The search for the truth

Posted on Thursday 29 October 2020 @ 15:28 by Lieutenant Commander Hayley Godding & Captain Melody Jones

Mission: A Whale of a problem (We're going to need a bigger boat)
Location: The planet surface
Timeline: The Resistance - The Etheria Part 2
1326 words - 2.7 OF Standard Post Measure

ON:

In a sudden brightness that burned her retinas causing her to squint in the light, Hayley awoke in the cavern that they'd all been inside just prior to being encapsulated. As her eyes adjusted to the light coming in from outside, she noticed that the rock 'pod' that had confined her had disintegrated around her, leaving her standing in a small pile of dust at her feet. Otherwise, there was no evidence of what had happened to her. Looking around, she noticed the other occupied pods of the landing party, only their faces visible from the hard rock pods, their eyes moving beneath their eyelids as if deep inside REM sleep.

Moving between the pods, she spotted Sansa's and moved over to it, peering down at the young sleeping face of the woman she loved. She reached out tenderly to caress Sansa's face for a moment with the back of her hand, before a psychic push reminded her that there was nothing she could do for Sansa right now but to do her mission.

Tann's voice suddenly sounded in her head "You cannot save her yet. You have far a more important mission and not much time. You know she is safe, so please hurry. Your absence will not go unnoticed indefinitely."

I get it, don't rush me Hayley thought to the mental urge, knowing that it was liable to be Tann pushing her on. She'd never endured a mental link before, but this feeling of not even knowing her own mind was incredibly distressing. The sanctuary of her own thoughts was unassailably violated and she now shared this most intimate of spaces with an alien entity she'd only met a short period before.

She opened her tricorder, which was still working miraculously and scanned for the signal she'd discovered moments before they'd been dragged into the Etheria. The signal came out strong and clear about five kilometers away from their current location. She checked the power-cell on her side-arm before setting off following the signal.

As she moved further towards it, she could see the signal strength increase. Realizing that it was possible that Tann wasn't aware of what she was seeing, she decided to explain;

"Tann, this signal appears to be some kind of strong theta-band transmission coming from a metallic object on the island. It seems to be just beneath the surface, but only enough to appear to have done so from landing from orbit at speed." Hayley explained.

As well as in his voice, Tann's genuine confusion came across in his thoughts. "Whatever it is, it is not natural to our planet yet it is somehow shielded from our detection. We normally can detect any foreign presence on the surface, like your shuttle. Can you identify the object and what it is doing?"

"I'm not a science officer, unfortunately, but I know enough to get by." Hayley said. "I can't tell you much more until I get there."

Those not accustomed to it, Tann was making small talk to Haley as she proceeded. "Your mind holds interesting thoughts. I am beginning to understand your people more. Is that what they look like?" He was looking at Hayley's memories of whales "We have never seen their natural form. It's quite beautiful and Oh..." His mental voice trailed off and an amount of embarrassment crept into her mind. "I apologize. Your thoughts about Sansa are particularly.... intense."

"Hey! Stay out of there!" Hayley snapped, then regathered herself. "Sorry, I'm quite a private person normally, and I get particularly protective of Sansa." She clambered over a rock formation. "So yeah, that's what whales look like. Sansa loves them so very much. I'm almost jealous." She grinned.

Arriving at the signal co-ordinates, Hayley noted that the area showed evidence of having received an impact in the past, but that the area was covered with islandic material. Removing her phaser, she carefully tuned the power and phase variance to allow her to perform a wide area dispersal that cleared the surface build-up of the impact creator, thus revealing a pathway down towards the metallic reading. She ducked down and crawled into the hole she'd created and came upon the device.

"It's a probe." She said, as she ran her tricorder over it. "Composite duranium, trianium and cobalt designed to survive harsh re-entries. It appears to be a rudimentary signal amplifier and transmitter, used to enhance a remote signal and thus strengthen it locally. We use something very similar when we need to communicate with our ship if it cannot maintain orbit for whatever reason. Whoever is using this, isn't on the planet themselves, but using it to interact as if they were."

This is most unusual and very concerning. What is the probe doing? Any strong transmission would be detected by us immediately. The transmission must be hidden somehow. Where is it going? Is someone controlling it?"

"I don't believe it has the range to do this outside the system, no." Hayley responded. "Whoever it is, likely is somewhere in your solar system but shielded from both your sensors and ours. This set-up is such that whoever it is can sit in a small craft inside an asteroid and interact with your Etheria at will."

Can you stop it?

"I think so..." Hayley said, and moved to an access panel, removing it carefully with a liberal application of her phaser at a low power setting to remove the fastenings. "It's not incredibly sophisticated technology, probably a couple years behind Federation standard tech, but then probe technology isn't exactly heavily policed. Its tactical technology that's watched. I think this here is a flow regulator..." She pressed a control button and the device whined slightly as the power level dropped slightly.

Oh this wouldn't do at all, not for Harn. Someone was messing with his device. Liquid rock started to form, but this time not to where it would cover Hayley, instead a tendril reached out to wrap itself around Hayley's waist to pull her away from the pod.

"Looks like I have someone's attention..." Hayley said, moving quickly to avoid the tendril, before using her phaser on a high setting to vaporise it. "I think it's time I made my presence known... before I'm removed from the equation entirely."

"I'm afraid I cannot help you there. Only the council members have permission to alter the structure of the island. If I tried, we would be discovered instantly. Tann's mind was working now, putting the pieces together wich was coming across in his link with Hayley.

Moving back to the access panel, Hayley pulled the panel off and accessed the circuitry below. "Ha, cheap bastard." She grinned. "You retrofitted an old Andorian communications probe. I do love me Andorians, they're exceptionally brilliant people and build amazing tech. It's almost criminal what this guy's done to their probe..." She said, as she moved aside some isolinear cables to expose the guts of the device. "Let's see you get yourself out of this one..." She said, as she pulled out a control board with considerable force, causing the probe to spark angrily from the socket she'd just yanked the board from. This would disrupt the control signal from the origin causing a disabilization of the signal at the end-point.

An urgent thought from Tann suddenly came tough. Everyone is being called to the meeting place. You must return to the cavern and re-enter The Etheria. Let us hope whatever you have done, it is enough.

Great... She thought. "Just what I want, to get stuck in your mind-prision again..." She said aloud as she began to clamber back out of the cave she'd made to the probe. "It'll take me a little while to get back, can you stall?"

We do not have much time! Hurry! came the reply.

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