The Founder, the Deception and an 'eagle.

Posted on Tue Jun 6th, 2023 @ 6:15pm by Lieutenant Commander Isabelle Savette & Captain Yadira Tristen & Commodore Finchley Kerr & Lieutenant Commander Jaal Jaxom & Lieutenant Kell Asaa Dr & Lieutenant T'Lira Sh'Karra

3,625 words; about a 18 minute read

Mission: Investigate the Chintoka Shipyard Buildup
Location: Cardassian held territory/Cardassia Three
Timeline: Current.

The Away Teams were now back on the Blackeagle. Finchley had taken the Vexis AI, discovered by Shon, Kell and Karadis, to Engineering to see if Chief McCrudden could integrate it into their ships system in order to make use of it.

The Scotsman had hummed and hawed, clicked his tongue, made a few dispassionate remarks about how busy he already was, but then finally relented to try his best to see if it would work.

Finchley left him to it, telling the Grinch of an Engineer to keep him informed. Leaving him, Finchley made his way to the Conference Room and sent out an order for the Senior Officers to make their way there immediately, they had to get underway for Cardassia Three.

He then got news that Shon had been taken to Sickbay, a precaution as the nanites had begun acting up when they'd returned. He was concerned for his Executive Officer and wanted to go and visit her, but he also knew duty and the mission came first. He waited patiently on everyone arriving.

Yadira was already headed for the conference room with Finchley's coffee like he enjoyed. Their personal relationship was known by most of the crew already but from the professional side it remained Starfleet. "Good morning dear, your coffee," she said giving him the cup and quick kiss before the senior officers arrived. "I heard the XO is not feeling well. Hope it is not too bad," she added, taking her seat.

Finchley loved the fact Yadira had brought him a cup of coffee, he really needed it right now.

"Thank you sweetheart" he replied, returning the kiss, and setting the cup down to cool off a little. "I don't know the extent of what's happened to the Commander, only that she felt unwell, something to do with the nanites I believe. Once we've finished the briefing I'll go and see her, try and get more information on what's happened."

Isabelle was next through the doors of the conference room, compared to Shon she was feeling fine the implants that were intertwined with her nervous system in, and around, her spine and brain stem weren’t giving her any problems. If anything she felt as fit as a fiddle. She offered Finchley and Yadira a warm smile. “Captains.” She took a seat. “I understand Shon isn’t doing so well? I hope she’s better soon.”

"Lieutenant" Finchley smiled back, then added "Yes, she's been taken to Sickbay. I'm not sure what the problem is, hopefully the medical team will be able to get to the bottom of the problem."

His mind wandered back to the subterranean situation, something hadn't sat right with him since they'd been in the labs where the two officers had been infected. He'd been subjected to the same conditions later on, yet he hadn't felt or encountered any adverse effects himself. He pushed it to the back of his mind as he awaited the rest of the team arriving.

Jaal strode in holding a PADD and a tricorder connected by a cable. He was keeping the data retrieved from base separate, in a virtual system, just in case there were trojans or worms in the software. He scanned it, found nothing suspicious, but still wanted to be absolute sure.

He sat in the chair next to where the XO would sit, as Captain Kerr indicated in his first staff meeting on the Blackeagle. The Trill wasn't sure he'd earned a seat that far up the totem pole however, he wasn't about to argue with his new captain.

Kell nodded at the PA that would be visually monitoring the XO and turned to exit sickbay. She was isolated for now, and the previous safeguards back in place, but now she wondered what the nefarious nanites were up to.

The trip was an easy one, one she could do be reflex now. Upon entering she saw only a few had arrived thus far. With a greeting to the Captain and nods to the others, so sat down to parse through some of the XOs data, looking for trends or clues. . .

Isabelle leaned towards Kell. “I hope Shon is okay. I wish I could help, but these nanites don’t communicate with me the way they do with Shon. It seems her nanites are somehow different from mine, it’s all very strange.”

Kell nodded in agreement.

Finchley stood up and paced to the back of the room, turned, and came back to the table. Looking around the assembled Officers he said "The Away Teams have both been successful in their endeavors, so thank you one and all. We'll begin the debriefing part of this mission before moving on to what we'll be doing next."

He looked at Jaal and said, "Lieutenant Jaxom, can you take us through your teams' findings please."

