Something in the Walls
Posted on Tue Aug 9th, 2016 @ 10:04pm by Captain Liarra Von & Commander Titus Livius Drusus PhD & Lieutenant Commander Le Austin & Lieutenant Commander Thomas Byrne & Commander Soleck & Warrant Officer Marcus Lazlo & Lieutenant JG Danetria Andrakos-Roarke
Mission:
Brave New World
Location: Ops Center
"I'm sorry to pull you guys away from what you were working on, but we figured this was worth it," He said, placing the listening device on the table in front of them. "We found about forty of these all throughout engineering on the Montreal."
"The hell is it?" Lazlo asked, peering down at the odd looking box.
"It's some sort of listening device," Austin replied, simply.
Yzhara only vaguely looked in the direction of the device, though her antennae twitched excitedly. "That's a lot of bugs. Any idea where they came from?"
Andrakos shook her head, making her bun bob uncertainly atop her head. "All of the usual identifiers were either burned off with a heat gun or otherwise removed from every chip, wire and casing. We've run what data we could off of the parts themselves individually and.. there's a lot. A whole lot."
Drusus frowned, his arms crossed as he glared at the device as though it had personally insulted him. Worse than that, really, it had secretly recorded his crew and he knew nothing about it! He shifted his gaze from the offending device up to Austin. "Have you found them anywhere else in the ship?"
"No sir, we did a full scan of the ship for similar resonance signals, and we didn't find anything anywhere else, just around engineering," He replied. "We've been trying to isolate how they communicate what they're reading. They're definitely sending data out, we just can't tell how - or what - just yet."
"Any idea how long they've been there?" Yzhara asked. She knew the ship spent a lot of time docked with the station, but access was restricted. That didn't mean that someone could have got aboard to plant the devices, but she hoped that was the case. The alternative was certainly more frightening.
"No ma'am," Austin replied. "We don't normally do the type of scan I did that found them except on post combat missions. It's a special in-depth kind of structural integrity scan," He explained.
"What sort of assignments has the Montreal been on recently?" Byrne asked, his arms crossed and brow furrowed as he turned towards the ship's commanding officer. "Or due to go on in the near future?"
Drusus shook his head slowly, "Nothing that brings her close to combat. She's done a few survey missions and went to the Gaven System last year on a rescue mission, but other than that she's remained local." He took a deep breath and let it sigh out of him. "As for what's coming up, she doesn't have any missions slated at the moment."
"So why would anyone want to bug her?" the security chief asked, of no-one in particular. "Have you had a chance to search the other garrison ships? Or critical areas of the station?" he asked to Austin, after a moment's thought.
"Not yet, sir, but I've got teams getting ready to do so. They should be hitting the garrison ships first, and them moving to the critical parts of the station," Austin replied. "Is there any chance this could be left over from the Sojourners? Maybe we had spies or something?" Austin asked.
"It's possible," Byrne conceded, though he hated to admit it. "I've not been on the station long, so I'm yet to get the lay of the land. I'll ask my section chiefs to go through their sources."
"They would have to get passed the security checkpoint to the Montreal," Yzhara added with a shrug. "It might have been possible that a Sojourner spy managed to get on board." She shook her head. "Maybe the section chiefs will have access to those logs."
"Might be a good idea to start there," Austin replied, nodding. "I can coordinate that and see what we can get. I'll check in with station security and see who came aboard within the few months before the Sojourner attack that wasn't verified Starfleet personnel, that might narrow our look down some."
"It might not be a bad idea to check the more recent security logs as well, just in case." Yzhara was still new to the command side of things, so maybe the others had already thought about it, but she couldn't shake the feeling that it was an unrelated event.
"Good point," Byrne agreed. "I'll also instruct Lieutenant Glek to increase security at the docking hatches for all Starfleet ships docked at the station, especially our garrison vessels. Just in case this is an ongoing infiltration."
"Sounds like we've all got things to do then," Austin said, nodding. "Anything else, Doc?" He asked, looking over at Titus.
Drusus was still staring at the bug like it had insulted his mother. The device's very existence was an affront. Without looking up at Austin, he reached out and snatched the device from the table. "I'd like to have this examined by my people as well. We might be able to find something useful. Otherwise, I think we're done here."
"Alright," Austin said, clapping his hands together, "Let's get to it!"
Commander Titus Drusus
Lt. Commander Le Austin
Lt. Commander Thomas Byrne
Lieutenant Yzhara [P: Von]
Lieutenant JG Danetria Andrakos-Roarke
