We Need To Find Something?
Posted on Tue Nov 27th, 2018 @ 12:32pm by Captain Benjamin Ingram Dr
Mission:
S1E1: Welcome Home, Now Go Away
Location: Canopus Station, Command Centre, Messier 4 Globular Cluster
Timeline: MD1 10.30AM
"I officially hate long jumping." Dania muttered as she stepped into the Command Centre.
She'd been in one of the other secured areas as the Command Module made the jump. If you'd told her six months ago she'd be leaving all she knew behind for a chance to be one of the first to collect intel on an entirely new area of space, she'd have scoffed at you.
Yet, here she was, feeling queasy and unsteady on her feet, in the Command Centre of the Command Module of a Starbase waiting to be built in Messier 4, their new home. Before she left she'd told her mother and sisters she was going on a deep space, deep cover assignment and that she may not be back for a while, that they may not hear from her for a while. Needless to say they were not happy. However, they would learn to live with it, they said.
Further musing was knocked out of her head as she noticed the expression on Commander Ingram's face.
"Sir?" She gave a short query.
"Oh nothing, I just wondered if you had any more gleaming insights to offer apart from the physical malaise of breaking at least two laws of classically held physics," he said mildly, tapping a finger against the central command console. He then looked at her again, his eyes flicking from her face to her collar and back again. "You're the Intel Section Chief aren't you? Stroud? Strom? From Earth's Eurasia prefecture, correct?"
"Yep," Dania nodded as she stepped over to the nearest working console, "I'm the resident viking spook. What do you need me to do?" She figured focusing on the obvious issue of there being an issue was the thing to do, rather than dwell on the snippy remark and the half insulting placement of her origin.
"Find something that is lost," he said primly and gestured to the holo table. Above its glossy black surface, a model of Canopus floated. Slowly it fell apart into three sections: the domed upper docking structure and Command Module, followed by the flared cylinder of the Support Module, followed by the spherical Engineering Module. The lower two modules flashed red and vanished.
"We have minimal long-range sensors, minimal power, and whilst we have supplies to last years they are all earmarked for the assembly of the station. So, self-styled 'Space Viking': how would you go about finding something, when you can barely see?" he gestured to the table.
"So we're getting no transponder signatures, no comms and no debris or anything to indicate any type of location?" Dania asked, her eyes switching from Ingram to the display. "Calculate last known positions, correlate with the intended coordinates then see if they haven't over or under shot. We look for anomalies along the trajectory. They could have exited sooner and entered a nebula or some sort of sensor shielding particle."
"The Long Jump Phase Space Accelerator is a new enough branch of theoretical physics they're still making up names for some of the spatial effects," he said, his voice clicking into the 'Lecture Mode' so often used by the more hidebound Academy instructors. The Starbase diagram vanished, replaced by a simple map of the known Milky Way galaxy and then highlighting the globular clusters that orbited around it.
One of the clusters, orbiting between and high above the swirling sea of stars blinked green.
"Messier 4. At a distance of 8500 light years from Sol it's not exactly a trivial distance to cover. The United Federation Of Planets could parallel park with ease in that distance, with wiggle room," he said, raising his hands the way a stage magician might and began to make gestures at the display. The computer, primed for such visual cues, began to project a stubby cone from within one of the spiral arms, pushing th wide mouth of it so that it swallowed Messier 4 and a vast swathe of space around it.
"That is the random exit trajectory diagram for a Long Jump misfire. Its why the calculations needed to make a successful jump take so long to compute, or in the case of our rushed expedition brute forced by co-opting the Binar homeworld for a day and a half," he drew his hand back, shrinking the image down to just Messier 4 as the cone shrank along with it until only the side facing the Milky Way was highlighted. "To our backs the wide open gulf of intergalactic space, a purer void you will never find. Ahead of us...well who knows. Its why we are here. A total of 78 possible stellar masses that might now be the home port to very necessary pieces of infrastructure."
He tapped one finger against his chin, causing the projection to throw up an error code as it tried to parse the gesture. He grumbled.
"But you're right. Variables...computer. Calculate the mass of the departure flotilla compared to how we arrived. Assume the Support and Engineering modules were at their correct masses before transit," he said. He then looked at her. "This might take some time. Whilst the computer calculates, why don't you dazzle me with your keen intellect? What do you know of these Myriad that caused the Traveller so much bother? Astound me."
