Dear John

Posted on Feb 23, 2016 @ 4:35pm by Captain Michael Turlogh Kane

Mission: Promethean

"DEAR JOHN"

(Continued from "Choices of the Damned")
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Location: USS Phoenix, orbiting Lavenza II
Stardate: [2.16]0223.2030
Scene: The Vulgar Tribble, Deck 10 (saucer section)


John Doe had a wriggling Capellan woodlouse under one hand, pinned upside-down to the chopping block, and lifted the cleaver high in his right hand. The insects looked like giant Terran cockroaches, but pithed and boiled, their meat was delicious. They tasted great in chowders, which John had decided to put on the menu for the evening, but this woodlouse wasn't going into the pot quietly. It was wriggling hard enough that he had to look around for help to hold it down while he prepared to deliver the killing blow.

No help was available, but Stiles Orion was waiting patiently at the bar. John sighed and released his grip on the woodlouse, grabbing it by one of its segmented legs and tossing it idly back into the box he had taken it from. Putting down the cleaver, he lumbered out of the kitchen and over to the transporter chief.

"What can I get you, Mister Orion?" he asked, already reaching for the bottle of synthehol under the counter. There would have been nothing to stop Stiles Orion from going to his quarters and asking the computer to replicate him a drink, but Terrans were sociable creatures. They preferred interacting with someone would pour the drink from a bottle, never mind that the bottle and the synthehol were both replicated.

"Huh? Oh, synthehol."

Stiles' eyes were narrowed and he was stroking his clean-shaven chin with one hand. John knew enough of the signs to recognise pensiveness when he saw it. "Something on your mind, Ensign?" he asked genially as he poured the drink. Another thought struck him. "Aren't you supposed to be on duty right now?"

Yes!" exclaimed Stiles. He took a hold of the glass and drained it in one shot. "I mean, I was until a few minutes ago. I'm finished my duty shift. But something strange happened earlier, and I've been thinking about it all day."

"Strange?" said John, pouring another one.

Stiles nodded. This time he touched the glass of synthehol like it was a bomb waiting to go off. He looked around to see whether anyone else was within earshot, but there were only half-a-dozen other people in the Vulgar Tribble, all of them taking up window seats and looking out at the ice world below them. He leaned in close to the bar. "Halfway through my duty shift, I got relieved, John, but not by one of the engineering staff. It was by Lieutenant Byte... and the Captain!"

"Captain Kane?" frowned John. "They came into your transporter room and told you to get out?"

Stiles nodded again. "Yep. Let me tell you what happened...."

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Scene: Transporter Room One, Deck 6 (saucer section)
Time Index: A few hours earlier


So I was standing at the pattern buffer, running a diagnostic. You wouldn't believe how boring it is in a transporter room when nothing's going on, John. Like, what am I supposed to do when nobody wants anything beamed anywhere? I swear that's the only reason the powers-that-be make such a big show about how technologically advanced a transporter is, and how absolutely vital it is that the operator knows their equipment backwards! Diagnostics, maintenance, calibrations - I mean, give me a break! If I popped a blood vessel in that room, standing up behind that console, who would ever know? They'd find the grinning bones of my skeleton years later still standing there, still waiting for some officer to beam up or down somewhere.

Anyway, like I said, I was running a diagnostic on the pattern buffer. All of a sudden the door hissed open behind me and Lieutenant Byte and Captain Kane walked in. When they saw me they immediately stopped talking, but it was obvious by their body language - well, by the Captain's body language, at any rate - that they had been talking about something important. I mean, really important.

"Mister Orion," said the Captain. His voice was hard enough to drive a stemmbolt with. That's how I knew something important was going on.

"Sir?" I said, looking back and forth at them both like an idiot.

"What are you working on, Ensign?" he asked me.

I told him what I was doing. He asked me if it was critical work, or if I could abandon it. "It's just routine," I told him.

"In that case," he said, "you're relieved, Mister Orion. Take a half-hour break."

It took a few moments for his meaning to sink in, but when they did, I was pretty amazed. Captain Kane was kicking me out of the transporter room! Him and that android both. I'm telling you, John, Lieutenant Byte didn't move a muscle the whole time, he was just staring at me with that creepy stare of his. At least Kane gave me a look like "this is an order, and you don't need to know what's happening, so get lost", you know what I mean?

So I shrugged to myself, deactivated the diagnostic and left them to it. It was strange, though - as I headed out the door, the Captain said "Let's hurry, Mister Byte, we don't have much time". I shot a glance over my shoulder but the doors closed on me before I could see what was going on.

What do you think of all that, huh?

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Scene: The Vulgar Tribble
Time Index: Now


John shook his head in puzzlement and picked a tooth with one of his claws. "That does sound strange," he rumbled. "What were they talking about, do you think?"

