240011.15.1000

Kr’antren exited his ready room and made his way to the center chair.“Morning everyone, let’s get a report by sections. Starting with engineering.”

“ We had some issues with the replicators on decks 5 and seven while you were on the surface, some blown fuses were the cause. Also conducted tests on the power couplings leading to the phaser arrays; everything tested fine.”

Kr’antren nodded and made a note on his PADD. “Ops”

“One slight issue in one of the holo suites, looks like one of the telepaths from science was trying to take a break and was overcome by the effects of the blood dilithium stored in their section. Did some damage to the suite and we had to subdue her to get her out of there before she did more damage. Medical has her now, they had to sedate her pretty heavily from what I heard.”

“And the holosuite?”

“Still going through some minor repairs, we should have it up this afternoon after we conduct some diagnostics on its systems.” Lieutenant Shrybass answered as he spun his chair back towards the main view screen.

“Helm?”

Lieutenant Darame turned in his chair. “Helm is green across the board, sir, made some minor adjustments to the orbital path to avoid some satellites and small space debris. Deflector dish would have handled it just fine, but since it was quiet I decided to alter the course as it was a quick alteration to our path.”

“That’s fine, keeps you on your toes,” Kr’antren said with a chuckle.

“Tactical and security?”

Lieutenant Skagath looked up from his console while holding some sort of beverage in one hand. “ What was that, captain? Was enjoying my hot chocolate.”

Kr’antren looked at Skagath and shook his head while trying to hide a chuckle. ”Report, old man.”

“I heard you the first time, but I was enjoying my hot chocolate. I have to thank the counselor later, she told me the secret of adding marshmallows to it. Damn, I didn’t think it could get any better than it was.”

The entire bridge crew broke out in laughter as he took another long and loud sip.”AHHHHHH!!”

“Ok, back to the business side of things now. Well, captain, our four guests are nice and comfy in their cells. That Devore one is constantly saying that we will all die for what we have done and that his friends will be coming to look for him. Told my guys to just ignore him, they wanted to tape his mouth shut. Can you believe that? Humans…Tactically we are green across the board, I have the sensors looking for any signs of the devore coming this way, but nothing yet. If they do, we will be ready for them. I took the liberty of readying a burst of quantum torpedoes followed by another of photon torpedoes if things get ugly. Should get their attention real quick. The governor was nice enough to send us the information on the systems that his brother provided in case they try that trick on us, not seeing those either. Though we can see the incoming and outgoing trails if you want to go see what we can find versus waiting for them to come to us.”

“Could you follow their trail?” He looked from Skagath to Lieutenant Tazzeth at the science console. 

“We could sir, not sure where they switched on those systems so when we hit that location it may take a few minutes for us to sort through the sensor data but I believe we could do it,” Tazzeth stated from his console.

“It’s a good idea, let’s wait for a few hours and see what happens. If nobody comes knocking then we can revisit the idea. Lieutenant Skagath gets with Lieutenant Darame, and start working on a course. Lieutenant Darame if it’s possible see if you could find us some places that we could observe their travel corridor from that would not make it outright obvious that we are searching for anyone or anything in particular.”

The lieutenants looked at each other and nodded.

“Science?”

“We are green across the board sir, Nothing new in the system as towards any subspace anomalies anything else. Though we are seeing something of interest that we are only able to pick up due to a suggestion the chief Kaha made as she was trying to boost her communication signals so she could see if we could hear anything farther out than our arrays normally allow.”

Kr’Antren’s ears perked up upon hearing this. “And what did we find?”

“Well sir, let me pull it up on the main view screen so it’s easier to see and explain.” Lieutenant Tazzeth typed a few commands into his console and then picked up his PADD as he made his way to the main view screen stopping next to Lieutenant Shrybass.

Kr’antren stood and made his way to his usual spot in between helm and ops. “So what are we looking at Lieutenant? I see the map of the area surrounding this system.”

“Yes, sir, that’s where we started once we figured out how to boost those Ferengi sensor/communication platforms they placed around the outer ring of the system, and we received permission from the governor to do so.”

