Developments

Posted on Sat Mar 23rd, 2024 @ 12:09am by Captain Xavier Carey & Lieutenant Commander Melor Pallara (Stoffels) & Lieutenant Commander Aalis Rinne & Lieutenant Etan tar-Lexros & Lieutenant Commander Rutherford (RJ) Milton & 1st Lieutenant Kayleigh London

Mission: Lantea
Location: Lantea
Timeline: before quick debrief

Xavier had gotten everyone from the away team together, and Commodore Horton had led them to a conference room where he would explain himself. The evidence pointed to deliberate. But certain things, given how bad it had gotten, with the medical situation, and people in intensive care. He took a seat, at the head of the table, and waited as everyone took their seat.

Melor sat down at the table but Kay stayed on her feet and selected a position were she could survey the whole room and spring into action if any danger presented itself.

Milton came in with Pix just behind, he had the PADD with infrormation on what Ensign Riley had discovered about a virus in the system that is quite unique.

"Lady, Gentlemen." Milton greet and quickly found a seat mid table to the right side of the head.

Pix landed and curled her legs under her to sit in his shoulder.

Aalis had been with the Captain since their discovery and she wasn't about to let him out of her sight until they were well back aboard and things had stabilized. Seeing her husband there in the room, while nice, made things a bit uneasy with their son still aboard the Resolution alone with their civilian nanny they had been able to hire.

Horton watched as the group sat down, before taking a deep breath... "We were hoping to keep you in the dark for a little longer, at least until everything was fixed and not having to worry. But, the circumstances, started with us putting what we thought was a simple computer virus... into the computer, it was not supposed to cause the chaos and issues it has."

Kay's eyes bulged at the stupidity of not telling them this vital information and she was about to open her mouth when she saw Melor stare at her and shake his head slowly. With difficulty she closed her mouth again.

"Wait, what?!" Aalis turned and looked at Horton. "Why would you put a virus in your own system?"

Etan tried to maintain an even expression, and a businesslike attitude, in the face of the ridiculous information he was now being given. After Aalis spoke up, he nodded - and after a moment of silence, put down the PADD in his hands, looking from the Captain to the Commodore. "With all due respect, sir, the Engineering and Operations teams were underwater when we discovered the virus and the damage it did. If we'd synced our tricorders to the affected mainframe where we identified the damage, it could have affected our life belts, and officers might have drowned as a result of this information being concealed."

He looked over at Xavier, and hopefully the Captain would realize something. He'd seen Etan be happy, determined, terrified, flustered, and goal-oriented, among other reactions. Never before had he seen Lt. tar-Lexros actually angry. The anger was written into every facet of the Ops chief's subtle features, and if he were more inclined to reacting emotionally to a problem, he'd probably have been shouting; after all, he'd been one of the ones who could have drowned, if they hadn't cleared out the moment they realized they weren't equipped for the repairs. There was something he wanted to say, but seemingly thought better of it, turning back to the Commodore with that same expression. "Sir, I must demand a full explanation of this situation's scope of repairs and damages, and a full listing of any known safety risks. Starfleet regulations disallow me from sending any of the Resolution's Operations team to aid in further planetary repairs until I know everything, and I believe the same goes for all other non-combat non-medical departments. I fully understand and apologize if you feel that this is insubordinate behavior, but I will stand for general court if I am ordered to send my team into an unknown situation of mortal danger."

"That Virus; according to the Analyst we had in Sick Bay gave contradictory commands at random times; ordering a shut-down and reset, thus losing all the data from the save point and causing damage to the systems. Wrecking havoc with the life support and diagnostic systems in Medical." Milton said. "Isolation rooms losing power and sealing while personnel were in them and forcing manual opening to get them out safely; inaccurate calibration results and therefore misdiagnosis of medical problems are on the records," Milton protested.

"Luckily we have a Closed system in Medical with a Computer Core assigned to it running things independently at the moment." He informed. "Away from that thing you inserted into the computers."

Aalis took a deep breath, because she was so ever very close to losing her mind with the targ dung in front of her. "You had ample time to advise us of this misfortune. Why would you do this purposefully, and why further conceal it? Were you looking to damage our systems as well, or just wanted to save face?"

