After delivering supplies to Starbase 23 and making a few repairs to the Tiberius, the crew was off on her first official mission. Starfleet informed the crew the USS Alcubierre, an Oberth-Class ship, has not reported in as expected. Located in the Elicona sector, the crew was tasked to figure out what happened to the Alcubierre. The Alcubierre was testing a new warp core engine, one designed not to damage subspace at speeds in excess of Warp 5. Captain Ral & Starfleet surmised that something must have gone wrong with the Alcubierre and want to investigate this matter.
We set off on Stardate 51667.2 for the remote Elicona sector, the location of where the Alcubierre was testing the new warp engine. Upon arrival, the crew discovered subspace interference in the vicinity of the Alcubierre, rendering sensors, communications and transporters inoperable. So an away team was tasked to investigate the Alcubierre. First Officer Kingston tasked Lt. MacKenzie to lead the away team and report back what they find out.
The away team boarded the Hannibal (Type-8 Shuttlecraft) and headed over to the Alcubierre. While ENS Zaim prepared to dock the ship, he noticed the bay doors mysteriously opened and decided to park the Hannibal in the shuttle bay. However, the crew quickly discovered that no one was in the shuttle bay to welcome them, leaving them wonder how they were let aboard.
Quick investigation of the control panel revealed most of the ships systems were down, though life support appeared operational on auxiliary power. The door leading to the corridor was only partially opened, leading the crew to find a way to access the rest of the ship. After the emergency hand actuator broke, the crew used brute force to open the doors. But while inspecting the console (and before power went out to it), a mysterious note appeared to Lt. Vos that said "Meet me in stellar cartography".
Once the crew made their way into the corridor, they came across the bodies of some dead Starfleet officers. Before they had time to inspect the bodies, a disruptor blast was heard and 4 Romulans were spotted and battled ensued. The crew dispatched 3 of the Romulans in short-order, with the remaining one fleeing.
At this point, the crew decided to head to stellar cartography to invest the mysterious message Lt. Vos received. There, they discovered the lone survivor of the Alcubierre, Ens Jim LaSalle. Jim filled in the crew on what had happened and requested their help to regain control of the computer system in stellar cartography to help track the location of the signal that called the Romulan ship away. The crew was successful in helping Ens LaSalle, and they discovered the location of the signal came from the Klingon station Kortar.
At this point, the crew decided they needed to head to main engineering to deal with the remaining Romulans and to regain control of the ship (and more importantly, to remove the subspace interference). Before leaving stellar cartography, however, Lt. Vos put an encryption in place to prevent (or at least slow down) the Romulans from regaining access to stellar cartography. This seemed to have worked as almost immediately it was found attempts to regain access were being made.
Since the ship was still disabled, Ens. LaSalle lead the crew through the jeffries tubes and turboshaft to a location just outside of main engineering. There, 2 Romulans were on guard duty, but hadn't noticed the crew sneak up on them. This allowed Lt. Vos to neutralize one of the Romulans, while Lt. Torc took out the other one, aided by Ens Zaim (a Betazoid) who was able to successfully confuse the two Romulans.
Shortly thereafter, the other 4 Romulans in main engineering were discovered, and another phaser battle ensued. Lt. MacKenzie bravely rushed into main engineering and quickly neutralized 2 of the Romulans. The third Romulan was also quickly neutralized (by Ens Zaim I believe), but the 4th, Sub-commander D'Nal, seemed to be resistant to the phaser fire. This allowed Sub-commander D'Nal to get off a blast of his disruptor onto Lt. MacKenzie, causing her to become injured. However, the next attack on D'Nal dropped him to a knee and took him out of combat (though he was not dead nor knocked out).
Lt. Commander Velesa quickly rushed to Lt. MacKenzie and stabilized her injury while the rest of the crew neutralized the Romulans. A mind-meld by Lt. Vos to D'Nal revealed a strange result: 2 minds were being read! Lt. Commander Velesa did a quick medical scan to reveal D'Nal was infected by the same neural parasite that the USS Enterprise discovered just a few years prior. The crew quickly dispensed with the parasite.
The crew then quickly restored all of the ships systems, allowing a security force to transport over to the Alcubierre to take care of the rest of the Romulans.
The away team made their report to 1st Officer Kingston, who promptly reported their findings to Captain Ral and Starfleet. Starfleet ordered the crew to track down the signal on the Klingon Station Kortar and to investigate the situation.
Tune in next time to see what the Tiberius discovers at the Kortar station.
MacKenzie here. Seems we have stumbled upon a hostile parasite species previously encountered by the Federation, which invades its humanoid host, and is a highly potential threat by subterfuge. This threat now appears to not only be a threat to the Federation, but potentially the entire Beta Quadrant. Also, of great concern, we know little about why they returned and how they infiltrated (or how far they have infiltrated) the Romulan Star Empire … Perhaps the Klingon Empire as well. The Captain has informed the ship’s company the Tiberius has been ordered us to investigate the Klingon station, Kortar. Kortar has suddenly gone dark after sending the signal that recalled the Romulan ship Decius. The Klingon High Council has given us permission to enter their space to investigate the station. We are 2 days out.
ReplyDelete(I was hoping we were done having to palate Gagh.)