"We managed to download all their communication logs for at least the last four years, plus some other things which I haven't gone through yet." He motioned to the PADD and tricorder sitting on the table in front of him, "The files are stored on this tricorder, which is hooked up to this PADD. I didn't want to connect to the ship's computer as there may be viruses, or some other defensive measure in place. For now, the PADD is acting as a virtual network with which we can do what we want with this data."

"How soon can you have the details of the communications that have been downloaded," Finchley asked, "Plus I'd like them correlated into internal and external categories, we need to know who they were in contact with, and what they did with the information they got."

“I can correlate that” Isabelle looked towards Jaal for confirmation of how soon the details would be available.

Jaal was already tapping out a sequence on his PADD before Captain Kerr finished his request. “It’ll take just a minute to sift through the data to determine which messages were internal and external. I can take this raw data and project it to the screen if you’d like.”

At that moment, the Conference doors opened and the Chief Engineer bustled in. He walked up to Finchley, threw a silver box down on the table, and said "Here's that infernal bloody box you gave me, it's been checked for viruses, there's none by the way, and he...it...is now hooked into the ship's system", then he turned and walked out again.

T'lira followed right on their heels but she stayed and took her seat. Right now there were more questions than analysis, the question of the nanites was an interesting one.

Karadis got up out of her seat and was about to storm after McCrudden, but Finchley calmly laid his hand on her arm and shook his head "I'll deal with it."

Isabelle watched with interest she’d need to talk with McCrudden to see if there was anything he wanted to talk about.

"For the benefit of everyone here who doesn't already know, Commander Dex has been taken into Sickbay as a precaution" Finchley said, looking around the table "She'd reported on her return from Runaman that the situation with the nanites had left her feeling unwell."

He got up and walked to the back of the room, then turned to face everyone. Crooking one leg, he placed against the wall in a casual manner and continued.

"The Subterranean team had quite the adventure. First we met what can only be described as 'space pirates', but dealt with them accordingly. We then ventured further and made a chance discovery, a lab. Not just any lab mind you, a 'Frankenlab', a place where bodies of different races had been put together, in order we think, to try and create a super soldier. We kept going, but things took an odd turn when myself, Karadis and Kilbane began hallucinating, seeing former colleagues where weren't actually there, because it was a Vorta who had used some kind of mind trick to fool us. They stunned us, wanting to use us in their experiments, but thankfully the bravery of Commander Dex and Lieutenant Asaa helped save us.” He decided to leave out the part of Kell pretending to want to shoot him, as he could now see the funny side of the situation. “Long story short, further labs were discovered, along with an arsenal of unknown weapons, some of which we've brought back to study. We also discovered the object our disgruntled Chief Engineer just brought in, and that I'll come to shortly. The final thing I want to say is in all of this, we've discovered where the remaining Founder is... plus we rescued a cranky son of a bitc...", then he remembered Karadis was there "...I mean, we discovered the body of Klingon Supreme Commander Krell in a stasis chamber. We've rescued him, informed the Klingon High Command he's here and are awaiting a reply from them as to what they want to do next."

He pushed himself off of the wall, walked back over to the table and picked up the silver box. He turned it round and round in his hand, then stopped and pressed the button on top.

A Cardassian soldier appeared out of nowhere, "Vexis online!"

Isabelle shot a glance at Finchley. “A Cardassian holographic interface?” This was interesting.

Jaal’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Well, that’s something.”

"It's only Cardassian because it was set up by a Vorta and he used their form. It's unique to us, and I'm swithering whether or not to change it's appearance" Finchley replied. "It could be useful the way it is, given we're in Cardassian territory, so for the moment, it'll remain like this. McCrudden has integrated it into the ships mainframe computer, firstly ensuring it has no viruses of course, so it will be useful to us all. Like the mainframe itself though, there will still be parts of it certain ranks need Seniority to use. Think of it as a visual representation of the computer, and in time we'll become used to it. If anyone would care to try it, you'll have to begin by using the name 'Vexis' before asking your question or trying to garner information."

[Sickbay]

Inside Shon’s head an argument was going on. She could do nothing but sit back and take it all in. In fact she was beginning to enjoy it, the ‘not having to take part’ of it although, she mused, it ultimately involved her future or not! The nanites were now divided about what to do. Half now no longer wanted to end in the destiny of a catastrophic explosion that would end their hosts life and ultimately their own. They had, they argued, gotten used to her brain processes, indeed gotten to know her and decided their own outcomes had changed. The other half seemed like a gang of old men, set in their ways and thumping about in their boots and clunking their glasses together shouting grumpily about the honor of ‘completing the mission’. Shon laughed, the comparison between them and Karadis was almost exact. So, there was nothing she could, the outcome was out of her hands. She opened a chocolate Ice cream and sat in the striped deck chair that conveniently appeared underneath her, the sun came out and a large brimmed sun hat decorated her head. ‘Take as long as you like boys’ she thought. So she lay in sickbay, quiet, waiting, unsure of the outcome of her existence that was to be decided by disparate groups of nanites taking on human personas.

