Post 21

Posted on Wed Feb 4th, 2015 @ 9:50pm by Captain Christina Curtis & Commander Leo Carpegiani PhD & Ensign Chloe Bishop & Lieutenant Luís Anziano & Doctor Maya

Mission: Begin with a Bang
Location: Bridge, Discovery NX-04, At Warp
Timeline: May 14th, 2155 - 1100 hours

The ship had been at warp just long enough for Christina to be happy that the ship would hold steady before she called Anziano to the bridge and asked the rest of the senior staff to join her at the rear of the bridge, around the situation table. She had promised them all a proper briefing on their mission, and now that they were safely en-route, she could divulge all of the necessary details to them.

Anziano stepped from the lift and strolled quickly to find a place. He looked focused, even a little preoccupied. He didn't see the necessity of excusing his slight tardiness given that everyone knew he was a very busy man.

"Now that everyone is here and we are on our way, I can brief you on the particulars of our mission," the captain started. She knew that Cayne already knew the broad strokes, but most of the rest of the crew had been kept in the dark to preserve the security of their assignment. "As you already know, we are on our way to Deneva. Earth has a colony there which has begun to develop into a major trading route, visited regularly by the ECS as well as the Vulcans and the Tellarites."

"I have visited Deneva twice," Doctor Maya reported. "Once when I served with the High Command and once when I participated in the Interspecies Medical Exchange. I was struck by the natural beauty of the countryside and the respect the settlers had for their environment."

"It is also home to a vibrant independent music culture," Carpegiani interjected, sudden vivid memories of long nights at one of his favourite venues intruded into his thoughts. "If you like that kind of thing," he added, remembering this probably wasn't the best place to talk about music.

"I've heard of slime devils," Anziano said under his breath, apparently looking at pad under the pool table.

The young blonde ensign kept her mouth shut for a change. They were already further from Earth than she had ever been. Though she was familiar with Denevan culture through what she had read, she didn't have any first hand experience to build upon.

Curtis reached over to the situation table and pressed one of the buttons next to the display, bringing up a pre-loaded graphic. It was a scan of an old citizen identification card, with the details showing that it was produced on one of the lunar mining colonies. The left of the card was dominated by a standard biographical picture; a man in either his thirties or forties with sandy brown hair and a nose that looked as though it may have been broken once or twice. "This is Luke Mosstaff. Starfleet Intelligence have him listed amongst a number of known Terra Prime members." She didn't feel the need to elaborate to them who Terra Prime were - the radical anti-alien organisation had made a very public leap into the public consciousness when they threatened to attack Starfleet Headquarters during the initial Coalition of Planets talks. "They believe that he joined up when John Paxton was running his father's mining installation on Luna after Mosstaff's parents were killed by Nausicans on the ECS Bonaventure. He wasn't aboard the mining station when Paxton took over the Verteron Array on Mars, and has been unaccounted for since - he was most likely off-world at the time.

"Starfleet now believe that he has aspirations to take over in the wake of Paxton's death, and lead Terra Prime in an even more aggressive direction. They have intelligence that indicates he is going to plant a bomb at the new Tellarite trading compound on Deneva and detonate it without giving any chance for an evacuation. Our mission is to get to Deneva before he has a chance to do that, and stop him."

"Should we not warn the Tellarites that their trading compound is in danger?" Maya asked.

"The problem we have with that is the same that has prevented me from giving you the full details until now," Curtis said. "Admiral Gardner is very wary of sending a transmission over subspace for fear of it being intercepted. He feels that if Mosstaff knew that we were aware of his plans, then he would accelerate them, potentially destroying the Tellarite compound before we can reach Deneva."

"Unfortunately the same holds true that if we don't alert the Tellarites, he may still manage to detonate his bomb before we reach the planet," Cayne added pointedly.

Curtis nodded. "It's a calculated risk, but one the Admiral feels we need to take. Chloe; I want you to buffer all outgoing communications. Allow the standard traffic to go out to stop our lack of activity looking suspicious, but keep a lid on anything that might give any hint of where we're going."

Bishop nodded. "Aye, Captain. That should be easy enough." There weren't a lot of outgoing messages most of the time, though there were still the typical location signals and log transmissions that were sent back to San Francisco. Starfleet was very interested in what their exploration ships could find, so the more updates the better. But no doubt Curtis's logs would need to be doctored to not give away their orders. Chloe was sure that she could come up with something.

"Luís, I know we left spacedock on a rushed schedule, and I want you and your team to know that I appreciate all of the work that you've put in to get us as ready as you have. I'm afraid they might still need to do a few more double shifts to get the rest of our critical systems working, but put everything not essential to our current mission on the back burner. I know that's not going to go down too well with some," she couldn't help but glance over at Leo, knowing how much he had been wanting the science equipment to be installed even as she knew he would appreciate the reason for the delay. "But I want you to make sure that they get some well deserved rest as they get the chance. That goes for you too."

"Dewitt, I want you to make sure that the weapons systems are ready. I don't know what we're going to expect once we get there, but I don't want to get caught with our pants down if Mosstaff has some firepower on his side in orbit."

"We'll be ready, Captain," Cayne answered. He already had a plan of the systems he needed to work on in the armoury and was already itching to be able to leave the bridge and get to them.

"Leo; I want you to keep your eye on the sensors. We'll be rendezvousing with an Andorian ship en-route. General Casey was able to assign us a contingent of the MACOs, but our advanced launch date didn't allow time for them to return from training on Andoria - one of the joint initiatives agreed with them during the Coalition talks. I believe the ship they're travelling on is called the Docona. As soon as you have a bearing on it, relay it to the helm. I want to get the MACOs aboard and carry on our way as quickly as possible."

The science officer affected a mock salute and said, "Yes, Captain." Like many in Starfleet's more scientific quarters, he worried about the militarisation that the MACOs represented and only grudgingly accepted the role they played.

"Doctor, I hope that we don't need your services on this mission, but just in case I'd like you to make sure you're prepared for any injuries in case we are too late or unable to stop Mosstaff. I don't know what kind of explosive he is likely to use, but it's likely to be a dirty bomb, so casualties probably won't be limited to just the Tellarites in the compound. If you need anything to prepare, let me know and I'll do my best to get it for you."

"We will need to check our supplies of inaprovaline and trinephedrine," Maya replied. "They are two medications manufactured on your planet that have been proven effective when treating Tellarites for circulatory shock."

"Crewman Ribbons should be able to help you with that," Curtis said, quoting the name of one of the medical technicians who had been seeing to things in the sickbay before the captain had requested Maya be assigned as CMO. "We should have a complete inventory of what we have aboard." The captain didn't know enough about medicine to even take a guess at what they had in stock beyond the names of the drugs she could remember were in the standard medkit from her survival training.

Christina took a moment to look around the faces of everyone, and knew that they were as disappointed as she was that their first mission wasn't going to be what they had signed up for. "I know that you all expected us to be out here exploring; following in the footsteps of Enterprise and Columbia and Challenger. And don't worry; we'll get there. But right now we're needed on Deneva. The Coalition could be one of the most important things that Earth does, but if anything happens to the Tellarites on one of our colonies, the whole conference would be derailed, and we will lose a chance to be part of something special. So let's get there, do what's been asked of us, and then we'll get to the exploring." She took another moment to look around everyone, and hoped that her words had had the desired effect. "Let's get to it."