Triangulating the Saboteur

Posted on Thu Jan 28th, 2016 @ 4:13pm by Captain Christina Curtis & Commander Leo Carpegiani PhD & 1st Lieutenant Dalton Wakefield & Ensign Chloe Bishop

Mission: Begin with a Bang
Location: Bridge, Discovery NX-04, Deep Space
Timeline: May 15th, 2155 - 0920 hours

Christina could barely hold her patience for the turbolift doors to open and admit her onto the bridge. Following the death of Dewitt, and then the more minor injuries sustained by Anziano and Tal Sek, she was eager to grab hold of any good news she could get. Thankfully, the deafened Andorian was able to provide her with just that.

"Chloe," she said, as soon as she got onto the bridge. She stepped down and around the science station to get to the communications chair towards the front of the bridge." Tal Sek should have just sent you a frequency from sickbay. It's something to do with the frequency of the device that just blew its circuits in engineering. Can you use it to try and locate any other devices that may still be on the ship?"

"Captain," Chloe replied in acknowledgement. "I just saw that message come through, though I didn't know the context." She pulled the information up on her console, studying it intently. Her background was in xenolinguistics, but her Starfleet training helped her become well versed in communication equipment and transmission. "I might be able to do something with this, ma'am. I'm not picking up any active transmissions at the moment, but they may not be always transmitting. Perhaps they are passively waiting on a signal to detonate. We could try pinging this frequency, but I don't have any guarantee that won't set off the devices. I'm just hoping that the ping will excite their transmitters, but won't detonate without the correct code. It's a gamble." Chloe looked up at Christina. "I'd say that's your call to make."

"Could we localise the pings?" Christina asked. "Evacuate sections of the ship, de-pressurise them, and then ping for devices in only those sections, just in case the ping does cause the device to detonate?" If the device was to detonate, then the explosion wouldn't do as much damage if it was deprived of oxygen.

Chloe thought about the suggestion. Using the ship's primary antenna would make it extremely difficult to send a localized ping within the ship itself. It had some directionality, but it would still cover about a quarter of the ship at a time. She wouldn't be able to reduce the area unless she had a smaller transmitter. She had a sudden idea. "That might be doable, Captain. Our long range communications aren't designed to do anything like that, but we could use the internal comm system to send the localized pings. I think that could work. We just need to know where to start."

"Let's start with the lower decks," Christina said, turning towards Leo. "Issue the order to evacuate them and then de-pressurise the sections."

Carpegiani tapped at his console and initiated the evacuation order for those sections. The two lowest decks had the advantage of not being particularly densely populated at the best of times. He then activated the shipwide address and said, "All personnel on Decks G and F evacuate immediately to E Deck."

A few moments later, the signal came back from the checkpoints to say that everybody had been evacuated. Leo then did a quick check on the internal sensors to confirm the report. They were clear.

"G and F Decks are cleared, Captain," he reported. "Commencing de-pressurisation." Then a moment later. "Decks de-pressurised."

"Send the ping."

The process went on for half an hour, clearing the lower decks in total first, and then as they moved up clearing sections at a time, sticking to the less dangerous areas first. IT was time consuming, not least because they had to evacuate each section, but then they had to re-pressurise them and move everyone back in before starting on the next section. Finally, they got a result - and thankfully minus the explosion.

"I've got something, Captain," Bishop announced excitedly. "I'm detecting a reply to my ping. I can't pin point it exactly, but it's on E deck, probably near the launch bay."

"Re-pressurise that section and get Wakefield to meet us there with a bomb diffusing kit," Curtis said, making her way back to the turbolift with haste.

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| Launch Bay, E-Deck, Discovery NX-04, Deep Space
| 1000hrs

Wakefield and Ragnar arrived at the launch bay, nodding to Curtis and Leo who arrived from the adjacent corridor. Taking off his backpack, Wakefield and Ragnar got to work setting up their equipment.

"Ma'am, Sir, I don't think you want to be here," Dalton explained, setting up the Signal Disruptor.

"If that device goes off Lieutenant, I don't think where we are on the ship is going to matter much," Christina answered. This close to engineering, there was a real danger that any explosion would not only take out the launch bay, but the warp reactor too, which would in turn take out the entire ship. "Let's just try and get it disarmed and made safe." That was the primary goal of course. Once it was removed however, she was hoping that Leo and Maya would be able to obtain some DNA off the casing to identify who placed it there.

It didn't take the MACOs long to disarm the device. It wasn't overly sophisticated; another contraption designed to mix two compounds together once it had received a set signal and a confirmation code. Their training allowed them to bypass the rudimentary anti-tamper device with ease, and once they had removed the canisters containing the active compounds, they removed the rest of the device from the bulkhead.

"Sickbay has the best scanning equipment onboard," the captain said, as the two moved away from the wall with it. "Let's get this to Doctor Maya. Hopefully we can obtain some DNA to tell us who planted it."