How To Find A

Posted on Thu Nov 14th, 2019 @ 6:09am by Lieutenant Alexis Aenera & Lieutenant Commander William Gunnison & Lieutenant Commander William Rogers

Mission: Sounds of Silence
Location: Science Lab 3

At that, Alexis hadn't even stopped to see if Calvin COULD bring her voice back, instead snatching the PADD out of Shaille's hands with a sharp and very serious nod. She reached out and grabbed William's arm and tugged him towards the door, only releasing him when he began to follow of his own accord. She flashed a mostly-smile at the child as she saw him being brought along in his father's hand. She typed one quick message on the PADD, "We're going to my lab." Showed it for a pair of seconds, then began typing frantically, barely watching where she was going. After about forty-five seconds she handed the PADD back to William.

"I thought I saw something needle-like hit Lt. Levine in the neck, that means that they're everywhere, they have to be. In fact, there may be one in my lab if they didn't get bored and wander away. I heard something in there, went to investigate and found a semi-warmer spot in a corner. I didn't SEE anything, which means they're under some sort of cloak or some sort of camouflage. No idea on what it can do, but we're going to run scans when we get to my lab if we can do it without giving what we're doing away."

William typed out a message back. "We should definitely be careful about giving away what we're doing. Depending on what these individuals and their technology are capable of, there could be a dozen of them with 5 meters of the two of us right now and we'd never even know it. It may be best to communicate via written words right now. If they have any sort of universal translator, such a device may function like the ones in our comm badges, in that it works on spoken words but not written ones, or at least be set up for written words at the moment."

Lexi read that and chewed on her upper lip for about five steps before starting to type her response, coming to a stop in front of and to the side of her lab doors in order to finish, "I'm stuck at this method anyways, so this is fine. Brainstorm: Cloaking device, active camouflage, visual phase or physical phase differential. What am I missing as an option?"

Following breakfast Buck had been going over the helm logs from the previous shifts when he'd noticed something he considered out of the ordinary. Looking to rule out a scientific explanation, and not wanting to tax his increasingly sore throat with the comms, he'd made his way down to the labs. Spotting Lexi and the Ops head just ahead he jogged over to catch up with them.

William quickly read over Lexi's message, then typed out a message to Buck: "Possible alien intruders on board using some type of cloaking device, source of strange virus going about may be them experimenting on crew. Switch to written communications for time being to hopefully prevent them from knowing what we're planning in effort to detect/uncloak them. See Lt. Aenera's comments above. Any suggestions, no matter how strange they may seem at the moment, appreciated."

After handing the padd to Buck, William grabbed another padd and typed out for Lexi (and Buck, when he finished reading William's original message), "Some animals, such as certain species of chameleon or octopus on Earth, have the ability to change their skin coloration to blend in with the specific environment. Also cannot rule out other biological capabilities, such as empathic or pheromone abilities. Trick our brains into 'overlooking' their presence. This may be the reason for some reports from younger civilians on board, like my son, indicating that they seem to have been able to see intruders better. Their brains are not fully developed yet, and so may not be affected in quite the same way."

Alexis nodded, "Pheremones, perhaps, not empathic or telepathic, I'd know, I'm Betazoid. Chameloid is another possibility for sure. I can figure out a way to unmask them, even if I factor in all of the potential methods, but what do we do when we do that?" She showed the PADD to William, then handed it to Buck with an emphatic move to let him know that this was more of a question for him.

Buck frowned as he read the messages, scrolling back up through the text log to make sure he'd read it correctly. It sounded a lot like an area 51 conspiracy theory to him. "Capture 1 and find out where they R coming from?" He texted out on the PADD, which he handed back to Lexi.

She took a few seconds to think, giving the PADD over to William as she did so. This was a bit out of her area of expertise. Sure, finding them was in it, but capturing and interrogating? She took the PADD back and typed again, slowly this time, "If we can, yes. But if there are multiple aliens, we may find their whole ship and then what? How will they respond? If they're more powerful than us, what would we do?" She held the PADD out between them, eyes half-glazing over in thought.

