A Light Day's Mystery
Posted on Tue Apr 9th, 2024 @ 11:27pm by Lieutenant Irynya & Ensign Noah Balsam
Mission:
Mean Green Queen
Location: USS Sojourner
Timeline: Mission Day 1 at 0630
[Junior Officer's Quarters]
[Deck 5]
[0630 Hours Day 1]
Being swathed in the equilibrium of warmth and softness was a serious detriment to Noah Balsam's early rise. He turned his ankle to circle his foot, feeling his covers graze his toes with their feather touch. It was his favorite blanket- the blue fleece from the Fassbinder Think-tank. Outside his cocoon was a lovely, brisk temperature that he could feel across one cheek while the other was comfortably settled in a damp spot of cool drool. He smacked his lips. Five degrees celsius, he guessed. He'd had a knack for numbers like that since he was a tween.
He groaned happily, oblivious to his roommate. "Cat." The computer chirped and trotting across his lanky body came the Russian Blue feline, appearing to decloak and phase in. She trilled at him. "Hey baby. I know. I'm cuh-coming. I'm just comfortable. The holographic cat began to knead at his ribs- making biscuits in the common parlance.
"Brrrow.... bbrrrrowww...." Cat trilled in its high voice. Noah twirled his foot again in that small chasm of deliciously soft airy comfort. Cat kept kneading- almost to the point that Noah wondered if he needed to check Cat's kneading subroutines or run a debug. But then cat jumped down and sat in front of him, swishing their tail. Noah leaned his head on his hand, staring at Cat with his own visible eye under a messy and frizzed mop of brown.
"Computer, holographic feline supplement number 22, small, with gravy." Before cat appeared a small silver dish full of some kind of flaky fish in a kind of fish bouillon. Cat leaned down, sniffed it and began to push their jaws down into the synthesized meal. "... Divider to privacy." The holographic barrier betwix his space and Margarar's snapped to an opaqueness and that let Noah throw off his sheet. He did it quickly, like a bandaid. An instant chill pricked off his skin and he shivered.
He laid there and quietly let the cold wake him up a little the jaws of his photonic pet masticating its photonic food the only sound beyond his own breathing. Noah got up, righted his white Y-fronts from wedging where he was vertical split and started to dig for an appropriate cover for which to venture out into the common space and then to the showers.
The shuttle bay was quiet. Or... at least... almost quiet. Really, at warp, there was little to do in a shuttle bay and so equally there was little sound. The hum of the deck plates seemed louder, perhaps a response to the slightly cavernous feel of the space or maybe because it had no other significant sounds to compete with. The occasional beep or trill of a system could be heard, but none of them were alarming--simply the ship doing what it was designed to do including the periodical auditory confirmation of its completed tasks.
On this occasion, however, one other sound filtered through the thin dry air of the bay. The sound was rich and warm, feminine but not exceedingly high or shrill. Certainly it was a sound one could only expect to hear from a living being and thus it gave away the single inhabitant of the space. The source of the sound, a melodic lilting tone, emanated from the open rear door of Opportunity, one of the two type XII shuttles that were allocated to the Sojourner. Were anyone to have entered the shuttle bay at that moment they would have been treated to an odd translation of the sound, which any listener would quickly identify as a song, that in, in the common language, translated roughly to...
Round about the sandy dunes
We dance at daylight creeping.
Into the water warm and soft
We bid farewell to sleeping.
The singer's voice fell silent just at the end of the line, though humming continued to the same tune afterward for a long moment before the sound of the voice ceased.
"What are you?" Irynya asked the anomalous output displayed across one of the consoles within Opportunity. She had been on a night shift, or rather now it felt like an early morning shift, and with little else required of her she was working through diagnostics of the shuttles. Standard procedure, if somewhat unnecessary since the last diagnostic had been completed after the shuttles had last been returned to the bay, dictated a fresh round of checking to be sure they were ready at moment's notice should the crew of the Soujourner need them.
