Cynndle materialised on deck 253 sector Tango-4. Looking around he pulled out his tricorder and confirmed he was on the correct deck but three sectors away from where the notification came from. He hadn’t been able to set up sit-to-site transports to every power junction. That would have been an impossible task, but he had been able to set them up to get with a few sectors of most junctions he suspected would be targeted. And it paid off.

Taking off at a run down the corridor he realized that his uniform jacket was undone. Briefly debating if he should fix it he decided against it, getting to the power junction as it was being tampered with was more important. ‘Come on, faster faster faster’ he thought trying to push himself to go quicker the tired haze that had been settling over him when he was making his log…’Shit…I think the log is still going. Oops.’ …had vanished as adrenaline pumped into his system. This was the closest he had gotten to catching these people red-handed.

Realising he handed notified anyone yet he tabled his combadge, “Lieutenant Oin’sun to Security”

“Go for Security”, came a voice from his badge.

“I am approaching a power junction on deck 253 sector Tango-1 that has reported an unauthorized access. Can you get anyone here?” Cynndle responds.

After a long pause, he rounds a corner getting close as the voice returns. “Lieutenant, I will have a Tema there as fast as we can but we are stretched very thin, ETA 20 minutes. I won’t tell you to wait. Do what you need to. Security out.”

“Roger that. Will report when able.” He says while cursing internally. ‘HoS lI’ Dalo’Ha’chu’!’ 

Slowing to a stop as he approaches the final corner he peers around and sees the junction about 10 meters away In front of it appears to be a child, nine, maybe ten years old. Shaking his head he removes his hand on the hilt of his phaser, ‘No need to draw this, it’s just a kid. Likely messing around…better go tell them off.’

Stepping around the corner he stands up straight and walks forward. The child seems oblivious to him until he is only a meter or two behind them. “What is it that you think you are doing? You are not meant to touch these”. He says with a stern voice.

Runaite shot around in a start, complete with a near scream that she immediately did her best to cover up. Off-balance, she fell back against the wall and maintained her footing. That falling against the wall, though, was all that was needed to knock the panel that she was pulling at loose. It stayed in place, however.

After giving the now loose panel a quick survey, her little legs twitched as though she was about to run off to the right. No, maybe left. The Starfleet type before her moved slightly as well like he might offer pursuit should she run.

Runaite forced the startled look from her face, pursed her lips and furrowed her brow. She tried pushing herself off the wall, but she only managed to force herself to not appear scared. Runaite remained against the wall as further retreat was not possible at the moment. “Just trying to get what is mine is all. I’m a Romulan,” she added some umph to ‘Romulan’, “and you would be wise to not mess with me.”

There was something she wanted, that much was certain. It was also certain that the little girl was willing to fight for it, no matter how big her opponent proved.

Unsure what to make of the situation as this is now what he had expected to find Cynndle just stared down at her for a moment after she spoke. “And what is it you feel is yours behind that panel?” he says with a slight gesture of his hand. “I am just very curious as to how you got it open and what you are after as what is behind there can be very dangerous.”

Taking a quick look up and down the corridor he doesn’t see anyone else, “Where are your parents? Did you arrive on one of the refugee ships?”

Runaite looked at him as though sizing him up when, in truth, she was only weighing her options in trusting him or not. “My parents are not here yet. I arrived aboard…why do you care? I have to save Vrulmur. I order you to help me save Vrulmur.” Runaite looked back at the panel. Though it had finally been knocked loose she did not reach for it. Instead, she kept looking back at the uniform, wondering if he was going to draw his phaser should she try.

A flash of sorrow crossed Cynndle’s face when he realized that the child’s parents had not arrived with her and maybe would not be arriving. “I am sorry to hear they haven’t arrived yet. I am sure they will be here as soon as they can,”  he says as he crouches down realizing that his height and the phaser at his side might be a bit intimidating. “What or who is Vrulmer? Is Vrulmer in the panel? Why would he be in there?”

“Vrulmur is my nei’ɽrh,” she said as though that was supposed to make perfect sense to Cynndle. “He’s been missing for a long time and he’s stuck behind here.” She glared back at the uniform. “Help me save him or else.”

Holding up his hands to show his palms Cynndles smiles in agreement. “Ok, I needed to look in there anyway. That is why I came here,” he remarks as he gestures for her to step to the side. “You know, I don’t know your name. I’m Cynndle Oin’sun. I work in Operations here. What’s Yours?”

“Runaite,” she blurted. Stepping to the side, she kept her eyes fixed on him. “My friends call me Runa,” but she had not really any friends yet here. “You’re not my friend. You call me Runaite.”

“It is nice to meet you Runaite.” He says as he starts to remove the panel. “Have you tried getting into any of these before by chance?”

“Only when they hide Vrulmur from me. I came here because one of them finally told me where he is.”

Raising an eyebrow quizzically Cynndle frowns. “And who would ‘they’ be?”

“‘They’ are the Bravo Boys…duh. Always taking my stuff.”

