S’Atlin was in his office as he started to notice flashes of what looked like transporters being activated. “What the hell?” as he rushed out of his office into the main area of the communications center. Tapping on his combadge “Bridge, Lt S’Atlin” he kept tapping the badge as he was getting no signs that it was working. “That’s not good, crap.” 

He made his way to the central table console. “Computer, show all life signs on the Mercy.” a map of the Mercy started to build on the tables main screen, blobs started to appear in cargo areas, some on the bridge and a couple in engineering. The screen than started to pixelate words started to appear where the map just was “They have come. They will join me.”

“Damn it, that’s not good.” he slams his fist on the table. “Sorry, whoever or whatever you are, hate to break it to you but that is not going to happen.”

He started to look around the communications center. “Ok, we need comms. Ship wide first. Then we go from there.” running a hand through his beard “After we get ship wide comms, heading to the bridge and getting with the captain and the rest of the command staff would be next.” 

Putting both hands on the table. “Ok, so we know the main computer has been hacked, so we can’t trust or use any information gained from it. Internal comms, internal comms.” he looked around the center, his eyes coming to rest on the CX room. “Hmmmmmm” leaving the central area he made his way to the communications away team storage room. “I Have an idea, what I need should be in here.”

He entered the room and started going through the racks and shelves of equipment. “Let’s see. Transmitter and receiver, not the duo set need them separated, “he placed one large black case back on the lower shelf. “Ahhh, here we go.” grabbed  two cases off of a middle shelf. “Now, an encrypted scrambler and a signal booster.” rummaged through a few more shelves and finally found one of each further back in the room. He carried these and placed them in the CX room, ran a hand through over his head. 

“Let’s see. Going to need some wiring harnesses and connectors, tools and some combadges that have not been connected to the ship’s systems yet.” he looked up at the ceiling, closed his eyes for a few seconds, opened them and left the CX room. He returned a few minutes later with several wire harnesses wrapped around his neck, a briefcase sized glossy back case and what looked like an engineer’s electrician specialist tool box. “Ok, time to get to work. I’m glad the engineers were able to remove and replace the compromised computer core that is housed here.”

== A couple hours later ==

“And that should do it.” S’Atlin stepped back from what he worked on and walked over to the main console on the table located in the room. “Ok, lets power this up shall we.” he entered some commands into the console and watched as the various pieces powered up and reported green. 

S’Atlin typed in the commands to activate each of the modules and watched the console making sure that each one worked and that they were in sync with each other, each doing its part. He then reached down and picked up the last case, placed it on the table top and opened it. Inside were 20 star fleet combadges each one docked in its station. He reached down along one side and opened the cover on the programming ports for the case.

He then reached over and grabbed a cable that was plugged into the table and connected it to the case. With his other hand he started typing commands on the console. Each station blinked amber for a minute then green. 

“Ok, 20 badges linked to this core.” He took of his combadge and replaced it with the one from the case. The old badge he took to his office and placed it on his desk, returned to the CX room and took the other com badges, placed them in his pockets. He left the room and closed the door behind him, walked over to the main entrance of the center and tried to leave. The door did not open as it should. “Well, that adds a piece to the puzzle.”

He returned to the central main table work console “Ok, lets see what we do have access to.” S’Atlin started to go through the various systems that he had access to. “ Transporters, communications both external and internal,  cargo systems and sensors both external and internal are giving me the access denied message.” He looked over his shoulder at the CX room and a smirk crossed his face. “Still have access to life support and the holosuites.  Guess whoever or whatever this is wants us alive, that’s something in the plus column, I guess.” 

“Ok, no control over the doors which means the turbo lifts are probably not working either. So jeffries tubes it is then” S’Atiln walked over to the storage room, grabbed a couple flashlight devices and than walked four of his paces out from the door and than two paces starboard. “Here we go.” went down one knee traced the tile outlines till he came to the corners found the slight indentation a finger width in on the tile he knelt on and pressed down, as heard a barely audible click, lifted his hand and repeated the process on each of the corners of the barely noticeable hexagonal tile. When he stepped off the tile it lifted a finger width above the floor height. “Glad I asked the engineers about access to the jeffries tubes from the center in case we had to get into them quickly for emergency work.”

S’Atilen slid the tile to one side and peered into the jefferies tube that was now accessed. “Looks clear to me, let’s get moving shall we.” He lowered himself into the tube and made his way portside, he knew that this was the direction of the turbolifts and beside those was the tube that ran between the decks.