Lost Contact...

Posted on Sun Sep 7th, 2014 @ 7:28pm by Commodore Kathleen O'Shea & Captain Jey Cleh & Commander Eliana Masters & Lieutenant Commander Adria "Tempest" Desoro & Lieutenant Jason Solaris & Captain Pete Samson
Edited on on Sun Sep 7th, 2014 @ 7:30pm

Mission: Bloodpath
Location: Starbase 80
Timeline: After Last Dawn

ON:

With the mining group back, and the threat to them dealt with, Kathleen had sent Arianna off to transport a delegate to Taranok IV.

Now, Lizzy sat in OPS, a pile of broken Tricorders, and other small medical tools sitting in front of her. She had been given the task of taking a shift, while the Commodore was resting. While it wasn't a glorious start to what would probably be her never ending career in place of her sister, fixing these tools was at least a good way to learn how to do the job.

Lizzy had been working in OPS for the last couple of hours, and all had been quiet. She was putting a dermal regenerator back together, when the station's COMM officer spoke up.

"Sir, we just lost all contact with the Federation Embassy on Taranok IV."

Lizzy looked up at the officer curiously. "What do you mean we lost contact?"

"We've lost contact with them." the man replied. "Communications, sensor data, everything... It's like they've just vanished."

"Try hailing them." Lizzy ordered.

As the officer tried to hail the colony, Lizzy turned to Eliana with a lowered voice. "Isn't that where Petty Officer D'Tal is supposed to be taking some delegate, or something?"

"That would be correct. Simple transport. Two souls on board. They took the Horizon, a type eleven," Masters rattled off the basic facts pertinent to the situation. She had a favorable first impression of Petty Officer D'Tal, and the news of the communications loss with the facility immediately caught her attention. There was rarely such a thing as coincidence in their area of operations.

The COMM officer turned back to Captain Cleh. "No response from the Embassy, or the main colony."

"One of our shuttles, the USS Horizon, is supposed to be there." Lizzy said. "Try hailing them."

*Kathleen's Quarters*

As Kathleen slept in the relative darkness of her quarters, the silence was interrupted by the chirping of her communicator.

=A= OPS to O'Shea. =A= Came Lizzy's disembodied voice.

It took a moment for Kathleen to realize that it wasn't a dream. Yawning, she rolled over to slap her badge, which was laying on the nightstand. "O'Shea here...what is it?" She half mumbled.

=A= Sorry to wake you, but I think we might have a problem. =A=
'OK, what's broken now..' "Can't it wait until after breakfast?"

=A= We've lost all communication with Taranok IV, including the shuttle you sent there. =A=

She spent a long moment running the last statement through her head. One of a hundred or more coincidental and innocent reasons could explain the issue. But with their luck...

"Give me a few to get put together and I'll be down. O'Shea out." She laid the badge back down and headed to the shower. At least she would be somewhat presentable...

*OPS*

"I'm pulling the telemetry from the flight recorder on that shuttle. The last readings we received before everything went dark showed no movement, so it's likely they made it to the surface. It's odd though, isn't it?" Eliana let the question hang in the air. "What sort of event would take out communications on this scale?"

Lizzy stopped what she was doing, as her mind momentarily drifted back to the past. During the incident on her own homeworld that resulted in the death of her parents, she remembered reading reports that all electronics, and communications near the immediate area of both blasts had simply stopped working.

"An explosion might do it..." Lizzy finally said, somewhat absently, as she looked at Eliana. "Check those readings for any sign of an explosion."

It was no easy task. The ship's computer was able to quickly organize the information into useful columns. On Masters' display, columns began to appear with the shuttle's speed, power settings, and other pertinent information. Everything looked so normal. How exactly was she supposed to find evidence of an abrupt explosion.

"Oh, of course," Eliana muttered under her breath. A quick filter weeded out any data that fit with the smooth control inputs made by Petty Office D'Tal during the descent and landing. All that was left was a few seconds of discrepancy.