“Need I ask how much that cost us?” Kr’antren looked at the Lieutenant and then down at Lieutenant Shrybass as he started to chuckle.

“Well sir, we haven’t told her yet. But the doc has a dinner date before we leave, it seems that the governor has a thing for Klingons.”

“Oh damn, You’re telling her I’m not touching that one with a ten-foot pole.” Kr’Antren shook his head as he tried to hold back a chuckle.” Ok, so what did we find after boosting the signal?”

“It was a two-fold process, sir, we had to boost the signal and scan the data using our systems as the Ferengi were not too worried about more than tracking incoming and outgoing ships with their cargo on them.”  an overlay appeared over the map. “Here we have the various trails of the Ferengi-provided identification systems, as you can see we can go a bit beyond the system but not by much, again Ferengi tech.” He shrugged his shoulders.  

“Ok, so it looks like we have three main corridors that ships use to come to this system. The one down towards the southwest, which is the one we used to arrive here, which I’m gathering leads towards the southern parts of the belt, the Markonian outpost, and the wormhole. One directly west, which I would guess is used to move cargo the rest of the Belt and beyond.” As he said each one Kr’Antren noticed that Lieutenant Tazzeth typed something on his PADD and that corridor information was removed from the screen. “Last but not least we have one going north, which doesn’t surprise me knowing what we do now about the brothers’ various deals with the Devore Imperium.” 

As that corridor was removed from the overlay, Lieutenant Shrybass looked at the Captain. “Sir, it took a bit for us to see them, but can you see the four remaining paths?”

“What, remaining paths? I don’t see anything.”

Lieutenant Tazzath typed a few commands on his PADD as the Map and overlay switched more to the eastern side and zoomed in a bit closer. “ How about now sir?”

“What the hell? The only thing that way is the border of the Borg-controlled region. Who would be that crazy?” His eyes went wide and his ears started to twitch, as the captain leaned towards the screen slightly.

Lieutenant Darame cleared his throat. “ We asked ourselves the same question, captain. Till we started to look at the area along the border.” again the map moved slightly to show the area that Lieutenant Darame was talking about, He stood and approached the screen and pointed to an area that was between the system they were in and the border. “Right here, sir” The map once again zoomed in to focus on the area that he pointed at, and he then returned to his seat. “ It took us a bit of investigative work to figure it out, we had to look at things from the flight control perspective and then Lieutenant Tazzeth helped us figure it out as he had his department start looking at anomalies in the area.”

Kr’Anren looked over at Lieutenant Tazzeth. “And what did we find, Lieutenant?”

“Well sir, we found a couple of thing. One that could be the answer to where the Imperium ships and/or team that is conducting the experiments are hiding and the second is one that we are still trying to figure out. The first one is the obvious one if you know what you are looking for and Lieutenant Darame was the first to notice it but he could not say for sure what it was till we looked into it.”

“Captain, I noticed reports from local ships and survey vessels stating to stay away from this area here. All of the reports said the same thing. A decent sized area emitting high levels of radiation along with waves of electrical force that knocked out all systems.”

“So the science team took a deeper look sir, we had to dig into old voyager data and data from the vessels that reported the warning, not much came from the Voyager data besides what we were already reading. It was when we started running the information through our systems that things started to click, as humans say.”

“Continue, Lieutenant” as the captain returned to his seat.

“Sir, we believe that the location holds a small very dense pulsar, we also believe looking at the data that it has a very strong gravitational pull close to the star but weaker further out. So if it  had any planets they would be closer to the star  than what we would consider habitable  distances or even safe to be near due to the radiation.”

“Knowing this was an unsafe location marked on maps plus its distance being decently close to Borg territory, it would make an opportune location to hide in,” Kr’Antren spoke aloud as he listened to the Lieutenant.

“Yes, sir. That’s what we were thinking. So what if someone was able to adequately shield a vessel of small to medium size and place it at the very edge of the gravitational pull.”

Kr’Antren let out a low whistle, “That would not be a spot that I would want to be in for very long.” Kr’Antren tapped on his console, opening a communications channel with sickbay.   

“Hey doc, have you been briefed on this idea that Lieutenants Tazzeth and Darame came up with?”

