Starry Starry Map
Posted on Thu Mar 14th, 2019 @ 7:47pm by Captain Benjamin Ingram Dr
Mission:
S1E2: A Temple To New Gods
Location: Command Deck, Support Module, Xilos Orbit
Timeline: MD3 20.00PM
After having had a her break and a chat with Teeran, Dania felt slightly better. Only slightly. There was still so much to do, so much to make sense of, and she didn't feel like she had enough time to do it all.
"One step at a time. I can't get it all done all at once, no matter how much I'd like to." She told herself as she brought up a star map. The Xilosian world was in the centre of it, showing the nearly fully functional Canopus Station near it.
Kle had said that they had detected strong modulated EM signals about twenty light years away from Xilos, but not having had any kind of a space fleet, they could not get to it.
"Computer, show me an overview of L and M class planets within twenty five light years in each direction of Xilos." Dania ordered, crossing her arms on her chest as she did so, eyes fixated on the holographic display.
"Access denied." The neutral female voice of the ship's computer responded, the preternatural calm cutting the train of thought off at the past. "Access to long-range active sensors had been restricted by order of Commander Benjamin Ingram."
Dania pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. "Of course." She muttered softly, before tapping her commbadge, "Storm to Ingram. Can you meet me at the Command Deck, please?"
"Funny, I was just about to ask you to do the same," Benjamin said pointedly as stepped off the lower steps of the stairs that led up to his office overlooking Station Ops. He walked briskly along the back of the bridge to the station Storm was using, and peered at the screen. "A 25 light year radial scan for all L and M class worlds. I can think of more subtle forms of announcing our presence here, but they lack the sort of pizazz as sending off a subspace flare. Explanation. Now."
"The Xilosians detected modulated EM signals from a planet and/or system roughly twenty light years from Xilos some fifty years back, but never explored them." Dania gave Ingram a wary look. "So I'm trying to figure out if its a dud, something dead and gone by now, or somene we can talk to perhaps."
"Huum I'm seeing a number of assumptions there. First off that the signal was of intelligent origin. I find the Xilosian's quite fascinating, but remember they barely passed into the Information Age before the Concordance arrived. They probably detected a Gamma Ray Burst, plenty of those got mistaken for 'First Contact' on Earth back in its Dark Age," Benjamin mused, his voice slipping into lecture mode as he pondered. "And if it was an electromagnetic wave signal, it would be limited to the speed of light. Meaning it was picked up here 50 years ago, but had been transmitted originally 25 years before that. And that's if the Xilosian's got the math right in the first place."
He held up a hand.
'But...to send a coherent signal across 25 light years and still have it intelligible at the other end, taking into account attenuation and signal loss is not an inconsiderable achievement for a species. Especially if it was picked up by a species who were still playing around with microwave burst transmitters," he looked at Storm out of the corner of his eye. "Oh, I'm still nixxing this idea in the bud before you announce to one and all that we're here. Sorry Commander, but until Canopus Station is fully online we are on passive sensors only. Curiosity is good, caution is better."
"And we can piece together a rough map from the fragments we have, sir." Dania nodded, to indicate she heard him. "From the Traveller's records, from our deep space telescopes and from our own scans when we arrived here. Should be able to extrapolate at least a vague idea of what's out there. I'm not looking at active sensors, I'm looking at the data we already have. I'm not saying this search will be at all successful, but if it is, we'll at least have a guess at where we can look, when and if we have long range sensors back. If it'll even be viable then."
"That I will allow," Ingram said after a moments consideration. "Computer, complete original search request using archival data, include information from the Traveller archive."
A map began to populate on the screen. At first the handful of stars within 25 light years of Xilos began to blink with data codes representing viable M and L class worlds. But then, like a wave sweeping in from the side, those codes shifted slightly into vagaries as conflicting data made analysis impossible. It like like a rot had washed through this area of space in the not too distant past, and Xilos was just behind the leading edge of it.
And Carpathia was riding just above the crest of that wave, saved probably by the fact it had no traditionally habitable worlds or saptient species.
"Odin's beard..." Dania muttered, "they've completely ravaged it." Then she focused on the twenty light year area. "So, with our map, we have the following possibilities," she pointed to several areas on the map. "Maybe if we show it to Kle, we can narrow the location down?"
"Perhaps. I'd be more inclined to present this to Kisbeck, Prime Philosopher and all that. Kle is a military commander, her knowledge of the signal might well have been gleaned from easily accessible media streams," Ingram muttered as he looked more closely at the map. He reached out and tapped one of the stars deep inside the wave of destruction that still shone a healthy blue. "It would seem one of the eighteen star systems survived. Might be the Concordance homeworld, or someone with technical prowess enough to fend them off."
"I would say show it to both." Dania countered. "Saves time if one doesn't know and gives us twice the intel if they do. Kisbeck is a good man, but Kle, in my assessment is the more logical, grounded one."
"Huum, somewhat telling that I trust the word of a fellow scholar whereas you trust the martial training of the other. But I do like the idea of polling both of them if only to cover both bases," Ingram said with a nod. "Approval granted."
