Midnight Briefing

Posted on Sat Jun 23rd, 2018 @ 6:19pm by Commander Mal Xustos & Captain Enalia Telvan & Lieutenant Commander T'Pral Jordan & Lieutenant Commander Eneas Clio & Commander Rita Paris & Lieutenant Commander Thex sh'Zoarhi & Lieutenant Vaemyn & Lieutenant Matthew Lysander MD & Akira Zhuri & Lieutenant Mona Gonadie & Petty Officer 2nd Class Ila Dedjoy

Mission: Holographic Horrors
Location: USS Hera Briefing Room
Timeline: After "Dark Matters Ionizing"

Mona and Ila were already in the briefing room behind the Hera's bridge at the main screens still sorting through the sensor data trying to figure it all out when Enalia came in, her hair still a bit disheveled from sleep, but otherwise ready. "Do we have enough energy for a pot of coffee? No, don't answer that yet... I'll just pass on it for now. A dark matter ion storm..." Joining them at the screens, she looked over the data, her eyes widening at the intensity and magnitude of it all.

"It seems that at warp eight, our momentum took us nearly three light years into it before we came to a stop. It's almost twelve light years across." Ila pointed out the dimensions of it as she spoke.

"It's a wonder we didn't take more damage than we did, to be honest." Mona pulled up a list of damages. "Other than some blown EPS relays and conduits, and a few isolated systems failures and the warp systems being offline, we seem to be in good condition overall."

Enalia spotted one thing that did worry her in the systems diagnostics and pointed it out immediately. "What about this one? The ship-wide holo-systems are reporting an ionizing matrix failure? What does that mean?"

Ila fielded that question. "I believe that it means that random projections may appear for brief periods. It shouldn't pose any issues and should clear up as soon as we leave the storm."

"Keep an eye on it just in case. A few of our crew are photonic life forms." Hearing the explanation only made Enalia worry more.

Mal had also already been in the room. Mal tapped his commbadge, which fortunately still worked, or this briefing couldn't have been called.

"Xustos to Zhuri," he said. "Akira, please respond."

At first, there was no response from the Chief Operations Officer, but before anyone could call for Akira again, static could be heard over the comm channel, and under that static was a voice, possibly Akira's, but the voice was so faint and distant that no words could be discerned.

"Damn," Mal said. "She must be somewhere the emitters aren't functioning properly."

Mal hit his badge again.

"Xustos to Ral," he said.

"Ral here, Commander," Daytona responded. "What's going on?"

"Is Akira with you?" Mal asked.

"Actually, no," Daytona said. "She was up and out as soon as whatever happened to us happened. What did happen?"

"We hit an ion storm," Mal replied. "Our internal holoemitters are malfunctioning. I'm concerned she might be affected. I was hoping we could convince her to get into that android body of hers for the duration. I tried to contact her, but I got a garbled response."

"Alright," Daytona said. "I'm up. I'll find her. She's really not going to like having to use that body, but I'll see if I can talk her into it. Ral out."

It was at that moment that Lieutenant Paris made her way in, trying very hard not to look ill, and failing. She'd been thrown from her bed when the Hera had hit the brakes, promptly thrown up, wrestled into her distinctive uniform and had been trying to compose herself all the way to the bridge. The hairs on her arms were standing up, she felt twitchy and her stomach was in knots, and she had no idea why. Also, she had reported to the helm, her duty station, only to be informed by the flight control officer on duty that she was supposed to be in a meeting in the briefing room. All in all a stellar start to the day for the anachronistic astronaut.

"Lieutenant Paris reporting as ordered," the nauseous navigator said as she slid into a seat and tried to put on a neutral expression so that she could hide her distress, even as her inner anxiety levels were going through the roof, her flight or fight reflex going off like a red alert klaxon.

Right behind Paris came Vaemyn, and much like her, the congenial Vorta looked distinctly out-of-sorts, his hair wildly askew and his uniform badly ruffled. “Me too,” he said unnecessarily, following Paris to collapse into a chair beside her, rubbing his violet forehead gingerly. “Generations of scientists spend their lives to find a dark storm like this and we literally fall into one by accident. It’d be fascinating if...ow...my head wasn’t hurting so much...”