"Captain, it's not much, but the relative wind around the shuttle shears suddenly from one direction to another. It's far from conclusive, but in atmosphere, it's rare for the wind to change direction and velocity this abruptly, especially on a calm day. Also, there's this," Eliana gestured to the screen.

Lizzy looked at the screen, and in her mind, everything fit together. For only a moment, she had a flashback of the day that took her parents away from her, but then she got serious. "Go to yellow alert." She said, and the computer changed the alert level to yellow, bathing OPS in yellow lights. "We need to get some accurate readings out there. Tell the 405th to prep for launch."

"On it," Masters replied. "I'll be heading to flight country unless I'm needed here."

"I think I can handle things, until the Commodore gets up here." Lizzy, said, then turned to the COMM officer. For the time she had been here, she'd been reading up, and teaching herself some of the procedures that her sister probably already knew. "Contact Starfleet Command, and tell them what's happening."

"Yes sir." The COMM officer replied, before turning back to his console.

The last thing Eliana saw as the turbolift doors slid to a close was the replacement officer taking her place at the station she had left unoccupied. So many things worked smoothly without people paying any attention to them. Personnel changes, replicators, the turbolift - all moving pieces of a machine in fine working order.

With things being taken care of for the moment, Lizzy turned back to one of the tricorders sitting in front of her, and began working on it, as she muttered under her breath. "See?" She said to herself. "I told you not to put an untrained child into a Starfleet uniform... but no one listens to the physician..."

As the doors closed on Masters, another set opened to admit O'Shea and Clarkson into the Command Center. The two had reached the lift at the same time...Clarkson just coming on for duty with no knowledge that anything was out of sorts. The moved quickly to their respective stations. "Report." Kathleen simply asked as she moved to the command area.

"Based on the last bit of data we got from the shuttle, I'm thinking there was some type of explosion not too far from D'Tal's landing point." Lizzy said, gesturing to the main screen. "I've ordered Commander Masters to prep the fighters, so we can get some eyes in the area."

Kathleen studied the data for a few more moments. "I concur, Captain. Lets load a Polaris out as a recon unit as well, including a comm-sat-relay and scout probe module. And...have Captain Sampson put together a Marine squad to ride along. Just in case." There had been too many coincidences as of late, and Kathleen had a feeling that everything may be connected.

Lizzy didn't bother arguing. She knew this was the right play. =A= "Cleh to Sampson." =A=

Pete pressed his com badge "Go ahead Captain"

=A= "Get a team together, and get to the launch bay. You're going on a recon mission." =A=

"Acknowledged Captain, my team will be ready to go when you need us."

Pete was on his daily run, he continued to run towards Marine Country. From the little he knew, he started to think about equipment and who to bring. He decided a team of six initially with a back of team of twenty awaiting orders. It would be him, the Gunny, a medic, combat engineer and two marks men. They would carry both phasers and projectile rifles.

*Flight Operations Briefing Room*

The immense distances that the turbolift system covered on a daily basis on the Celestial Class base were the furthest thing from Eliana's mind. This was not the time to stop and marvel at the feat of engineering accomplished by those who had come before. It was well over two kilometers from OPS to the briefing room, but for now, the Horizon was the only thing Ellie was thinking about. She would have to check and make sure, but she was fairly certain that the last time she had taken a type eleven for a spin, it had been in the very shuttle that was currently gone without a trace.

Having waited for its one passenger to disembark, the lift whizzed away at high speed, no doubt servicing the request of another soul somewhere on the station. Masters, on the other hand, walked with purpose into the main control room.

"Alright folks, station's on yellow alert, so let's get prepared. I need representatives from the quick response teams from the 405th in the conference room in five mikes," Eliana stated. "It wouldn't be the worst idea in the world to reach out to the 220th either. We'll need to be coordinated if and when the time comes to launch our birds. We can't have everyone departing at will now, can we?"

A chorus of aye's sounded through the room, synchronized by the beat of the invisible drum that they were all marching along to. Masters had control of the metronome, and she could not help but smile as the different parts of the human machine worked together in harmony.

