Data retrieval
Posted on Mon May 12th, 2025 @ 4:35pm by Lieutenant M'Tala "Hobbes" Clan Hrasi & Lieutenant Liam O'Riley & Lieutenant Zane D'Sai & Lieutenant JG Stevie Thomas [O'Riley]
Edited on on Mon May 12th, 2025 @ 4:36pm
1,609 words; about a 8 minute read
Mission:
Sole Survivor
Location: Derelict space craft
Timeline: MD 14 - Same time as Critical Decisions
With part of the away team dealing with the embryos Hobbes and O'Riley headed back to the bridge to try and retrieve as much information about this ship as possible. While in route Liam knew he needed another pair of hands knowing time was not on their side. Tapping his comm "Lieutenant Thomas grab an EVA suit and beam to my location. There's a computer I need you to access and we have very little time so hurry" Liam ordered.
"Understood Lieutenant, I'll be there in five, Thomas out."
Moments later the team were back on the bridge as Liam turned to his shipmates "I have my computer specialist coming over to lend a hand. In the meantime I'll try and stabilize the power while you try to access any flight plans and the ship's logs; hopefully we don't run out of time" Liam commented just before approaching the main console.
"I've been doing some tinkering on my own during all the commotion. This thing is old, at least a century if not more. I couldn't find anywhere to tie in a power unit. If any of those solar arrays are still working a beam of visible light from the Valkyrie should be enough to give us some power. Enough to check things out at least."
Thinking for a moment "Lieutenant M'Tala, I like the way you think; you missed your calling and should be in engineering" Liam replied with a smirk as he tapped his comm "Lieutenant Sovak, go to the master console and send a continuous beam of visible light to these coordinates I'm sending you" O'Riley ordered.
"Understood Chief" then moments later "Sending beam now" as suddenly the bridge was dimly lit.
Soon thereafter Lieutenant Thomas materialized on the bridge. Looking towards the beam of light Liam grinned "Good timing Lieutenant" then pointing to a large box like object "That should be the computer. See if you can retrieve any data it may contain."
"Sure thing Chief" Thomas replied more than ready to get to work as she made her way over to the box like object.
Zane appeared on the alien vessel, taking things in as he moved through the space, looking for the away team. He had spent most of his childhood creeping around Ma'Zed encampments, searching for the relics stolen from his people. From a technological perspective, the Ma'Zed were probably a bit more advanced though that didn't make this ship any less interesting. This, he thought, as he consulted his tricorder and locked onto the combadge signals from the team, was a ship built for a purpose.
Once he found them, Zane stood behind the engineering consultant, watching her work. It was Operations job to handle computer software but she seemed to be doing a good job which meant that it was probably best if he just waited, to see where he was needed.
Now that there was minimal power available Stevie accessed the computer. Looking things over she quickly realized the language was foreign to her and it would take far too long to try a work around. Standing for a few moments she was thinking the best way to circumvent the problem as a thought came to her. Looking for a way to open the computer Stevie found the sweet spot "There you are" she thought to herself as she opened it and exposed the insides. Looking around she soon found what she was looking for.....the data collection drives. Calling over to Liam "I found the data drives Chief."
O'Riley walked over "Good Job Lieutenant" then he paused looking at the computer's insides "So what am I looking at; they look old."
Thomas grinned "Old is an understatement....these things are ancient" she replied as she explained "These are what were called ssd's or solid state drives which I only read about when at the Academy. Way back when they were used to store data and evolved to petabytes, which for that time was a huge amount of data storage. Since there is a language barrier I'm going to pull them and take them back to the ship and see if I can't download whatever data is on them" then she paused "Although I must warn you due to their age I'm not entirely sure what I can extract.....maybe quite a bit or maybe not so much; it's hard to tell at this point."
"Continue with what you are doing since that's probably the quickest and most efficient way to go about this" Liam answered "Besides time is definitely not on our side."
