---Part 4 (pre - Part 5)

Posted on Sat Mar 11th, 2023 @ 4:24pm by Lieutenant Commander Diane Doctrine

Mission: Starship Side Quest
Location: Gagarin's Bridge
Timeline: Current.

==USS Garagin's Bridge==

Diane and Kilbane arrived back on the bridge of the old starship. "All right, your grace," she teased a bit, "Let's get the library console fired up and see what we can find."

She walked over to it and started entering the search terms that Kerr had suggested. As they waited for the results to be compiled, Diane asked, "So, how long have you been a student of history?"

"I've always enjoyed history Commander," Kilbane replied, "It's more like a hobby if I'm honest and it can become alive the more you dig into it. Sometimes I can lose myself for hours in the one subject. For instance, take the history of warfare, a huge subject I know, but when you think of how it's changed from the discovery of gunpowder on Earth in the 800's AD to what we and other races have used in our time, how can you not be fascinated?"

"Oh yes," Diane sounded discontent, "It always seems to be war that advances our technology. Surely we're advanced enough now to find another way." She closed her eyes and shook her head, "Don't get me wrong. Knowing history is a good thing for if we forget it we're doomed to repeat it. I think some famous philosopher said that once. It makes sense to me."

"Yes, it was George Santayana, a Spanish philosopher" Kilbane replied "The whole quote being 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it'. You're twisting my meaning Commander and I don't appreciate it, that's not what I was driving at. I chose warfare as a subject because it's the one thing for certain that every species you'll have encountered in your life will have had in common. If you don't like my answers, don't try and put me down."

"I wasn't..." Diane stammered.

He turned way in disgust, he wasn't going to be spoken to like that, and made his way towards the turbolift. As he walked he said, "If you want me I'll be checking the former crews' quarters for written diaries and logs as was suggested when we were in engineering!"

Diane watched him leave surprised at his reaction. Her mouth hung open in disbelief for a few seconds. After recomposing herself she drummed her fingers on the console a few times wondering what prompted his outburst.

The computer chimed for attention. Her search had found some results in the recorded crew logs. 'This should be interesting,' she thought selecting one file and pressing 'play'.

"Personal log, Lieutenant Kerry Kordeleski. We've reached the planet Calistan. It's been colonized by Bajorans. They seem like nice people, very religious, and very artful and cultured. There seem to be two groups. Some worship beings they call Prophets... while some worship another group, they seem to have different names depending on who we ask. Some call them Overseers while others call them Pahwraiths. The two groups seem to be at odds with each other on whose gods are the rightful ones. One thing I'll never understand is fighting over something like that. When asked about it, they talk about an ancient book they brought with them..."

The log entry went on to explain the belief the Bajorans held about this book. That some ceremonies described within would free the true leaders of their religion. Then Kerry had to stop recording and go to his duty station.

"Intriguing," Diane said to herself. She looked over the other entries trying to decide which one to listen to next.

The turbolift doors opened again and Kilbane came out saying "And another thing, warf..." then he heard the recording of the log. He quickly walked over to the library console and said, "That's wonderful, religion and religious acrimony, that's another subject that has a vast historical interest and another subject that crosses the species divide. It's been blamed for causing more conflict that anything else. The text book inclusion, if only we had more on that, perhaps it would give us an insight into what caused the split in beliefs...it could even give us information about this orb."

While she agreed with Kilbane, religion, in Diane's view, was one of the biggest causes of strife, violence, and ignorance in history. She kept this opinion to herself for the time being. Instead she offered, "We have a list of other personal log entries to listen to. Would you like to pick the next one?"

"That's very kind of you Commander, yes," Kilbane replied, looking at the list of personnel logs. He saw that the ships Chief Science Officer, one Lieutenant Junior Grade Io DaSilva had one so he clicked on it.

"Personal Log, Io DaSilva. It was an interesting meeting today with the leaders of those who followed the Pah-wraiths, they seemed overly keen to tell us about their beliefs and show us the text book today. Not that any of us could understand anything written in it, and we weren't allowed to touch it. When the book was brought out, you could see an immediate reverence was paid to it by all the Bajorans, and when they began the recitals, something strange happened, they went into a kind of trance. At one point, and I'm not entirely sure how to describe this, but it was like they had a kind of fire in their eyes. The ceremony lasted about twenty minutes or so and when it finished, those Bajorans present seemed different, almost aggressive. Our team thanked them for their time and for allowing us to be present and made a quick exit. I'm not sure I'd want to see that again, I'll admit, it scared me. End log."

