From Out Of The Shadows

Posted on Jun 06, 2015 @ 10:09pm by Commander Jacob Crichton
Edited on on Jun 06, 2015 @ 10:09pm

Mission: The Lights of Hyperion

= From Out Of The Shadows =
(cont'd from "Quoting Caligula")

LOCATION: USS PHOENIX

SCENE: Science Center

STARDATE: [2.15] 0606.1305



Thomas Varn looked up from his workstation and smiled as Jake entered the lab. Jake returned the smile as he made his way over to where Thomas was standing. The lab was otherwise empty, as most of the regular science teams had been reassigned as part of Shanty Town's security detail, but Jake could imagine what it would look like if it were running at full capacity. Powered-off workstations line most of the walls, and there were several sealed laboratories for more critical or dangerous experiments. Jake had a general idea of what each of the machines did, and how they worked, but his talent had always been the physical: the feel of tools in his fingers and components beneath his hands. Science had always required a lot more repetition and patience than Jake was able to muster.



Thank goodness, then, for Thomas Varn. The winged-man stepped out from behind the workstation, his hand extended as Jake approached him.



"Jake," Varn said. "Good to see you."



"Good to see that Kane finally took you off the bench," Jake said, shaking Varn's proffered hand.



"It was my idea," Varn said. "There was an incident in my quarters."



Jake's mind flashed back to the other night, when one of the mysterious "aurora" events had manifested in his son's room. They'd gone to Sickbay, where Jake and his two kids had received treatment for minor radiation exposure, but Jake didn't want to think about what could have happened if he'd already been asleep when the thing had appeared. It might have just floated there, above Ben's bed, showering radiation on the young boy, with no one to do anything about it...



"They hit you where you live," Jake nodded. "I can relate."



"I was worried about Sylvia, and the baby," Varn said.



"Oh yeah," Jake grinned, glad for some good news. "I haven't had the chance to congratulate you yet."



"Thanks," Varn said, looking a little embarrassed. "Any advice for the soon-to-be new father?"



"I'm not sure I'm the one you want to ask," Jake said.



Varn looked surprised. "You're a great father."



"Maybe," Jake said with a half-shrug. "When I'm around."



"You're around now," Varn said. "And I don't think you're going anywhere."



Jake smiled again. "Thanks, Tom. Anyway, let's get to it."



Varn nodded in agreement. "You've read my report to Captain Kane?"



"Yes," Jake nodded. "Two distinct types of phenomena, similar enough to appear related."



"And *only* two," Thomas said. "Out of the, I don't know, thousands or millions of theoretically possible waveform structures, it's just these two, again and again."



Jake stepped over to Thomas' workstation and looked at the screen. An analysis of the two unique waveforms was currently running. The similarities between the two were obvious at a glance, but the computer had already identified several slight variations in the structure of each waveform that it was clear they were distinct.



"So what are we thinking?" Jake asked. "They're artificial?"



"It's possible," Varn shrugged. "The patterns are consistent enough that they could be emanating from the same source. But it's just radiation. Why would someone be blasting radiation around like this? What do they get out of it?"



"It's got us all tied-up," Jake said with a shrug. "Maybe it's a distraction."



"I don't think so," Varn said. He moved over to another workstation, tapped in a few commands, and stepped back so Jake could see the screen. "I've already gone through our long range sensor records, correlating them with each of the recorded radiation events so far. There's no external radiation build up, no broadcasts or mysterious energy signatures. If someone was *beaming* these things at us somehow, there'd be some kind of trace, especially if the transmission was strong enough to get around our shields. But there's just nothing."



"Okay," Jake agreed. "So probably not artificial. But is it unusual for naturally-occurring phenomena to have such consistent patterns like what we've been seeing?"



"Yes and no," Varn said. "Patterns happen in nature all the time. A water molecule, for example, is always 2 hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom, it's always the same. As you scale up the complexity, slight variations can be seen: flora and fauna, with minor variations, are more or less structurally consistent with other examples of the same type."



"You have two ears and a nose and so do I," Jake nodded.



"Even crystalline structures typically form in symmetric patterns," Varn said. "So yeah, naturally occurring, consistent patterns are a possibility. If these incidents are some kind of natural phenomena, the consistent waveform structures we've been seeing might just be an intrinsic part of how that phenomena expresses itself."



"I'm sensing a 'but' coming," said Jake.



"But," Varn said, with a half-smile. "The trouble is, we're not dealing with flora or fauna, we're not dealing with crystal formation. There's nothing obvious that would be limiting these manifestations to one of two structures, and it's not something I've never heard of radiation doing before."



"Okay," Jake said. "The biggest thing we don't know yet is where these things are coming from. Once we know that, maybe we can figure out how they're getting past the ship's defenses, and it hopefully will give us more information about how they're formed."



"There we have some good news," Varn said. He keyed in a few more commands on his console. "The orb-type events come and go too quickly for us to predict, but the aurora-types give us more warning. There's a measurable build-up of beta particles leading up to a manifestation. If you can remodulate the ship's internal sensors, we should be able to detect that build-up early enough to predict where one of the aurora-types will appear. That should give us enough time to get there with some scanning equipment, or at the very least evacuate the area to minimize radiation exposure."