Turning around to greet the arrivals, Enalia was caught off guard by an old man in a toga, poring over some scrolls in the back of the conference room. "Did someone invite Aristotle to this meeting or is this one of those holographical glitches?"

Upon hearing his name, the recreation of Aristotle glanced up and realized he was no longer in his workshop, freaking out. He pulled out a rather shiny .50AE Desert Eagle, definitely not genre specific, and fired it at the Captain seemingly blindly. The first couple projectiles Enalia ignored because she assumed the safeties were still on, but the third actually grazed her left shoulder, causing a rather light of damage in the process and shattering the monitor behind her.

The doors slid open as the andorian stepped into the room. Eyes fell on her tattered uniform, light bandaged cuts and soaked from as she stepped into the room. " Sorry, I'm late. There's a tropical jungle with a t rex living in it that's sprung up in the corridors outside of engineering. " She said her voice still rather out of breath.

At that moment Mal leaped into action. Rising and ducking his head, he charged the Mad Greek.

"Maaaa! Maaaa!" (goats say "Maa", sheep sound like people imitating sheep by saying "Baa")

The satyr hit the deranged, gun-toting, philosopher amidships and knocked him down.

Aristotle screamed in surprise in having a mythical beast charging him and fired two more shots into the ceiling, which was all the rounds that gun held. As he was bowled over, he screamed in pain as if something had been broken. Howling, he clung to Mal for a few more moments before vanishing into thin air.

As for Enalia, she was more stunned than injured, touching the blood coming from the wound and looking at it in surprise. "Computer, red alert. It seems the holo-emitter safeties are offline." When the computer did not respond and no red alert sounds were forthcoming, that's when Enalia became visibly concerned. "Yeah, we definitely have a problem."

Matthew almost did not avoid the rush on the XO, out the door to the briefing room. Pinwheeling with arms and cane he lost his footing entirely and ended up on his back on the decking. Hed been limping heavily already because one thing his body didnt react well to was sand. Sickbay had a lovely floor covering of sand, with a lovely oasis that had once been his office. He personally liked the date palm, but could do without the water and sand.

Mal reached down and offered the doctor a hand up.

"Sorry, Doctor," Mal said.

"Couldn't be helped." Matthew said softly and groaned as he was lifted from the ground.

Still seated, Lieutenant Paris raised her hand as if in a classroom, but when she began speaking, it came out a bit rushed and jumbled, outwardly illustrating her anxiety. "So, for the slow kid... we're trapped in a dark storm that's causing the ship to randomly manifest holographic horrors that basically render the whole ship a holodeck with the safeties turned off and a kinda whimsical approach to doing random harm to the crew. I got all of that, so... what's a dark storm and how does it do this?"

Mal turned to Dedjoy, Vaemyn, and Thex.

"Alright," Mal said. "You three are our Geek Squad representatives. Can you please answer the lieutenant?"

Ila Dedjoy Looked over at the Commander, then to Vaemyn. She had been the one explaining it to the Captain and him just moments before so she figured she'd best take the lead on this - especially since she was one one on bridge duty when it happened. Glancing down at her PaDD, she headed over to the conference table as she offered a correction to the earlier question. "It's a dark matter ion storm. Just like a normal ion storm in space, but made of dark matter. Our sensors didn't pick it up until we were about to punch into it and our deflector wasn't calibrated to protect against it." She then stood at the ready, her large eyes blinking as she looked around the room.

Ensign Gonadie chimed in as well, momentarily pointing to the now shattered monitor that was displaying a map of the storm. "Right. The... ah... Well, at warp eight, we hit it pretty hard without proper protections. We were able to get shields up, but Lieutenant Commander Thex, I'm sorry, but the ship took quite a beating. Also, the storm is preventing us from creating a stable warp field."

Enalia was still bleeding and though she would be fine with it normally, the symbiont was not. It did a slight flip flop and she realized that though it was just a graze, she had lost far more blood than she had thought as she nearly passed out, falling into the chair behind her. "Doctor... Do you think you could patch this up before I get any more light headed? If you need a med kit, there's one in the supply locker."

"Of course, Captain. I will need that medkit." He could tell with a glance that he would need the blood replenisher and a stronger regenerator.

