The Solar Ray

Posted on Mon Jul 22nd, 2024 @ 6:00pm by Lieutenant Commander Jason Elliot & Commander Zera Tirado & Lieutenant Commander Jorel Torin II & Lieutenant Commander Bellona Juventus & Lieutenant Commander Johanna Lyngstad & Lieutenant Pharos Ventari & Lieutenant Xander Oroyo

3,029 words; about a 15 minute read

Mission: Upon Stranger Stars

Zera had already suited up and was awaiting the arrival of the away team members. It would consist of herself, Lieutenant Commander Bellona Juventus, Lieutenant Pharos Ventari, Lieutenant Commander Johanna Lyngstad and Lieutenant Commander Jason Elliot. She checked over her tricorder and hand phaser before turning to the team.

"We will be beaming onto their bridge. From there we will attempt to restore some sort of power. If we can get life support functioning again it will help us rig the vessel for proper towing. Plus make it a hell of a lot easier to find our what happened." Zera told them all. "If you have anything to ask, ask it now."

Jason adjusted his long duster coat, "There are three things I hate, cold coffee, calls in the middle of the night and derelict ships."

Johanna arrived with her environment suit, tricorder and hand phaser. "I got a bad feeling that this derelict is going to be a lot of trouble."

"It's an empty ship." Zera reminded them with a slight scowl. It seemed clear she had no room for any sort of superstitions.

Bellona was all business as she traipsed into the transporter room in her EV suit. She looked like she was ready to go to war, with her steely blue eyes and stony expression. "Janus guide this mission." She muttered, mostly to herself, as she triple checked her service phaser. Extra layers of verification were never out of place.

Following Bellona in, Pharos lugged an equipment case in each hand, which together likely weighed as much as he did. He was wearing a customized EV suit -the standard model didn't fit his biology at all- with the helmet stowed, and he stacked the cases on the center pad before checking his suit readouts. "Old derelict ship. huh? Those are always exciting! It'll be like working at the fleet museum again."

"Let's get over there shall we? No more dilly dallying!" Zera said beckoning them to join her on the transporter pad.

Jason stepped up on the transporter pad, "Here we go..." he said without finishing.

"Energize!" Zera ordered.

A few seconds later the team from the Columbia appeared on the old cramped bridge of the Freighter. The consoles once lit up with colorful buttons and screens of the 2260's were all dark and lifeless, the room was dark and occasional a clipboard floated silently in the vacuum. Everything was silent and still, deserted and lonely.

Zera switched on her wrist torch and magnetized her boots to the deck. "Ventari, see if any of these consoles have power," she said simply.

The Ventari hovered his hand over the console, visibly restraining himself from flipping the old-style toggle switches and manual buttons. "Oh my Queen, it's so legacy in here!" Using the tricorder sensors integrated into his gauntlet, he studied the readouts briefly, then tapped at several of the console buttons. "Not a lot of power, but there should be enough to check readings or logs. Let me see if I can some backups restored."

Jorel was onboard the bridge of the Columbia as he sat in the First Officer's seat. He was watching as the team beamed over the vessel and made their ways onto what appeared to him as a freighter from the 23rd century.

Jorel tapped his combadge and said, "Torin to away team. I've reached out to some of my contacts within the Federation and if you have trouble getting past the access codes of those old ships, I might have some codes that might help to override and get you into their systems."

Jason looked at one of the readouts, "This is Elliot, it looks like some of the systems have been left unlocked, can you get us the command prefix code incase we need it." he turned to the Commander "Half the internal sensors are either disconnected or configured like something....." Jason paused "Columbia pull the files on the Xerix incident on Starbase 34 ASAP!!"

Jorel heard Elliot ask for the information relating back to the Xerix incident on Starbase 34. Jorel pulled out his PADD and quickly accessed the Columbia's main computer and pulled up the information as quickly as he could and as the information came up, Jorel replied to Elliot and said, "Well, there wasn't much to go off of. The Starbase was attacked back around 2266 or so, but not destroyed. There was some information stolen and several key personnel killed. But, that was about it. At least from the official records. The Federation thought it might have come from a new empire they encountered at the time called the Xerix Empire."

Jason paused, "That's the official story, unofficial records are a lot different, the Xerix have been extinct for around five thousand years, some of their artifacts are believed to have similar properties to catric archives from Vulcan except these have a stronger influence over the wielder, almost along the line the of possession, in my office on my desk is a green leather book with copies of the original investigation notes along with information on how to track the neural energy of these ghosts for a lack of a better term."

Jason stood upright, "This isn't my first dance with this kind of thing."

Johanna said, "Wait a second. How does this relate to that? How do you connect this ship with this Xerix incident?"

