Suspicious Findings, Part 2

Posted on Sun Aug 4th, 2019 @ 3:56pm by Lieutenant Sera Williams & Lieutenant JG Lillian James

1,432 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Canary
Location: Io Wreckage Storage
Timeline: MD 02, 15:00

The two had been searching through the wreckage of the Io for the better part of the day. There were no clues that pointed to anything other than a sudden warp core breach. That was, however, until Sera's tricorder chirped with something suspicious. "I... I have something," Sera called out to Lillian. Due to the cold and fatigue, the Chief Operations Officer left out the usual pleasantries.

Lillian looked up at the operations chief, glancing back to her tricorder nothing was suspicious. She walked over to the Cheif, "What is it," she asked.

Once the Security Officer came to Sera, she showed Lillian the tricorder readout. "This is interesting," She started. "This shows a large tachyon surge just before the core went critical," she paused for a moment. "If we can figure out what caused this, we'll have our suspect."

Reading the tricorder, Liliian's eyes went wide, "A Tachyon surge?" Looking at the Operations chief, "You know what this means right?" Lillian rubbed her hands over her face, "I feel a headache coming on," she mumbled, "We're going to need more coffee and lots of it. "I've read and memorized the USS Voyager logs, anytime the word tachyon was mentioned meant trouble and lots of it. Voyager's Cheif engineer, Lt. Torres tried to use a tachyon as a way to disable a Cardassian missile that she reprogramed. Unfortunately, it failed, but they were able to disable the missile another way. Bottom line is we have BIG problems, like really BIG. I suggest we separate everything that has a tachyon reading from the rest of it and try to determine when it came from, then figure out what it was."

"Tachyons can be caused by any number of devices from replicators to cloaking devices," Sera began, "they are also usually harmless but can cause a huge problem." Tapping her PADD, the Chief of Operations added, "We'll have to separate the pieces with evidence of tachyons. If they make it into the dilitium chamber at a high enough stream, we can count ourselves lucky to have even survived."

Sera then began scanning more of the debris, which caused the tricorder to give off a positive chirp. "Anything that you find with a tachyon marker, put it into a pile right there," she pointed to an open clearing in the middle of the piles of wreckage.

Knowing that the chief was right and that she shouldn't have jumped to conclusions, "Sorry, you're right." After moving several pieces of the wreckage to the new pile, Lillian looked at the Lieutenant, "I don't know about you but I can use some more coffee. I'm going to go to the bar to get some do you want any?" After receiving a yes, Lillian left to go to the bar for coffee, when she got back after about ten minutes, she was carrying two carafes both filled with hot coffee and two coffee cups. Handing one of each to the Lieutenant, Lillian poured herself a cup and took a sip of it. Looking at the pile that held tachyon markers, Lillian noticed the lock of what was used on the weapons locker. "Chief, do you recognize that lock?" Lillian asked as she pointed to the lock.

The lock was in bad shape. Normally, part of the sliding mechanism would have a serial number that indicated the exact place it was supposed to be, but it had been sheered off during the explosion. "It looks like some kind of locker, but I can't tell if it's a damage control, weapon locker, or environmental hazard locker." She brought up her tricorder to scan the device, shaking her head in almost disbelief she added, "This has to have held whatever caused the tachyon surge."

"Yeah it's in pretty bad shape, I've seen old weapons locker lock that looks like this, but then again I have seen other locks that look like that too," Lillian said, after a few moments of drinking the coffee she went back to work looking for other things that had the tachyon signature on them. "Maybe we can piece this together eventually."

“An old weapons locker?” Sera asked as if something was making sense. Pointing at the lock she explained, “Engineering locks aren’t that complex, you don’t have to worry about an intruder breaking into the spare parts and taking over the ship.” From her experience as an Engineer, she added, “There is a weapons locker in most engineering departments, isn’t there?”

"Yeah there is, everyone in security gets issued a code for the weapons lockers to check and maintain the weapons, it's standard procedure," Lillian replied. "I can't think of any ships that won't have one in Engineering, with most engineering rooms acting as a secondary bridge if the main bridge is compromised or severely damaged, the bridge controls can be rerouted down to engineering during that time."

"I've done that a few times," Sera nodded as she looked back on her career. Skipping that story for the more pressing matter before them, the Chief Operations Officer asked, "Each person should have their own command code for unlocking the locker. Do tactical lockers keep records of entry and which codes were used?"

Lillian nodded and explained, "Yeah, usually the main computer will keep track of it, but I don't know if we can get anything from this computer, but it's worth a shot. Any clue where it is at this point?"

Pulling out her tricorder, Sera explained, "If we are lucky, I can use this to power up the console. Hopefully the data is stored locally but with the kind of damage we see..." She sort of trailed off indicating that this was more of a needle in a haystack type of a search.

Laying in the snow next to the console, Sera flipped open the access panel. After a little maneuvering, she connected her tricorder to the cables. After a little button pushing on her device, the console screen began to light up as startup initiated. "Would you mind seeing what you can find? I've got to stay down here to make sure this doesn't surge."

"Sure," Lillian replied, moving back to the console, she inputted some general commands and found that they were responding. "The console is responding, "I'm looking for the list of command codes that were used," Lillian said as she was working, then all of a sudden, "Got it," taking out a PADD she downloaded the information onto the PADD. "I have the used command code list on the PADD Lieutenant," she said so the Lieutenant didn't have to stay in the snow.

With the good news, Sera disconnected her tricorder from the console. When the plug was pulled, the console went dark. Almost as she stood, Sera was ready to see the results, so she asked, "Who is our suspect?"

As Lillian read the PADD her face paled in shock, she recognized the user, "This has to be a mistake," looking at the Lieutenant, "according to this, the last person to use the locker for anything was the Chief of Security, Lieutenant Theodore Winslow." After taking a few deep breaths, "Please tell me that I'm reading this wrong."

"Let me see," Sera replied, just as shocked as Lillian. Sure enough, the command codes matched and left a sick feeling in Sera's stomach. It could not be true, but here it was looking at them. "I need to get this to the Captain," she said in a way that that invited Lillian to go with her but did not put pressure on her to come.

"Yeah, he needs to know about this," Lillian replied, following the Lieutenant. If she was going to have to arrest the chief, then her orders would have to be given by Captain Mahone. Still being new to the colony but after having worked with the Chief on a couple of issues, he just didn't seem like the type to have blown up his ship and stay in Starfleet. "Lieutenant, if the chief did this then why stay in Starfleet?" Lillian asked.

"This raises many questions," Sera nodded. "I'm not a psyche examiner, those kinds of things are best left to people who'd know," she shrugged. She certainly did not believe that Winslow could be part of this, but she had seen things in her past that suggested that people were not always who you thought. "What's important is that we show our findings to Mahone."

OFF::

Lieutenant Sera Williams
Chief Operations Officer
Haumea Colony

Lieutenant JG Lillian James
Asst. Chief of Security
Haumea Colony

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