While the captain suffered through treatment, Vaemyn leant forward on the table, although he eyed the open med kit with restrained envy before focusing his attention on Rita. “Basically, Lieutenant, we ran right into a big cloud of highly ionised dark matter. Under normal circumstances, dark matter is extremely difficult to detect. It doesn’t reflect light or other EM radiation and normal matter goes right through it, but it still exerts a gravitational pull, so it wrecked havoc on us as we flew through. It’s what the Romulans like to call jien’hruf: literally, ghost stuff.”

At that, Vaemyn gestured at the viewport where the stars twinkled innocently, showing no sign of the vast clouds of dark matter that surrounding the Hera. “Of course, this is even worse. This is a storm which means that the dark matter clouds are moving, and because they’re moving, they’re creating dark energy discharges through static electricity. Superpowered lightning bolts if you will, but they’re completely invisible to us, at least until they hit us. And because we can see neither the dark clouds or the dark lightning, we’re in...well, trouble. A great deal of trouble.”

"As for that howling noise we heard before we got the shields up and calibrated, I believe that was from those discharges interacting with our power systems, trying to overload them. If you hear that again, I recommend you evacuate the area and notify the bridge." Added Crewman Dedjoy.

"So how is that making the ship's computer goes haywire and the holo emitters to start trying to- oh, because the dark matter literally cross-connects the isolinear reactions in the computer, essentially causing short-circuits in the computer, bringing about the occasional aberration which would be both unpredictable and uncontrolled, thus the safety overrides?" the pretty pilot started asking, then tried answering her own question to the scientist.

Vaemyn laughed, but he nevertheless bobbed his head in agreement. “I was just going to say that it disrupted our systems, but yes, you’re quite right. Dark matter and the consequent dark energy has a deleterious effect on most computer systems that is poorly understood, mainly because nobody sane actually goes near this much dark matter. In short, yes, it will cause random fluctuations in our computer systems. Even with the ingenuity of Lieutenant sh’Zhoari’s engineers, these holographic malfunctions will likely persist until we escape the storm.”

At that, Vaemyn winced before hesitantly raising a finger, looking around at everyone. “Would this be a bad time to point out that in the entire known history of the Alpha and Gamma Quadrants, nobody has ever actually managed to escape a dark storm?”

" Yes, that would be a very bad time to mention that. Means I'll have to work overtime to get us out of it and become the first to do so." The andorian responded from her seat. " All whilst avoiding the holodeck horrors. I'll have to crack out the salvage suits for protection then start seeing that's broken and then how to get this ship moving. If anyone has any idea's I wouldn't think of I'd love to hear them."

"I'll get the navigation sensors recalibrated, ideally get them adapted to function properly in here, and see if I can plot us a faster course out of here," Paris volunteered. "Assuming I should live so long, and don't get eaten by a T-Rex on Deck 5. Is there some way to visualize the storm so that we don't steer into something extra awful, Lieutenant Vaemyn?"

Doing a bit of math on her fingers, Enalia did not like the prospect of travelling out of this storm at impulse speeds. It would take them twelve years to do so and she knew most, if not all, of the other officers had an idea of how long it would take without warp. "And do you have any thought son how to form a warp bubble inside the storm?"

T'Pral entered, breathing heavily. "I apologize for my tardiness but my department is busy handling situations all across the ship."

Enalia nodded understandingly. "Post security at all major junctions until we can clear this dark storm. We had a bit of a situation ourselves - a greek philosopher with a gun tried to shoot me. Lieutenant Vaemyn, could you catch Commander T'Pral up on the situation and answer our prior questions?"

While Enalia was talking, Clio quietly slinked in behind T'Pral and took her seat at the table, resting her head on her hands and not paying much attention to Enalia's bleeding wound or the random Greek philosopher in the room. She already suspected she wouldn't have much to contribute to the briefing, and she wasn't sure she'd be able to string together the words if asked for input. It was probably a miracle that she'd shown up at all.

Smiling enigmatically at T’Pral as the security chief sat down, Vaemyn gestured at the viewports again. “We’re stuck in a big invisible dark matter storm that could kill us at any time without warning, interferes with our warp engines and has disrupted our computer systems, including safety protocols. Oh, and nobody has ever escaped a dark storm before. I hope that you now consider yourself caught up.”

"that's good to know," T'Pral commented with a hint of sarcasm.