"Lantea has never been at the fore front of anything. We have asked for assistance, it was ignored, or we were give there's other emergencies elsewhere they were just busy to assist us. We as a planet don't have any significant contributions to starfleet, we are away from everything. We don't have very much of a resource. It was not an easy decision but our systems are out of date, some systems are almost as old as Captain Kirk's time. As for the extent... what we inserted into the system was not designed to be as chaotic as it turned out to be. There was a lot of research that went into it... its a new system... a new program, that we put in the system. It was supposed to go after nonessential systems, but shields, and medical were never supposed to be impacted. Something changed after the fact of inputting into the system."

A nervous looking ensign came into the room then and looked at Carey. "Uhm sir, I have your XO on the comm and she says she needs to talk to you right now, it can't wait."

"You can take it here, if you wish." Horton replied. Gesturing to the console.

Xavier nodded, "Very well... patch it through."

Aalis rolled her eyes at Horton. To personally sabotage their systems to try to get some assistance was beyond ridiculous. Starfleet was all about abundance. While she knew that some fringe worlds suffered greatly to the cost of dealings with criminal empires. However, looking at this world, they had none of that problem, just the misperception that they were being ignored. While she felt some sympathy to their people, whatever they created had done a world of harm, literally, and now they were going to have to face the consequences for it.

Tony's face appeared on the screen. =/\="Captain, are you well?"=/\= she asked, her worry shining through.=/\= "Something messed with the ship's computer. We suffered casualties, no deaths thankfully and we nearly have everything fixed. I was just worried for the away teams and your safety." =/\=

"We will need to discuss things when we get back to the ship." Xavier replied "Contact HQ, and inform them that the Resolution will be heading to HQ as soon as we finish up here, and to expect a call from myself."

=/\="Yes sir. Is everyone ok down there?"=/\=

Pix heard Tony's voice and moved to be just behind and over his shoulder to see if it was Tony afterall?

"Things have been complicated and not what we came for... We will discuss it later..." He paused, as he turned, to the Commodore and his men, "We will be escorting some of the Starfleet personnel to HQ for questioning."

"Commander Rinne... Take the commodore into custody as well as his personnel... Doctor... I'm sure with the information that the commodore will supply us with the program they installed, our people can get those new equipment set up without worry about contamination from their program."

Aalis had already gotten a move as soon as the Captain had issued the order to start taking them into custody. The couple other security officers with her started taking the rest of them into custody.

Tony's eyes widened as she heard the captain's order. Things must have seriously got out of hand. =/\="Will you return to the ship with your prisoner, sir?"=/\=

There was a slight chill that ran up and down Etan's spine when they started discussing things wrong with the ship. They'd opened the sensor net to the Lantean network. They'd also transmitted data up from the planet before the discovery. He looked around. "Captain, we may have to operate under quarantine conditions. We'll need a team to analyze the computer core and ODN network - a level one diagnostic."

"Once I see to it that all repairs are well underway I shall beam aboard and debrief you." Xavier replied. Turning to the doctor, "Doc, would you prefer the use of the planets facility, or do you think our ship would be better for the injured?"

"The planetary Sick Bay is on a Closed network, no danger of infection, if they can be moved it would help to assure they get the medical care needed." Milton began. "The Ensign that was trouble shooting made sure the Core I had put in is working without danger of corruption. Until we purge the system on the ship." A thought hit him. "OPS Miss Riley might be helpful as she kind of cured the problem here , if the ship is infected she might quicken the process."

"Very well, Commander Rinne... once everyone is rounded up, report back to the ship, and give the guests here some secure quarters. Make sure they don't have anything on them of course."

Etan nodded at the Doctor, looking down at his PADD. "Ensign Riley. Thank you, Doctor." He thought for a moment and with the comedic timing of a dyspeptic sloth, he smiled and spoke again. "Uh, I guess we should wish each other luck, for both our patients."

"More luck to you, my problems are solved, closed off from the rest and safe for all intent and purposes." Milton said. "I wish you luck as we do not know how it might be with more modern systems?"

Aalis nodded in acknowledgement to the captain.

