The Gilded Protocol

Posted on Thu Dec 4th, 2014 @ 3:07am by Commander Andrew Matheson & Commander Eliana Masters
Edited on on Thu Dec 4th, 2014 @ 3:36am

Mission: Bloodpath
Location: Taranok IV - FOB Phoenix
Timeline: Following "This was a great idea..."

OLD:

Andrew and Jim came out of the room where they had been talking and headed over to the highest visible concentration of pips, which at the moment seemed to be Eliana and Rosaleen. Andrew addressed the pair quietly as he approached. "My apologies for our absence; Mr. Denova was bringing me up to speed on the diplomatic situation. What's the next project that needs doing?"

"Follow me Commander, we've got a few hours to get as many basic supplies out to these refugees as possible. We're going to use those replicators over there," Masters gestured to the modules next to the Bettina.

NEW:

A distance of about fifty meters remained between the two officers and the Bettina where members of the engineering team were just about to bring two replicator modules online. The modules were part of the standard response loadout that was brought on every mission. Having launched the mission without knowing the true scale of the problem on the surface, the crew from Starbase 80 had not brought any of the truly heavy duty replicators with them.

That thought was on the back of Masters' mind as she walked with her heretofore silent crewmate.

"You know, it's funny," Masters began. "We were worried about drawing too much attention in a war zone bringing the ship down here, but you think they're going to notice the hundreds of people and dozens of campfires dotting the hillside?"

Andrew shivered a little bit contemplating that. "They probably will eventually, Commander. I just hope at this point they're not working on their secondary targets list - or that the Bettina doesn't elevate us to a primary target."

"I'm sorry, we haven't been properly introduced." Ellie stopped for a moment to make eye contact with Andrew while she extended a hand and showed one of her signature smiles. "Eliana Masters, and though I wish it were under better circumstances, it's a pleasure to meet you."

He smiled back and returned the proper handshake. "Andrew Matheson. It's a pleasure to meet you as well and I couldn't agree more about the circumstances. I'm the new Chief Diplomatic Officer. Mr. Denova and I were just comparing notes on the high number of explosions in the region and not liking what we were coming up with."

"Indeed," Masters replied in turn. "I don't know how much you were able to see on the way down through the atmosphere, but this landscape reminds me of some of the wars that I have been told stories of - and not in a good way if there is such a thing."

Andrew nodded. "I've landed on and flown off better looking planets during the Cardassian War - and the Cardassians weren't remotely trying to limit the destruction. This is looking like one particularly nasty situation."

The two officers were only halfway to the Bettina when a voice split the soundscape.

"Masters! Desoro! I need two of your best pilots standing front, and center on the double!" It was unmistakably the voice of Captain Cleh.

"Give me just a sec, okay?" Eliana gave Andrew an apologetic look and ran over to a group of familiar uniforms, hoping to find a few of her department's pilots interspersed among the crew. Without explaining herself, she stepped into the middle of the group's conversation, searching for a familiar face. More than a few quizzical looks met her frantic search through the sea of faces.

"Come on, come on, come on," she muttered under her breath, scanning with fervor. "Ah! Scheifele! Just the man I need! Report to Captain Cleh, double time."

"Yes ma'am."

With the veteran pilot on his way, Ellie gracefully skipped her way back to where Andrew was standing.

"Sorry about that. Uh, anyway, we've got to get these replicator units pumping out basic supplies as fast as we can. We'll have to use storage containers and Betty herself to provide as much shelter to these refugees as possible. Say," an impish grin began to spread over the El Aurian's features. "You're the diplomat, be a pal and convince these engineers that we need to borrow their toys for a bit."

Andrew chuckled. "It'll probably be easier to convince the engineers to use their toys on our behalf than to convince them to give them up, but I get your meaning." With a mock salute that still had more precision on it than most inspections, he turned and picked out a likely target.

After a couple minutes of quiet conversation with the nearest engineer, Andrew patted the man on the shoulder and came back over to Eliana. "Give me a priority list and our man will run the replicator until someone who outranks me in his department, or outranks you period, tells him otherwise."

"See, I already like you," Masters stated matter-of-factly, before opening her posture to include the replicator technician into the conversation. "Okay, here's the plan. We need to push out as many waterproof canopies as we can in the next hour or so. Dial up as many of the standard kits as you can and we'll teach our friends here how to put them up. Actually, you know what, make sure we get the kits with the suspended floor. There's going to be a ton of rain."

Looking around, Eliana ran a rough estimate of the numbers and knew that they would be hard-pressed to keep everyone dry. Still, they had to try.

"Okay, follow that up with jackets and bedding. The medical facilities should be self-sustaining with the medical replicators they have, but if they need something big, move it up the priority list. Questions? Didn't think so, let's go," Ellie finished without a pause.

Tapped into the EPS grid on the Bettina, the two replicator modules soon hummed into life. The next step would be to distribute the canopies they were creating to the people who needed them, while explaining how to build them as quickly as possible. The plan of action had barely formulated in her mind when the technician walked over and handed her the first kit.

"Ever dealt with one of these before?" Eliana asked.

Andrew looked at the kit and chuckled. "It's probably been forty years since I had to use one, but I think I've worked with the civilian pre-pre-predecessor of this kit before. Jim, do me a favor and round up some volunteering civilians while I embarrass myself with childhood nostalgia for a few minutes, please." Jim headed off into the crowd while Andrew laid the kit contents out.