"From the data the Traveller managed to dump," Dania began, looking over at Ingram again, "they're an incorporeal group. MO is akin to would be gods offering protection to any and all considered competition but woe is you if you don't do as they say, and even if you do depending on what side of the bed they woke up this morning. Any lesser society, they would either hinder in their attainment of warp capable vessels or aid them but under servitude contract wrapped up in a neat little bow. Others they would savagely destroy to prove a point.
They can act through mechanized proxies fashioned in the style of what you may call...angels or divine beings, you could call them.
They seem to be able to hijack technology and influence people of any type. With what happened with the Traveller and Acheron, we know they have a good deal of information on us and we need to be careful lest we let them through to our side of the Galaxy."
"As good an example as to why the Prime Directive is a law and not a guideline for Starfleet," Ingram mused. "That last statement of yours is something that worries me greatly. Every sensor we have is a conduit right back to the main computer. Canopus was meant to ship out with a Superintendent AI in residence, but given the ease by which Abborax took over a Federation warship...we must make our selves impervious to their digital attacks. Or all they'll need to do is appear in system, and Canopus will be fit to fall from the sky."
Dania nodded, "agreed. We'll need to employ non standard methods of data keeping, at least for a while, until we can figure out a way to keep our systems 100% secured."
"Are you familar with the term 'air gapping'?" Ingram asked.
Dania nodded, "securing a system by not having it plugged into any outside networks. The way to communicate with said network would be by inputting data we wanted sent through a connected outlet. That way we can also control how much we send and receive, as we'd have to manually input data into our systems."
It was often a way Intelligence installations kept their data secured.
"Not just a pretty face I see," Benjie nodded. "It'll mean manning the Command Centre around the clock with full shifts, but if it means we have a layer of intangibility between our external sensors and the main computer all's the better. A bit old fashion to be sure, but a classic never goes out of style."
Storm nodded, "People operated with pen and paper for centuries to keep intel secured, and it worked." Then added, "I'll get started on isolating the system immediately."
She would still keep her logs secured via the p&p in short hand routine, to keep data away from possibly influenced crew and input it into the system only as and when necessary.
"We travelled here through realms of space and time unknowable to our senses and barely perceived by the canniest sciences of the age...and now we come back to pen, paper and ink," Ingram chuckled. "Truly a voyage into dark times for some."
"Sometimes the best way to hide things, sir, is on a blank piece of paper." Dania smirked as she stepped away to the security console and began to make preparations to isolate the Command Module computer core from the outside network.
"Huum. Well who am I to judge-" Ingram began to say, before the computer chimed an alert. "Ah, the calculation is done and...and clearly it's broken. The Command Module is 10'000 tonnes over its calculated mass. Starfleet Logistics went over every gram of weight for the Long Jump calculations!"
His hand's flew across the controls of the main display, and the holographic display volume lit up with data panes filled with dense calculations. Ingram's eyed flickered from one to the other, shifting figures around.
"At least they sent us with the entire calculus of the jump in storage, just need to rearrange a few variables to match the new mass figures and...there."
The tables vanished, and a map of Messier 4 appeared. The exit vector cone returned but shrank down from the entire Milky Way facing side of Messier 4 to a handful of stars. Then further, until it wasn't a narrowing cone any more, but a jagged serrated blade pushing into Messier 4. Part of the project impacted the star marked Canopus Alpha.
The other part of the projection pushed a little further and touched a second star.
"Well...at least we have a rough idea of which star the Service and Engineering modules landed in," Ingram said, nodding at the plot. "And it's close too, no more than five light years away."
"Roughly a day or so in each direction at warp nine." Dania mused. "And we have a rough idea where to focus our sensors and communications readouts, if that's indeed where they ended up."
"Well consider your work docket full then. Work with Operations to refine our short range sensors into something that can at least give us something on our target system. Even if they can pick up the pulse beacons from the other Modules, that would be quite nice," Ingram stated and smoothed a hand down his shirt. "Now, if you'll pardon me. I need to take a walk to see Doctor Kiiz, to make sure he's not running through our supply of bandages and mophax."
"Yes, sir." Dania nodded and tapped a few commands at her console. "I wanted to live in interesting times, we'll we've got some."
