Moving Forward

Posted on Wed Jan 19th, 2022 @ 12:23am by Commander Jennifer Baldric & Commander Finchley Kerr & Commander Dean House & Lieutenant Commander Sandra "Phantom" Risa & Lieutenant Commander Thriss Kla'ren & Lieutenant Commander Aurora Vali & Lieutenant Niali Korial MD & Commodore S'thenosis Gorgox

Mission: Paranoia Nebula
Location: Briefing Room
Timeline: Day 3 - Gamma Quadrant - Morning

After the meeting with the Admiralty and with her new command staff, Commander Jennifer Balric set a senior staff meeting for 1300 hours to advise them of the state of play. Command had agreed with her decision to take over command as well as her choice of command staff, and had issued the Sunfire with a new mission profile in the Gamma Quadrant.

Arriving ahead of the senior staff she saw Ronson preparing the room, setting a pitcher of water in the centre and the padds she had assigned to each officer at their usual location.

" Thank you Ronson" She said earnestly as he nodded briefly before leaving the room.

Dean wasn't particularly thirsty at the moment, but the sentiment wasn't unappreciated. Giving a look to the new spot to Jennifer's right. Which to be honest was a little weird but not so much so that if was shown or could even be picked up by Aurora. "Commander." Sitting down and picking up the PADD to give it a look over ahead of time.

Lieutenant Kla'ren walked into the briefing room for the first time in what seemed like forever. His recovery from the transport ship incident was more or less speedy in a sense. At least from the time it happened to the time the Sunfire had departed Deep Space Nine. Unfortunately, his injuries were severe enough that he had a few new scars and his arm was still in a sling from when he was thrown back into the turbolift of the transport ship. On the bright side, he would also be able to take off the sling in at most a few days.

The Andorian Chief nodded to everyone who was currently present in the room and sat at his usual spot. He picked up the PADD in front of him to prepare for the meeting. There was a decent amount of change going on at once, but he knew that he could handle it.

Niali had thought she was late and therefore her entrance was theatrical. She bustled in, “sorry I’m late everyone I…..oh I’m not late then.” Glowing red she sat down and picked up her PaDD.

Aurora was unusually late to the meeting, she was normally one of the first through the door, but she had been spending as much time as she could with Savar. Walking into the room she nodded to all present taking her usual seat, but I felt odd not to have her husband in the room, plus there was someone else in Savar’s place, though she understood the reason why.

Finchley entered the room, PADD in hand, and silently walked to the far end of the table and sat in the empty seat to the Captain left-hand side.

Called, or rather summoned, S'thenosis made her way to the conference room after debating with herself if her presence was completely required. As she entered, she gave Balric, who currently occupied the Captain's chair, a nod that meant 'carry on' before moving over to the corner of the room and standing statuesque.

Sandra entered and sat quickly with both PADD's she had brought to the meeting.

Balric waited until everyone was assembled before getting started, feeling a little uncomfortable about her place at the head of the table, the Commodore just over her left shoulder.

"Thank you all for coming. I would like to confirm the appointment of commander House as my First Officer and Commander Kerr as my second" she started, casting her gaze around the table.

Aurora offered an understanding nod, the daily life aboard ship had to carry on and a replacement First Officer wasn’t a surprise whilst Savar was incapacitated.

"I've also conferred with the Admiralty, who have not only ratified my decision but have requested we remain in the Gamma Quadrant on the Sunfire's primary mission. " She continued.

Aurora looked towards Baldric. “I’ve been talking with Lieutenant Korial with regards my husband, we plan for me to try connecting with Savar on a deeper mental level to see if I can find out what’s wrong with him.”

" I would appreciate any information you both can uncover" Jennifer's tone softened as she regarded the two women. "We need to uncover if his illness is related to the meeting with the Phobe before we leave the area completely"

“Of course Commander” Aurora nodded. “I’ll get to the bottom of what’s going on.”

" If there's any possibility it's linked to the meeting yesterday - I need to know." Baldric continued before switching track. "Until we can rule out possible deliberate infection we'll remain in this vicinity. Our general orders are to continue making our way through the Gamma Quadrant, however, we've been tasked to investigate a spatial anomaly not far from our current location."

Up until now, she had been a spectator, but now the questions burned upon her tongue like a dragon chile. She cleared her throat. "How long can we expect to remain in the Gamma Quadrant, might I inquire?"

Jennifer looked at the imposing figure in the meeting, trying VERY hard not to feel intimidated by her mere appearance let alone her words. " Command have authorized us to continue our primary mission in the Gamma Quadrant for as long as it takes for us to achieve it."

"Perhaps I will need to confer with the Admiralty myself," She paused as she shifted her head to the side slightly. "...To understand how this new order of command will impact our previous engagement on Cardassia Prime. That is unless you could save me the call? By my calculations, we have three weeks and four days before our case is due to be heard in court. I believe a bit of reassurance is in order."

" The slightly only major problem is I believe Commander Savar is in medical stasis." Baldric replied as she took on the Commodore. " If he recovers in time I will organise a transport back to Cardassia Prime for both yourself and him"

"If he recovers. If, my dear Captain, is not acceptable. He must recover and he will stand trial. Anything less than his appearance or his funeral would be seen as a sign of guilt, and even the funeral would be up for questions." She raised her eyebrow. "So when the time comes, I will escort the Commander or the corpse to the trial one way or another. Are we clear on this fact?"

" With all due respect Commodore, we haven't begun to understand the nature of his illness. And to presume an ill man can stand trial is ludacris. I will not endanger his well-being to suit someone's schedule." Balric retorted hotly, having very little idea of what actually was at stake here.

