surface and her staff had been under the guise that it was just engineering efficiency. She caught Deanna's eye across the briefing room and offered a wave, receiving that familiar glance she had come to expect in return. The dichotomy of her reputation gnawed at her: respected intelligence analyst beyond these bulkheads, yet perpetually the naive child within them. Last mission's attempts to assert herself had been met with dismissive glances and interrupted sentences. Part of her wanted to slam her fist on the table and demand the respect she'd earned, while another voice whispered, she should be grateful to even occupy a chair at this table. Kate swallowed the bitter pill of resentment, crafting her features into that perfect, pleasant mask she'd perfected over years of being underestimated, even before Q carried her away to the twenty-fourth century. She chose a seat at the center, where she could watch the hypnotic streaks of starlight through the viewport—silent witnesses to her internal struggle as the Washington hurtled toward whatever crisis awaited.

Kate twirled a strand of her sleek black hair between her fingers, the unfamiliar weight of it still surprising her after six weeks of growth. The strands now brushed against her earlobes—a far cry from the severe pixie cut she'd maintained for nearly a decade. She tilted her head slightly, feeling the whisper of movement against her neck as she waited impatiently for the intel briefing to begin.

Deanna looked up from her work and saw that a few had arrived. "Lieutenants" she said in an even tone. "Everything in order in security Mr. Phoenix?" She looked to Kate, "How are the new members of your intelligence crew working out lieutenant?"

Kate's lips curved upward as she inclined her head, relishing the rare feeling of being treated as an equal rather than some Academy cadet. She rolled her angular shoulders beneath her uniform.

"A.J.'s accent is a total warp-barrier at first," she said, "but once you calibrate to his frequency, you realize his brain output is off the charts. Kevin's been in our orbit forever, but his presence is at maximum density lately. Seems like ever since Risa, he’s been more present. Command uploaded this completely glitched assignment to our queue—supposedly to 'optimize our operational parameters'—but it's more vexing than debugging a malfunctioning holodeck." Kate’s laughter came in short, staccato bursts. She obviously didn’t like the assignment.

“So, what’s this thing we got going on?” Kate turned to the sound of a hissing automatic slider.

Just then the door opened and Aidan walked in looking like he had just finished working on something. "Never ceases to amaze me. You go on vacation for a few days and then you spend weeks fixing everything that went to hell in your absence" he said with that typical Irish excitement. He sat down next to Phoenix and looked around. "Seems all the fashionable people have been invited, though some of the chairs are noticeably empty."

The doors hissed open and Jon entered. His eyes swept over the room and those present. They lingered on Callie for an instant before moving on. A smile came to his face as he spoke, "Good morning, everyone. I hope you all enjoyed your time on Risa."

Deanna looked to Kate and offered a chuckle. "I remember such assignments. Part of the reason I always preferred field work with the captain. More action, less paperwork. As for our little rescue, I'll wait for the captain before getting into details."

Aidan looked to Jon, "Risa was magnificent Commander, once we got things fixed. Hope the issues with the weather grid didn't cause any issues for any of you. I will report that all of my engineers took full advantage of the R&R, even the Chief, though the captain did have to order him" he said with a soft laugh through that Irish brogue.

"No complainants from me with the weather grid Mr. O'Connor. it was nice to relax, totally relax for awhile." he finished looking at Callie to see if she wanted to add anything.

James looked to Deanna after waiting for the others to answer first. “Security and tactical are ready for anything ma’am. Our systems and procedures are up to date.”

Sam wandered onto the bridge, taking in the general vibe of the bridge before heading to the conference room, keen to hear the latest on this little mystery that was before them.

"What'd I miss?" She asked as there was conversation already rolling around the room.

Kate leaned back in her conference chair until it creaked in protest, shooting one arm skyward like a game show contestant with the winning answer. "And now for the real emergency agenda item—who among us got lucky on Risa? I need names, positions, and a satisfaction rating on a scale of one to 'computer, delete my search history.'"

Callie couldn’t help but grin at Kate’s humor. She and Jon may have gotten off to a rocky start on their romantic plans, but it hadn’t been rocky for long, in her case she got lucky all the time being married to Jon.

Aidan glanced over at Kate, surprised at what he had just heard. "Are you actually inquiring at who managed to have Jamaharon?" Lass, not sure this is the right place for such discussion, but if you are that curious, perhaps a drink after our duty shift is called for."

Jon looked at Kate and shook his head not believing what he had heard, only she would have the nerve to ask such a question. For himself, he had the best of times on Risa and it was all due to being married to Callie.