Cynndle removes the panel covering the power junction, sliding it to the wall beside him. Looking inside, he shakes his head and curses under his breath before realizing there is a child present. Several of the wires within the junction have been cut and or unplugged along with several of the connectors for the bio-neural circuitry. As he continues to examine the handy work of whoever did this he sees a small patch of fur tucked and stuffed down inside. Worming his hand down, he touched it and realized it was artificial. He was surprised to find a stuffed animal; a child’s toy. It proved not very big as he gently pulled it free. It was similar in size to the teddy bears he recalled from Earth. This stuffed nei’ɽrh was more like a bird, however.

“Vrulmur!” Runaite exclaimed but those words only echoed in Cynndle’s ears.

‘Why on earth would someone put a stuffed town into here? It has to be connected somehow, no way did someone play a prank on her, hide this and then that junction just so happen to be sabotaged.” he thinks to himself before an idea occurs to him. Maybe there are traces left on the toy. Pulling out his tricorder he begins to scan the nei’ɽrh for any trace samples, main DNA, which could point him towards the suspect.

Runaite was on edge; about to attempt to snatch Vrulmur from the uniform.

Turning back to Runaite he holds up the stuffed animal, “Is this Vrulmur? You are going to have to explain how he got there. It is very important.” he says as he tries to hide the edge in his voice. “Do you know who put it there? Did you see them?”

“The Bravo Boys I said,” she reached to grab it from him but he held it a bit too high. “They keep taking my things and hiding them. They took Vrulmur a few days ago…three, four…I don’t know. One of them finally told me,” and she jumped in another attempt to grab Vrulmur but could only manage to brush her fingers against his fur, “to look behind a loose panel up here somewhere.

Giving up her attempt to snatch Vrulmur from the uniform, Runaite simply stood there with her hand out. “Give it.”

Looking down at the child Cynndle frowns in disappointment. “It isn’t nice to lie to people, especially those who have helped you Runaite. I saw that the panel was closed when you started trying to open it.” Turning his hand so that Vrulmur was looking at him he sighs. “Now how about you tell me how he really got in there and what you were doing?”

“Hrmph,” she crossed her arms, “Vulcans tell more lies than we do. I was trying to get Vrulmur back I said. The panel was loose when I got here. Only…someone else got here and started working. I waited until they were done but they put the panel back. It was not loose anymore.”

“Really, so you arrived and the panel was loose but you saw someone go their first and start to work in it? Can you describe this person? It is really important.” Cynndle says crouching down to face her. As he does he taps his tricorder to record the description.

Runaite stood there, staring at the uniform still in possession of Vrulmur. Though he crouched down to her putting Vrulmur into a more easily reached position, she only held her hand out. “Hand him over first.”

Cynndle looked at Vrulmur and smiled, “Of course, after all, I am sure that he has missed you since he was taken, eh?” he says as he extends his left hand with the stuffed animal to Runaite who quickly grabs it and hugs it close. “Now, who did you see?”

“Looked like a girl to me…grown up. But in her nighties. Like she got out of bed to do some work but didn’t put on work clothes. She had this tattoo on her forehead and going down the sides of her face. Couldn’t really see it. I was standing over there,” Runaite pointed behind her, “and her hair was a mess. Whatever she was doing, it was quick. Closed the panel and was gone.”

Frowning at what he heard Cynndle glances past Runaite to where she was pointing. “Tattoos on her forehead and down her face you say?” his mind instantly jumping to think of Heriah, not as a suspect but trill spots are hard to not think about… ”Can you describe her in more detail? It is important as whoever is doing this may be trying to hurt the station. Could you tell the colour of her hair by chance, what sort of clothes she was wearing?” he continues. “Can you describe the tattoo? What did it look like exactly?”

Runaite withdrew slightly at the barrage of questions. “Look, I was only wanting to get Vrulmur. I did not pay that much attention to her. Her hair was blond-ish, a little yellow maybe…I don’t know. Her clothes were her nighties I said. Like something you would wear to bed. Well, not you maybe. The tattoo…as I said, her hair was a mess. I could not really see it. Did not look like writing or anything like that.” Runaite relaxed her hold on Vrulmur somewhat, seeing that the uniform was most likely not going to snatch him away from her. “Besides don’t you have sensors to pick up things like that?”

Standing up and taking a step back from Runaite Cynndle laughs a little. “I wish this…” holding up his tricorder, “…could tell me those things when the person wasn’t there. But it can tell me lots of information. By using that and what you have told me I should be able to get what I need.” He says as he takes a step to where she had pointed scanning for residual DNA traces or a thing else that he could use.

Looking back at Runaite he frowns slight, “You have been very helpful Runaite, were are you staying? Do you want me to contact someone or take you to one of the shelters?” He says but the tricorder beeps and he looks back down at it his frown deepens. “Well, that is interesting…”

Cynndle’s tricorder picked up some readings to back up Runaite’s story. The locking mechanism for the panel was certainly old and damaged in a way that only careful replacement of the panel would result in a secure fitting. Otherwise, it might pop loose. Flakes of skin, fingerprints, and old and dried drops of sweat indicated that several have been inside this panel over, at least, the past several weeks, possibly and most likely for short-term storage, smuggling and the like. The list of races included, Romulan, Bolian, Cardassian, Klingon, human, and even a Trill or two. DNA scans as well as fingerprints, including partials, provided an expansive array of possible perpetrators. The most complete, and possibly most recent, fingerprints, however, were of a design specific to the Trill.