"Commander," a warrant officer stuck his head in the door of the conference room, "representatives from both the 405th and the 220th are on their way."

"Good, we'll be ready when the order comes," Masters nodded.

*Adria's Quarters*

Adria had finally gotten a chance to get some sleep after their mission to protect Tin Squadron. In the short time she'd been assigned to Starbase 80 Adria got the feeling this would be much like being assigned to and active combat zone once again. That meant sleeping when and where duty allowed.

Being woken from a dead sleep was not high on her list. However Adria knew it had to be urgent for that to happen. Locating her comm badge, =A= Desoro here. I'll be there shortly. =A= Pulling herself out of bed to dress as she spoke.

*Flight Operations Briefing Room*

A short time later Adria entered the Flight Ops briefing room. Currently the top half of her flight suite was tied around her waist revealing the normal t-shirt she wore underneath. "What do we have?"

"Simply put, we've got a shuttle that's dropped off the map and evidence that there may have been an explosion close to where the dropoff point was for that VIP transport earlier today. I think the city is called Prepheradus, but don't quote me on it yet," Masters brought up the map of the Taranok system while they waited for others to join them in the briefing room. Highlighted on the system's fourth planet was the aforementioned capital city. The animation continued to slowly pan out until the location of Starbase 80 could be seen.

"No orders have come down yet, but based on this, we could be looking at a humanitarian aid mission, the start of a full out war, or anything in between. We've got that much space to cover," Eliana gestured, "so I thought it would be best to bring together everyone responsible for birds in the air and come up with a coordinated plan. All that said, good morning, thanks for coming - we make really strong coffee around here if that's your thing."

Adria nodded, "Yeah I could use a cup of strong coffee at the moment." She paused letting Masters' words sink in, "Who was piloting the shuttle?"

"Arianna D'Tal. Two souls on the manifest - operating as a VIP transport for a Federation diplomat. These poor people," Eliana paused as she walked over to the coffee pot, poured a cup, and walked it over to Adria. Eliana continued her thought as she returned to her end of the table. "Let's just hope that this isn't serious and we're all just here enjoying some coffee."

Tempest let out a sigh when she heard Arianna's name. "Yes lets hope this turns out to be nothing." Accepting the coffee, "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Eliana replied. There had been a time in her life when some doctors could have thought that she had transfused most of her blood with coffee and other various caffeinated beverages, but that time had passed, giving way to a tea obsessed flygirl. Still, what was the harm in sharing a cup of coffee with a fellow pilot?

"How've things been overall? Seems like the station on the whole is on the up and up, but how's her CAG doing?"

As Eliana and Tempest continued their conversation, Von Hyden wandered in to Operations. "Yellow alert?" He asked coming over to the briefing. He'd brought the 405th's Bajoran Group Security Officer with him, Lieutenant Buren Zel "What's up this time?"

The pair of pilots listened to the details of the missing shuttle and possible explosion nearby as they were explained again. Von Hyden looked to his junior officer "Any ideas Zel?"

Buren paused in thought "Could be any kind of thing, from a simple comms and transponder failure, through to a fatal crash.

The loss of communications with the planet and possible explosion clearly lead to there being some kind of major incident.

We don't really have the data on what that might be. Anything more is really just unfounded speculation. If we can't re-establish comms then I recommend we need to send a reconnaissance flight to see what's going on"

Von Hyden nodded "I agree with Lieutenant Buren's assessment one hundred percent"

"It's a solid opening move," Masters agreed with the strategy put forth by the most recent arrivals to the briefing. After all, the command staff needed solid information upon which to base their decisions and at the moment, that information was hard to come by. Nothing good would come out of making moves based on pure speculation.

"Masters to OPS, we're getting teams ready to go for reconnaissance. We believe it's our best shot at getting a better idea of what's going on," Eliana waited for whomever was on the other end of the comm in the brain center of the station.