"Front right pocket there is a data stick that can assist your officers, it details exactly what we installed."

"Commander Rinne, if you can have one of your officers check him."

After Horton had told her that as the Captain was already ordering her to have someone check him, she moved over to go through his pockets. In the process, she palmed the datastick and handed it off to Etan.

Etan nodded and took the datastick. He set about pulling out a spare device from one of the equipment crates, disconnecting all external connections. He'd already been given reason to worry. Now, it was a matter of making sure they could protect the ship, and then quarantine the planet until the virus could be removed from all computers. "Miss Riley, come here and look at this with me."

Larissa Rilely stood, smooth her skirt and moved to the device.

"Yes Sir, ENsign Riley, but you can call me Larissa, my family name makes feel like I am in trouble." Riley grinned slightly. "I wish I had this when I started, might have cut some..." She thought of being caught in the dark Isolation room when Virus test cut all power to the unit as a reset that never restarted. "problems the Good Doctor had to help me with."

SHe began reading the coding on the Data STick.

"This was not harmless but never should have done the damage it did." She continued to read deeper. "The mutation seems to not be i the initial operating software but maybe..." Riley noted something. "This coding does not match the more archaic system; more from advanced programming that I saw on the planet's Medical programming. Additional codes that ... mutated the smaller and older system." SHe pointed to the higher function codes within the stream. "This was hiding and I do not recognize the Federation or even Cengeti Original computer codes in these; they are... not ours?"

"So... what are you saying Ensign. Someone else tampered with the tampering system?" Xavier inquired

"It is mutating in unusual ways." Riley read more of the coding. "This original programs should have been able to have repairs done yet the program is expanding and changing the coding... almost like a chess program of sorts." Looking up to the Captain, wishing she had hoped for more traditional uniform, her face flushed slightly as having The Captain's attention is not what she readily expected. "It is modifying after we seem to make changes, that is not normal for the programming level of the original Virus, this program is almost anticipating changes and... changing."

"Mutating how so?" Aalis asked. "If this gets off of this world to our ship and then gets back to the fleet, there could be catastrophic ripples if we cannot contain."

"Is it anything thats out of scope for the engineering, and operations departments?" Xavier asked his people. "Changing, as in knowing what the probably fix is to a problem it has created, and creating a failsafe from it?"

Aalis looked over to where Etan was sitting hoping that he might have a better idea as to what was going on and what the repercussions might be.

"The program is growing in scope; we solve one and another pops in to replace it." Riley mentioned. "It is changing as we get closer to ending it; almost like we need to get a step ahead of it to really contain and purge it."

Etan sat and listened, looking at the data along with Riley. He could follow what she was saying, and he looked at Xavier when the Captain asked if it was out of scope. "Sir, it's not outside of our teams' capabilities. It is out of scope for the hardware we have on-planet. We'll have to, uh, get creative, I think. It's not so much that it's predicting the fix, as it's adapting to whatever solution we put in place. Short of physically isolating the hardware and totally reformatting it under a stasis field, it's writing itself into every blank sector, and stealing ID codes to appear as legitimate update packages. They wanted something that would force a full hardware upgrade; and I believe, um... that would have been the easiest solution. But that's not going to be possible, as upgrading in place would only infect any new equipment the moment it was connected to the legacy network. I believe that, um, all planetary data may have to be wiped - and restored from the last time they uploaded a full backup to Memory Alpha. If they uploaded a packet with this virus, it might not have been flagged, and..." Now everyone saw the Etan they were more used to in a crisis, as he realized the potential scope of what could happen. One planet and one ship would be very bad - but if this virus got into the Memory Alpha archives, it could potentially infect the entire stored knowledge of the Federation.

"Well, if there is anything this crew has shown in the past year or more... its how creative they can be." Xavier replied. "Get to whatever you need, ill make a few calls if you need something we don't have."

"I'd recommend keeping us isolated from Memory Alpha and take comms offline until we get this situation resolved," Aalis commented.

"Very well do it." Xavier replied. With everything now coming together... "Ill head up to the ship, and deal with that situation." He turned "I guess with comms going offline, the shuttles are the way to go." He motioned for security to bring their prisoners.