Turning to everyone else, Vaemyn grinned nervously, realising that they were all looking at him to provide an answer. Logical under the circumstances, but by the Founders’ grace, it was disquieting. “As to the other questions, Captain, we need time to study this dark storm. First off, we need to study just how to actually...well...study the storm. Nobody has ever done so before, not with our level of technology. As far as physical escape is concerned, however, I am frankly at a loss. We can create a malformed high-power warp field, yes, but maintaining that warp field as we pass through the storm would be extraordinarily difficult and incur a serious chance of a warp core breach.”

"So," Paris looked around, making certain she wasn't interrupting anyone, then started ticking off points on her fingers. "We have to tune up all of the sensors so that we can figure out how to study the phenomenon so that we can figure out how to survive it long enough to escape it, which no one's ever accomplished. Have I got the gist of it?" asked the pretty pilot plaintively of the science chief.

"Alright," Mal said. "That's enough. Most spatial storms pass. They either dissipate or they pass by, moving on to ruin someone else's day. The only real question is whether or not our shields, engines, and hull will last long enough for that to happen. So, Commander sh'Zoarhi, find Mister Rybeena and do whatever you can to shore up our shields, maintain power, and reduce the stress on our hull, and try to get the holoemitters fixed before someone gets killed. If you can find Akira, rope her into helping you. Mister Vaemyn, Crewman Dedjoy, study the storm. Try to figure out the dimensions of this storm, estimate either its duration, or at least the time it will take for it to pass us by. If you figure out a way for us to get out of it, by all means, let us know. Lieutenant Paris, get down to astrometrics and see if you can help Vaeymn and Dedjoy from there. Commander Jordan, as the captain asked, please deploy security teams throughout the ship and try to keep a handle on our hologram problem. Doctor Lysander, get Sickbay prepped for business. We've got holograms firing projectile weapons. I'm sure you're going to be busy down there before this situation is resolved. Questions? If not, let's get to work."

Wait, that was it? Clio tilted her head sideways just enough to look at Mal with one eye. He did indeed appear to be trying to bring the briefing to an end. She'd missed practically the whole thing and hadn't heard enough of it to have many questions... not that she planned on asking any. And since Mal hadn't given her a job to do, she wasn't going to volunteer for one either.

"I do have a question, Commander Xustos," the anachronism in the room spoke up again. "It's, uh, generally accepted science at this point that excess ion storms interacting with transporters have a tendency to trigger extradimensional events. At least I hope it's accepted, because they do. Should we consider restricting use of the transporters, and by dint of the similar technology the replicators, while we're in this dark matter ion storm? Just to not take chances on who knows what showing up from who knows where dimension?"

"Modern transporters have ionization inhibitors to prevent extra-dimensional events from occurring," Mal said. "We should have full use of the transporters as needed."

"As long as the shields stay up, they don't malfunction, and we don't try transporting off the ship, that is." Enalia added, more worried about the storm doing other kinds of damage. "With everything else malfunctioning, replicators are safe enough, but we should probably keep transporter use to emergencies just in case they decide to transport someone into a bulkhead or inside out. As for the replicator, If someone orders soup and gets a sandwich... Well, I guess you're getting a sandwich for lunch."

"Alright then," Mal said. "Commander Enaes, you look terrible. If you're up to it, you and I will go to Intelligence and check for reports of dark matter storm activity. I think it's safe to assume this is just nature taking its course, but considering that we're dealing with a people that think of themselves as gods...and have the tech to back it up, I think we should take a look and see what we can find."

Mal took a moment to look each person present in the eye.

"When you meet with a Starfleet recruiter," he said. "They tell you about all of the adventures you'll have, the new civilizations you'll encounter, the planets and stars and anomalies you'll discover, all part of being Starfleet. They tend to ignore the other thing we face out here: risk. We risk our lives out here, and the lives of our friends. For science, for exploration, for defense of the Federation and its allies. Risk is as much our business as anything else we do, and we take those risks willingly. I'm willing to risk my life for the advancement of science and to defend the Federation, and while I accept that losing my life might be a part of my service, I'd rather not lose it if I don't have to. I think a lot of people on this ship feel the same way, and they're counting on us to make sure they don't. So let's do our jobs and do them well. We do that and if it's possible to get out of this mess, we will. You have your orders. Dismissed."