Kilbane looked at Diane "Well now, that's an interesting one don't you think?"

"It is indeed," she agreed looking back to him. "I have to wonder what was in that book. It seems to be the focal point of the two groups differences."

"How about adding in the words fire, eyes, aggression and aggressive to the logs we're searching, see if anyone else wrote about this, or was able to shed any more light on it," Kilbane said.

Diane took a breath while considering the request. "Well, it can't hurt." She adjusted the search parameters and ran it again. "Let's see what we get." She suddenly looked to Kilbane, "Do you suppose there was any effect on the Garagin's crew? Some people hold their religious beliefs quite close to their hearts."

"Bearing in mind that I would imagine not many, if any at all, of the crew would have come across Bajorans before, I would hazard a guess that the answer to that question would be no" Kilbane answered, then suddenly he began stroking his chin thoughtfully "However...being exposed to what went on, it doesn't discount that some of the crew could have been affected. From the description given, this seemed to be psychological more than spiritual, plus, with the change in attitude, could there have been some kind of air born 'drug' included? I mean to go from placid to aggressive within a very short space of time, literally minutes, how could you account otherwise?"

“There’s at least one other factor to consider,” Diane replied while thinking, “Besides the possibility of drugs, it could be environmental factor, perhaps something on the planet, but to prove that we’d need more information on this book and how it affects people on other planets.” She ran her fingers through her hair as she spoke trying to stimulate her brain.

[Main Engineering]

Finchley was tracking the source of the messages from the main frame that the gold medallion set off, to the fact that the same medallion had tripped the message of the pre-set heading the Gagarin was now on in Main Engineering. It occurred to him that some kind of failsafe would have had to be employed just in case the star charting had changed in the nearly two hundred years between the Gagarin returning from its original journey to and from Calistan and its journey back there now. The limited engineering techniques of back then compared to what was available now would mean the ship would have to scan for the nearest source with the most up to date space faring chart...and that would be the runabout!

Though the runabout was no longer attached to the Gagarin, it would still be within scanning distance, so if he could find the source of the scan from engineering, he could break the failsafe and then by proxy stop the pre-set course setting the Gagarin was on. There had to be a power link separate too the ones that ran all the other parts keeping the ship going. Jogging back to the main console, he brought up the main chart showing all the links the ship had going from Main Engineering to the various departments powered up and the consoles which were 'live'. He isolated them out one by one till he eventually found the one link that remained within engineering itself but also the helm controls of the ship. That was the one, that was the failsafe and that was what needed to be cut off.

"Kerr to Doctrine, Sir, can you go to the Helm control and see if you can locate where the console is scanning back to our runabout" he said "long story short, the Gagarin's computer is trying to scan the star charts the runabout has in its data core, if we can break the link, we can cut out the failsafe that's been built in and bring the Gagarin back under our control. Once we do that, we can then take this ship back to the boneyard...and collect the runabout at the same time."

“Good work Kerr, I’ll get right on it,” Diane replied. She made her way to the helm and starting doing as Finchley suggested. “I see it, I think I can break the link through communications…” Now she moved to the communication console near the back of the bridge. Her hands worked the console and several indicators on the console went dark. “Ah here we go… I’m shutting down the comm-array now. let’s see what that does.”

[Main Engineering]

Finchley watched the screen and sure enough, the communications link up showed as red.

"That's it Sir, great job!" he replied "The links red and there's no back up for it so it's shut down."

He moved over to the main engineering station and it showed that there was now no course showing and the ship was slowing down. Looking at the core, he saw the intermix was also slowing and in a very short time was simply a blue hue.

"Sir, the ships back under our control, I'm going to use the secondary helm control here for setting a course back to the boneyard, we can tractor the runabout and pull it back with us," he reported to Diane.

"Sounds good," Diane replied, "Kilbane and I can keep going with our research here."

"Get him to check on any mention of 'The Nine'," Finchley said, "It's just a hunch, something my father mentioned to me that my Great Great Great Grandfather passed down along with the gold medallion."

