Ghosts in the Machines

Posted on Sat Feb 10th, 2024 @ 12:16pm by Lieutenant JG Eislyn Jortho & Ensign Kate Kono & Lieutenant JG Vienna Steele & Lieutenant JG Tarja zh'Rhun

Mission: Lost & Found
Location: USS Henry Hudson

Eislyn and Kate were unaware of the ghostly discovery. They were too busy trying to reactivate the warp core and getting main power back online. Eislyn had managed to reorganize the crystals in the dilithium chamber already, antimatter pods were primed and ready, and they were now performing maintenance on the plasma systems and the EPS taps before moving to restart the core.

Eislyn was really working up a sweat as she tried to finish the work. "Kate, check the readout and tell me if it is reading that the EPS taps are back in the green."

Kate had just made another cupcake match before moving the game aside to check on her diagnostics. She had reconfigured the screen on her PADD to give a display of a finger tapping on the bubble letters "EPS". The letters turned green and the finger stopped tapping on the letters to give her an animated thumbs up on the screen with celebratory vertical lines dancing just a few inches from the cartoon thumb icon.

"EPS taps are back in the green," Kate said.

"Great. Then it is just a matter of coupling this. Hand me the flux coupler please" Eislyn replied. As she put her hand out, she felt the tool be placed in her grip. "Thanks." Not hearing a reply, she looked up from what she was doing, and to her shock she didn't see Kate standing next to her, but rather a translucent figure that appeared to be Vulcan, his uniform indicating he was an engineer and his rank insignia showing he was a lieutenant commander. Eislyn was flabbergasted at what she was seeing, and blinked rapidly several times to refocus her eyes to ensure she was seeing what she was seeing before she screamed.

Kate looked over at the translucent figure and nodded to him. "Oh, thanks for getting that for me" she replied sweetly.

Kate went back to focusing her dark eyes on the screen a moment, they glanced from side to side as her face lit up with multiple colors and the PADD emitted various beeps and squeaks. Her eyes stopped on the screen, and she blinked rapidly when she realized what had just happened. The game made an *error* sound indicating she lost the match as she froze a moment and her eyes looked back over to the direction of the man that shouldn't have been there.

Kate pulled her phaser and let the PADD suddenly bounce off the floor in preparation to empty her free hand for any kind of retaliation to her aggressive posture.

****

Tarja and Vi slowly made their way into sickbay, investigating the translucent Deltan they had just seen moments ago. The doors opened and the lights made everything quite visible. Tarja was scanning intently as she continuously bobbed her head back and forth from her tricorder readings to what she could see with her own eyes in a visual assessment. She quickly spotted the translucent Deltan female again standing next to a biobed.

Tarja began scanning as she crept slowly towards the entity. "I'm not detecting much to signify we are seeing what we are seeing. I am detecting a slight neurogenic field though, otherwise I'd say we were imagining it. Shall we attempt to communicate with it?" she inquired Vi.

Vienna nodded. “That might be a good idea, though I’m not sure if she’ll even hear us.” She looked at the Deltan. “I’m Lieutenant Vienna Steele, from the USS Washington, can you understand me?”

The Deltan female looked at Vi and Tarja and began to speak, "... Ilia, Chief Medical... Hudson. Can you hear me?"

“Ilia?... We can just about hear you.” Vienna was amazed they had any kind of communication going.

"You must be careful. The... will attempt to capture..." the Deltan Ilia responded.

"I wish we could better understand her. It is still only partially audible" Tarja said to Vi.

Vi nodded in agreement, “I think we’re getting the gist, something out here wants to capture us.” She hit her comm badge. “Vienna to Wyatt, we’ve managed to open lines of communication. Be warned... there’s something out here that wants to capture us!”

*******

Eislyn needed to complete her work, but at this moment, all she could do is stare slack jawed at this translucent Vulcan. If this was indeed some sort of specter, she was going to have to reconsider a few things. She decided to try to speak to it, "Who are you?" she asked.

The Vulcan arched an eyebrow. "Varik" he said simply.

"Is there anything we can do for you, Varik?" Kate asked as she lowered her phaser to low-ready. "We're trying to get your ship free to get it back to a local space dock eventually. However, we're curious what happened to you and the rest of the crew. What can we do to assist you?"

"Captured...study. They are unaware...telepathic..." Varik responded, though not everything he was saying was audible.

Eislyn had gathered enough from what was understandable to know that a race, be it intentional or not, was performing hostile actions. She needed to get the warpcore up and running so that they could properly power ship systems, first and foremost being the shields. "Are you someplace nearby?" she queried.

"Planetoid...cloaked." Varik responded, again only partially audible.

"To cloak something as large as a planetoid would require a great deal of power. If we adjust sensors though, we might be able to locate it." Eislyn looked over at Kate. "I'm going to make a few quick adjustments here. When I give you the go ahead, I want you to raise the shields on this ship. We have to protect ourselves first and foremost."

"Even if something as large as a planet is cloaked, as long as it is nearby, all we would need to do is scan the Washington and any other nearby stationary ship or object to get the planets exact position in space." Kate stated. "The cloak won't matter when we have physics on our side. It's amazing the computer systems didn't just tell us about the gravitational well of mass when we arrived in the system in the first place. If it's here, the computer will tell us exactly where it is with just one scan."

"Alright, here we go." Eislyn said as she gave a small vote of confidence before attempting to reactivate the warp core. All was quiet and somewhat dark for what seemed like an eternity, and then all of a sudden, the familiar hum and glow of the warpcore came into being, and moments later the lights and stations on the ship came to life. Eislyn checked her readouts, saw that they had indeed done their job correctly. "Now Kate, raise the shields. I'll notify the others of our progress, and of our new friend and the information he has provided."

Kate walked over to the nearest console and tapped the shield icon. "Shields are up!"