Taking What We Need (Part 7, of Away Team Series)
Posted on Mon Apr 14th, 2025 @ 12:17pm by Captain Remy Johansen & Sub-Lieutenant Osirin Acainus & Commander Maxun Spello & Lieutenant Commander Eirly Andersen & Lieutenant Daynah Ral & Lieutenant Phaedrae Cyn & Ensign Quinn L'khet
1,900 words; about a 10 minute read
Mission:
Gone, Without Ever Knowing the Way
Location: Main Bridge, USS Astrea
Timeline: MD 02, 0145 Hours, (Immediately following "The Prodigal Sub-Lieutenant..."
Osirin, now back on the Bridge was in good condition, other than being more than half naked and smelling of sex. Without a trace of embarrassment in his voice, he said, "Thanks for the rescue."
Maxun arched an eyebrow, in mild annoyance. He looked over at a crewman and said, "Go replicate a tunic for Mister Osirin, now."
The young crewman nodded and scurried to the nearest replicator and did as instructed. She then hurried over to Maxun and handed the bland garment to him. After taking it, he tossed it to Osirin. "You're on the bridge. Cover yourself up."
Osirin gave a brief quizzical look at Maxum, before following the order. "In my defense, I wasn't planning on seeing the bridge."
"Not this one anyway," he thought but did not say.
The Captain was more concerned about why Osirin was undressed, but that was a less urgent problem. "Lieutenant Cyn, do we have access yet? I'd rather we shut them down nicely than take another shot."
Cyn's fingers danced over her console as she quickly sifted through the incoming data. "Attempting to regain access now, Captain," she reported, her tone clipped and efficient. Her blue eyes narrowed as she keyed in a security override, forcing a direct intrusion into the Milano’s systems.
A sharp alert flashed across her screen, signaling a partial link. "I have a weak connection—there’s residual encryption blocking full access. Adjusting decryption algorithms to compensate."
Her fingers flew across the interface, bypassing firewalls with practiced precision. The console flickered as she pushed deeper. "Almost there… They’re trying to sever the connection, but I’ve locked onto a secondary relay point. We should have visual and sensor telemetry in moments."
Cyn glanced up briefly, locking eyes with the Captain. "They know we’re in their system. If they have countermeasures, now’s when they’ll use them."
A new alert pulsed across her screen. Cyn's lips pressed into a firm line. "Confirmed. The Milano is attempting to engage a secondary cloak—if they succeed, we lose them again. I can delay it, but not for long."
She initiated a signal loop, buying precious seconds. "Captain, if we’re making a move, now is the time."
"At least, I assume Mr. Acaincus was over there because they know something?" Remy added.
"I believe it is almost certain that they did," the Akadian observed. "Or at the very least they had connections to those who did. If I'm being honest though they were more interested in... partyingthan plotting to take over the Universe. It may have been daddy's ship if that is the correct Terran terminology."
"I appreciate the rescue as I already said, but I don't think I was in any real danger."
"I do think it's imperative that you receive whatever is in their mainframe."
"Lieutenant Ral, I need you to redirect your attention to the Milano's main computer now, shut down their cloaks, their engines, whatever you need to do to give Cyn more time," Remy ordered. "Commander Andersen stay alert."
"Aye Captain." Daynah replied. She had a question although it was not for the Captain. She now wondered exactly how she would pull this off. A ship like the Milano would not be easily infiltrated via computer. She stood a thought for a moment, then all at once it seemed to click. The reason everything works on a starship. She thought. Daynah keyed up a minor monitoring system for the Milano it was relatively easy for her to get to it through the internal sensor net. It allowed her to get a look at their bridge. Briefly but it was long enough for her to get a glimpse of the shield modulation. Next Daynah put a command loop into the Milano's computer. She made the computer believe that the shields were raised. Since ship's cannot cloak while shields are raised that took care of that. It was a matter of a few more keystrokes to initiate a full engine restart on the ship. "Captain. I have the cloak stuck in a loop. I made their computer believe that the shields are raised and therefore cannot cloak. Not sure how long until they notice that. As for the engines I have initiated a full engine restart on their ship. It will take at least twenty minutes for their engines to reignite."
"Nice work. Now let's keep an eye on things to make sure they don't try anything squirrely. Commander Spello, you and Ms. Andersen keep a close eye on them." Remy took a moment to glance at each officer before taking her seat next to Cyn.
Maxun nodded, then moved to one of the auxiliary stations, located at the aft section of the bridge. "Okay, Eirly," he said to the young woman. "We'll work this in a tag team format. While you work to keep one system distracted with one version of code, I'll do the same on another system with a different code. Then, when it looks like they are about to adapt, we swap systems and use new codes. Keep them guessing and unsteady. Don't go after the systems in any obvious order." He started typing commands at a breakneck speed.
"On it," Eirly started typing commands in to match what Maxun was doing. This wasn't her forte, but she'd try to keep it going in the loop for as long as possible.
The Captain accessed the control panel on her armrest and pulled up a holographic terminal and accessed Cyn's link to the Milano. "Twenty minutes, Lieutenant. How can I help?"
