Gore read over the report again. “Insatiably ravenous for the life force found in intelligent forms like us.” That single phrase bounced around in his head over and over again. The quote was from then Captain Picard, when the Admiral had commanded the famous USS Enterprise-D, the Galaxy class version of the Enterprise lineage, and incidentally, which the Cygnus herself was based off of. Gore had a duty and desire to protect the Cygnus from any harm. As he continued to read the report from his station on the Bridge, he felt both better and worse about being able to perform his duty. Oh, he would do it, and he would do it perfect, but he knew that given the slightest chance, the Crystalline Entity would capitalize on it and eat every microbe of biological matter on this ship. He would not let that happen.

He tapped a few commands to pull up the shield schematics of the old USS Enterprise and the USS Titan, the ship that next survived the encounter. For the aforementioned ship, it had been 32 years since the encounter. Gore already knew the shield harmonics, frequencies and power output were greater on the Cygnus than they were for the Enterprise roughly a third of a century ago. The encounter with the Titan under Captain Riker was much closer in time, just 18 years ago. The Titan had experimental shielding at the time, those experiments going into shielding technology for the fleet a few years after the fact, some of which the Cygnus now incorporated. In that regard, Gore was satisfied that their shields would hold against the Crystalline Entity, so long as its manner in which it stripped all biological life from an object or planet had not changed. He took a quick look at the information Commander Larsen and his team brought back from the planet below, and it was pretty close to consistent with what the Enterprise and Titan had reported all those years ago. 

He cross-referenced the additional information gathered and compiled from the ships Chief Science Officer, Ensign Spangler, with the help of the Chief of Operations Lieutenant Lisald. They had discovered a way to track it using the decayed particles that the Crystalline Entity expelled from ingesting all the matter. Ensign Spangler had even annotated in his report that it he called it Crystalline Methoxyl Discharge, which he had shortened to the much-easier-to-say Crystal Meth. Gore thought that had a nice ring to it, and added a sub-note to the report that he approved of the name. In the back of his mind, he wondered how that phrase had never been made before. While it would not help them tactically, beyond being able to track where it was at, it was still advantageous to be able to find them. Surely, the Crystalline Entity could, somehow, track biological matter across great distances. This, at least, evened the playing field a bit.

Continuing to go over the data that came back from the Away Mission, Doctor Elodin had also compiled his report from the Away Mission and had found that the Enterprise had, unusually, destroyed the Crytalline Entity with a series of graviton pulses. Pulling up the referenced report from the Enterprise, Gore couldn’t find any tactical reason the thing was destroyed, or why they chose to use that sort of methodology in the first place. It looked like Captain Picard had indicated the Entity was trying to communicate. Gore filed both pieces of information away into his own report. At the very least, he had a surefire way of both defending the Cygnus, and if necessary, going on the offensive to eliminate the threat. 

Using this information, he sent commands down to the phaser control rooms and to the torpedo magazines to begin drilling for this possible encounter. He also sent a note to Ensign Spangler about setting up the gravimetric pulse to be at the ready, just in case the Captain, or the Crystalline Entity, weren’t in the mood to try and communicate.

OFF

Lieutenant Gore

Chief Tactical/Security Officer

(as written by Captain Bane)