Dania nodded, "computer, location of Formation Leader Kle and Prime Kisbeck?"
"Formation Leader Kle and Prime Kisbeck are located in the Agricultural Dome"
"Open a communications channel to them," Ingram said. At his utterance, the computer chimed, a pair of holographic panes opened before Dania and Benjamin. On one was presented the bewildered face of Prime Kisbeck, whose eyes narrowed as he tilted his head this way and that, unused as he was to Federation technology. Kle, on the other hand, took it in stride, giving a curt nod to the person she had been talking to as the window opened.
"Prime Kidsbeck, Leader Kle, sorry for the interruption of your activities acclimating your people to their new residence, but Commander Storm has a question she wants to pose to both of you," Ingram said, turning a little to give Dania a little 'after you' gesture.
Dania tapped a few commands on the console, "I'm sending a rough map to Kle's PADD. If you remember my question from earlier, when Commander Jiang and I were with you at the Dome? See if there's anything you recognize and circle a location for me? If you were ever informed of one? I would me grateful for your help."
"Kle isn't with me," Kisbeck said, his voice echoing slightly as he turned to look over his shoulder. He then walked out of the view of the comm channel on his end, and appeared over the shoulder of Leader Kle. A look of somewhat boyish wonder on his face. "Will you look at this? Two-way video-...huum, well not video as such, more of three-dimensional projection system? And in real time as well? The computer power requirements alone must be staggering-"
"Look. A star map," Kle said, a note of exasperation entering her voice as she held up the padd. "This is about The Message? I told you everything we knew, that it was detected fifty years ago and was determined to be of significant intelligent origin but it was too far away to be of any real time use to us. We never detected it again."
"I remember studying it in university. It was a big help for funding of the Peace Station," Kisbeck said. He looked thoughtful for a moment. "A repeating carrying wave we detected over the span of several months. We determined it was some sort of audio signal, we even decoded the structure enough to render it audible."
"I don't suppose you have that audio file to hand?" Ingram asked.
"Oh, sorry no. It wasn't deemed culturally significant at the time of The Fall Back," Kisbeck said apologetically. "Huum, let me see if I can remember how it sounded. Sparked something of a love of languages for me. Ah, yes. It said 'Ovo je Persephone kolonija, trebamo hitnu pomoć Zvjezdane flote'. No idea what that means, but if it helps?"
Dania's eyes widened momentarily, before she refocused. "Kisbeck, did you ever find a location on your maps? Where the signal might have come from. We've put together a rough map of the area, that's what I sent to Kle. If you did, can you please mark it for us?"
"Persephone Colony. Persephone Colony...fifty years ago? Hmmm."
"I think so. But I'll be honest I was a geophysics person, not astronomy. But I can ask around. I know a few Philosophers from the Stellar Accession Foundation made it to our Cradle Facility. Didn't we also have a stellarnaut in your Formation?" Kisbeck asked, his eyes tracking to the edges of the holo screen.
"I'll ask around, but I think we had a pair of them. Kaz and Kumic, orbital pilots for the SAF if I recall. They might know something," Kle ventured.
"Thank you for your time. If you get any more information, please feel free to ask the computer to direct you to me personally," Benjamin said with a smile. He then made a closing gesture, and the holo windows snapped shut. His cold blue eyes turned to look at Storm.
Dania was staring down at the console for a moment, her eyes darting left to right, softly repeating the words, over and over. "Ovo je Persephone kolonija, trebamo hitnu pomoć Zvjezdane flote."
"Persephone Colony...trebamo, mi trebamo...nam nuzhna... pomoć...pomoshch... help...Zvjezdane... Zvezdnogo.... flota... Starfleet..." Storm looked over at Ingram, then over at the computer again, "Computer, look up Federation Standard Translation of the following: Ovo je Persephone kolonija, trebamo hitnu pomoć Zvjezdane flote."
"Working."
Then she finally turned to Ingram again, "I think it's an SOS from a Federation Colony or a Human Colony called Persephone. Except it doesn't ring a bell for me."
"Ensure that it doesn't ring loudly," Benjamin said as he reached over, and typed a code into the computer terminal. "As of this moment, I'm classifying this information under the Nightmare Purple classification. That means you speak of this to no one. I will talk to Kle and Kisbeck about keeping their end of it secured. You report any findings or information to me directly."
Dania nodded, "I'll need access to scour the database to see if we have any intel on the colony. Our database and the Traveller's database that we've got. Definitely not connecting this to the grid."
"Agreed. Once we have a stable uplink back to the Milky Way, we can access the larger Memory Alpha Data Banks. Anything you find comes to me first, are we crystal clear on that point?" he asked pointedly.
"Yes, sir." Dania nodded, raising a blonde eyebrow momentarily before lowering it and nodding.
"Good," Benjamin said as he looked around the back of the bridge. "Word of this spreading wouldn't do anyone any good anyway. Carry on."
With another nod, Dania bowed out and stepped over to a different console, to set up a secure search algorithm only she could access.
