Bad Connection

Posted on Apr 06, 2017 @ 1:27am by Commander Jacob Crichton
Edited on on Apr 06, 2017 @ 1:27am

Mission: In Place of God

= Bad Connection =

(cont’d from “The Science Team”)

LOCATION: USS PHOENIX

SCENE: Counselor’s Office

STARDATE: [2.17] 0405.2110

The PHOENIX seemed to hum with activity. There was still the normal, day-to-day work of normal starship operations, which kept everyone busy enough on their own. On top of that, most of the senior staff had been reassigned to study of the mysterious wormhole transmissions, which had quickly become the hottest subject of conversation and gossip among the crew. First contact missions were relatively rare, especially in recent years with so much of Starfleet’s resources committed to peacekeeping and war; this opportunity to embody one of the Federation’s core ideals was a welcome change of pace, even if the communication could only be one way.

For Jake Crichton’s part, missions like these were a big part of why he’d come to love his life in the fleet. Standing at the edge of discovery always made Jake feel light, somewhere between flying and falling. It was almost enough to take his mind off of Xana, though the knowledge of her illness still lurked at the edges of his mind like a tiger stalking a campsite.

**She’s going to die.**

**Not soon. And there’s nothing you can do about it anyway.**

**You can be there for her.**

**I don’t think I can, not in the way she needs.**

Jake pushed the thoughts away. As First Officer, Jake’s attention had to be on the ship, not his personal problems. That normally meant a lot of paperwork - in fact, Jake was deliberately ignoring a growing stack of PADDs, reports, and leave requests back in his office - but today, part of his job was checking in on how the various teams were doing with their assigned research.

Jake stepped up to the threshold of Eve Dalziel’s office. The door was still open, and he could hear murmured conversations from inside. He knocked on the frame, then peeked his head in, and saw Eve seated in her chair, with Jasmine Yu seated in one of the chairs across the desk. Kassandra Thytos, meanwhile, had draped herself across one of the plush loveseats set against the wall opposite Eve’s desk. Her legs dangled casually over one of the armrests.

Eve looked up at the sound of Jake’s knock, and smiled. “Commander.”

Jake smiled back. “Thought I’d see how you were getting along. Can I come in?”

“Please,” Eve said, gesturing towards the chair next to where Jasmine Yu was seated. “We’re looking through the images in the data packets the aliens sent us, seeing if anything jumps out.”

Jake lowered himself into the chair, then turned to smile as Jasmine. “Lt. Yu. It’s a pleasure to meet you in person.”

“You’re not a Viking,” Yu said.

“I’m as disappointed about that as you are,” Jake said. Yu smiled.

“Sorry. It’s just… we were stuck in there for awhile. I’m not used to seeing you in uniform.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Kass said from her perch on the plush chair behind them. “The Commander never lets his hair down. Pretty sure that uniform’s stapled to his body.”

Without turning, Jake deadpanned, “Nice to see you, Tannenbaum.”

From behind him, Kass replied, equally deadpan: “Perfect 10.”

Jake looked back to Eve. “What have you come up with so far?”

“Nothing concrete,” Eve shrugged. “The images contain what appears to be writing, but the so far the Universal Translator hasn’t made a dent in it.”

“There are some images that may be pieces of art,” Jasmine said. She passed a PADD to Jake. He looked at it. The first image was a silver object, with a shape that reminded Jake of a warped figure-8.

“That could be sculpture, or it might be technology,” Jasmine said.

Jake nodded, and brushed his fingertip across the surface of the PADD’s screen. The image swept aside, making way for a new one. It was a smear of various colors, whites and purples and yellows. It looked senseless to Jake’s eyes, which he supposed was a qualifier for some kinds of artwork.

“That appears to be a painting,” Jasmine continued. “To our sensibilities, it appears to be an abstraction, but we can’t really know what the artist was trying to capture. It could have been something specific.”

Jake looked down at the image again; if it was supposed to represent some physical object, Jake couldn’t guess what. “Any theories?”

“Oh, plenty of those,” Jasmine said. “Maybe an aurora borealis in their sky?”

Jake thought back to his last first-contact mission, with the Amaterasu, and shuddered. “Anything else?”

“It could be anything,” Kass muttered grouchily from behind them. “That’s the point. We’re just taking stabs in the dark here.”

“Culture is tricky,” Eve said. “I could show you the image of, say, a housecat, divorced from all context. If you’re an alien race, and that image is included in a packet of other such images, what are you to make of it? Is it supposed to represent the people who sent it? A natural predator of theirs? How many leaps of logic would it take to surmise it’s an image of a household pet? And how do you even get there if you’re part of a species that doesn’t *have* pets?”

“They sent all this stuff to us for a reason,” Jake said. “I don’t think they’re just photos of whatever cool stuff happened to be lying around. I think we can assume each image they’ve sent is important.”

“We have made some concrete progress,” Jasmine said. “I checked with Lt. Stavik. The image with the belt cluster, and what appears to be a planet, or maybe a moon…”

She called the image up on her PADD and passed it to Jake.

“They’re faint, but you can make out some stars in the background of the image,” Jasmine continued. “Stavik ran the image through the PHOENIX’s cartographic computer and found no match. I even asked him to ping the furthest nav buoy from our position to check them against the most recent charts, and nothing.”

“So wherever this is, it’s not charted space,” Jake said.

Jasmine nodded.

“So we can’t talk back to them, and there’s a good chance we’ll never know where they’re transmitting from,” Kass said. “This is a real productive conversation we’re almost having.”

“Cheer up, Tannenbaum,” Jake said, getting to his feet. “Maybe their transmission included a brownie recipe.”

Kass snorted. “This ship? We ain’t that lucky.”

“That phenomena towards the left of the space image,” Jake said. “Any luck identifying that?”

“Working theory is that it’s a black hole,” Eve said. “We checked the nav data against recorded black holes and didn’t find anything, but that’s not surprising if they’re somewhere we’ve never been before.”

“Who determined it was a black hole?” Jake asked.

“Arak,” Eve said. “Though he didn’t sound optimistic about it.”

“Why not?”

“Well, look at the planetoid in that image,” Eve said. “It’s way too close to the event horizon. If that *was* a black hole…”

She didn’t finish. She didn’t need to.

“Okay,” Jake said. “Well, it’s a start. Keep working; no penalties for wrong guesses. It’s not like the aliens will be able to correct us.”

=[/\]=

Shawn Putnam

A.k.a.

Jake Crichton

Executive Officer

USS PHOENIX