Resuming her humming Irynya's fingers danced over the console, forcing a rerun of the scan on that specific node of the shuttle's replicators that had indicated something within the confines of the small vessel had been tampered with. Or at least that's what she thought it meant.
The lilting hum once again ceased as the console flashed yet another warning indicating something was not as it should be. "What are you?" the Risian asked the console again and then rubbed the bridge of her nose as if doing so might help her think.
"Computer," she said, addressing the space around her, "what time is it?"
The disembodied feminine voice of the computer responded warmly. "The time is Oh-Six-Thirty."
Early. "Computer, when does Ensign Balsam start his duty rotation?"
Once again the voice chimed in as if happy to respond. "Ensign Balsam is assigned to computer core maintenance beginning at Oh-Seven-Thirty."
"Thanks," Iry muttered to the air and then with two fingers lightly tapped her commbadge to open a channel.
"Lieutenant Irynya to Ensign Balsam," she said, feeling weirdly formal as she used their titles to be sure it reached the right person. "Noah, are you awake?"
Swish. Swish. Cat's tail was patiently swaying, the eyes of the feline observant.
Despite the pelting of water, Cat stood uncaring in the sonic shower cubicle where her creator stood. Noah had opted for a real water shower today. A luxurious five minute experience rather than the relatively short minute-plus of a standard sonic shower. He peered at his holographic pet with one eye squinted and the other's lashes beading with droplets. Steam rose warmly about his person. "Y-you know, this would be a glitch if you were a Biologic."
Noah had noted that Cat had followed- merrily- into the cubicle and now was just staring at him. When he spoke, Cat did a slow double blink of her amber gaze and shifted foot to foot. Noah turned away from his creation and dunked his head under the water pouring from above. He sputtered. "Computer, schedule." It chirped and warbled at him and then displayed it in holographic 3-D to his side. Noah peered at it with one eye.
"0730: Staff Meeting Main Engineering. 0800: Assignment Briefing, Computer Core Room. 0830: Level Four Diagnostic, Criticals..."
"Mmm, mute," Noah said to the voice that was calmly, almost medically, reading his schedule. The voice ceased but the display was more persistent. Noah moved his head out of the continuous sheet of water to read when the comm system chirped.
"Lieutenant Irynya to Ensign Balsam," the voice announced- it was Irynya. "Noah, are you awake?"
Noah sputtered water, the echo of it in the background. "Uh huh. Just up and h-having a shower, Sir. Wuh-what's wrong?" He asked the Lieutenant. He kept it in the safe zone knowing that Irynya was likely on duty. Why else would she have referred to ranks for? His hand flicked at the controls, the gesture ending the water flow. He fumbled for a towel and dried off his face.
An almost feline look of mischief crossed Irynya's features as the sound of soft water colored the space behind Noah's voice. She giggled, entirely unprofessional, and quickly responded to give him context. "Sorry," she said to the air. "You can skip formalities. It's just me." Then, as an afterthought she added, a lightly teasing amusement wrapped around her words, "Are you answering me IN the shower?" Emphasis was placed on the word in and, because it was so hard not to tease, made ever so slightly suggestive. She knew full well from the background sound that he must have been actually in the shower and, by that point in their friendship, nudity was hardly any kind of issue between the two of them.
"OK," Noah's voiced acknowledged- one could almost hear him smile as the ranks were dropped. He hesitated only a moment, Uhhh... mmhmm. I-I am." His mouth was muffled by towel. "More like juh-just out of one. And Cat says hi. This might be a-a glitch. They joined me in the shower. I pra-probably'll run a debug later.". There was a beat of a pause. "So... uhh... wah-wait you're not on the Bridge, right?"
A peal of laughter filled the shuttle followed by hurried confirmation. "No. No. I'm in the shuttle bay. Running diagnostics on Opportunity." The flex of cheek muscles shifting into smile lines stretched across her face. Almost as an after thought she added, "Hi Cat!" in gaily greeting. "Did Cat interact with the shower?" she asked, curious.
