The Breach
Posted on Fri Oct 27th, 2023 @ 2:13am by Captain Isabella Perry & Verrana Nemis & Commander Riko McCord & Lyirru ei'Lyrrveoth & Podkayne Mars
1,606 words; about a 8 minute read
Mission:
Rescue
Location: Undisclosed Moon
Timeline: MD 6, 1320
The early afternoon sun was a pleasant warmth on Lyirru's back as she sat in the tiny spot of sunlight that shone into the broken ship. It wouldn't last long, but the lingering heat made it pleasant to be in the ship at this hour. Her personal routine had made it so that she took the tiny creature comforts where she could get them. The nights were bitter, and cold. As cold as the empress had impressed to her hell was, where she was certain they would reunite and their blood would freeze upon the stone of redemption. Her eyes were fixed on the tiny panel that she used to periodically fling coded reports into the cosmos, with the tiny hope of one day being rescued. It was becoming a further flung hope each day, as their supplies were dwindling.
As much as she hoped, every day they got thinner and more worn...and every day she checked the panel for any fluctuations in the sending sequence. Green lights were in a line across the board, each a shining point of blood emerald. Each representing a message, encoded in simple frequencies waiting for someone familiar with both coding structures of Romulan and Starfleet, as well as the Ancient, reunification dialect that she'd used.
Then even as she watched it, the green dot third from the left, flickered to yellow. It was so shocking that she didn't register the yellow received reply before it flicked back to green. Someone, somewhere had decoded her message and sent back the appropriate reply.
Did that mean rescue and redemption for her people or destruction and torture?
"Message 3 has been decoded," she spoke in a voice hoarse from disuse.
-Meanwhile on Nomad-
If they'd been planet-side, it would have been early afternoon, shortly after Nomad had left the secret base on Xelara. Podkayne yawned, not because she was sleepy, but because she was bored. Sitting and watching her console was her job, but hours of boredom were the pay she was receiving today. She wondered idly what the planetary situation was for those who'd be rescued sometime in the next two or three days. Was it a planet? A moon? An asteroid? Some other kind of feature? There was no way of knowing at the moment.
Glancing around the bridge, she saw that Nemis was the only one still with her. She appeared to be reading something on her console. A book? Her contract? Rules and Regulations? History? There was a way to find that out.
"Say, Ma'am, what are you reading? If it's interesting, maybe you could shoot me a copy?"
Verrana turned her head from her console and looked towards Podkayne. "Actually, I am doing some research on our soon to be rescued friends. Something bothered me after our briefing about a name, but I just can't put my finger on what it is."
Nemis tapped a couple of commands into her workstation and within a half of a second, the files she was examining were sent over to Podkayne's workstation. "I have heard the name ... somewhere."
Podkayne brought the files up on a sidebar of her own computer. She knew she didn't have as much knowledge as the Romulan woman, but she did have access to the database, through Ava, that their consultant might not have. She sent a quick message to Ava, asking for any additional information on the spy they were to rescue.
Normally, Ava answered her right away on a private channel, but today the response was slower ... and it didn't have the usual tenor of a reply Ava would send. Perhaps the other AI was performing maintenance tasks. Nothing was forthcoming, so she read through the file Verrana had sent.
"I haven't had much contact with Romulans, so I can't really help you, I guess. AVA is a little more informed than I am, but she doesn't seem to have anything, either. This fellow is a spy ... and you were a spy. Could you have crossed paths at some point?"
"I'm not sure ...." Nemis sat in her chair, racking her memory for something familiar to surface.
"Then I guess we move on until we have more information from ... somewhere. Isabella didn't seem to recognize him, so it would have to be something you experienced that she didn't, I think."
"I know I have seen him somewhere...." Nemis said more to herself than to Podkayne. She shook her head and rubbed her eyes. She was tired from sitting at the panel for such a long time.
