Contemplation

Posted on Sat Aug 20th, 2022 @ 2:09pm by Captain Shran dh'Klar

Mission: A Trip to Middle Earth
Location: USS Washington

Shran had little to do while on this medically required time off. He wasn't barred from all duties, but he certainly couldn't be doing what he would prefer at this moment. Reports had been cycling in over the last 29 hours and everything seemed to be looking fine. He knew Jon could handle things, he just hated being on ship and feeling so helpless.

He pulled the PaDD that a young ensign had brought to him less than an hour go. One of the new officers that had rotated in, an engineer fresh from the Academy. Shran look at the PaDD, the information displayed told him about the repairs to the ship. Sickbay had been fully repaired, which was the priority, and the work on the holodecks was well underway, as well as the repairs to the surrounding areas.

He thought about the holodeck, what was supposed to be a teambuilding exercise had turned into a fight for their lives. Sam, Shon, T'Plana, they had all been severely injured, though the medical report said they would all recover in due course. Not everyone trapped on the holodecks had been so lucky. An ensign had died of severe trauma and internal injuries when a massive tornado in their holoprogram launched the ensign into a wooded area, impaling them upon a tree branch. By the time they had been transported to sickbay, Perrim could do very little. Perrim being the only doctor available at that moment forced a medical choice to be made, save the ensign or save the trio of injured senior officers. While the loss of one patient would certainly be something Perrim would have to deal with, it was also something that would haunt Shran, because he felt responsible for the situation.

He reached for the analysis report from Celes regarding the omicron particles. She had concluded that because of the three types of radiation present in the nebula, an unforeseen situation occured allowing the omicron particles to pass through the shields and to saturate all of the holoprojectors. This enhanced the holodecks, but the surge in power also caused a cascade failure in the computer which placed all of the holodecks on a lockdown and overrode the safety protocols, deactivating them completely while also setting the difficulty of every program to a dangerously high setting. While Celes had determined exactly what had happened, she still couldn't give a complete explanation for how or why it happened. So many things had to go wrong.

He sat in quiet contemplation about these reports. So many had things had to happen that just didn't seem possible. Multiple system failures, along with the back ups, and the second back up. It defied all the odds. Logic would dictate that an answer existed, and that they simply defied the odds. He couldn't accept that. That only left him with a single quote in mind from an ancient Earth detective story, "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." Sherlock Holmes always seemed to be aprospro when dealing with any mystery.

He stood and began to slowly pace from one side of the room to the other, considering all the facts, and slowly, methodically, checking off every box imaginable while inputting every possible variable that might make sense. Finally, after nearly an hour of pacing and contemplating, something dawned on him, something dark. During their last mission, Shon had been tortured mercilessly by Loki, but towards the end of the endeavor, she had brokered a deal with Hela, a deal that returned Shon's daughter to her. Hela never said what she would take as payment other than the fact that the scales had to be balanced, a life for a life. It was Shran who had shortly thereafter killed Loki, and that was something that would have to be avenged, no matter how frayed that familial relationship might be. Hela had great power, and placing crew members in a life and death situation certainly seemed right in line with the daughter of the Trickster god Loki. A reckoning was required, but Shran would need to speak with Shon first, along with his other officers.