"Yes," William typed back. "We do not know how they may react if they feel threatened enough. If there are more than one of them, with their cloaking tech they wouldn't even need to be all that powerful in other areas. Imagine the end results of a phaser set at even moderate power and fired at the warp core. Even if they're armed with nothing more than knives, they could easily kill many, if not all, of us before we'd have a chance to stop them. Should we make a direct effort to confront them, we'd need some way to 'uncloak' all of them at once, or at least be able to know how many there are and where they are at all times so that we can defend ourselves against any counterattack on their part."

Lexi shook her head, finally triggering the door to the lab, taking the first steps inside to where she wasn't quite sure was a safe location, but she had a reason and maybe even idea or two. She typed again, then handed it to William with the gesture to hand it to over to Buck when he was done with it, "First: We have to be able to find them. Pheromones; Phasing; Technology; Biological Camouflage. Probable ship in contact or nearby, another possibility temporal wormhole 'bridge'. Going to scan for temporal markers, will take several minutes." She took off for her console as soon as the PADD left her hand.

William read over the note, then added for Buck, "Look for the possibility of a cloaked ship, either nearby or docked with the Astraea." He handed the padd to Buck, then went to another station and began scanning for biological agents in the atmosphere. If pheromones were involved, there could be something left in the air that the environmental controls could be set to detect. Glancing over at Cole, William also worked to cross-reference chemical agents that would affect those in the adult brain the most. As he'd mentioned to Buck and Alexis earlier, if something like pheromones were indeed involved, then they must be targeting those parts of the brain that only fully developed after full physical maturity was done. That would explain why Cole seemed to be able to see them the best, and why he'd reported that they seemed surprised that he could see them.

The three adults seemed to be focused on their tasks, Alexis running different scans at the same time, all focused on their current location. Her senses were alert, there wasn't as much pain as there was before, so maybe that meant there wasn't one of whatever it was there? No stabby stabbing pains. She sighed loudly and leaned back into her chair and then there was an alert light flashing on one of the displays. She leaned forward in a rush, examining the notice, then punching a trio of buttons to open a text link to the other consoles, "I've got something. It's a particle decay sequence, doesn't occur naturally anywhere I know of and is used in certain technologies. It's a phased cloaking system byproduct, only produced after the source has passed through and is no longer active. Do you guys have anything?"

William responded, "I'm also getting some feedback from the environmental systems. Looks like there's some traces of some sort of pheromone in the air that, when cross-referenced with the ship's medical database, is something that may have an adverse effect on the parts of the brain in most humanoids that deal with the senses of sight and hearing that, to put into layman's terms, would seem to make someone not really see or hear certain things. It may be possible to track these intruders by looking for high concentrations of both these pheromones and the cloaking system byproducts."

Buck rubbed the back of his neck absentmindedly as he tried to focus on trying to locate wherever it was the intruders were using as a base of operations. His headache and the update texts from the other two were making it difficult to focus. The location, he suspected, was tied in with the increased number of warp field adjustments helm had recorded in recent days. Not enough to be suspicious in isolation, but now…. He added a message to the group. "We've been having to readjust the warp field during the trip. Thought it could be an alignment issue. Looks more like a variable phase displacement cloak for a shuttle though."

Alexis had to think, and fast. The biggest question was how to counter these problems. "Lieutenant Gunnison: Start making scans, find those pheremone concentrations. Lieutenant Rogers: Find the location of that displacement, where the warp field is whatevering it needed to do to require alignment." Her mind began to try to figure out how to counter a phased cloak, the answer was really more of a theory than anything else. But that was something she'd worked out an idea for. Instead, she typed a new message, adding one more person to the conversation:

"Captain Laurens: We have a problem, but we're working on it. Here's what we know..." And she went on to explain everything they knew, everything they suspected and how they might go about revealing these aliens.

END:

Lieutenant Alexis Aenera
Chief Science Officer
USS Astraea

Lieutenant William Gunnison
Chief Operations Officer
USS Astraea

Lieutenant William Rogers
Chief Flight Officer
USS Astraea