Revealing The Foe

Posted on Sat Nov 30th, 2019 @ 8:54pm by Captain Abigail Laurens & Lieutenant Commander William Gunnison & Lieutenant Alexis Aenera & Captain Amanda Foxwell & Chief Petty Officer Benjamin Thor & Commander Ichiko Gail & Lieutenant Commander Calvin Morgan & Lieutenant Commander William Rogers

Mission: Sounds of Silence
Location: Observation Lounge

The preparations had been made and Alexis had left her original tricorder running to keep a track of where she suspected the alien in the room to be. She'd fiddled with it a couple times, mostly for observation's sake and the double flash whenever she put it back down and the fact that no one had entered or exited had ensured that the alien was truly present. With the knowledge of the phasing cloak, letting the subject actually walk through walls, made thins more complicated. It would do no good to find the subject and just let it get away just by slipping through a wall.

She finished making alterations to the tricorder she held in her lap and looked up at the Captain and nodded. She was ready, wondering if this would actually work. It should, the concept was actually relatively simple: The tricorder would emit a modulating sensor sweep on an area and if something came into the visual field that wasn't previously there, it would lock into that frequency to put the 'target' in view. As it did so, it would also emit an inaudible sound that was above normal hearing range, which she hoped and expected would cause that slight enough change to the surroundings of the subject to interfere with the matter-altering factor of this cloaking device. The last was theory, but sound theory.

The scientist set the tricorder into her hand, ready to activate it as soon as the Skipper gave the order.

Abigail drew in a breath, a rapid succession of orders being typed out on the PaDD in front of her, each one stacking up on the screen.

"Lieutenant Matashi. The weapons locker is near the replicator, position yourself at the replicator."

"Captain Foxwell, position yourself near the door."

"Lieutenant Rue and Mister Thor, self modulating contour conforming shields on my order."

"Commander Gail, access the command controls and prepare to go to red alert."

"Lieutenant Morgan, be prepared for casualties."

"Lieutenant Rogers and Lieutenant Gunnison, help Lieutenant Matashi arm anyone necessary. Speed is of essence."

Finally, she turned a steady gaze on the hulking Klingon that had remained stoically silent in the back of the room. "Mister Kaarg, I want you with Commander Gail and I."

"Lieutenant Aenera, stand by."

Ichiko nodded, and typed in a response all her own, "Of course. The usual I suspect." and she made her way over to the wall replicator and started to type in a few commands. It just happened that close to the replicator was the console for general command control. She grumbled a bit to herself and tapped a few commands into the console to update the visual interface from Terran Standard to a language more familiar and comforting to the Daughter of Ts'usu: Her native tongue.

Elegant lines and symbols replaced easily understood Terran standard as she keyed in a sequence but didn't finish it. When the replicator generated a mug with a fresh chai latte, the rabbitess turned her attention back to Abigail. Waiting for the signal.

Calvin simply nodded. He didn't have much on him to do anything, but fingers crossed it would not come to that. He opened up his tricorder, interested in gathering some information in time allowed it after their move was made.

Buck shifted in his chair, easing in back slightly and turning so that he faced towards the replicator.

Amanda watched as everyone else moved, deciding to move last, heading to stand near the door as ordered.

Ben started preparing some subroutines, shields were not really his thing, but he thought to himself "how hard could it be".

Alexis nodded back fractionally at Abigail and pressed the activation key on her modified tricorder and her guess of where the alien was off only by a couple of feet and the hazy figure of the creature came into view and the Betazoid's eyes locked on its own. It only took a matter of seconds as everyone else began to move before the alien noticed the eyes on it. It shifted to the side, bringing something up to its mouth and hissing into it. It pressed an activation key on a device and backed up to the wall and flattened against it. Apparent alarm crossed it's features and the limbs tensed hard as it pressed the button again.

This time an elongated and threatening hiss, a defensive instinct of its species, before it gabbled into the device in its hand again and started for the door, stopping as it saw Captain Foxwell blocking its path. Its eyes darted around the room, looking for an exit, then tried a set of keys on the device on its belt and another look of alarm at the fact that it still stood in this room and froze, not knowing what to do next.

William moved forward, drawn phaser in hand. Addressing the intruder, he said, "Whoever you are, obviously we're aware of you, and have a way to make you visible. Would I be correct in assuming that you can understand our verbal communications?"

