Going Over the Records - Part II

Posted on Mon Mar 10th, 2025 @ 12:04pm by Executive Officer Jake Ford & Chief Engineer Michael Burnstein & Chief Helmsman Kalahaeia t'Leiya & Leiddem Kea (*)

Mission: Shackles
Location: The Coterie
Timeline: MD01 Afternoon
1267 words - 2.5 OF Standard Post Measure

Burnie hooked up the portable generator, tinkered with some connections, and a terminal began to come to life. He slid out from under the console, adjusted controls until the screen went from digital snow to rolling stripes, and finally applied a bit of 'percussive maintenance' to get it stabilize. "There," he said happily, keying in a command. "Now maybe we can get somewhere... or not." He sighed. "The files, even the names, are all encrypted."

"Naturally." Kali rolled her eyes and sighed. "I offer the usual attempt but given the source, I'd actually give way better than even odds it'd not only fry the thing, but set off some sort of trap, too..."

Leiddem sat back in one of the seats and sighed as he stared at the information going across the screens. “I can’t imagine there are many traps left in this pile of scrap metal.” He sighed picking up a stray PADD to fan himself.

Kali pursed her lips for a moment, considering, then muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like 'fuck it' and dug inside one of the equipment pouches on her hip and came out with her aunt's hacking and access tool. "We can try it; since the alternative is trying to crack it ourselves and that's basically hopeless. But I mean it this time, everyone back a decent distance from the console and the generator while it works, if there is anything left to screw with us I'd bet on Orions to make it...emphatic."

From a short distance away, Jake motioned for the others to join him as Kali did her work. "Keep it quiet, if possible. I'd rather the locals not get spooked."

Leiddem sighed and moved from his seat and followed the older man to what he thought was a safe location away from where Kali was working. He had thought where he had been was suitable but he would humour the man. “Have heard anything from the ship?” He wondered.

"Not much. I think Reuben's on his way down with a few others to help secure things. Probably also to see for himself what sort of mess we've uncovered down here..." Jake replied.

Watching over Kali's shoulder - he didn't expect anything dramatic in the sense of what he'd do to booby-trap a console, especially since there'd have been no time for that with the ship crashing - Burnie watched as file names began to appear. Not that that helped tremendously. "Looks like the file decryption is working, but the filenames are still in some kind of code, probably a clan or faction version of Trader Talk. Guess we're just going to have sift through them the hard way. Let's see what we've got here..." he said, tapping a random file. As it opened, his eyebrows shot nearly to hairline, and he quickly closed it. "Okaayyy, hopefully the next one won't be someone's porn stash."

"....Damn it." Kali scowled at the screen with the next file she reached over to try...which immediately prompted her for a code they lacked, and shortly thereafter deleted itself after no more than a bare minimum timeframe for one to have entered something "Well. I think we can assume that one wasn't."

"Don't rush it," Jake urged. "We've got time here, we just need to get some systems access, nothing fancy."

Leiddem laughed a little at the mention of Orion Porn stash and the look on Michael’s face. “I am surprised you looked quite so surprised Burnie. You are married.” He teased watching the group. He no idea what he was doing with the films so it seemed safer for him just to tease and try to lighten the mood when Jake was urging them all to slow down.

"Married, yes, but that... whew. You know, I served with an Orion and she used to joke about how human porn was basically PG by Orion standards. I always thought she was joking, but now..." he gave an exaggerated grimace.

Leiddem did not know whether to be horrified or laughed so he settled for teasing still. “Will have to ask Beya I suppose.” He said innocently before rolling his eyes as he watched over their shoulders as they revealed a few more files.

"...Aaaand I'm starting to notice a pattern here." Kali sighed a few minutes of silence alter, emphatically and rapidly hitting 'close' on another...extracurricular activities...video. "Whatever we can get into is useless; and whatever I suspect is not...deletes itself when you fail to immediately enter the passcode. If you had a dedicated intelligence team working this thing with a lot more people and tools, you might get something out of eventually. With just us, out here, and just this...Yeah. Probably shoulda seen this coming a lightyear away given the source."

"Just leave it then." Leiddem advised thinking that anything like this could be passed over to Starfleet or just left alone. It was not like they were desperate to know it all, it would just be helpful to try and find ways to get some of these people home to the right planets if they wanted that.

Kali shrugged and turned away from the console, giving it a rather 'Earth' gesture of annoyance with one finger as she did so.

Burnie frowned at the console and sighed. "I'll see what I can download. Maybe the computer can decode the file names so we can at least work out which files to focus on and which to discard. In the meantime, I guess we have to try old fashioned detective work - interview the survivors and get as much information as we can that could help us sort out where they came from. The Federation has pretty good database of pre-warp societies, even outside its immediate borders, and even more extensive stellar cartography. If we can get the type of star, number of planets, constellations, maybe days since they were taken, or at least order of abductions, we should be able to feed it all to astrometrics and find homeworlds, or at least narrow the search to specific regions."

"Good idea," Jake nodded. "Maybe we can get some of our contacts to help us run down old sensor data on where this ship was sighted before, too. It might take a bit of time and detective work, but we can at least give some of these people some hope."

"...Stellar carto..." Kali's voice took on a rather thoughtful and considering tone she wasn't often prone to and trailed off. "See if we can get any of them to sketch their home constellations. The combination can be put together to narrow the area considerably, yeah." It was perhaps a tell that Kali had been a much better combat pilot than she ever had been an intelligence officer; because one of the things most galactic powers taught in such training was how to approximate the position of a planet you might have crashed on in order to better communicate your position if you had the opportunity.

Leiddem nodded already thinking of catching up with the other group. "I will let you guys do it. I want to go check in with the other group." He said nodding at the trio.

"Let's break up, then," Jake nodded. "But stay in touch. We still don't know enough about these people and their experience of advanced civilizations yet and it makes sense to be on our toes." With that, he motioned for them to split up and carry on their investigations.