Cyn barely glanced up from her console as the Captain’s offer registered. Her hands continued their precise work, eyes flickering over streams of raw data, breaking apart the last layers of encryption with the ease of long-practiced skill.
“Please stand by, Captain. Assistance isn't necessary at this time.” she said, her voice crisp and measured as she concentrated on the incoming feed. “I’ve pulled a rather large chunk of data. I’m refining the results now.” A faint smirk ghosted across her lips as another line of code fell to her expertise. “You’ll have actionable intelligence within minutes.”
Her screen flickered, the decryption completing with a final series of beeps. The information resolved into something tangible, albeit fragmented. Cyn’s expression darkened slightly as she analyzed the results.
“I’ve extracted coordinates—deep within the Typhon Expanse. Uncharted space for us, which means whoever was operating behind the Milano had access to resources beyond our charting.” She tapped a control, forwarding the details to the Captain’s display. “We’ll need to navigate carefully. No telling what we’re walking into.”
Her eyes narrowed as she examined a secondary data fragment, partially corrupted but hinting at something significant. “There’s also a reference to a vessel—USS Dalton. No current records match it, at least not in active service. The data mentions a crash site, but the details are unclear—either degraded or intentionally obfuscated.”
She leaned back slightly, finally meeting the Captain’s gaze. “I’ll clean up the remaining data, but this gives us a start.” A small, confident nod. “And as I said, results incoming quickly.”
The Captain felt a tinge of guilt as Cyn relayed how easy it was for them to take information from the ship. Remy shut down her holoterminal and went to give her First Officer an uneasy look, but he was busy at his own terminal.
"Try to focus on the Dalton, and Starfleet, and get out of there," Remy said as she stood up from her seat. "Let's try to only take what we need as best we can. Anything more, Starfleet would likely need to come back with a warrant."
"Copy that, Captain. Sticking to the essentials—though I’d say we’re well past ‘only what we need.’ I’ll focus on Starfleet intel and scrub the rest. Leaving the black-market shopping for another day." Cyn gave a tug to one of the braids that slipped past her shoulder as she continued to work.
At the mention of the Typhon Expanse Daynah looked up from her station. She quite a lot about that region of space. From both her studies and from the memories of Captain Alaryc Ral. "Captain, the Typhon Expanse is a region of space in the Typhon Sector of the Beta Quadrant. It is known for its great number of spacial anomalies. The largest one of note was a temporal causality loop encountered by the USS Enterprise D in 2368. This encounter freed the USS Bozeman trapped in the anomaly since 2278. It is possible that whoever is behind the Milano wants to use one of these anomalies."
"If the Dalton ended up out there, they were either abducted and dragged across the alpha quadrant without anyone knowing, or they found their way into a wormhole connecting the regions. I want the senior staff assembled in an hour. Lieutenant Ral, I will want to hear more about how you think the Milano could use these anomalies," the Captain replied.
"Right now, let's move along from here, and give these 'kids' a break." Remy turned to her intelligence officer, "Lieutenant Cyn, while you're scrubbing, make sure to hang on to any information about Axel - or whatever his real name is."
"Commander, you and Andersen can let up on the distractions. We'll let them have their ship back. Ensign L'khet, we need a new hiding spot. There's a moon nearby, CMF5A lay in a course, three-quarters impulse," Remy ordered.
"Aye, Sir. New Course 042 mark 72, Three-Quarter Impulse." Quinn acknowledges, gliding his fingers across the helm as the engines rev, the ship turns and slowly makes it's way to CMF5A.
The Captain turned to Osirin, "Sub-Commander Acinus, why don't you use this time to get yourself cleaned up, and in uniform. Be back in an hour for Senior Staff briefing in the conference room."
"Yes ma'am," the Akadian, trying to read her mood. For the first time in a long time, he was wondering if he'd made a major error or even a small one.
Then he turned to leave the bridge.
"Everyone else, I know it's late, and most of you aren't used to working this shift, but we need take some action quickly," Remy announced to the Bridge. "Commander Andersen, get a message to the rest of the senior staff to report to the conference room in an hour. I'm sure most will need a wake-up call."
Eirly nodded and proceeded to tap her commbadge, "Attention all senior staff, this is Lieutenant Commander Andersen. Please report to the conference room in one hour. I repeat, all senior staff please report to the conference room in one hour." She turned back to Remy, "I'll meet you there if nothing else is needed from me here, ma'am?"
"Not at all. If there's anyone else that needs to attend to anything, we've still got around thirty minutes. I'll hold the fort down," Remy stated.
Captain Remira Johansen
Commanding Officer
USS Astrea
Commander Maxun Spello
Executive Officer
USS Astrea
Lt. Commander Eirly Andersen
Second Officer
USS Astrea
Lieutenant Daynah Ral
Chief Operations Officer
USS Astrea
Lieutenant Phaedrae Cyn
Chief Intelligence Officer
USS Astrea
Sub-Lieutenant Osirin Acainus
Mission Advisor
USS Astrea
Ensign Quinn L'khet
Quartermaster
USS Astrea
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