"Not a problem," Jake said. "Just give me the specs, I can have the sensors re-jiggered within the next hour or so."



Varn passed a PADD with a list of the necessary modifications over to Jake. Jake picked it up, gave it a quick once-over, and nodded his approval.

=[/\]=

SCENE: Main Engineering - CEO’s Office

TIME INDEX: A few hours later

With the modifications to the ship’s internal sensors made, there was little else for Thomas and Jake to do but wait for the next aurora-event to appear. There had been no new reports of radiation activity, but Jake guessed that might have more to do with most of the ship being empty than it did with the events happening less frequently than before.

Of course, there was too much to do for Jake to spend long resting on his laurels. He and Varn had reconfigured a pair of tricorders, tying them in with the ship’s internal sensor network, and had agreed to carry them around at all times. As soon as a build-up of beta particles was detected, the tricorders would alert them. Those same tricorders had been modified to detect a wider range of energy emissions, working along similar lines as Major Thytos’ sensor-nets. Both men were confident that, as long as they got to the site of a manifestation in time, they would be able to get more information than they’d been able to record so far.

And while they waited, Jake had returned to Main Engineering. The work never stopped down there, and every new day he was impressed by the resilience and resourcefulness of his team. They all looked tired-- even the naturally sunny Cindy Rochemonte had only managed a monosyllabic grunt of acknowledgement as Jake had passed by her in Main Engineering -- but they were showing up for their shifts on time, staying after to complete their work assignments, and had been doing it all with no fussing or grousing. Jake couldn’t have been more proud of them.

During a lull of activity, Jake had found himself in the CEO office. He’d been going over status reports on the various projects throughout the ship, including the ongoing project to pull functional replicators out of some of the unused crew quarters to relocate them to Shanty Town. It was going slowly, because Jake simply didn’t have the manpower to commit to getting it done quickly, but he was glad that progress was being made. Embry’s direct call to Captain Kane had been a breach of protocol, to say the least, and the sooner Jake could call the community leader back with some good news, the better.

But Embry’s impatience wasn’t the only thing in Shanty Town that had been weighing on his mind. Jake had been too busy lately to give it much thought, but the question of Jacen Barnes was still bothering him. Something about the huge man was familiar. It wasn’t necessarily the way he looked, as Jake was certain he would have remembered meeting somebody as physically imposing as Barnes, but the recognition was there in the way Barnes walked, the way he carried himself, the easy way he dealt with Major Thytos’ marines and the rest of the denizens of Shanty Town.

With a rare moment to spare, Jake called up the ship’s transport logs from the day they had fled LIMBO. He remembered that Barnes had beamed aboard, along with Kass and Commander Jos, and that meant that the big man’s transporter signature would be stored inside the ship’s databanks.

“Computer,” Jake ordered. “Show me the transport logs from the day the PHOENIX left LIMBO.”

The computer chirped its acknowledgement, and a second later Jake’s terminal was filled with diagnostic data from the ship’s transport system. It took Jake only a moment to filter out diagnostic info and the patterns of his shipmates, and a few moments later Jake was looking at the transporter signature of Jacen Barnes. There was nothing unusual about it -- Barnes was definitely human, not a Klingon in disguise or anything bizarre like that.

“Computer, how long would it take to run a trace for this pattern against information stored in Starfleet’s internal databanks?” he asked.

[[The PHOENIX is not currently networked with Starfleet’s internal databanks,]] the computer said dispassionately.

“Right,” Jake said, with a frown. It was just one of the many inconveniences of their status as fugitives from the Federation. Of course, that wasn’t going to stop Jake; he’d shown Xana a few things about covering her tracks when she accessed the Federation’s internal network, and Xana in turn had shown him a few of the backdoors she’d been using to keep up to date on the status of the Siege of Bolarus. Those same tricks would come in handy now, and as Jake set up and encrypted the connection, he felt Xana’s absence like an almost physical pain in his heart.

[[Connection established,]] the computer reported, and Jake nodded.

“Run the trace,” he ordered.

The screen on his terminal began to flash through dozens, hundreds, thousands of transporter signatures stored inside the Federation’s internal network. With millions of transports recorded every week (maybe even every day), and trillions of lifeforms on file with the Federation Census Bureau, Jake knew the search would take some time. He sat back, watching the screen as it shifted and blinked much too rapidly for his eyes to keep up with. It was actually kind of hypnotic, and Jake could feel his eyes beginning to droop…

**BBBBZZZZZZZTTT!**

Jake’s eyes snapped open, and he sat forward in his chair so fast that it almost shot out from underneath him. He looked down, realizing that the tricorder he had clipped to his belt was buzzing, its indicator lights blinking rapidly. Jake flipped the device open and examined the readout. It was happening again: a build-up of beta particles on Deck 4, in one of the unused crew quarters.

[[Varn to Crichton,]] came the voice of Thomas Varn from over the ship’s comms.

Jake slapped his commbadge. “Crichton here. I see it too.”

[[Meet me there,]] Varn said. [[Varn out.]]