[Conference Room]

Finchley continued to look round the room "Honestly, this is like a Beta test people, we need to know if 'Vexis' is working, go ahead and ask them something."

The door to the Conference Room opened and Kilbane walked in. Hearing what Finchley said, he spoke up "Vexis, what's the frequency of all transmitted messages between Runaman and the Cardassian High Command?"

The hologram turned to face Kilbane "Specify message information required."

"Troop movements between Cardassia Prime and Cardassia Three."

"One message, transmitted eight time cycles ago. Four squadrons of Galor Class vessels were re-routed to Cardassia Three, one hundred and twenty thousand Jem'Hadar soldiers" Vexis replied.

"ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY THOUSAND!" Finchley said incredulously, "That's a hell of a lot of soldiers to move in one go!"

[Sickbay]

Shon’s eyes shot open. It had been decided, she would retain her Nantes and their information for as long as she needed them, then, they would deactivate. “So the good guys won” she said to the nurse who now looked incredulously at the woman who had seemingly been in coma. Shon lifted herself off the bio bed alarms sounding. “Turn that row off Ensign?” She said. She batted the nurse with the tricorder away and stalked off to find herself an uniform replicator. The shower would have to wait. Feeling better now she was not so naked she tapped her comm “Computer where is the Captain?”
=/\= The captain is in the main conference room and Vexis is online=/\= Shon raised her eyebrows. “Is he now!” She said to nobody in particular. She jumped in the turbo lift which deposited her near her destination.

[Conference room]

Walking in she saw the crew sitting around the table with the hologram Vexis looming in the middle of the large cylindrical table. Everybody turned to look at her.

“We’re back!” She announced. Nodding to Kerr she spoke to Vexis. “Vexis why the enormity of troop movements and transform eight time cycles into Federation Standard time?” Then she waved at Asaa and sat down in the nearest chair.

Kell nodded, seemingly unsurprised at the XOs grand entrance as she glanced back and forth from her PADD, to the Captain, to Shon, and back thru the cycle, no doubt having a conversation with her staff on the side.

The hologram turned to face Shon and replied "Eight time cycles equates to two hundred and eighty eight standard hours or twelve days in standard Federation time. The reason for the troop movement is classified, only verified members of the Caradssian High Council may access this information."

Finchley had casually nodded back to Shon when she'd entered and nodded to him. On hearing what Vexis had to say, he made a quick mental calculation, and came to a conclusion.

"Twelve days ago was when I was summoned and given this mission...we have a leak in SFIHQ."

Shon went from silly to serious in an instant. “How do you want to play this Captain?” she asked.

As the Captain considered his answer, Kell looked up at the floating image. "Vexis... do you know who has provided information within Starfleet, or more specifically, from within the HQ?"

Vexis turned to face Kell and relied "Only verified members of the Caradassian High Council may access this information."

Kell nodded...

Finchley considered the two replies the hologram had given. He walked over and closed Vexis down.

"Computer, access Dominion war criminal trial records. Piece together the following words from all trials of captured Cardassian High Council members. 'Access', 'Cardassian', 'High', 'Council', 'Records', 'For, 'Starfleet', 'Intelligence', 'Head', 'Quarters', 'And', 'Give', 'Spy', 'Name', and adjoin intersecting words that complete a sentence" Finchley said.

The ships computer, after a delay of around thirty seconds replied =^=High Council member Lemar H'MarHam said all the stated words over a three month interrogation period=^=

"Computer, piece together all words into one sentence" Finchley replied. The computer beeped to say it had completed the task .

Touching the red button on top of the silver box, Vexis reappeared.

"Vexis online."

Kell smiled...

Finchley walked over and tapped the button on the Command console and a Cardassian voice said "Access Cardassian High Council records for Starfleet Intelligence Head Quarters and give me the name of the spy we inserted."

"High Council member Lemar H'MarHam recognised, information access granted" Vexis replied "Cardassian spy inserted is Legate Jad Kilpar, code name 'Shadow'. Legate Kilpar assumed the mantle of Vice Admiral Alex Ramsay. Records detail that he is still active, but no recent contact."

