Away Team

Posted on Mon Apr 11th, 2022 @ 8:49am by Lieutenant Commander Deanna Celes & Commander Jonathan Grayson & Commander Samantha Howard & Ensign Zack Ravencroft

Mission: Jupiter Mystery
Location: USS Jupiter

Dr Samantha Howard retrieved her larger portable med kit and slung it over her shoulder, attaching a medical tricorder and phaser to her hip holster in rapid succession afterwards. They had located the Jupiter, her orbit decaying and her crew lifesigns sporadic. The Doctor in her was keen to do what she could for those still alive, the soldier in her wanted to know what the hell had happened to them.

Jon entered the transporter room, a phaser his hip and questions filled his mind. Questions that could only be answered by beaming over to the Jupiter and seeing what they could find. The first thing however was to stabilize the Jupiter's decaying orbit. Then see what could be done for the crew, that was Sam's department and Jon was confident in not only Sam's ability but her doggedness to find answers.

Deanna enjoyed away missions, but she had never really enjoyed being in EVA suits. They were excellent of course, but they made things more difficult from a tactical perspective. She had everything she needed as she entered the transporter room. "Ready when you are commander" she said as she made her way onto the transporter pad.

Jon nodded at Deanna, in his EVA suit. The suits were an added layer of caution but weren't the fastest way to move about. "Good deal Deanna. Just waiting on Mr. Ravencroft to arrive."

Zack entered the room, he was going on automatic mode. He wouldn't let his mental or emotional state affect his work. Especially when it came to guard duty. The EVA-suit was never something he truly enjoyed using, it was very restricting.

With the away team now assembled, they took their places on the transporter platform after one final check of the EVA suits. Weapons raised they stood in a semi circle, backs forwards the center and weapons armed and ready. This was an unknown situation they were beaming into, they had to be prepared for anything.

It took them only a few moments to materialize in the rear of the bridge of the Jupiter. Looking around the lights were dimmed as if the ship were on a night shift when something happened. A tactical officer were sprawled out over the tactical station console, the same true at Ops and the helm. The XO seat was empty but the command seat was occupied by an unconscious Tellerite.

Celes made her way down as quickly as caution would allow. Her first priority was fixing the helm. She checked on the officer slumped over the station. She had weak lifesigns but no apparent injuries. She leaned the young female back and then entered commands into the helm, stabilizing the ships course and putting it into a stable orbit. She looked back towards Jon who was now by the Tellerite lieutenant slumped in the command chair, "Orbit stabilized commander." She made her way over to the Ops station to see if she could get any answers to what happened.

Jon was trying to access any logs from the command chair. He had straightened the Tellerite lieutenant. He looked at Sam and Deanna, "Is it my imagination or do all these officers look like junior officers?"

"They don't look well, that's for sure" Sam knelt down to the closest unconscious crewman and began taking readings. It appeared the oxygen/nitrogen levels in the air were out of whack, an increased carbon dioxide level could have caused the unconsciousness. But why hadn't anyone picked up on the environmental systems being out of whack? Unless they were already unconscious before it happened.

"Something's not right there. No obvious signs of physical trauma, but the environmental systems aren't working. It's too hot for comfort in here, the heat from the core isn't being vented into space, the air mix is way out of whack. Why weren't they aware of it to fix it?" Sam theorized as she continued to run scans. "Celes, can you see if you can get the environmental systems back online?"

"Something else had their attention or they were already unconscious when the environmental system went haywire." Jon commented.

Celes continued to work as best she could at the Ops console, difficult as it was unable to sit at the station. "Everyone on the bridge is a junior officer. I have managed to pull log entries up. It seems the entire senior staff disappeared at various times after transporting down to investigate ruins and the source of the signal. All but the captain. He disappeared while in his quarters, though they never determined why. These junior officers were the most senior officers left on the ship as crew began disappearing and systems began slowly malfunctioning."

Jon listened to Deanna's report and when she had finished, he commented. "It's more than that. Half the crew is missing there has to be some correlation with the disappearances. Take the environmental systems, Could the malfunction be deliberate? Like they were trying to force something out of the ship?"

Celes worked feverishly at the Ops station. "I have made the correction of the environmental controls back to standard and addressed the atmosphere issue. Bio scan shows no harmful substances, though I'll let you be the final say on that doctor." She looked up at the tactical station where Ravencroft was, "Ensign, will you download the tactical logs for the last 7 days. I'm sure the captain will want to look at them." She looked back at Grayson, "If the environmental systems were malfunctioning to get something out, it wasn't because of the crew. The malfunction with the atmosphere happened after they became unconscious. It is the latest of the system malfunctions apparently."