Jake snapped the tricorder shut and stood up, fixing the device back onto his belt. He took a final look at the screen of his terminal, still flitting through information too fast for him to follow, and turned to dash out the door.

=[/\]=

SCENE: Unoccupied Crew Quarters, Deck 4



Jake stepped out of the turbolift and made his way up the corridor, following the trace on his tricorder. He found Varn already standing in front of the closed doors of the crew quarters, his own tricorder in his hand. He looked up as Jake approached and nodded at the closed doors.

“In here,” said Varn.

“Computer, override lock on this door,” Jake said. “Authorization, Crichton-Omicron-One-Zero-Three.”

The doors hissed open, and Jake and Varn stepped back reflexively as light spilled out of the portal and into the corridor. Jake immediately recognized the wispy tendrils of an Aurora-type manifestation, and sure enough there it was: suspended in midair inside the crew quarters, like a technicolor rip in the fabric of space, was the shifting, incandescent form of the aurora.

Varn’s tricorder was up instantly. “Huge spike in beta particles, radiating out from a central point.”

“Dangerous?” Jake asked.

“I wouldn’t get too close,” Varn said. “At this distance, radiation exposure is fairly minimal, though we’re going to want to visit sickbay again after this.”

“Look at it,” Jake whispered, watching the shifting whorls of color as they danced in the air before his eyes. It was beautiful, as beautiful as the apparition he’d seen in the warp core, and even the one he’d witnessed in his own quarters.

“Waveform structure is stable,” Varn said. “Readings match up with previously observed aurora-type phenomena.”

Jake waved his own tricorder at the shimmering apparition. The readings confirmed what Varn had told him, but Jake wasn’t satisfied. He keyed a few commands into the tricorder and scanned the aurora again.

“This is strange,” Jake said, frowning at the readout.

“What is it?”

“The beta particles are throwing up some interference,” Jake said, showing Varn the readout on his tricorder, “...but if I’m reading this right…”

Varn blinked at the display. “Tetryon particles? That’s impossible.”

Jake reconfigured the scan parameters, trying to clean up some of the interference being thrown off from the beta radiation, and performed the scan again. The same results came back: there were definitely trace amounts of Tetryon particles emanating from the heart of the aurora.

“Don’t argue with me, argue with the scan results,” Jake said. “It’s Tetryon alright.”

“Tetryon can only exist within subspace,” Varn said. “It breaks down almost immediately in real-space. There’s no way that... “

He trailed off. Jake somehow pulled his eyes away from the warm glow of the aurora and looked at Varn. “Tommy?”

“Unless…” Varn said quietly. He reconfigured his own tricorder and scanned again, even taking a few steps closer to the aurora. Jake reached out to catch him by the arm.

“Wait a minute,” Jake started.

“It’s okay,” Varn said, not looking up from his tricorder. “I’m reading significant subspace oscillations in the area around the aurora. Jake, I think these things are coming from out of subspace.”

Suddenly, it fell into place. These things weren’t getting around the ship’s shields; the shields were never a factor. If the events were emerging from out of subspace, they could flit in and around any energy barriers the PHOENIX erected. Multiphasic shielding might stop them once they’d manifested, but there was nothing stopping these events from appearing from subspace whenever- and wherever- they wanted.

“Beta-particle levels are falling,” Varn reported, and sure enough, the lights had once again begun to fade. Jake watched at the shimmery thing dimmed, then disappeared, leaving no sign at all that it had ever been there to begin with. No sign, that is, except the elevated radiation levels it left in its wake.

“Tetryon particles no longer detected,” Jake said, looking down at his own tricorder. “It’s gone.”

The two men stood in silence for another moment, staring into the now dark, empty quarters. A radiation warning had started to flash on their tricorder readouts, and Jake decided now would be a good time to vacate the area.

“Radioactive waveform structures from out of subspace,” Varn said quietly, turning to look at Jake. The excited look on Varn’s face couldn’t be missed. “Stable structures, with predictable patterns of behavior, somehow crossing over the barrier between subspace and real-space.”

“I know,” Jake nodded.

“This… this is unlike anything I’ve ever even heard of,” Varn said. “I mean, you see weird subspace phenomena all the time in this line of work, but the consistency of the structures… I mean, where could they be *coming* from? What could be causing them?”

“I don’t know,” Jake said, snapping his tricorder closed. “Come on, Tommy, we need to get treated. The radiation levels in here are making me a little uncomfortable.”

“I need to get to the lab,” Varn said. “We need to analyze all this data we’ve collected, Jake. I think we could be onto something big here!”

“Sickbay first,” Jake said. “Or your hair’s gonna start coming out in clumps. There will be time later.”

Varn looked a little reluctant, but he agreed. The two men turned to leave, and Jake cast a final glance over his shoulder at the empty crew quarters behind him.

=[/\]=

NRPG: Now we know where the phenomena are coming from, but what *are* they? Are they naturally occurring, or did someone - or something - send them? And maybe most importantly, *why* are they here? More answers to be discovered… post post post!

JUSTIN: Hope I did okay with Thomas!

Shawn Putnam

a.k.a

Jake Crichton

Chief Engineering Officer

USS PHOENIX