by Dabin Reece and February Grace
80518.1500
After Breaking the Ice
-=Underground, on Stra II=-
80518.1500
After Breaking the Ice
-=Underground, on Stra II=-
"Keeeelllllllynnnnnnnnnnn." Reece whined. They had been at this business of repairing the communications relays for over an hour now. All the while Reece had been singing his version of 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, though his enthusiasm for it had waned. The guards had followed their orders and let the Sera personnel go about their business, but Reece saw a few of them brush their weapons as they considered silencing the Trill once and for all. After about 70verses of the dreaded song Reece was honestly ready to do the deed for them.
He had come to appreciate the Strasa, however. Their accomplishments were impressive and admirable. They had, amazingly, found a task more boring and tedious than anything Reece had ever done. That included all the years of experience in the Reece symbiont, not just the comparatively short existence of Dabin. Reece actually found himself longing for days when an angry Zanh Liis would send him to clean the deuterium ports with a toothbrush.
Lair Kellyn crossed the room in her typically graceful manner. “What is it now Dabin?” She spoke as a mother would to a child.
“This one is doing the thing again where the thing doesn’t go into the thingy right.” Reece gestured helplessly towards the dangling part and wires inside the panel.
Kellyn leaned into the panel to begin to fix the mess and Reece took the opportunity to whisper in her ear.
“How’s it going?”
“Rada has almost got access to the security scanners through the comm-panels. We’ll be able to take a look around the complex soon.” Kellyn whispered back.
“How soon? The guards are going to flambé me if I keep up the song much longer.”
“Maybe half an hour. You just keep them distracted. Grace has almost tapped into some of their messaging systems too, but we need you to keep their eyes off us.”
Dabin rolled his eyes. He would be the decoy a little longer, if everyone insisted.
Kellyn slammed the door shut. “There, was that so bad?”
“Thank you Kellyn.” Dabin said. Lair took her leave of him, and Dabin went to work on the next panel, cheerfully singing his little tune. One of the guards finally had heard enough and walked over to Reece.
*Oh boy, here we go.* Thought Reece to himself. February looked over her shoulder, having heard his thought.
*Be careful.* She warned.
“MUST you keep singing that?” The guard asked through gritted teeth.
“It helps me focus.” Dabin said.
“It is AGGRIVATING. I think you should work in silence.”
Reece put his hands on his hips indigently and cocked his head to the side.
“Hey, look, I have work to do here, and if its not done, your communications systems aren’t going to work when the time comes. Do you want to explain to Kumquat that the reason why our work isn’t done is because you kept slowing us down?”
“Yeah come on, I can’t concentrate with all these negative vibes in the room!” February chimed in.
The guard set his jaw, spun on his heel and rejoined his mates.
“Just keep on walking.” Dabin mumbled, than began his singing again.
*You got anything over there yet Bru?*
*Just a few more minutes.*
Rada had taken advantage of the commotion to briefly transfer power from his tricorder to one of the comm-units. Little did the guards know he was currently trying to hack his way into the security system. Kellyn hovered next to him, offering her help.
The chief engineer had nearly completely dismantled the panel, leaving wires and parts dangling everywhere to give the impression that the unit required massive repairs. That afforded him the luxury of working in one place for quite a while.
Nearby, February had finally gained access to some of the message logs. She, like Rada, used the tricorder to power one of the units. She moved the device up and down to give the impression she was scanning the panel for some unseen problem, when in fact she was actually downloading log files to the device that she intended to read for clues.
A moment later her tricorder began beeping wildly, and the noise caught the attention of one of the guards.
*Great, * Grace thought. . .
*What great? * Dabin asked, but then he glanced over and saw that she was already looking way up at a guard who loomed over her. No small thing herself, Bru figured this guy had to be at least seven feet tall.
“Power fluctuation.” She shrugged, holding up her tricorder while doing her best to obscure the reading that it displayed. She had no idea if the guard would have the technical knowledge to understand the binary code she’d downloaded, but she was taking no chances.
After glaring at her a moment longer, during which she neither flinched nor spoke again, the guard seemed satisfied with her explanation and moved away, back toward the group guarding the door- and closely watching Reece.
“Chief, if I could have your help for a moment? I’m stuck on whether I need to re-engage the secondary capacitors or reinitialize the primary sequencers.” February knew that such fictitious babbling would be hard to distinguish from actual names of real components- unless you were one of the senior engineers in the room.
Lair and Dengar exchanged a look.
“Right there.” Rada said cheerfully, as he left Lair to guard his work in progress.
“Here, if you do this,” Rada reached into February’s panel and pretended to adjust some settings, “And then this, the problem will resolve itself. No more power fluctuations.” The tone of the last two words told her that he wanted to know what she had for him.
“It’s puzzling why that happened. The levels had been so predictable, then they just went up and down suddenly. See?" She handed him her tricorder.
“Maybe your tricorder is malfunctioning. I’d best have a look. Just wait a moment, and I’ll bring you another.” Rada moved back toward his tool kit, removed a spare and handed it to Bru. “Here you go.”
“Thank you, Sir.” February turned back to her ‘work’ at the panel, and Dengar returned to Lair.
February pondered the message she’d seen, repeating over and over, screens and screens worth of characters in code.
She was surprised that she understood what the letters spelled out in the binary alphabet- that was a language that had ceased use in modern technology two centuries before, for the most part. Still, she knew what it meant because Kimare, who had been an architect and engineer for Starfleet during the time she was a Grace host, knew what it meant.
Bru saw the pattern again in her mind when she closed her eyes for a moment to gather her thoughts.
01010011 01000001 01010110 01000101
01001101 01001001 01001101
01010011 01000001 01010110 01000101
01001101 01001001 01001101
01010011 01000001 01010110 01000101
01001101 01001001 01001101
01010011 01000001 01010110 01000101
01001101 01001001 01001101
01010011 01000001 01010110 01000101
01001101 01001001 01001101
01010011 01000001 01010110 01000101
01001101 01001001 01001101
01010011 01000001 01010110 01000101
01001101 01001001 01001101
01010011 01000001 01010110 01000101
01001101 01001001 01001101
01010011 01000001 01010110 01000101
01001101 01001001 01001101
01010011 01000001 01010110 01000101
01001101 01001001 01001101
01010011 01000001 01010110 01000101
01001101 01001001 01001101
01010011 01000001 01010110 01000101
01001101 01001001 01001101
01010011 01000001 01010110 01000101
01001101 01001001 01001101
01010011 01000001 01010110 01000101
01001101 01001001 01001101
“Tricorder malfunction?” Kellyn asked Rada, playing along.
He nodded slowly.
“Here, let me do that for you, we’ll get it up and running again in no time.”
Kellyn took the tricorder and attached it, rather dramatically and obviously, to several computer components she had set up before her. Then, as the guards were distracted by all the blinking lights, longing it seemed for their entertainment technology, she took a second and uploaded the data from Bru’s tricorder into a PADD.
She turned it toward Dengar surreptitiously, and his eyes widened. The code spelled out two words, over and over. Though the identity of the sender of the message was a mystery, the meaning of the words was clear.
Someone was in trouble.
*What did the code read?* Dabin asked, curiosity making it hard for him to remember which bottle-of-beer was left on the wall.
*It said the same thing over and over, * Bru informed him sadly. *It said, SAVE MIM.*
Commander Dabin Reece
Chief Science Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
and
Lt. (SG) February Grace
Senior Flight Controller
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
Chief Science Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
and
Lt. (SG) February Grace
Senior Flight Controller
USS Serendipity NCC-2012