Monday, March 30, 2020

Signals Part 1

The crew was tasked to investigate a strange alien signal and the missing runabout, the Susquehanna. After traversing the Nebula and after performing their initial scans of the planet, Seku VI, the players were able to locate the source of the alien signal, as well as the comm-badges of 2 Starfleet Officiers.

As the players were about to make their way to the surface, the runabout was attacked by a Romulan shuttle. After a brief fire-fight, both ships were hit with a burst of energy that emanated from the planet. Both ships lost power and crashed to the planet.

Thankfully, the Atilla was being steered by Ens. Farragut, a top-notch pilot, and he was able to safely crash land the shuttle with out causing injuries to the crew.

Once planet-side, the crew found the comm badges and the crew members who belonged to them. Unfortunately, the 2 crew members appeared to have died in a terrible transporter accident.

Knowing that the Romulans crashed nearby, the away team decided to search for them. However, the Romulans had the same idea and a fight broke out on the planet. However, the away team made fairly quick work of the Romulans, and after a brief questioning session (which yielded nothing of interest), the crew set off to investigate the signal.

The crew set out for their several hour walk toward the source of the signal. However, the walk was not without peril. First, a sandstorm suddenly sprung up on the team, forcing them to shelter for a bit. Only the security and engineer took a little damage from the storm. Once the storm passed, they pressed on. About an hour or two later, they came upon a ravine that needed to be crossed. With a little team work and a lending hand by XO MacKenzie, the team managed to cross the ravine safely, only losing the Doctors medical tri-corder in the process.

As they approached the signal, the away team came across a settlement in a valley. As they were surveying the situation, a rifle blast hit the rocks in front of the away team, and they were soon surrounded by 3 snipers. The away team was told to toss down their phasers and put their hands up. The team complied and was lead into the settlement and to the sniper's boss, Ero Drallen.

Ero took the team to his office where a conversation was had. Ero explained what his miners had found in the caverns below the town and asked the away team for their help. Since the team was trapped on the planet, they agreed to help as best they could.

The team was lead into the caverns below the settlement to a chamber. This chamber contained an obelisk and some computer consoles. Inspection of these devices proved nearly inconclusive, though they were determined to be quite old. In fact, the age nearly matched the age of the technology from the Rl'lowo Shal.

Chief Engineer Foxwell was able to detect an off switch of sorts for the device, and after some discussion, turned the device off. For a moment, the obelisk appeared to be powered down. However, tricorder readings suggested a surge of power was building below them, leading the team to infer that a self-destruction sequence had been activated!

Left with the decision to flee or try to stop the explosion, the team decided to stay and try to deactivate the self-destruction sequence. With only a few minutes to work with, the team was able to quickly shut down the device before it could explode!

Once back on the surface, Ero and the Away team were able to beam up to the Tiberius, now that the signal and device were shut down. Onboard, Ero and Captain Ral negotiated a peaceful agreement for the time being until an actual diplomat from Starfleet could arrive.

The crew still has the missing Susquehanna to find, but has a new lead. Tune in next time as the Tiberius races to find the Susquehanna.

Sunday, March 15, 2020

Tug of War

The crew of the Tiberius, after encountering pirates, Ferengi, and an organization only known as the XO, was tasked with a scientific exploration of a pair of M-Class planets that orbit the same star. Among other things that made these 2 planets unusual is the fact that both planets are in the final stages of a planet-wide extinction event. In orbit of the planets, which has been cleared away of asteroid debris, was a derelict space station and other space debris.The crew was given the task to collect data from these planets to learn what happened.

The crew first came into a stable orbit in between both planets and made some initial scans of the planets and the space station. Then, they decided to beam over to the derelict space station and investigate it. Onboard the station, the crew found the station completely without power and no artificial gravity. The space station was fully intact but did not show any signs of a crew or its things. The only thing the crew was able to salvage were a few discs that the crew presumes store data. They also discovered that this space station was hundreds of thousands of years old. They grabbed the discs and headed back to the Tiberius.

The crew then beamed down to the smaller of the two planets, which they eventually learned was named the Rl’lowo Shal. The planet was nearly fully dead. Just a few planets and fish were remaining alive. Buildings and cities were showing signs of being in ruined. The technology that they came across seemed to match the technology of the space station, leading the crew to draw the conclusion that the space station probably came from this planet.

The crew then proceeded to the other, larger planet in this system. This planet had a smaller population and only sparse technology. However, the technology matched that of the technology from the smaller planet, lending the crew to assume the technology was shared. This planet, the crew discovered, was called Five Turns and the inhabitants called themselves Us.

The crew also discovered that both world were covered in multiple asteroid craters, many of which were larger than the dinosaur killing impact on Earth from millions of years ago.

It was at this point the away team was recalled to the Tiberius as the ship was recalled in order to help search for a Federation runabout that had gone missing.

As the ship attempted to break orbit, 2 powerful tractor beams locked onto the ship. Both beams emanated from the planets: one from each. The ship was trap! As the crew scrambled to figure out what happened and to assess the damage, the ship took some significant damage. Shields were dropped along with taking a breach to both the sensors and the engines. The crew struggled to keep the ship together as the structural integrity fields was starting to fail. As engineering teams enacted repairs all over the ship, and medical teams tended to the wounded, the crew devised a plan to send a beam out through the deflector dish to negate the tractor beams. This plan worked and the ship, albeit beaten up pretty bad (the ship's top speed is now just warp 6), they were able to move away from the beams.

Just as they were starting to leave, more alarm bells started to go off as a Romulan Warbird decloaked off the port side of the ship. The commander of the Warbird claimed the Tiberius was in Romulan space (they claimed this system as theirs). A verbal confrontation occurred, but as the Tiberius was already leaving, they just agreed to leave and let the Admirals deal with this.

However, just as the Tiberius was finally starting to leave, they were hailed by the Warbird once again as the tractor beams locked onto the Warbird. The Commander claimed the Federation did this. Another verbal confrontation occurred, but eventually ended when the Tiberius agreed to transmit the same wave frequency that freed them from the tractor beams to the Warbird. Skeptical, but not seeing many other options, the Commander reluctantly took the data and was able to free themselves. Both ships went on their way without further interactions.

The Tiberius left the system and began the search for the missing runabout, the Susquehanna, to discover what had happened to it. Come back in 2 weeks to see if the Tiberius was able to locate the Susquehanna. 

Tiberius' Conclusion

 After some delays due to various real life stuff, the crew of the USS Tiberius finally met this past Saturday to conclude our story. When w...