Diane looked at Kilbane curiously. "The Nine? Know anything about that?" she asked as she once again, adjusted the search parameters on the library console and restarted process.

Kilbane thought for a moment "The only thing I can think of is a fable, a tale...a myth to be honest, about a group of explorers sent out eons ago by a race of beings who allegedly controlled how they could be seen. I do believe they were referred to as 'The Nine'. I've no idea what they're objective was, other than exploration. I don't know where they came from or what happened to them. If Kerr's ancestor came across them or one of them, perhaps they have something to do with what happened on Calistan."

"Chameloids and Founders can control how they're seen," Diane thought out loud, mostly to herself, while looking to Kilbane. Her practical way of thinking was looking for reasonable answers, not more fairy tale speculation. "Of course, the other possibility is a species we've never encountered before."

"Before we carry on Commander," Kilbane said "How are you going to explain all of these goings on to Captain Carey, and once you have, will we still be setting out on this venture?

Diane sat back and regarded Kilbane with a slightly sly smile, "I've found it best to just tell captains the truth. We should tell him what we've found and let him decide how to proceed." Her smile went flat as she continued, "However, something of this magnitude I should also report to Intel Headquarters. If they disagree with Carey's assessment then their orders would supersede his, at least for me." She rested one elbow on the console and and held her chin between her thumb and forefinger, "Personally, I think this should be pursued and I have a feeling Xavier will agree with me." Now she shrugged, "I must admit though, I'm wrong on occasion. We'll have to tell the story and see what happens."

"You know, there might potentially be a way of getting round having to report this to Intel Headquarters," Kilbane said, "Kerr has an Uncle who's in that line of work, Vice Admiral Eugene Kerr, Chief of Staff to Starfleet Intelligence, perhaps he could help, after all, both Kerr and his Uncle 'speak the same language' and they've both served in that service."

"That's definitely an avenue we should pursue," she replied, "But I have a feeling Captain Carey is the curious type. He just may want to go on this trip as well."

"There's no harm in getting in contact with the Vice Admiral though," Kilbane replied, "Surely the more information we have the better it is for us," he finished.

"Agreed," Diane answered, "on both points. I think the three of us should decide on how were going to go about this."

"You are meaning you, me and Kerr Commander?" Kilbane asked, "Though I will say right off the bat, to use a cricketing metaphor, there is a little bit of tension between Kerr and the Vice Admiral..."

Diane thought a moment before replying. "Perhaps we should talk to Kerr and explain what we've come up with and make sure we're all on the same page... and also, perhaps, only go to the Vice Admiral if we have to... does that make sense?"

"If you'll allow it Commander, perhaps I should have a word with the Chief on my own first," Kilbane replied, using Finchley's rank, which was unusual for him. "We have a love/hate relationship, but bar Karadis, I'm the closest thing to a friend he has, so coming from me it may be a little easier to convince him we should do this."

Diane sat back in the chair with a slightly mirthful smile on her face. "That makes perfect sense to me. You know him quite a bit better than I do at this point. Do we agree that contacting the Vice Admiral is the last thing we want to do?"

"No..." Kilbane paused a second, "I think that I can talk sense into Bird, as much as he's hot headed, I think I can persuade him to talk to the Vice Admiral. The one thing you have to understand is that the problem being the Vice Admiral is linked to Kerr's Fathers death, he, Kerr, links the Vice Admiral to his Fathers death."

Diane nodded solemnly, "Ahhh, I see now. The pieces are starting to fit together."

"It's all rather a bit of a to do," Kilbane replied. "Bird loved his Father, adored him, and when he died, a piece of Kerr died to. From what I can gather, the Vice Admiral and Bird haven't had much contact with each other 'officially', but their paths have crossed during a number of Intelligence briefings/meetings. You can come along whilst I speak to him, try and convince him to talk to the Vice Admiral, hell, you can always order him to... but I'd make that a very very very last resort."

Diane nodded once more, "I see. A bit of a troubled history between those two then. If you don't mind, I'd like to come along... I have a feeling I won't have to order him though."

"Well, asking him and getting him to do this are two entirely different things," Kilbane replied. "Let's not hold this off, why don't we go see him now?"

Diane shrugged, "All right."