by Dabin Reece
90628.2000
After All Fall Down
-=USS Serendipity Bridge=-
90628.2000
After All Fall Down
-=USS Serendipity Bridge=-
As the drama with Admiral Lassiter played out on the screen behind him, Reece was already beginning to go over readings from the battle that had just ended.
He owed the First Officer a report, and he wanted to complete it as soon as possible so he could set about tracking down Lair Kellyn to find out where exactly she had dropped off his wife and unborn child.
Zanh Liis was going to want a piece of Kellyn too, but she was just going to have to wait.
*Shouldn’t be a big deal.* Reece thought. *Liis loves to be kept waiting!*
He’d been so busy watching for transporter signals, he hadn’t had much time to look for anything else. As he reviewed the logs, looking for all the transmissions now, he saw a low level subspace signal coming from the Domox.
There was proof that their transporters were tied into subspace technology, and Reece had been looking for subspace signs, but this signal was so subtle and low powered it would never have registered on Reece’s radar since it was too weak to carry a transporter beam.
“Hey, Susie-Q. A moment please!”
Tenney would normally have rolled her eyes, but she was in too much shock after what she’d just seen on the screen, as the Admiral had collapsed and been beamed to Sickbay. Zanh Liis promised to keep the Gauntlet advised on the status of the Admiral, and ordered the channel closed.
“Can you believe that?” Tenney whispered to Reece.
“Believe what?”
“The Admiral!”
Reece was tapping the controls like mad as he began tracing the subspace signals. “Not now Susan! I can’t talk politics. Did the Domox ever try to hail us during the fight?”
“No, not that I recall. Why?”
“Thanks,” Reece said. He went back to studying the signal and waited for Tenney to leave. Tenney, for her part, was waiting for him to ask her something else.
“Can I help you?” Dabin asked.
“Well, are you done with me?”
“Yeah, I said thanks.” Reece answered. Tenney just shook her head and went back to her station.
As he looked at the readings, he realized this was a data transfer, not a voice or video message. He followed the signal in through the ship, looking for its destination. The Domox somehow manipulated each circuit they sent their message through, bypassing the security protocols until the reached the information library on the ship’s main computer. Apparently they were looking for some sort of data.
“Computer, eliminate all requests for information that were made by the Serendipity’s crew in the last hour. Are there any unknown data transfers?”
^One.^ The computer answered, before displaying a list of files that the Domox had apparently taken right out of the Sera’s data banks.
The sight excited him in one sense, for Rada’s sake, and scared the crap out him in another sense, for the sake of dozens of species in the galaxy.
“Whoa! Salvek! Liis!” Reece exclaimed as he bounced down to the Command area.
“You have something to report?” Salvek asked dryly, overstating the obvious.
“The Domox! You won’t believe it, I just found it in the logs.”
“Get to the point Reece!” Liis urged, before Reece lost his focus.
“They stole our star charts. Specifically they were looking for the location of Betazed, Vulcan, Melkot, any planet inhabited by a telepathic species.”
Salvek turned to the Captain. “If they had been allowed to open one of their portals directly to these planets, they would most assuredly have eliminated all life there.”
The Captain nodded. In a way, it was vindicating news for Rada Dengar that he had probably just saved the complete annihilation of several species, but she knew that would to little to help him in his current state.
There was likely no rationale for him that was ever going to be good enough to justify the destruction of an entire species.
“Are you going to tell Rada?” Dabin asked.
Zanh Liis did not answer him, because she simply didn’t know how. What was going to become of Rada Dengar was a mystery at this point. He had just created the most deadly weapon ever known, and the trial run had brought an end to the Domox species. What action the Federation may take on him was irrelevant compared to the punishment Dengar was going to inflict on himself.
It was a punishment that Zanh Liis feared may end his life.
“Did you get any Varion readings from the Domox?” She asked to break the awkward silence.
“Like the weapon Rada used? Not a thing. Their weapons and shielding used highly charged plasma and complex subspace fields. Closest thing I’ve ever seen is the Borg. They were decades beyond our technology, but no, nothing Varion. That would have lit up the sensors like a Renewal Scroll.”
“Rada thought for sure their technology was Varion based, and modifying our shields to match was the only way to protect us,” Zanh said.
“If their weapons were not Varion based, then Commander Dengar’s modified shielding would have been ineffective.” Salvek said to Reece.
“If by ineffective you mean useless, then yeah. That sums it up. The Domox wouldn’t have broken a sweat.” Reece answered.
“It is highly ironic that in his attempt to create a shield that would not protect us, he inadvertently created a weapon that ended up being the only reason we were able to survive.” Salvek mused in his rational manner, as he simultaneously reviewed damage reports from across the ship.
“Yeah,” Zanh Liis said in agreement, even though her thoughts were awash with theories of what Rada was actually going through in his own mind. Rada would never have allowed himself to create such a weapon, not consciously anyway, but it was too impressive a feat to have been accomplished merely by accident or coincidence.
“Reece, I want you to lock up everything related to that weapon. Every computer log, every file, every sensor reading. Put it all in a central location and when it’s ready, let me know where it is. I don’t want anyone seeing any of it. Including you. Don’t look at any of the files or readings, just move them. I’m trusting you Reece, to find everything we need to make sure nobody can figure out how to duplicate this.”
“No problem,” Reece saluted and went back to his station to do as the Captain asked. He couldn’t help but wonder what Zanh Liis had planned for the information. Was she just going to delete it? Or turn it over to Starfleet? And what if Starfleet wanted it, but she didn’t want to hand it over? Then it was really going to hit the fan. He knew her well enough to know she wanted him to gather the information in a single location for her, so she could put her authorization on it all to make sure no one else could access it.
Reece couldn’t blame her for that. He would have done the same thing in her shoes. You don’t just leave the procedures for creating the most deadly weapon ever conceived in the main computer for everyone to see, alongside Lair Arie’s favorite holodeck programs and Fleur’s recipe for sugar cookies.
“Hey, Sue!” Reece whispered as he worked. “Do you still have the Alchemy on hold?”
“Yeah, I’m waiting for the Captain’s orders.”
“Send a message for me to Lair Kellyn, text only,” Reece asked.
“Ready,” Sue said.
Reece recited his simple one line message, which Tenney typed out and sent off to the Alchemy. “Dude, where’s my wife?”
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Dabin Reece
Chief Science Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
Dabin Reece
Chief Science Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012