It took Andrew about ten minutes and a sprinkling of Rigelian profanity, but the first canopy was just finishing going up when Jim came back with the first wave of volunteers. The construction process was pretty straightforward. The bottom tarp layer was placed out and the corner posts were sunk into the ground through rings in the tarp corners. Locking pins were set in above and below the tarp to lock it into an elevated position. After that, the waterproof side sheeting was wrapped around the outside of the posts. There were grommets on the top and bottom edge of the sheeting to affix it to the locking pins and the top of the posts, and the entrance flap was placed facing downwind. Finally, a couple of overlapping triangles were placed on the top of the poles and locked into place, and the overlap thermally fused itself to form a watertight roof that held the sheeting in place.

Once Jim and the volunteers were working on extending the row of canopies he'd started, he turned back to Eliana. "Once people start seeing those canopies go up, ma'am, we're liable to have an influx of people. Do we have a security force to help direct the traffic, or do I need to conscript some crew members?"

"Frankly, I hadn't gotten that far," Ellie sighed. "It wouldn't hurt to have a few people around to make sure that the line stays orderly - see if there's anyone around that can..."

"I can help with that." The voice had originated from outside of Masters' field of vision.

"Who said that?"

"Me. My name is Durion, and I am a member of the local militia. We are thankful for your assistance. I am willing to help in any way I can."

Wiping a few beads of sweat off of her brow, Eliana used a well-aimed exhale to tame an unruly tuft of hair that had fallen into her visage. Turning to face Durion, she quickly realized that the man's sheer size would be useful if push came to shove.

"Hello Durion. I'm Eliana, thank you for help. We'll need to keep everyone in line so we can get as many of these shelters into peoples' hands as possible. Everyone else that is not able-bodied can find shelter in one of the large storage units or inside the ship behind me," she explained concisely. "Do you have anyone that can help you?"

"Yes," came the simple reply and Durion disappeared into the crowd.

"Hmm, not a talkative one, eh?" Masters raised an eyebrow.

"With all the commotion around here, I don't really have a problem with strong and silent types at the moment." Andrew looked after the man. Having local involvement here would make the rest of the locals more likely to cooperate, since it was their own people appearing to run the show.

He let his telepathic senses range out, looking for any surface thoughts that might indicate intentions of violence or subterfuge. As much as he hated to admit it, if the previous attacks on the planet were meant to have a terrorism component, striking a group of refugees and blackening the eye of a relief force to convey a sense of not being welcome would definitely fall in line with that aim.

Masters tried to interact with as many of the refugees as she could, but she was only one woman in the midst of what by now had to be thousands of homeless. It was becoming more difficult to maintain a positive state of mind, but she tried anyway.

"Here take this, these men will help you construct it and keep you dry. Stay safe and warm - come back and find me if you need anything, okay?" Ellie repeated some form of the statement dozens of times before she looked around and started to notice the makeshift canopies popping up all over the place. As promised, Durion and other members of the Prepheradian militia were keeping the process orderly.

"Rain, rain, go away - come again some other day," Masters sang to whomever would listen. "My friends and I would like to say - rain, rain go away."

Andrew did his part to direct traffic and attempt to keep things going smoothly, but as the numbers of people swelled he kept thinking he was forgetting something. As he was passing by Eliana, he heard her singing about the rain. Suddenly, the detail that had been eluding him smacked him between the eyes at about the same moment a raindrop did.

Quietly walking over to Eliana, he asked softly: "Do we know if the weapon blasts had any chemical or radiation fallout associated with them? We could have a serious medical issue crop up here if that rain is contaminated with something."

"Initial scans determined that the explosion was caused by a small antimatter device. That," she explained, "is how we know that there's another force in play. The Tarakens have only theorized about the presence of anti-matter. So..." Masters then caught up to the train of thought that Matheson had been conducting.

"Shit."

Eliana found a PADD laying around nearby and accessed the meteorological information for the past forty eight hours. The explosion had sent residual radioactive material into the upper atmosphere, so depending on the prevailing wind in the area, the rain falling could be innocuous or potentially life-threatening.

Frantically tapping away at the data, Masters took a deep breath and turned the display so that Andrew could see.

"We're lucky," she spoke in a low voice, "but let's get some readings from a geiger counter just to be safe."

He nodded in reply and released a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding. "Damned lucky. Some of the things I saw back when I was dealing with the Cardassian Treaty..." He shuddered. "Antimatter charges are NOT pleasant to deal with. And the resulting wastelands that usually crop up in their wake are even worse. If or when that fallout hits the water table..."

The emotions rolling through his head at this point were pretty powerful. Radiation could kill in a hundred different ways, and none of them were particularly pleasant to deal with. Fortunately, most were treatable if you knew to watch out for them - but since antimatter was a foreign concept on this planet, no one here would know to watch for it. Unfortunately for him, he'd seen most of the ways it could kill on one of the border planets towards the end of the Cardassian war. The nightmares had mostly stopped twenty years later.

He took another deep, steadying breath. "Well, we seem to have gotten a jump on the basic shelter problem. I'll try to stop coming up with problems we can't do anything about if you have some problems in mind that we can work on."

"Hey," Masters' voice was softer. She put a hand on his shoulder. "We signed up to make a difference and we're doing it."

A few moments passed in silence. It was the only suitable thing to do as a response to the hand they had been dealt.

"Well," Eliana raised her eyebrows, "I suppose we could introduce these fine people to the wonder that is the MRE."

Andrew chuckled. "It's a fine day for a diplomatic incident, now that you mention those." It was gallows humor, and he knew it. "I remember seeing crates of those back where you and Rosaleen were talking earlier." And with that, he turned and ambled off in that general direction.

"Back to it," Eliana's face lit up with a smile.

OFF:

Commander Eliana Masters
Second Officer
Starbase 80

Lt. Commander Andrew Matheson
Chief Diplomatic Officer
Starbase 80

Lt. Jim Denova
Diplomatic Officer
Starbase 80
Simmed by Lt. Cmdr. Matheson