"Guh-good. I was about to resign my commission and m-move to Chandra," Noah replied. He continued, "Cat stood in it. Which I-I don't think cats are supposed to do." There was a pause over the line with a rustling sound. "So wuh-what's wrong with Opportunity?"
"Oh," the Risian said in response realizing she'd been so easily comfortable in their interchange that she'd nearly forgotten the whole reason for contacting him. "I've got an unusual anomalous reading on Opportunity's diagnostic. There should be nothing new. She hasn't been out of the shuttle bay since the last diagnostic was run. But this shows some kind of tampering with..." here she frowned at the diagnostic result again, "with the replicator. If I understand what I'm seeing correctly it's an override. Or maybe someone trying to program a recipe? Whole thing is a jumble though. I... umm... wondered if you'd have time to take a look before your shift."
Brrrow..... brrrrow. True to form, Cat, neglected of attention, had begun to brush up and weave between Noah's skinny wet legs. "W-weird. I wonder if it was a system corruption from when we uh, passed through the Oasis." Noah looked into the mirror and dried off his face. Then he checked his neck and jawline for any hairs he might've missed shaving earlier. He doubted it was the Starfire Oasis' effects since the deflector shields had been up. But it seemed the most reasonable starting point."
"Yeah.... though... umm..." He blinked and lowered his towel from his face to tuck around his waist, "Um, I'll be right down to take a look." Noah flailed an arm in a shrug that Irynya could, of course, not see. "Is it just Opportunity or did you find it on Spirit too?" And he wondered, by extension, about the Waverider shuttle which was even more exposed to space than their two Type XII's.
"Just Opportunity. Irynya's voice returned the result with a mild sort of curiosity to it. "Spirit's diagnostics came back as boring as boring ever is. Not a micron out of place. I'm going to run a diagnostic on just the replicator to double check myself. I'll leave the door open, come on in when you get here."
"OK," Noah agreed. He was processing that. Why would one shuttle be affected but not the other? That didn't completely rule out some kind of interference from the Starfire... and he hadn't heard about any other system outages- at least nothing major. Noah was easily spinning in the catalyst to such a minor mystery but he was also just inertly spinning his wheels. The mystery was in the shuttlebay, not in the sonic shower. "I'll be there in a little bit. Noah out." He reached for the comm and pressed it and then examined his neck and chin again. Fingers sought out the texture of any hair he'd missed.
But the mystery of it all made his normal regimen grow short. He finished his usual ablutions and dressed in the engineering jumpsuit variant. He took up his tool kit and proceeded toward the shuttlebay. It was a level up and half a ship back. And when the large reinforced blast doors ground open, his thinness stepped through to the ozonous tang of the bay. His eyes found Opportunity with ease for despite the two shuttles being the same class, there were subtle aesthetic differences. They had in fact been built at two completely different shipyards. Opportunity came from the Titan Shipyards and Spirit from Antares- like the rest of Sojourner.
Noah started to lankily stride up the open ramp of the shuttle where he found Irynya. "Hi." He greeted with his too-wide, slightly awkward grin. He shifted back on his heels. "So, tell me m-more about this weirdness."
"Hi." Irynya's responding irrepressible grin was a comfortable counter to Noah's slight awkwardness. If there was ever any question that she was always happy to see him then the question had to be coming from someone blind. She turned and patted the seat next to her. "Sit," she said. "I suspect you're going to want to check my work."
Noah swiveled at the hips to look for an appropriate spot. He seldom mentioned this but the seats on the shuttlecrafts were rock hard and they hurt his back. Nonetheless, he dropped into the seat across from the Risian. He balanced his toolkit on his knees. He blinked as if to silently say, go on.
She didn't wait for him to sit but instead swiveled to face the console she was working from, fingers flying across the controls with practiced ease. A long string of results began to scroll through and then stopped on one which blinked red.