Kell's smiled broadened considerably.

Finchley looked round at the assembled officers "Well, now we're in the game."

Shon was busy on her paDD, “Vice Admiral Alex Ramsay born New New York Anappa Colony, Prima I.” she waited for the information, “age 62, married.” She raised her eyebrows “ten children, current position second in Command to Admiral V’Shar head of military intelligence Federation Headquarters…….Earth.” She paused “ now that’s what I call embedding!” She looked around the table. “Computer current whereabouts of Vice Admiral Alex Ramsay?” It took a couple more seconds than the reply normally would. ‘Whereabouts of Vice Admiral Alex Ramsay currently unknown’. Shon looked around. “Ideas people?”

Jaal felt in over his head. In for a penny, in for a pound, he thought the Terran saying went. He rubbed the stubble on his chin and offered, “I’m gonna guess we should find out his last confirmed location and go from there. There have to be some clues leading to where he is currently.”

Kell looked at her. "Backtrack his history, movements, for two weeks? We know when the leak was so...??"

"That's a good call" Finchley said to Kell "However, for the moment, we have to park that, don't worry though, we'll get to it, the score will be settled. For the time being, we're going to Cardassia Three."

He knew they were going up against what would be considered insurmountable odds, but that was why the crew Blackeagle had been chosen, impossible missions. He thought back to previous missions, similar to that which they were facing. How many of the original crew were left, not many, how many times had they re-crewed the ship, seven, possibly eight times. Himself, Karadis, Kilbane and McCrudden, four our of so many who had started out. He shook his head, coming out of the reverie.

"Our goal now is to capture the Founder, find out the plans for the Dominion rebuild and also their plan for another war" Finchley said, "or if that plan fails, whoever here makes it through, they kill the Founder, even to the detriment of their own life. If you have a problem with that, if you're not willing to take risk you may not come back, the doors over there, you can leave now."

“I would like to say the work the crew, and especially those in this room have already done has been sterling and they deserve kudos. I am sure we are all still with you Captain.” Shon said.

Finchley looked around at the rest, waiting on their replies.

Isabelle looked towards Finchley. “I’ve come this far Captain, I’m not going anywhere now.”

"I'm staying," Jaal wasn't sure he had to mentioned it verbally, but it seemed like the thing to do. He was reminded of something the gardener at Starfleet Academy once told him, 'Risk is our business.'

Kell nodded as well.

"Ok then, we'd best get underway," Finchley said. "This isn't going to be easy, and there's no guarantees we're coming back. I wish us all the very best, I'm sure everyone will give it their all. Are there any more questions?"

“I have a question for the doctor” the XO said. “If needed would you be able to transfer some of us into Cardassians, at least enough to pass a cursory test?”

Kell took a breath, considering. "Cursory observation, absolutely. Those individuals would need some acting training to stand, walk, talk, respond like one. That would be the more daunting task and best started sooner than later."

She gave Shon a thoughtful gaze. "Have you figured out just who your little critters are yearning for?"

Shon smiled at Kell, “well currently they have decided they quite like the life they have right now. Half are quite happy to live their lives out inside my brain, even helping occasionally. The other half, well let’s say they are more the ‘blood and guts type’. Wanting to blow the founder to kingdom come and infecting half the quadrant as they do so. But, for the moment they are towing the line.

"The training will begin now, each Department Head will study a Cardassian officer equivalent to their Starfleet rank" Finchley said "There's archived footage in the computer database, this I know, Kilbane and myself had to do something similar, though not as complicated as what we're going to be attempting. If you have any problems, come and see me, and we'll work on them. Right, briefing's over, you know where we're going, you know what's now expected of you in regards to 'becoming Cardassian'. We set off in three hours, I don't have to say how difficult and challenging this is going to be, but given the fantastic crew we have, I believe we have a forty percent chance of carrying it out, and that's good odds given we're on our own."

“A Glinn it is then,” Isabelle offered a smile before pausing. “Don’t ask me how I know that, because I have no idea!” She shrugged her shoulders.

Jaal didn't share Isabelle's seemingly glib attitude. On the other hand, operations was operations no matter what fleet you were serving. Computer systems were based on logical function and that was something the Trill understood very well.

Shon turned to the Counsellor, “Lieutenant Savette can you see to the bridge teams psychological transformation into Cardassians?” Shon asked.

“Of course Commander” Isabelle nodded. This was going to be a big task, one they all needed to be ready for.

{OFF}

 

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