The rewiring of the junction was only very recent, so it did not seem anyone who had been inside this panel as of late meant any real sabotage. On top of that, the rewiring and apparent sabotage were not specifically to overload or short out any of the systems supported nearby. Power redistribution was not going to cause any cascading outages, an explosion, nor a fire anywhere. The rewiring appeared more communication oriented than anything else. Computational matrices, algorithms, and computer requests for all locally supported systems were either being rerouted back to the end user, to another system, or information from the local computer core was being sent back to the computer. All in all, this rewiring seemed to have been a deliberate attempt put computational analyses, requests, etc into a cyclic pattern causing a rotation of computations and an exponential increase in memory usage to make up for exploding results.

One of the readings showed that the computer was on an endless cycle for some infinitely large number. So far, the computer was at ‘2^82589933-1’. If Cynndle had to guess, it would have taken a long time, weeks even, for the relays in this junction to succumb to the cyclic redundancies and burn out. And the local computer users might have only shrugged in the face of a few glitches and minor quirks only to move on as though nothing was too much out of the ordinary.

This was certainly not a deliberate attempt to burn out this or a nearby junction nor was this meant to cause immediate sensor outages. This was also not some ill-experienced thug cutting and rewiring at random. This was, however, another modus operandi, throwing yet another wrench into Cynndle’s deduction process.

“Would you be able to keep him safe?” Runaite asked.

Lost in thought for a moment Cynndle didn’t respond. This was a step above what had happened with the other power junctions that had been hit. ‘Most recently accessed by a Trill…I wonder how many Trill could be on board. Need to speak to the Cheif and security, this is the closes lead we have…but is this something different? The method used was not the same…a Trill…really?’ ’He snapped out of it when Runaite stomped her food and asked again. “Keep who safe?” he asked looking back at her.

“Vrulmur.” She sighed, understanding that she was going to have to repeat herself. “I only want to keep him safe. I’m OK with the other children in the shelter, but Vrulmur is not. They keep taking him and hiding him. Vrulmur is the last thing my parents gave me before we were separated. I only want to keep him safe, hide him somewhere only I know. Any ideas? Can you help me keep him safe?”

“Oh, yeah, sure. I am sure we can find someplace safe for him and yourself,” he said as he looked back at the panel. “Look, I need to fix this. Will only take a couple of minutes. Then how about we go speak to the security office. It is the safest place on the station. I know they can keep Vrulmur safe and you can then visit whenever you want. We can then let them know about the woman who was messing around here, the boys who keep stealing Vrulmur from you and some food. How does ice cream sound? Have you ever had that before?”

Runaite nodded. “They had plenty of that when my ship arrived.” She squeezed Vrulmur. “Are you sure those uniforms in security can keep Vrulmur safe? Me, I can take care of myself. Just ask the Bravo Boy with the black eye. I just need to keep Vrulmur safe.”

“It is their job so I am sure that if anyone can do it they can,” Cynndle responded “I need to give them a heads up that we are on our way ok.”

Tapping his combadge, “Lieutenant Oin’sun to Security” he said as he looked down at Runaite and smiled before turning to face the junction.

“Go for Security”, came a voice from his badge.

“I wanted to report in, I am at the power junction in question on deck 253 sector Tango-1 that I message about earlier. I found a young girl who was trying to get in but it doesn’t seem like she was responsible as some other kids hid her stuffed animal in there earlier today. She did witnesses the person I believe was responsible. I will come by shortly with her once I repair the damage here, will only take a couple of minutes.” he said glancing back at Runaite.

“Thanks for the update Lieutenant; we will have someone other in the next couple of minutes anyways so will see you shortly after that.” the disembodied voice responded

Turning back, “I will just need a couple of minutes here; one of my colleagues will be here soon to double-check the area then we can go and get Vrulmur someplace safe ok,” he said as he crouched down and became to undo the rewiring. It was not an overly complicated job addressing the damage that the unknown perpetrator caused to the system. As he looked at it he couldn’t help but think that there was something clearly different about this one. The previous issues were simple things, a cure wire or a bio-neural circuit plugged in the wrong place; this though showed a greater understanding of the systems.

Runaite took a few steps back to allow the uniform to do his work. All the while, she kept glancing at the tricorder he used frequently. That was one of the things the alpha Space Girl wanted in addition to the dermal regenerator. Runaite was already playing out just how she might get it from this one.

After a couple of minutes, Cynndle sat back and smiled, “All sorted” he said looking around. “Guess they arent hear yet. Let me close this up and then we can go. The security station is only a couple of minutes’ walk from here. “You all set?”

Runaite stood there, her arms crossed over her torso holding Vrulmur tight. She took her eyes off of the tricorder and connected with the uniform. She nodded. “All set.”