"It looks like someone... or something... tried to bypass the security protocols on the replicator. But if that's what they were doing there's no evidence if they were successful or what they could possibly have wanted to replicate that the shuttle would prohibit. For that matter the codes that would tell me who was in here are just outright absent. Like someone tried to undo what they had done and then botched fixing it. Or something like that."
"Hmm," Noah intoned. His eyes dropped like he was scanned text just under his beakish nose. Then he looked at her with a skeptical eyebrow raise. "I'm g-guessing you checked the replicator logs and-and the security clearance codes used in the last.... oh..." He twisted to look at the panel that was to his left. "Maybe month or so? That's about the uh last time Opportunity had had a deep diagnostic.
She frowned, the motion creasing the skin between her eyebrows slightly. "I've checked all of the other security controls on the shuttle and they show no indication of anything out of place. Nothing brought into the shuttle that shouldn't be here. Nothing changed. Nothing that was taken off. No introduction of dangerous chemicals or biological agents." The Risian glared at the offending blinking red line of text. "I'm stuck."
Noah nodded. "Huh. OK. Computer, open root command authorized access tiers file 8991-1Nada-Omri-Keras-Kera-6. Authorization Balsam Charlie-Systems-Gamma." He waited for the computer to trill and raised his chin a little more. "Computer, list all personnel to request access to Level 3 systems aboard Opportunity in the last thirty days. Include v-voice print authorization, manual override and any unknown security anomalies. Authorization Balsam Iota 71 Iota Charlie Delta 6 Ampersand.
"Acknowledged," the computer stated in a distinctly older voice pattern. Noah smiled at Irynya. "Trying the back door." The computer chirped. "Onscreen please." He turned fully and stooped to look at his screen. There were five accesses and one of them was- suspiciously- keyed out with a series of 0s, 1s and 2s. "Ah ha... g-got you my little friend." Noah was up immediately. "D-do you have your tricorder?" He asked Irynya with a lip bite.
Iry watched Noah work with the sort of appreciation that one might have for watching a talented singer or athlete. "This," she said, grinning as she twisted in her seat and rummaged around in a storage compartment, "is why I called you instead of engineering." With an unwinding of herself that wasn't entirely dissimilar to a spring moving back into place the Risian produced her tricorder, holding it out to face Noah with the interface and controls facing him. "Before you crack this mystery wide open have you got any guesses?"
Noah chomped his bottom lip while he took the tricorder, "Uh huh," he acknowledged with a head bob. "Isolinear interphase." Noah turned the tricorder end over end to face its scanner out from him. "S-sort of like a virtual private network. Plug it in to-to the interface and it does a packet scatter. You run a scaled down version of LCARS off it... like a remote system." His eyebrows popped, "They're..." he winced, "Uh, pruh-pretty shady. They were invented by a Yridian, if I remember right." Noah shifted out of the chair he'd assumed. He squatted down and then sank into a pretzeled leg-sit.
He stooped in that position and pulled off the panel below the replicator. Then he started to scan the isolinear panel with the tricorder. "I-I think Grosh would love this actually...." He muttered. "Ah... uh huh. Umm... please hold this?" He passed the tricorder back. "I'm-I'm wrong.. its not an interphase." Noah rolled onto his back like an obedient puppy, bending his storky legs at the knees.
He started to pull back the inner hatch and with a click it came free. He started to shift under, his head disappearing. "Oh. Uh. That's old school." He said, muffled slightly. "Found the problem!"
Even as used to Noah's flexibility as she was, Iry couldn't help thinking he really had missed his calling as a possible gymnast as he rolled and bent at angles that would prove difficult for so many others. "I had meant who had done it," Iry quipped back with a chuckle. She hadn't expected further answer, though knowing that now that Noah had found the offending issue he'd be happily working on it. She was quiet a moment before asking. "So... how old school exactly are we talking?"
