Booms in the Dark

Posted on Mon Jan 17th, 2011 @ 9:23am by Lieutenant Colonel Anastasia DeVries & Darek Halsey & Grixx

Mission: Hippocratic Hijacking
Location: SS North Star
Timeline: Following 'Away Team Abuse'

[Command Cabin]
[SS North Star]
[shortly after Jack's departure]

With the Executive Officer and their 'guest' S'anra now back aboard the safety net of the Arizona, Stace S. DeVries turned her attention to the slightly taller Darek D. Halsey and eyed him with some minor scrutiny. Deciding that he would work well enough, she then adverted her glance back towards the obnoxious Ferengi who stood there gazing at them both as if they were to offer some sort of compensation for all his troubles. Smiling faintly, Stace wished she could give good ol' Grixx just what he deserved.

"So... according to S'anra this vessel was carrying all sorts of highly expensive, highly valuable medical supplies," Stace announced out loud - as if she were talking more to herself than the other two gentlemen. "And by some bizarre act... this news got leaked to some very professional space pirates... who by further means of amazement found their way to this vessel's exact location in order to steal them." She paused then to stare Grixx down. "Shocking, no?"

The Ferengi scowled at yet another implication being thrown his way, "I will never understand your Starfleet's desire to point fingers at everyone arbitrarily until you finally get a confession out of someone. I hired people to take care of cargo that was valuable, because that was what I had been paid to do. If anyone leaked information, you'll have to find them among my crew. I'm sure someone wasn't happy with their pay... probably one of the Hew-mons working for me, they are never happy... Go sniff at their doorsteps."

"I would if I thought any of them actually had something to do with this," Stace retorted sharply. "Make no mistake, I'm sure you paid them all well under what it was worth and I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't want to bash your face in as much as I do... but that still doesn't make you any more saint-like. In fact, I have a snagging suspicion we'll be coming back to you before this is all said and done. Nevertheless, in the meantime, I'm sure you won't mind if the Commander and I have a more in depth look at your vessel. I'm sure there is a plethora of information to be had."

Darek turned to the Ferengi, "We're going to start searching, I suggest you stay out of our way and stay where we can find you. We will be back! He growled at the diminutive creature, "Major I'll take the computer systems, you take the cargo areas, and blast points?" He inquired, seeing as it'd be better to play to their strengths.

"Works for me," Stace agreed with a leer in the direction of Grixx.

Grixx gave the woman a bit of a leer before turning his attention to the Intelligence Officer, "If you are so dead set on searching my ship, then do it and leave. I want no more to do with you or your Starfleet friends."

Chuckling to himself Darek nodded to the Major and headed for the ships main computer core, that would be the best place to start looking for information or even the lack there off. Pushing his way past the partially jambed open door to the computer core Darek pulled his magnum from its holster and a small flashlight, he flicked on the light and looked around the small tier at the center of the multiple deck high room. "Great, here comes the fun part..." He mused as he grasped the ladder and climbed upwards towards the computer interface.

[Cargo Bay]
[SS North Star]

Having cleared the entire area of any stray crewmembers who were still lurking about either out of sheer boredom or in an blatant attempt to be nosey, Stace found herself thankful for the silence. Processing a quote unquote crime scene usually turned out with far better results if the investigator were left to her own devices and not distracted with the annoying prattling of someone else. However, on the unfortunate flip side to working alone, the work could sometimes take far longer and you'd only be relying on one opinion instead of possibly two or more. Good thing for Stace she was always right.

Her first step was to walk the perimeter of the cargo bay in order to get a general feel of the room and the situation that was ongoing prior to the chaos breaking out. For a place where such valuables were being held she came to the realization rather quickly that the area wasn't overly protected to begin with. It didn't appear it would take much to come in but for some reason whoever was responsible for hijacking the goods seemed to want to make a rather impressing impression on someone.

"Uh huh..." she murmured to herself as she reached an area in the wall where a small scorch mark remained and a slight discoloration had taken place. "Let's just take a little tiny peek."

Removing her tricorder from her belt and giving it a rather impromptu makeover, Stace initiated a scan on the surrounding area of the wall and was not overly surprised when the instrument beeped it had found something. "Interesting indeed." For it was not often she ran across either argine or sorium and even rarer to run into them together despite the fact they were of the same origin.

Hoping the rest of the room would turn out to be a continuing plethora of wealth, the Major continued on with her scans and her research for another half an hour at least before she was at the point of giving up.

"Well, I'll be damned..."

There, almost covered by the shade of an out of place console, another mark had made itself known. A mark Stace recognized immediately. The unmistakable mark of a phased polaron rifle. Now, now, they were getting somewhere. And this somewhere was far far from good.

"DeVries to Halsey... I've found something rather interesting here and I'm making my way back to the Arizona to see what I can bang out from it... feel free to join me at any time. DeVries out."

Confident that she was on the road to discovery, the Major reached for her commbadge and asked the good ship to beam her on home.

[Main Computer Core]
[SS North Star]

With his legs dangling from the platform and his arms wrapped around the center railing he felt almost like a child, one hand held a padd and the other a tri-corder, both of which were hooked up to the computer core, pulling the last couple days of sensor readings from the vessel. Much of it was boring and useless information; unless of course you were in the Science Department.

It was all quite boring till gaps, small ones started to appear in the sensor readings. Then as the time codes progressed closer and closer to the actual attack, the gaps got larger until the logs were completely erased and still being erased by a worm. Darek paused and brought the padd closer to his face, blinking he focused on the worm. Quickly highlighting it with his thumb the worm was enlarged so he could see its command coding; he paused as his eyes glided over the code, he'd seen code like that once before and that had been somewhere most people never got to see, even if they were brass level in Central Intelligence.

It looked like someone had some pretty genius and very powerful friends if they had managed to lay their paws on coding like that, even if it was a copy it came from somewhere in SF:I.

Reaching for his comm-badge to call Major DeVries, she beat him to the punch. "Yea I'll meet you there, I have my own set of interesting, I'll see you back on the Arizona. Halsey out." He quickly detached his hard lines from the computer core, and tapped his commbadge and request to be brought home.