Post #148: Pandora's Box
Posted on Wed Oct 23rd, 2024 @ 9:57pm by Lieutenant V'Lar & Ensign Hannah Thrace & Ensign Freya Locklyn & Ensign Dot and Dash & Ensign Timor Kyl & Sergeant Major Okan
Edited on on Wed Oct 23rd, 2024 @ 11:36pm
1,235 words; about a 6 minute read
Mission: Secrets
The streaks of weapons fire, orange and purple, lanced around all over the holodeck as Hannah and Okan went at it in a game of velocity that was probably better described as "Clash of the Titans." or "Unstoppable Force meets the Immovable Object", as might be deduced from those potential names for the match up this was far from their first game each other. This was a friendly rivalry that went back to the Academy, where Okan a fourth year cadet, having won the Academy Velocity title for three years in a row lost it to Hannah, who had been a first year at the time, it had been quite an upset given how the sport overwhelmingly played to Okan's strength's as a Jem Hadar, but Hannah hadn't been ignorant of those who'd raised her, she knew how to move, how to react, how to shoot. This wasn't an average standard of play either, in most instances the players tended to stay on the floor and do the old duck, aim and shoot routine on the holographic disk, but for these two it was far more athletic and far more acrobatic. Hannah kicked off the wall to dodge the disk as it flew past her before firing and hitting it, turning the red light on it blue, it rebounded off the wall as Okan took aim and fired sending the disk high and into a corner shot off of two walls. There was little value at times of just sending it straight at your opponent, you needed to get them off balance to get the hit on them. Hannah responded by rolling away from the disk and firing, sending it back at Okan, and so the back and forth continued until Hannah was able to send the disk at Okan in the manner of a stone skimming off of the surface of a pond, Okan was able to return it but he was off balance now and Hannah was already charging she fired and before Okan could regain his footing the disk collided with his shoulder.
"Point Thrace, Round Ten Thrace." the computer said "Match Thrace six rounds to four." Hannah giggled as she walked over to Okan and gave him a hug.
"Do you ever sweat?" she asked noticing that she was practically drenched in it
"Not that I'm aware of." Okan said "You're getting harder to live with at this."
"You'll get me eventually." Hannah said
About five minutes later the pair walked into the Intelligence hub where the Intelligence Departments officers were waiting expectantly.
"So... who won?" V'Lar asked
"Me." Hannah said, at this point Freya was holding out a hand and Timor was placing some latinum in it.
"Is there a reason why you don't go invisible Okan?" Timor asked
"He used to." Hannah said "Used to win a lot by doing that but it doesn't really work if your opponent can calculate where he is, which is how he lost the academy title."
"I didn't know I was up against a nerd." Okan said putting Hannah into a playful headlock and giving her head a scratch or two, before after a few moments of hilarity releasing her and leaving.
Now things became serious as the intelligence officers gathered around the round central console in their hub. "Ok Freya what's the current situation?" V'Lar asked
"Well the good news is that the Hydro Bomb is not specific enough for anyone to identify it as a Federation device, so we're probably not getting a declaration of war from the Klingons at the moment." Freya said "It hasn't stopped the Romulan propaganda machine, there are whispers running around, a little bit of fearmongering."
"And the bad news?" V'Lar asked
"We still have a fractured Klingon Empire." Timor said
"It's not the victory the Romulans wanted..." Dot said
"But it is a victory nonetheless." Dash finished her partners sentence.
"So what happens next Hannah?" V'Lar asked
"Most likely civil war." Hannah said "No one on the High Council survived so we've now got a situation where all these Klingon Houses do not have a consensus. They're warriors, most houses have some sort of claim to the throne as it were, so there's probably going to be a lot of posturing, a lot of deal making, a lot of shenanigans and probably a lot of bloodshed." she paused before continuing "It's also likely that there's going to be some who take the opportunity to raid and do what we might call acts of piracy, the Romulans just took the shackles off of the Klingon Empire and while we may not be at war with them, the Federation now has to watch the Klingon border intensely for the first time in sixty six years."
"So we don't worry about the internal politics until it becomes a problem, the more immediate concern is the opportunists." V'Lar said "Ok then Dot, Dash tell me about the recovered intel."
"It's far more than we thought it was." Dot said
"It contains things that are classified." Dash said "It's information that has grave implications if widely known."
"But." Freya said "If the Romulans are prepared to dig out something from two hundred years ago that may not be their only plan."
"Timor?" V'Lar asked
"The quadrant was a very different place two hundred years ago, it wasn't as clear cut. Forewarned is forearmed." Timor said
"Ok Hannah you're the historian, you'll get access to the data, I want it secured on an independent system, no remote access, I want a pantheon of security protocols for it and no one outside of ourselves, members of the senior staff and anyone else granted access is to know about it."
"We take a terminal, give it a hard connection to the main core, disconnect it's accessibility from the rest of the network, put DNA, voice, eye and other security considerations in place." Timor said
"And we do the same sort of thing for the room, plenty of security measures, a solid door, forcefields, transporter inhibitor, all sorts of scanners." Freya said
"Ok then." V'Lar said looking around and pointing at an area of the hub that was currently an empty storage room that was about half the size of a small cargo bay "In there will do."
"We'll get on it." Freya said
As various tasks began being undertaken V'Lar looked at Hannah. "It's Pandora's box." she said "All the power, all the knowledge that could be in there and we can't let it out. We shouldn't even be peaking but we're going to have to if we're going to win this fight. You're the historian, this is your thing and we're going to cut the middleman out rather than going through the formality of me having to call your sister in here every time we find something, the moment you find anything that's alarming, you leave me a note telling me what it is, you go and tell her and we start working quickly, if there's one thing Qon'os tells us it's that time is of essence when it comes to things like this."
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Lieutenant Junior Grade V'Lar
Chief Intelligence Officer
Starbase Obsidian
Ensign Freya Locklyn
Infiltration Specialist
Starbase Obsidian
Ensigns Dot & Dash
Encryption/Decryption Specialists
Starbase Obsidian
Ensign Timor Kyl
Intelligence Officer
Starbase Obsidian
Ensign Hannah Thrace
Alien Archaeologist & Anthropologist/Intelligence Officer
Starbase Obsidian
Sgt Major Okan
First Sgt
Starbase Obsidian
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