-Roughly 2 hours after S’Atilen entered the jeffries tubes in the communication center.-

“Damn, eight decks worth of climbing in the dark is no joke. Guess I need to add some more climbing into my work out schedule.” S’Atiln stopped just between the second and first decks and turned off his flashlight. ”Don’t want to give myself away if this is something else besides what we have been dealing with, I don’t see how it could be way out here in the middle of nowhere but you can never be sure in places like this.”

He peeks his head over the lip of the Jefferies tube hatch adjacent to the turbo lift and the captain’s ready room door.” Well, the hatch is closed, guess that’s a good thing. Finding the security pad just below the hatch and starboard. “Damn, what was my code again?” He took a minute and worked his fingers over the PADD, remembering his access code. “ahhh there we go.” as he heard the barely audible clicks of the hatch locks release. “ Well, let’s see what is going on, shall we.”

He pushed the hatch open slightly, giving himself just enough room to look onto the bridge. Noticed that the bridge lights were dimmer than usual, but he could hear the voices of several of the command staff, including the captain, decided it was safe and opened the hatch the rest of the way with the arm that was holding onto the case and exited the Jeffries tube on to the bridge.

“Captain,” as he walked towards the communications console ‘I rigged up an encrypted communications network using some equipment meant for away teams and the Communications Experiment (CX) rooms independent computer core. It’s not much, but it should allow us to communicate on the Mercy without worrying about outside interference or knowledge. I programmed these 20 badges, as they were brand new and had never been programmed into the ship’s main systems, for communications only on the rigged system.” He placed the case on the console to the left of the captain’s chair and opened it. He then made his way to the communications console as the lights grew brighter, and many of the consoles that were blank started to come back to life.

Halsey blinked and looked down at the hard work the officer had done as the system returned online.

“That’s some seriously hard work, Lieutenant S’Atilen.  As you can see…it looks like we’re back in business.”

”Well, sir, you know what they say. Rather be late to the party than not show up at all.” As he shrugged his shoulders and turned back to the communications console. “Whoever picked this location for this base knew what they were doing; out in the middle of nowhere, no real transport traffic lanes near the system nor am I picking up much on any of the communication frequencies.“ 

Leopold concurred, “There’s evidence to suggest significant planning went into this venture.”

”Makes you wonder, though, doesn’t it? Who? What? Why? Makes me think of those old earth mystery-solving stories. Do you think we will ever know, sir?”

The CO gave the communications specialist a nod, “I think there are enough scientists and curious officers on this ship who could seek out the answers.  Might help us prevent something like this again.”

”I might join in on that. So many questions left unanswered on that base. Some of which may be helpful to star fleet, who knows what else could be out there like that.“ S’Atilen turned back towards his console. “Guess, I should inform my team about my work down there and ask one of them to bring me my combadge.”