S'thenosis grinned, if you could call it that, "That is why the situation is not only not yours to manage, but neither is the decision. I will consult with the Admiralty on the matter and let you know when your name comes up." Her forked tongue escaped her lips. "As for now, you may carry on." She said with a small wave of her fingers and just her fingers as if the conversation didn't even warrant the full wave of her hand.

Baldric was dumbfounded and took a moment to recover her senses before trying to continue the briefing.

"Right.. ok. Now, until we uncover the cause of Commander Savar's illness we shall remain here. Once that cause is determined, we will be moving forward with a new tasking the Admiralty has assigned to us"

Finchley had sat silent since taking his seat, but now spoke up asking "Sir" he said, looking at Baldric "Do we have any kind of notes as to what was said or discussed at the meeting between our Away Team and the Chief Chancellor of the Phobe?"

" We have the reports submitted by Commander Savar and myself as well as the other away team members. From my experience it went as well as can be expected. The Phobe were terrified of us, and despite our requests for friendship and co-operation, wanted nothing more than to be left alone. The agreement was that we would post bouys around the ion cloud to deter anyone venturing in and disturbing them." Jennifer explained.

"If I may. Why don't we simply contact them and get more in depth information. Considering that the First Contact went..mostly well. I'm sure they wouldn't mind giving it to us. Make it part of our bargain to make sure they aren't disturbed. If it's not whatever they have had, then we'll just have to leave that up to our Science and Medical staff."

Dean took a drink of water, "Also..I'd like to warrant caution about doing the mind link. From what I do know about the Vulcan mind, regardless of being in stasis. He's probably already tuned his body to go into a type of healing stasis of his own. Which includes very specific concentration of his mind as well. Interruptions of that sort could do more damage than good. Our best bet is to contact the Vulcan Science Institute before any other action is taken."

"I was thinking more of auditory and sensor notes as well as transcript" Finchley replied "because it's a strange coincidence that Commander Savar becomes ill just after attending the First Contact meeting, but all the other Away Team members are, as yet, unaffected. I'm not a strong believer in coincidences myself, so if we had this information, it could perhaps yield clues as to what may have happened to cause him to become unwell."

Jennifer listened carefully as the ideas were thrown around the table. Each question or concern had its own merit and spoke volumes about the speaker. " My tricorder was set for an audio and visual recording of the meeting, I reviewed it afterwards and didn't see anything untoward. However I am the first to admit I'm no doctor. I'll pass the files onto yourself and Dr Korial to review" She continued.

"Thank you Captain, that's very much appreciated" Finchley replied.

" Which brings me to the next matter to bring to your attention" Balric moved to the large screen that was embedded within one of the walls, tapping the control to activate it.

" Starfleet Command has received a distress call from a Ferengi ship in the vicinity of this region" she indicated an area of space on the starchart. " We're the closest vessel and we've been asked to investigate. The message was garbled, almost impossible to interpret but the tone was dire." She played the message received then turned back to the assembled officers.

Aurora frowned. “I’m not able to ascertain any emotion from the communication, Betazoids can’t read Ferengi, besides the obvious observation that they appear to be completely terrified. Both body language and the obvious visual clues tell us that.”

"Do we have any long range scan information from that area?" Finchley asked "If so, are there any anomalous readings or background noise that could yield any clues as to what they were terrified of?"

"I seriously doubt it." Dean made a bit of a face. "It's the Ferengi. They're not going to send any more than that and I believe we're too far out to get anything definite. Unless.....we use those evil probes I talked about before with Bonnie and she decided uh no, let's not use those where we can blow things up from 20 light-years away."

Sandra, having been quiet from the start, "Captain, if needed and may I suggest that you allow two of my fighters to go ahead and check out the issue?", she queried.

If she had been sitting next to him, she would have elbowed him in the ribs for picking on her during a staff meeting. And since he was across from her, her legs were too short to effectively reach him for that kick in the shins. Instead she opted for the death stare and decided to rib him later.

" We will start long-range scans promptly, and as soon as the matter with Savar is identified, we can move forward to assist. I'm sure our medical team will have answers shortly" Jennifer looked around the room at the assembled officers. " Any other questions?

"Also from an engineering standpoint, there may be a way to create, with medicals help a device that can monitor Savar's healing from the inside. It may give us a possible reason for his total shutdown, or help in giving us a look as to the reason why. I am not a Vulcan but I am Betazoid and there is a small window of hope in a possible monitored link, if only for a few minutes," Sandy said, knowing that it could be dangerous.

Jen considered this information before replying. "Take the fighters and scout the region where the distress beacon has come from, but don't engage or enter anything untoward, this is information gathering only. To that end, I'll have Aurora work with the medical team on healing Savar, I need you on that fighter."

Thriss looked at Baldric. "Captain, what would you like my team and I working on, aside from making sure the transwarp drive is tested and ready for use?"

" See if we can get any data from the long range scans and the fighter intel and figure out if it was a spacial phenomena or the like that's got two Ferengi ships in distress - we don't want to fall victim to whatever's gotten them into trouble in the first place." Balric looked at the Chief Engineer and nodded.

Thriss nodded back accepting the order. "I'll get right to it."

"Captain, just a precautionary measure, but it may be worthwhile projecting where the Ferengi ship was coming from, and where it was heading to" Finchley added "in case there's anything along those headings that could have, or may still, suffer a similar fate before we can get there. In the latter case, we could send a warning."

" See to it Commander." Jennifer nodded and the room fell silent for a minute. Seeing there were no further questions, she stood " Dismissed, let's get to it"


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