Jason looked over to Johanna, "The sensors are configured to detect the same energy forms from the Starbase thirty-four reports, the omitted sections include a photograph of the alterations, the fact I could remember this is another story." he paused "These incidents are more common than the records show."

Jorel had to take a seat and let everything sink in as he listened to what Jason was telling him. He wasn't sure what to believe at this point, but Jorel knew that there was something going on and they needed to figure out what.

Jorel turned to Jason and asked, "How common are these occurrences?"

Jason turned to Jorel, "There are recorded incidents dating back centuries on several worlds and yes I am saying there are ghosts and other things that go bump in the night, spatial anomalies trapping neural energy, interdimensional travel bringing all kinds of bad things, and other stuff." Jason slid his coat off revealing his shoulder holster along with a particularly nasty and antiquated shotgun hanging from it.

Listening in on the conversation Zera turned to the officers. "Times were different back then. I doubt there's any ghosts here now." She told them all. "Once life support is restored I want a deck by deck survey. Find anything that can determine what happened here and locate any remains of the crew."

Jorel said over the others, "Never say never, Zera. Ghost stories come from some sort of fact, even if it isn't wholly correct. Think about all of the stuff from each of our world's Histories."

"I doubt we're dealing with anything of the organized energy type, some kind of..." the whine of the aged lighting and antique life support coming on "Critter."

"Well, lets just see if we can't get the lights and environmental back online, so that we can do that deck by deck survey. Also, might I suggest that we go in teams of two or more," Jorel said, looking at the rest of the team as he waited to help out.

Jason looked back at the readout, "Five minutes we should have more than the stale atmosphere in here," he paused flipping a few pages in the book he laid on the console "Has the engineering station started to reboot?"

Bellona glanced at the station in question. "Indeed, albeit slowly." She replied, wiping dust from its surface. "Something tells me environmental control might take some time - and we waste time waiting for it to return to operational status. I would prefer to scout ahead with another."

Jason looked at the pages he had open, "The first readout will be the for escape pods, The others will come up after." He pointed to a display beside him "Life support is fully online, but only certain sections are coming up, the internal sensors are configured as if there looking for something, it might be a bad idea for us to venture too far for about forty minutes this display says some of the emergency bulkheads are showing they're manually locked." Jason said pointing to a trio of blinking icons on the display.

"You thinking it was something the computer did or are you implying that someone manually locked the bulkheads into place?" Jorel asked Jason, walking over to see which bulkheads he was talking about.

Jason looked at the readouts "Four of the bulkheads are showing they're manually engaged so we can't open them from here."

"So, why would someone want to bring down the bulkheads and manually lock them? What were they trying to keep out?" Jorel asked, looking over at Jason a bit confused as to why someone would want to keep someone away from that part of the ship, unless they were trying to hide something or keep themselves from harm.

Jason managed to pull up another status display, "The starboard airlock outer door is showing open and the inner one is showing the locks manually engaged too, this isn't making sense, could this ship have been boarded by pirates?"

"I mean, it's definitely a possibility. Lord only knows what this ship has been through yet. We'd have to get to the Bridge or Main Engineering to see if we couldn't gather some personal logs from the crew," Jorel replied, thinking how far of a walk that would be in a completely Zero-G environment.

"The ship has been in space for a long time. Odds are better than not that someone boarded her." said Johanna.

"No doubt that someone has come for a look." Zera said upon listening to the conversation. "What areas are those bulkheads I'm? Are they closed around essential systems?"

"They're all closed around the main cargo bay, blocking access to it, the internal sensors are all focused in that area too, This is starting to look more familiar." Jason paused as there was another audible hiss "Life support excluding some issues with the gravity plates is now fully restored, we'll have to take a look at that when we get down too main engineering." Jason finished pulling off his rebreather mask.

"Do you think that's really safe to do in here? Especially if someone might be in here with us that might not have the best intentions for us?" Jorel asked Jason, wanting to make sure that the ship was a bit more secure before trusting the environmental systems totally.

Zera checked her tricorder, confirming the existence of air now in the room and removed her helmet. The air was rather stale, but now it would start to get fresher. "If there is anything still in there, it has to be dead or gone by now." She told them all.

Jason picked up the notebook, "Life support on these old freighters generally was set up so that the bridge, medbay and engineering got priority during an emergency along with a designated area in the crew quarters." he quoted from a footnote "the engineering station should have the escape pod status by now."

"That's a comfort to know, actually. Even though I'd still like to make sure that there's nobody onboard. Would we be able to scan for lifesigns from the Bridge or Main Engineering?" Jorel asked, looking over Jason's shoulder for a moment before looking around the area that they were in.

Jason made a motion, "The station to your left should have the internal sensors or at the least of the ones that are online, the station behind Commander Tirado should be the main status board for most of the other systems."