The intruder nodded. William continued. "We do not know your intent, but due to your efforts to keep yourselves concealed from us we are going on the assumption that you are not here for peaceful purposes. You will agree to stand down and have your companions uncloak. You will then explain yourselves, and agree to reverse whatever it is you've done to us. Failure to comply with these terms and any other terms we set down will force us to take more drastic measures to act in what we will consider to be self-defense."

Everything seemed to happen quickly. Abigail nodded and the room exploded into chaos. Lighting across the ship lowered, the klaxons sounded and red lights strobed around them. Weapons were uncached and distributed, her crew moved swiftly and deliberately despite being at less than their best. It made her proud.

Then her gaze fell on the alien standing in the room with them. There is an element of disappointment at the discovery, which coincided with a feeling of relief. Disappointment because this discovery meant that the aliens had been on the ship for some time, likely since they had left Meria, and they had somehow remained undetected, something she took as a failure on her part for having failed to protect her crew from this threat. On the other hand, the sense of relief was genuine. Hopefully now Lieutenant Morgan could work out what had been done to them and reverse it.

Rising from her seat, Abigail picked up the PaDD and walked across to fall in next to William, offering a slight nod at his demands before she typed into the PaDD again. "Use transporters. Start confining them to the brig!"

The alien talked into its device, having made the decision to cooperate, passing that on to its fellows, then held it up as it translated for it, "We did nothing to permanently harm any of you. Any discomfort would have ended within three cycles of this time. We studied you all to ensure this."

"Discomfort maybe, but I highly doubt your testing was as failsafe as you think. Obviously the Hippocratic oath doesn't exist in your culture," Calvin replied sourly.

Whatever this ‘Hippocratic Oath’ that this creature was talking about didn’t translate apparently and the alien spoke into its translation device again, “The stress hormone your people produces is a valuable substance to our people, many medicines can be made from it, many of our people helped, but cannot be synthesized, therefore.” It gestured around generally. It paused for a moment, then gestured at Ichiko, “This machine that makes things where there is nothing, what is this?”

Buck folded his arms over his chest and narrowed his eyes while he watched the formally invisible alien. There was something very familiar about this. He remained quiet and waited for someone more versed in replicator technology to answer the question.

When the order came through, Mica didn't hesitate. Her fingers flew across the glass of the console, watching as the programming commands were activated in perfect syncronicity from Thor.

Ichiko, to her credit, managed to wrangle in her shock with professional calm. There was an invisible alien, now revealed to them, in this room. A ghost no longer. Though, this 'Ghost' that had been driving her and her crewmates to stress and sickness was now asking questions and those questions would probably lead to more requests. A request in exchange for relief, she'd at least listen.

Her response came in the form of the written word on her PaDD, "It's called a Replicator by Federation science. I imagine you're going to be asking to see it work, or asking for one of your own in a few moments. I'm certain we can negotiate something, but I'm sure I speak for the Captain when I say that we'd prefer to negotiate with our proper voices. A side effect of your hormone harvest, I'm afraid." Diplomacy and tact were ever the bread and butter of the Ts'usugi.

The alien looked at the words on the PADD in obvious incomprehension and it some into its translator again, “I am sorry, I cannot understand your written language, the translation device only operates on the spoken words.”

Ichiko gave an understanding look... or one that was just Done with the situation. She handed the PaDD to Calvin, as he still had his voice, and gave a nod.

"The First Officer says," Calvin stopped to read the PADD quick, pondering on how much to just ad-lib. "Negotiation is possible, but we need our voices back. So I say, the sooner you sit down with me and explain what you did, the sooner I can reverse the damage you've done to my fellow crew members. And then the sooner we can resolve the problems at hand." Calvin stiffened up in his chair a bit, squaring to the "new"comer of the room, waiting for an answer.

The alien nodded, then spoke into a communications device for a moment that didn’t get translated, then into its translator, “To negotiate, the High Supervisor must be here. Please to make your people to allow him to come?” It paused for a moment to get a nod or a shake of the head, then went on, “I do not know how it works or why it stops someone from talking, but this is what we use. It provides a local pain relief with a substance to keep the area from scarring over when we harvest. Perhaps there is something that causes the problem accidentally?”

Abigail drew in a sharp breath, tapping something out on her PaDD before handing it to Gregory. "Take it to the brig, along with the 'High Supervisor', and any more of them on the ship. Until they prove otherwise, consider them a threat."