"Okay Deanna, it was just a thought." Jon answered as he looked about the bridge, trying to ascertain just what happened to the ship and crew with half of them missing.

Zack had instantly lifted the phaser rifle, doing a quick sweep of the bridge, the bridge wasn't that large so the first look over, he calmly stepped up to the captain's office, it didn't open, either of lack of power or some other reason. But he eventually stepped away and started to work on the tactical station, but he kept an eye on the bridge just to be safe.

Sam looked up as the freshened air flowed through the bridge. She wasn't convinced the air was the problem and advised the rest of the team to keep their suits on. Cautiously she tried to wake one of the Jupiter's crewmembers.

"I wish I had answers for you Commander, but honestly, I simply can't find a reason why these people would be unconscious nor why so many appear to be missing. It is honestly baffling, and a bit frightening to be perfectly candid. The only hypothesis I can offer is that perhaps the cause for all of this originates from the ruins and the signal itself. I don't know how or why, but that is the only thing we have to work with at this point. I'll keep working here if you wish to check out the rest of the ship."

Jon nodded, "How are you coming in waking up the crewman?" He asked Sam, his eyes sweeping the bridge and the unconscious bodies of the Jupiter crew lying at their stations.

"Standard pharmaceutical stimulants, although it doesn't seem to be working. There's no medical reason I can see for them still being unconscious" Sam was perplexed.

"Perhaps we should begin transporting the crew we find to sickbay, be that here or on the Washington" suggested Celes. "I'm going to begin transmitting the logs to the Washington. Perhaps the captain can make something of them while we continue our investigation here."

"What if we transport them to the sickbay here and bring Dex and some others over here to treat them?" Jon suggested.

"I can inform the captain of our plan" replied Celes. =^=Celes to Washington.=^=

=^=Go ahead Deanna.=^=

=^=Captain, Commander Grayson wants us to use the Jupiter's transporters to send the remaining Jupiter crew to its sickbay. Requesting Dex and other medical staff to assist with treatment.=^=

=^=It sounds like a promising plan, but Dex is unavailable. She just transported to the surface with Ayana and Aiko to investigate the ruins. Have you found anything besides these logs entries?=^=

Celes looked back at Grayson wondering if he might be inclined to answer that query.

=^= Captain, we're still trying to access both the captain's log as well as the chief medical officer's logs.=^= Jon relayed to Shran.

=^=Very well. Go ahead with your plan to transport the crew to the sickbay. I'll send medical staff to assist. Do you require an engineering team?=^=

=^= Make it a small one, to begin with, Captain to stabilize the systems and just make necessary adjustments if needed. Once we know more of what happened here. more engineers can be sent over.=^= Jon replied.

"Tactical logs look corrupted, but transferable," Zack said as he requested a line to transfer the logs to the Washington, adding a request to place the data in an isolated storage device to protect the system of the ship in case there were risks. He had read that corrupt data could be a disguise for viruses.

Celes looked at the tactical logs. =^=Captain, the corruption in these logs shares code from the signal. I suggest an in depth analysis.=^=

=^=Confirmed. We'll take a closer look. I'll get those medical staff and engineers over to you immediately. Let me know if you discover anything else. Shran out.=^=

Celes looked back to Grayson, "I'll transport these bridge officers first and then see if I can find anything else out here. Perhaps you might find something in engineering commander."

Sam nodded as she understood the orders and headed to the Jupiter's sickbay, hoping it was as well stocked as the Washington's. With any luck there would be an EMH or similar program there to act as a medical assistant until more medical staff arrived.

"I'll let you know when I'm ready, beam him first, then I'll let you know when we're ready for more." Dr Howard continued as she started to head off the bridge, hoping the turbolift system was in working order.

"Wait a second Sam, I'll share the lift with you. I'm going to Engineering to see if I can ger any answers."

"I'll await you call doctor" replied Celes as she watched the two senior officers enter the turbolift and leave the bridge. She looked back at Ravencroft, "Just you and me up here now. A bit like the situation here as we found it all over again. Start running internal sensor scans. Perhaps we can find cluster of people. Any information we can discover could be useful. I'll continue working on getting the rest of the personal logs pulled together and sent over to the ship."

Zack found it a little awkward, she had seen him at his lowest and most vulnerable. But he was on duty so he forced those feelings away, so he simply went on with the task, trying to sharpen the sensors.

Sam held the turbolift until Jon entered, wondering what else the Jupiter was going to offer them in terms of weirdness. Unconscious low ranked crew...environmental systems offline, decaying orbit. Something more was up, she could feel it.

"We're missing something...something big" She mumbled to herself as she tried to concentrate on what they knew.