"Well... older than you and I, s-certainly," Noah's reply came back muffled by a bank of bulkhead and electronics. "Old enough that you can probably make one at home. Especially with a replicator. They're not used anymore. But..." There was a warbled sound and then the clatter of a tool. Noah grunted and grunted again. "Uuuurgh, come off!" More warbling. More clattering. "Got it!" Noah announced a moment later. The replicator powered off and came up with an error code on its access screen.
He scooted out from under the console, very cautiously avoiding hitting his head- as if that was a learned behavior. In his hand was something very simple and very straightforward. It was vaguely tubular with two interfaces on either end. In the center was another optical interface. "Tricorder?" Noah said with a grunt. He showed it between two fingers, "dynamic syscode converter." He said, eyeing it. He twisted back to look at the replicator, "I-I'll fix that as soon as I can replicate the part in Engineering."
Unconsciously bending closer Irynya inspected the tube held between Noah's fingers. The design, on its face, was extremely simplistic and she found herself wondering what other system or part had made it redundant. "Interesting," she breathed, eyes still on the tube as she slid the tricorder from her lap and offered it to Noah. "Would you have to be an engineer to know how to build this or... is it something that I could do?" she asked, wondering if the simplistic design of the thing my belie a much more complicated architecture within its small structure.
Scratching his cheek with his free hand, Noah pursed his lips, "I think with the engineering courses... you know, the extensions? You could easily build this. The blueprints are in the computer archives." Noah took the tricorder and aimed it at the small device's interface.
Though she appreciated Noah's comment about the replicator she wasn't terribly concerned. If there was anyone on the ship she'd trust to fix something he had, for good reason, broken, it was Noah. "Is there anything I can..." she waved her hand vaguely in the direction of Noah and the device he held, "... I don't know... do to help? Like... hold your sonic screwdriver or something?" Though this last was delivered deadpan a gleam in the corner of her eye gave away a degree of personal pride in her reference to one of the lanky engineer's favorite dramas.
Noah looked at Irynya and blinked. "Oh." he blinked again and sat up straight, "Uh, yeah. s-sorry, this must be really boring. Here I am.. uh..." he gestured at the console. "Um. Can you download the telemetry of the tricorder to your console? Maybe put it on screen?" For while Noah now knew what the device was and why it was attached to a replicator, he certainly had no idea what they'd made. He hoped it wasn't something as insidious as a weapon. "Let's see what they were trying to replicate. It'll be in its memory archives I just scanned."
The Risian's fingers were dancing over her console before Noah had even finished making his request and moved to pull up the memory archives he mentioned displaying them on screen a few moments later. She read the information once and then read it again for good measure cocking her head slightly as she did as if the different angle might change the results.
"You're seeing the requirements for Romulan Ale... right?" she finally asked Noah.
Noah squinted and then finally got up from his pretzeled sit and leaned over Irynya's shoulder. A few moments later and he guffawed, his smile turning geekily sideways. "Tha-that's exactly what it looks like. "Ethyl alcohol... enough for wha-what... 160 proof? Reman tonic water... Khalifal berry... Gur-gur... uh... Gurnak? I'm guessing that was on Romulus.. prefecture yeast? Kohlambee bitters... Sinak rye." Noah blinked, "Only wuh-one way to find out though." He glanced at Irynya.
"I mean for confirmation of our theory purposes... of course."
Irynya raised one eyebrow in her best impression of a Vulcanoid and then, face as devoid of emotion as she could manage, said, "Seems only logical." And then giggled and pressed her lips together as if doing so could swallow back her mirth. "Do we... like... taste it to confirm or... take it to Debbie? Or... I mean a tricorder readout is just going to give us the ingredients... right?"