Jorel went over and input some commands into the system to see if the internal sensors would work for him. It quickly went to its task and the scans were completed in a few moments time. Jorel looked up and said, "From what I can tell, there's nobody in the parts of the ship that the sensors could scan, which were pretty much Main Engineering, the bridge, and a few other places. We should be good for the moment."

Jason was still baffled, "There's a huge amount of power being routed to the main cargo bay but the internal sensors are offline or are not functional, add in that most of the internal monitoring is offline behind the sealed doors, our next stop is going to have to be main engineering."

Johanna nodded to Jason as the group headed to main engineering.

Jason looked at the bulkheads as they walked towards the stairwell that lead to engineering, "Surprisingly well preserved considering the time," He paused a he looked over too the escape pods on the port side, "Three were launched for sure, it looked like an orderly evacuation too." he said gesturing to the pod hatches.

"Which does not explain why the crew of this freighter vacated it. Speaking of which. Did you say there is a huge amount of power being routed to the main cargo bay?" Bellona glanced at Jason and raised an eyebrow. "Cargo bays do not normally require large amounts of power - only just enough to maintain the environmental systems and lighting, as needed. Perhaps the answer as to why this freighter is abandoned lies down there."

Following the group as they were making their way down to Main Engineering, Jorel asked, "Well, did it say what the power was being used for down there? Like, was it just for environmental systems or was it being put towards something else?"

Jason had been weighing those questions before they were raised, "We'll know more when we get to engineering, all of the master logs are accessible there, until we know what the hell happened I don't want to take any chances that whatever was sealed behind those doors is either still alive or something devious like an Iconian gate."

What Jason had said didn't give much comfort to Jorel, but he knew where the man was coming from. He didn't want to make any sort of assumptions or anything, which Jorel could respect. However, it made Jorel want to get to Engineering sooner rather than later and tap into those logs.

As the group made there way too the engineering section Jason began to sweep the area looking for the main engineering console, he walked over pulling out the red notebook again, he opened it too a page and began to key in commands, the lights flickered on after of few more seconds, after some humming and other vocal noises Jason spoke "We have ninety minutes of power reserves left and maybe two hours of life support."

Johanna looked at the readouts from the engineering console that Jason had been programming. She confirmed his estimations.

Jason kept keying his way through the various systems, his frustration was about to show, "The majority of the computer memory is corrupted or intentionally deleted, there's nothing to go on, personal files are wiped, logs erased and or encrypted, manifest erased, cargo records erased, crew manifest erased, but if you want some good news I can unlock the bulkheads from here except for the one for the cargo bays, that one seems to be locally engaged." he said sliding the notebook back into his bag "I assume we're going to make our way to the cargo holds?"

Zera moved over to one of the engineering systems console. "Why would someone go to the lengths of erasing everything in their computer banks?" She asked as she managed to get a readout of the ships overall condition. "The engines are perfectly fine, but the core and impulse generators are dry. No dilithium or dueterium, even the antimatter isn't present in the entire system."

She turned to Elliot. "Someone took great lengths to make sure this ship wasn't going anywhere anytime soon." Zera stood there pondering for a few moments as she went over what they had found out in her head.

"Let's take a quick look at that cargo hold. Then we'll return to Columbia." Zera said. "Mister Elliot, download what you can onto your tricorder from their computers. We can analyse that on the Columbia."

Jason set to downloading the remaining computer files when a display to his left came to life, "Uh...I don't think it's a good idea to open that bulkhead." he said pointing to the display.

"What have you found?" Zera asked.

Jason tried to clear up the image, "The image won't clear up, it could be a pile of cargo containers or something else but what little sensor data there is a lot of random energies in the cargo hold, There is artificial gravity and poor atmosphere but the lighting is at an emergency level."

"Is there enough power to erect a forcefield over the door?" Zera asked. "Then at least we can make a visual inspection."

Keying more commands, "Emitters are burned out, some of the power relays are tied into whatever they did to the cargo bay."

Johanna said, "Making a small hole in the door to see what's in the room could be dangerous. There must a good reason people sealed whatever it was in that room."

"Personally, I'm a bit at a crossroads with the whole door. I want to know because I want to see what's behind there, but at the same time, I'm ready to just get back onboard the Columbia," Jorel replied as he shuttered for a moment.

Jason looked at the display, "Well the computer records aren't going to be much help, the few I've recovered mostly status reports, an old cargo manifest, not much else, no flight plans, no rosters." he turned "Opening that bay might solve some questions but to be honest without functioning life support we're best off leaving."

There was a noise coming from Jason's tricorder, he pulled it out, "Columbia we have a problem."

End Part one

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