"I need a break." Nemis said as she stood from her terminal. Looking over to her pilot she asked, "Wanna grab a quick drink in the mess with me?"
A new message appeared from the most distant of Podkayne's nose-forward sensors. It didn't make a lot of sense, but it came from the right direction. Like Nemis, she felt a niggle of something. "Wait a second, what's this?" she said aloud.
Not glancing up from the console, Podkayne shook her head. "Normally, I'd jump at the chance for a break, but there's something about this latest message that's nudging my brain. It's like ... a puzzle, I guess. Some kind of rhythm?"
"Rhythm?" Verrana whispered to herself as she stood on the bridge by her station. She shook her head again and made her way to the ship's galley. Impressed with the various types of teas and coffees, Nemis was able to get her favorite Romulan tea. "Bless you Henry, you remembered."
Verrana brewed her tea and made her way back to Nomad's bridge. Sitting back at her station, she was still thinking about Podkayne's words.
"Podkayne, can you send the message over to my station?" Verrana asked. "I want to take a look at it."
"Sure," the pilot answered, "and there are two of them now. I have a feeling this is ... a thing, I just don't know what." The two messages went right to the Romulan's console.
Verrana sat back at her tactical station and pulled up the messages Podkayne had sent. She looked over their coding and ran them through some of her own personal filtering programs. Nothing was coming through the results, which started to frustrate her. Nemis sipped on her tea and closed her eyes. She took a deep breath and looked again. This time, the former Romulan Intelligence officer broke the message down into layers. That is when she first noticed it. "Podkayne, have you noticed how hollow the message is?"
"Hollow?" Podkayne asked, distracted as a third message came through. "You mean like something empty in the middle?" The humaniform sent a quick query to the computer, looking for another meaning. Nothing turned up.
"Did another message come in, Podkayne?" the Romulan asked, not even turning her head.
"Yep, and it gives me the same ... impression?" Podkayne said, blowing out a breath. "Maybe that's the right word. It gives me a niggle that they are all parts of the same whole ... like verses in a song or poems."
The last message had the same feeling as the first ones to Nemis. "A rhythm," she said again as she played with the codes within messages.
"Podkayne, you're a genius. Look at this!" Verrana said as she slaved her panel to Podkayne's so they could see the same thing.
"There is a pattern here. Look at how the codes almost pulse, in a sense, when the codec index meets here." Nemis pulled the specific pattern on the screen to illustrate her point. "Now watch this!" She said as she tapped her fingers along the console in quick succession.
"I see what you're pointing out to me, but what is it?" the pilot asked. "Is there something hidden in that message ... another layer to it?" Snapping her fingers, she said, "Wait, that's it! There is something embedded in that core, and ..." she tapped a few keys and then said, "Yes! There it is in the third one, and ..." she tapped the same keys on the first two messages, "it's in the center of the first ones as well. I think it's location codes!"
"I think we have found our new friends, Podkayne." Nemis said as she looked over at the pilot with a smile on her face.
Podkayne ran the most recent message through the Starfleet intelligence coding database, and a location came up, flashing a signal back toward the direction from which it originally came. Then she saw a location travel to the bottom of her screen. Quickly, she treated the first two messages to a similar analysis by the Starfleet database, watching with excitement as two more pieces of the puzzle were put into place at the bottom of her screen. She wondered how many would arrive ... but now she had hope they were going to succeed at rescuing this spy.
There were 9 messages in total, and would each contain a single number of astrometric code that would eventually allow rescue to plot their position exactly on the moon that they were trapped upon. Each whisper of a message, would decode into poetry. A forlorn soul, reaching out from the abyss towards any sort of hope and redemption.
Lyirru stared at the panel, straining her eyes for any more flickers. For any sign at all that her messages had been understood and that her need to save her people hadn't doomed them. Loyalty to the empire came at too high a price for her and hers.
Put it together, whoever is out there. Put it together and find the message within the message ... and save us.
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