"Bring it to Debbie and plug it into her replicator," Noah confirmed with a nod. "This one's out of commission until I replicate a new sub-processor interface," Noah gestured back at their handiwork. He couldn't help but split his own wide and agreeable grin. "I don't think she'd try to keep the converter. Th-then again, I'm not sure she didn't put the thing in here." His nose screwed as if something were sour, "Mmm probably not actually. She would've used an interphase. Or something really insidious like a Lethean Bypass PP...or Black Nagus PP Code."
"Whaaaaat... is a Black Nagus PP Code?" Iry exclaimed, and then added a softly voiced, "Oh." In her curiosity and amusement she'd whirled to look at him and forgetting his proximity found herself suddenly at eye level with Noah's ear. They were standing so close that a puff of breath would stir the shortened curls from where they threatened to curve along the nape of his neck. In a larger space she would have stepped back, but was somewhat restricted by the console and the chair she'd been sitting in.
He had freckles. They were faint and easily missed in the light of the typical shuttlebay. Likely he was the kind that freckled under a summer sun and otherwise stayed fair. And he had a high cheekbone. Noah was self-conscious about his ears, using his naturally curly hair to hide them to his satisfaction. He shivered when he felt the warm puff of breath touch his neck. He faintly blushed at grinned wide again, "S-sorry I guess I also have to move huh." He smiled amiably and stepped to let Irynya go through.
She noticed the shiver. And she noticed the blush. And against reason a slight light flush of her own crept along the back of her neck, subsiding at the appearance of Noah's familiar wide grin. She returned it in kind and slid by him as he shifted to give her space. "Thanks," she murmured.
"And um," he scratched his cheek. "It's messed up. Black Nagus I mean. It was d-developed by a rogue Ferengi hacker. Starfleet doesn't know his- maybe her- real name. But their syndicate is called something like the Latinum Ring. A-and they supposedly sign off as the Black Nagus. Supposedly they're based on Nimbus III." Noah shrugged and then smiled a tilted smile. "Anyway. It's like the memory EMP of code. It torches all authorization access requirements in a given system. Then exactly 22 minutes later, it rewrites a 22-character fractal security code and implements on all levels. It was used by the Black Nagus to crack the security code on Starbase 137 to get access to bio-mimetic gel." He nodded. "Messed up huh."
"That is messed up," she said, eyes wide at the telling. "And you think Debbie could get a hold of one?" Even as she asked it the answer was obvious. "Nevermind... it's Debbie... if she wanted to of course she could."
Noah guffawed again, "Sure. If she wants to go to the Jaros II facility. Black Nagus is insanely illegal." He pursed his lips, "N-not that it didn't occur to me when they put our friends in jail down on that station we just left..." He muttered.
Turning, Irynya took in the error code still displayed on the replicator's interface. "What do you think I should put in my report on this?" she asked. "That I have a contraband part and suspect someone made Romulan Ale, but they also might not have and we're going to ask Debbie to be sure?" She frowned. "That seems... premature..." Her brow creased slightly as she thought and then she turned an incandescent smile back on Noah. "I'll note that you came down to look at an anomaly, removed a part, and it is now under evaluation. Does that work?"
Noah nodded agreeably, "Y-yes. Until we know for sure all the whys and whats and whos of it all." Noah tossed the part up in the air a short distance and caught it. "So. To Debbie?"
Iry nodded her confirmation. "What time do you stop for lunch? I can meet you then." She eyed the tube that Noah still held, "Or after your shift is over if that's better."
"Uhhh," Noah screwed up his face in an upward way on one side, tilting his head, "1300 I think. I'll meet you at Debbie's then." His eyebrows raised happily as if remembering, "If I remember right, its bacon cheeseburger day in there."
Iry's expression seemed to brighten as well as she oohed over that revelation. "Perfect," she said with a chuckle and a slight shake of her head. "Bacon cheeseburgers sound like perfect sleuthing fuel."
=/\= A Mysterious Find By =/\=
Lieutenant Junior Grade Irynya
Assistant Chief Flight Controller
Ensign Noah Balsam
Systems Specialist