The doors opened once again and the captain entered. "Glad everyone is here for the emergency. Deanna, let's get this briefing underway."

"We received a distress call from Dr. Darkwa, though the message was fractured. Dr. Darkwa is the lead anthropologist studying a humanoid culture that has just entered the Iron Age. Based on what we got from the message it seemed that the planet they are on was impacted by a plasma storm which caused some sort of radiation emergency. We have been scanning the system and have detected the plasma storm. It has passed the planet and continued on. The system does have an asteroid belt that is filled largely with highly radioactive elements. The shields will protect us from the radiation as we approach the planet, but we can't determine the extent of the damage to the planet until we get closer, in approximately 20 minutes."

"This will be a rescue mission, but we have to remember that the Prime Directive applies. Dr. Darkwa's team has been in an anthropology blind for several years studying these people. Contact with the indigenous people is not to occur unless we have no other option. And obviously doctor, we will need you to be prepared to deal with radiation injuries" Shran added.

Kate felt anxious. No martial arts training—not even the deadliest techniques from Earth's history—could have prepared her for an enemy that existed beyond all human senses.

"What about using the transporter buffers to store our baseline DNA patterns?" Kate asked, her fingers drumming a nervous rhythm against the gleaming conference table. The overhead lights reflected in her wide eyes as she scanned the concerned faces of her fellow officers. "Starfleet has precedent for this. When personnel suffer genetic damage, the transporter can reconstitute them using stored patterns. The problem has always been finding clean DNA samples after exposure." She paused, swallowed hard. "I've been researching the Pulaski incident—Stardate 42494.8—when the Enterprise-D's CMO was aged by a disease on Darwin Station. They reconstructed her using a cellular sample from her hairbrush." Her voice grew softer. "We could implement this proactively. Before anyone gets hurt." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, adding with forced lightness, "Reading obscure technical reports is what I do best."

Callie nodded, it sounded like a good idea to her. “Do we know if the blind would have withstood the intensity of the storm?”

"I'm not a medical doctor, but you can't filter out radiation damage even with the transporters. This is why we have drugs to assist with it like hyronalin. For sake of argument though, even if we could do as you are suggesting, we don't have untainted samples to draw from for any of the scientists in Dr. Darkwa's team. Remember, they have been down there for years" Deanna noted.

"Would taking a shuttle down to the surface make any difference as to the radition? Assuming we can mask them from the planet's population and all" James inquired to the group.

Kate leaned back in her chair and shot her hand up again. "Actually, this is exactly like what happened to Dr. Pulaski on the Enterprise-D. When she beamed down to Darwin Station, she contracted a rapid aging disease that damaged her DNA telomeres. The transporter system saved her by using a hair sample from her quarters as a quantum-level template. The biofilter compared her degraded pattern against her original DNA signature, then reconstructed her at the molecular level. The same principle would apply to radiation damage—the transporter would just need an uncorrupted DNA reference to rebuild the damaged sequences."

Kate exhaled slowly, her shoulders slumping as she pinched the bridge of her nose. "Look, I'll grant you one point—this won't do a damn thing for the research team already stranded down there," she said, her voice low and measured. "But it buys us precious time to fortify our protocols before we send another soul into the Area of Operations. It's all in the Intelligence file." Kate tapped the PaDD with a toothy grin and almost manic eyes all at the same time. "It won't hurt to run it by the appropriate personnel?"

"I can inoculate the team that goes down against known forms of radiation, it'll wear off eventually, but it will give us enough coverage to get down there, retrieve the team and get out again without glowing in the dark. I can develop a treatment regimen for the scientists once we work out how bad the exposure was" Sam said factually.

"We'll go with the standard medical treatment" Shran answered, quashing further speculation. "And unless it becomes necessary, we won't be sending any craft to the surface. We can't risk the cultural contamination." He looked over at Inara who had been dead silent the whole time, "I would expect you to have something to say about all this Inara."

Inara read her PADD "What do I have to say about this? Maybe we should start taking samples of our DNA in our prime, so when we're old and gray, we can use the transporter as a damned fountain of youth. But it's the unknown forms of radiation, and what we don't know that concerns me." Inara was wearing a lai from Risa. "It's always what we don't know that ends up biting us in the ass. I recommend listening to little ol me as I get scans in from the area and as my trusty ol tricorder picks up things."

"I look forward to finding out what the sensors tell you Inara. I trust you'll keep us all informed" Shran said with a smile. "Very well, I think we know what we need to and we'll learn more over the next hour or so as we approach. Back to work everyone. Dismissed."

 

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