Stiles Orion spread his arms wide. "You got me, John. When I went back later they were gone and the transporter room was unattended. I asked the computer where they were, and it said they were both back on the bridge. But that's not all. There's still two other things - what they were saying in the corridor when they came into the transporter room, and what I found in the transporter records after I went on duty."

John frowned. "Sounds like a real mystery. So what were they saying?"

Stiles lowered his voice again. "So the doors opened, right? They must have been just finishing a conversation or something. Lieutenant Byte was finishing a sentence, talking about how something, presumably the subject of their conversation, had the possibility to revolutionise medical technology as we know it, but that even the templates - yes, I think that's what he said - even the templates might still be valuable in a non-functional state."

"Templates," repeated John. "I wonder what they were talking about? Documents of some sort?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. I thought we were chasing pirates to this system, the same pirates that bombed the Jenner back after we shipped out from Elandipole. But put it all together - an away team on the surface for hours, an arctic base, the ship's phasers burning off the permafrost - something's going on, John."

The huge daemon scratched his goatee beard. "So what happened? What did Byte and the Captain do?"

Stiles took a draught of his synthehol. Like the real thing, it was making his lips flap. "I don't know. I went back to my quarters and looked out the window at the ice planet for a half-hour. I went back to see if they were still there, but they were gone. So I got back to work."

"And that's it?" asked John.

"Oh no," said Stiles. "That's not it at all."

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Scene: Transporter Room One, Deck 6 (saucer section)
Time Index: A few hours earlier


I'm not nosey or anything, but when I went back to the transporter room and found it empty, I wanted to have a little look around to see what they might have done. I didn't want them suddenly materialising in front of me, though, so I checked with the computer to see where they were.

"Captain Kane and Lieutenant Byte," it told me in those calm tones, "are on the bridge."

Well, I didn't ask any more. If I had thought about it, I might have asked the computer where they were between the time they relieved me and the time I went back to work, but I was in a hurry to see if anything had happened to my transporter.

I opened up the main menu and there it was, right in front of me. A new transporter log, automatically recorded not fifteen minutes prior, and another one several minutes before that. Both of these new logs were time-stamped, and both of them had occurred while I was in my quarters staring down at the planet!

Well, you know, John, I'm not normally one for poking my nose into other peoples' business, but I suppose curiosity got the better of me. I reached out with my finger and accessed the logs, trying to imagine what had happened in my absence -

- but nothing happened! Both transporter logs had been classified with an Alpha command code! I tried a few more times, but it was obvious - Captain Kane had ordered the computer to encrypt the logs using his command code!

I was astounded. Think about it, John! One of them - either Captain Kane or Lieutenant Byte had beamed down to that planet for several minutes, did something, then beamed back up. Then Kane classified the logs so nobody can read them except him!

Why would they do something like that? What could be on the planet that they wanted so badly? Why didn't they help the away team? Were they successful in getting what they wanted? And why didn't they just delete the logs when they were finished - why keep them, but classify them? It doesn't make any sense!

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Scene: The Vulgar Tribble
Time Index: Now


John Doe was picking his tusks thoughtfully. "That's some story, Ensign Orion," he said.

Stiles nodded conspiratorially. "But it raises more questions than it answers," he said.

John flipped a thumb at the bay window, through which the ice-blue world of Lavenza II was rolling on by. "I thought transporters were offline because of the atmosphere?"

Stiles was still nodding. "Yep, they were, but not because of the atmosphere. I reckon they did something to the base with the phasers. Then Captain Kane must have enlisted Lieutenant Byte's help - "

"Why did he pick Byte, do you think?"

"Because it's a machine!" hissed Stiles. "I bet if you press the right buttons with Byte, you can make it do anything! Maybe you can even delete its memory after you beam it down to the planet - I don't know, I'm just spitballing here!"

"Maybe Kane was the one who beamed down," said John.

"Maybe! Maybe he used Byte because a Human operator like me might make a mistake!" Stiles drained the last of his synthehol. "Look, I'm going back to my quarters. Thinking about this is giving me a headache. We're still down one away team with no pirate scalps to speak of. Something's not right about this one, John, you mark my words. I'll see you." Stiles pushed the glass back across the bar and headed for the Vulgar Tribble's door.

John Doe sighed and put the dirty glass in a tray with the others, before turning his gaze back onto the ice-blue planet outside. It wasn't for everyone to know what was happening at all times aboard a starship, he knew, least of all a civilian mess proprietor, but was Stiles Orion right to be worried? Was the away team in trouble? Had Captain Kane beamed down to the planet's surface with another mission in mind, one that did not involve helping his own away team?

Surely not, he thought.






Surely not?

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NRPG: Hmmmmm.


Jerome McKee
the Soul of Captain Michael Turlogh Kane
Commanding Officer
USS PHOENIX


"He speaks an infinite deal of nothing!"
- Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice", Chapter 1, Scene 1.117

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