=A= "Add a Polaris transport to your recon unit, Commander." =A= Lizzy's disembodied voice came in reply. =A= "We're sending a squad of Marines along." =A=

"Acknowledged, Masters out," Eliana returned her attention to those assembled in the room, most of whom were already formulating their plans of attack.

"Commander Von Hyden, let's go ahead and get Tin Squadron moving on this one - I know it takes a few minutes to get through the startup flows on the Polaris, and I want them ready to go as soon as everyone else is. Standard reconnaissance loadout, but take additional long range communications equipment with you, just in case."

Von Hyden nodded "Understood" Turning to Buren, he said "Zel, you've got this, take Tin Flight Six."

"Aye sir" Buren acknowledged "Besides Recon and Comms Modules, are we ferrying the Marines?"

"Yes. We're going to have to cover everything from A to Z on this one, so err on the side of caution when it comes to equipment and loadout. Everything should be modularized and ready to go, and fueling," Masters stopped to bring up the fleet overview, "is being completed as we speak. The clock is ticking folks, let's get moving on this."

Von Hyden and Buren conferred briefly on the configuration for the Polaris craft Buren was taking and left to join the Flight.

"Tempest, I'll leave the details of the escort up to you. You know what equipment's going to be active and the circumstances," Masters looked across to the CAG.

"Roger that," Adria replied. "Given the unusual situation. I'm flying lead with the squadron on this one. Lt Voight will handle anything that crops up while I'm out there."

"If there are no questions, I've got a flight line to oversee. Dismissed."

*OPS*

"Orders coming in from Starfleet Command." the COMM officer said, turning to Lizzy, and Kathleen. "They say to find out what we can, and keep them apprised of the situation."

"Please be wrong..." Lizzy said quietly, as she looked at the readings on the screen. She didn't like people much, but even she had to admit that it would be terrible for the life of a child to be lost.

'I really miss having Darok around.' Kathleen thought as she studied the data further. "Get Lieutenant Davek to report here stat. We need information. We don't even know what we don't know yet. And get medical up to speed...and Williams as well. We have to consider the possibility of a humanitarian response, so they need to at least start putting together a plan." She thought for a moment, trying to think of any other possible...wait a moment." And get the Chesapeake on the horn and see if they are in the area. If nothing else their sensor data may be better than ours."

"Maybe I should go to red alert, while I'm at it." Lizzy replied smartly. The computer, picking up her words, immediately, and automatically raised the alert level to red, bathing Ops in red lights. Lizzy sighed as she stood up. "Too late." she said, as she moved towards the turbolift, to follow the orders Kathleen had given her.

'What in the...' "Computer can..." Kathleen thought about it for a moment, then decided to allow the alert to continue for a few minutes to gauge the crews response. However, the 'glitch' that allowed it in the first place would be fixed...immediately. "Let's find out what the hell is going on, folks. And get me Doctor Trebe." She had turned back to the stations 'paging operator' for lack of a better term. "I want him to be ready, just in case."

Lizzy stepped into the waiting lift. She began thinking of ways she could possibly use this distraction to do a little exploring into things. If she didn't give the Orions something soon, they'd start to get restless. "Medical deck." She ordered, and vanished as the doors closed.

Kathleen walked over to the communication's workstation where the two techs were trying every trick they knew to somehow re-establish contact, while the third continued to make the necessary calls to wake key personnel and get them up to speed. It was going to be a long morning. Kathleen was thankful that she had gone to bed early the previous evening. Sleep might just end up being a luxury for the forseeable future.

---------------------------------------

Commodore Kathleen O'Shea
Commanding Officer
Starbase 80

Captain Jey Cleh
Executive Officer
Medical Systems Specialist
Starbase 80

Marine Captain Pete Samson
Marine Commanding Officer
Starbase 80

Lt Commander Adria "Tempest" Desoro
220th CAG
Starbase 80

Commander Eliana Masters
Director of Flight Operations
Second Officer
Starbase 80

LtCmdr Falk Von Hyden
CO 407th