"No problem Chief" Stevie stated then got to work extracting the six data collection devices. Fifteen minutes later Stevie had all the drives extracted as she put them in a special case to keep out any electrical interference. Walking over to O'Riley "I have the six drives so unless you need me for something else I'd like to go back to the ship and get started."
We're about as good as we're going to be here so yes please return and get started. Hopefully I'll be back myself before too much longer so keep me apprised of what you find out from those drives" Liam ordered with a smile.
"Absolutely Chief" then Stevie tapped her comm "Valkyrie lock onto my signal, I'm ready to return" as she disappeared from sight.
Hobbes had finished looking over the ship, and found the the rest of the officers in the lower section. "The navigational system is pretty basic. Simple point A to point B, but it seems something went majorly wrong during the trip. I was about to pull the navcomputer's memory core. Hopefully it's memory is till intact and we can figure out what when wrong.
Turning towards Hobbes "Good, take it back to the ship since we're on a time crunch here" O'Riley suggested "If you need any help with the core, might I suggest talking to Lieutenant Thomas in engineering; she's our computer specialist and she's already working with the drives from this ship's main computer."
While Hobbes worked, Zane studied the Bridge layout. On the Valkyrie, the captain had his Ready Room, somewhere he'd never been, and it followed that there would be a spot for whomever had commanded this vessel as well. It took a minute to figure out the doors and another two or three to get them to release manually but he got it and checked them. The last proved to be the most interesting, a sort of combination office and sleeping quarters. Small and compact.
There was a framed drawing on a wall in the sleeping alcove, what looked like a child's rendering of stars, that he pulled down. And later, he found a dog-eared volume, filled with a handwritten scrawl, symbols he didn't recognize, that he picked up as well. Zane could imagine, as he picked up the volume, what it must have been like. A being far from family and home, writing his thoughts in a book at night. Alone. Yes, he could understand that very well.
Zane started scanning in the pages, one after the other, and then started moving around the room, doing a slow scan of the walls and furniture. and from there, moved to a console where a map of the surrounding stars was displayed. He scanned that in as well. Enough data and the Valkyrie's computer would be able to extrapolate a few words. From there, he moved to the consoles and sure enough, the PADD pinged, through its connection to the ship, and started overlaying some of the basic words. Not much but enough to start to figure out some of the controls.
Zane moved to the adult pods. On closer inspection they appeared to be intact, no visible signs of damage, and yet, the five occupants he could see were clearly dead. Unlikely, he reasoned, that they would store dead bodies in functioning pods, so, something happened to them once they were inside. But if the pods aren't damaged, then what killed them? Each pod had a small panel next to it and in front of it, a larger one, which was where he went next. Logic, combined with trial and error, and the help of Valkyrie's computer, revealed a bit of the puzzle. He tested his theory on the empty, sixth pod, and sighed quietly. It wasn't a manual shutdown because the log, while unreadable, added the same entry whenever he pressed the control that turned on or shut down the pod. No, it had been done automatically. His gaze turned toward where the team worked to save the embryos. "Save what you can," he whispered in his native tongue. How often had he heard that?
Glancing around the area Hobbes looked to O'Riley, who had basically taken command of the away team following the Commander's departure. "Anything else, you think we should take back with us?"
Thinking a moment "As far as the bridge is concerned, we have the computer disc drives and you have the navigational core so unless any ship's logs are readily available , which I seriously doubt they are, I think we have everything we can acquire given this vessel's age" Liam commented.
"Well I guess we can always come back if needed; it's not like this wreck is going anywhere."
O'Riley grinned "The only place this thing should go is the nearest scrap yard" he replied.
Lieuttenant M'Tala "Hobbes" of Clan Hrasi
Chief Flight Control Officer
NPC played by Baas
Lieutenant Liam O'Riley
Chief Engineering Officer
Lieutenant J.G. Stevie Thomas
Computer Systems Specialist
NPC played by O'Riley
Lieutenant JG Zane D'Sai
Operations Officer
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