[Story by Shawn Alpay, Character Art by Thomas Marrone]
ACT 1
Captain’s Log, Stardate 48315.7. With two ships of the line lost in as many weeks, I’ve ordered Yeoman Bukowski to research any relevant and possible dangers to the Loma Prieta. She’s a quick study, so she’s already got something for me…
“Come.”
The door to Yeoman Bukowski’s quarters slid open, and Captain Perkins entered, having since changed into a Starfleet command uniform of a more contemporary era. He stood with a rigid posture just inside her quarters as the door closed. “What am I not going to like?”
She regarded him without looking up, still working away at the console. “What did you and Captain Glenn talk about in your last conversation?”
Perkins sighed with a smile, crossing the room and sinking into a chair, crossing one leg over the other and putting an arm over the chair’s back. “Are you making fun of me, Yeoman? We’ve been over this.”
She looked over at him. “I’m serious.”
He spoke with a fairly matter-of-fact, almost bored tone. “When we were all in port at Deep Space 3, he told me he was worried about the safety of his crew. Namely, he thought his ship was from… From another place. That he didn’t belong.” Perkins groaned quietly, disappointed at the very thought that someone he respected so much could have produced such an outlandish claim.
“And?”
“And so he was going to do ‘something about it’. Didn’t say what.”
“Captain, official records said that the Navras was lost due to a warp core malfunction. But it’s an open secret that Glenn disobeyed a direct order right before the Navras was lost.”
“That’s hearsay, Yeoman.”
Bukowski swiveled her console monitor to face Perkins, and she proceeded to answer his earlier question. “Anyway, the classified entries for the Loma Prieta are all garbled — I can’t make heads or tails of them.” The captain leaned in for a better look; indeed, the data presented on the screen seemed to break the very confines of the LCARS format through which it was displayed. Pictures hung over their borders; diagrams seemed to fade and flicker; words were misspelled; sentences stopped abruptly; large blank spaces had appeared. And chunks of information seemed to be actively shifting from one place to the next every few seconds.
“That’s… not good,” Perkins said, leaning back, his fingers laced around one knee. “What about entries for the Navras, and Voyager?”
“That’s actually the weirdest part,” Bukowski replied, turning the monitor back towards her and keying in a few commands. “I haven’t had time yet to dig into the details, but…” She turned the console back to face Perkins once again. “Classified data on the Navras looks the same as the LP. Info on Voyager seems… fine.” She had stacked one entry above the other on the screen to showcase the difference, and she watched Perkins’ face to gauge his reaction.
“You think there’s a connection?”
“I really can’t tell.” She leaned forward, planting an elbow on the desk and her head in her hand, staring at the jumbled console, frowning. Then she peered over to him. “Captain… what else did Glenn say? I feel like you’re holding out on me — not to mention the official logs.”
“He just said he’d try to prove it to me as soon as he could. I never heard from him again.” Perkins sighed, standing to his feet. “Have the engineering team run a level 2 diagnostic on the ship’s computer. Let me know what they say.” Before she could reply, he had already made his way to the door. “Thanks, Tiffany,” he said back to her as he exited.
She exhaled slowly, staring at the console.
—
“Anything?”
“Nope. Wait… oh, nope.”
Lieutenant Harley Cooper pushed out from underneath a console on the Engineering deck, a small directional light clipped around his ear, which he deactivated as he sat up, looking to his commanding officer. “It’s a bust.”
“Alright,” Chief Engineer Tom Hesser said, looking to the jumbled LCARS interface and handing Cooper a cylindrical tool. “Well, let’s recap the emitters anyhow, as long as we’ve got the thing down for checks.” Yeoman Bukowski stood at his side, her best attempt at an intent expression worn on her face, her patience silently screaming on the inside, having reached her daily quota for technical babble hours ago.
“Good idea, sir,” Cooper replied, taking the tool in hand, reactivating the light, and sliding back in underneath the console.
Captain Perkins strode onto the deck, his first officer in tow. He didn’t often make it to this part of the ship, and he moved at a slower pace to conduct a cursory visual inspection before approaching Hesser. “Report, Commander.”
“Well sir, seems we’ve got a mild amount of corruption in several sectors of the classified subsection of the ship’s computer. And it seems to be moving around.”
“‘It’?”
“Yeah, ‘it’. I think we’ve got some sort of virus on our hands.”
Perkins and Sung looked at each other, both offering the other a puzzled expression before Sung regarded Hesser. “What was the entry vector? And when?”
“Can’t be sure, sir,” the engineer replied, picking up a flashing matrix board and running a scanner over it. “Its very nature seems to target historic data — so logs and audits of those sectors are all over the board right now.”
“Prognosis?”
“We haven’t been able to slow the rate of degradation, but I’ve activated a secondary quarantine, so I think we’ve stopped it from spreading. We’re alright for now, but at some point soon, we’re gonna want to put in to Starbase 415 for repairs. In the meantime, I’ll ask Lieutenant Sloan to transfer someone from her staff over here to help better understand and maybe even reverse this thing.”
Perkins chimed in. “You mean Lieutenant MacKinnon. She changed her name since she and Jesse got hitched.”
“Two Lieutenant MacKinnons, huh.” Hesser snorted. “That’s not gonna get confusing.”
“Captain, I suggest we take Mr. Hesser’s advice sooner than later,” Sung offered. “Our current mission to complete the triangulation scan of the Ayla sector is not time-sensitive.”
“Noted, Mr. Sung,” Perkins replied. “We’ll stay put out here for the moment. Keep me appraised, Commander,” Perkins said to Hesser as he turned and made his way back towards the turbolift. Sung and Bukowski shared a look before following.
“Captain, would it not be prudent to nip this in the proverbial bud as soon as possible?” Sung inquired, locking in with Perkins’ step down the hall.
“We don’t know what it is yet. And I’m not so interested in infecting an entire starbase with whatever’s in the computer. Hesser can handle it.” The three of them entered the turbolift. “Bridge.”
“Understood, sir. I’ll notify Command of our situation.”
“Unnecessary, Mr. Sung. Let’s not make a mountain out of a molehill.”
Bukowski watched Sung’s expression. The executive officer appeared as though he dearly wished to protest further, but he quieted up. She had seen Sung in this situation many times before; he wouldn’t dare further rattling the hornet’s nest, even though he was reasonably sure that his was the correct course of action — and although she always tried to appear as neutral as possible, she certainly agreed.
The turbolift doors slid open, and the trio walked onto the bridge.
“Ah, Captain!” Lieutenant Jesse MacKinnon rose from the captain’s seat. “I was just telling the bridge crew here of my honeymoon travels to Skye. Perhaps I can regale you with tales of derring-do with and among their soused populace?”
“Another time, Lieutenant — maybe tonight at C&S. Mr. Sung, you have the bridge.” Perkins proceeded to enter his ready room.
MacKinnon, eyebrows raised, then shrugged and stepped over to the helm as an ensign dutifully rose from that station and moved to a console nearby. “Commander Sung! Have you ever set eyes on bluffs the color of a rose, while the most vibrant of all possible suns, beckoning you towards untold sums of pleasure, rises overhead?”
Sung said nothing.
—
TO BE CONTINUED… STAY TUNED FOR ACT 2, NEXT TUESDAY.