“Yes sir, I got the report earlier this morning. I have been looking through it as I was drinking a Raktajino and finishing up my notes from the autopsies.”

“Can you come up to the bridge so we can all hear your thoughts and discuss possible theories?”

“On my way sir, I’ll bring the autopsy reports with me so you can read through them also.”

Several minutes later Doctor M’Gok entered the bridge and made her way to her chair, she took a seat and handed a PADD to the captain. “Here you go, captain. These are the final autopsy reports for the individuals from the asteroid. We can transport them back to the planet when you give the word. They have been prepared  for transport and are in the medical cold storage.”

Kr’Antren nodded. “Thank you Doc, the Desert Sands is due back in a couple of hours, we will notify governor Rhazpaz and make arrangements to transport them on its next trip. So what did you find?” as he held up the PADD. 

She shrugged her shoulders as she looked at the view screen. “About what we expected, sir. The five Ferengi all died from a combination of Hemorrhagic strokes and what I  would probably call fear-induced stress cardiomyopathy, better known as being scared to death. I can tell you that the two deceased that were on the films of the experiments should signs of having small hemorrhagic strokes before they died, which would fit with the symptoms that they showed on the films.”

I’m guessing that for those two deaths it was not quick or painless.” Kr’antren looked back at the view screen.

“No. it was not. Now the other item of interest that you asked about, is those implants. First thing, whoever the hell put those in needs to have their medical license revoked if they even had one. They made a mess of things, till they reached the brain cavity. Anyways from what I found they seemed to be based on some sort of borg implant, possibly a communications implant. From what I found in all five of them the implant seemed to tie into several parts of the Ferengi’s third lobe. I could not see any differences in why the three failed and the other two succeeded. One point of interest is that the two in the videos were younger than the other three. “ she shrugged her shoulders with a slight shudder. “ Not sure why that would affect the implants,  but it is something I plan on looking into.”

Kr’Antren nodded. “And the Imperium Officers?”

“Murdered, captain. It would have been hard to see by most in the condition they were in but I found deep ligature marks and bruising. I would guess that they were strangled from behind probably with some sort of garrote-type weapon.”

Kr’antren looked at Doc M’gok with a raised eyebrow, ears twitching. “Murdered, now that makes things interesting. Maybe they didn’t have the chance to get everyone out? So they killed those that they deemed as expendable.”

“Possibly, sounds as good of a reason as any I could come up with. Our arrival into the area might have made them decide to cut bait and run,” she replied as she stood and approached the Helm officer’s console.

“Captain. Are you thinking they may be hiding in that?” she pointed at the zoomed-in image.

“It’s a theory, why?” He said as he stood and walked to his usual spot between the two consoles.

“Hmmmmm, that may explain something else I found when I was conducting the autopsies on the Devore officers.” She went and grabbed her PADD from her chair and returned. “Yes, here it is. Increased signs of X-ray radiation were found in skin and muscle tissues and slight amounts in some bones, such as the hands and feet. Captain, X-ray radiation isn’t deadly unless you’re exposed to large amounts over long perio, and the body has been known to “heal” after periods away from the source. What if that was the reason why they possibly rotated to the planet, they knew about the x-ray radiation, knew their shields can’t block it all so they rotated to the planet to let their bodies recover.”

Lieutenant Tazzeth turned back towards his console. “Captain, it is possible that the pulsar is sending out X-Ray radiation, theoretically the closer you are to the star the stronger the radiation would be. So they could be orbiting far enough out that they are not getting the worst of the radiation.”

Kr’Antren places a hand on Lieutenant Darame’s shoulder “Lieutenant, do you have the course laid in?”

Lieutenant Darame looked up at the Captain. “ Yes, sir. I programmed two routes, just in case. The one you asked for and another that would get us there quickly. I figured something may come up that required a different plan of action.”

“Nice thinking, Lieutenant.” As he went back to his chair. “Chief Kaha, send a message to Lieutenant Talibah. Let her know that we have a theory on where the Devore Imperium may be hiding and that we will be going to the location to investigate. Ask her if she needs anything further from us before we leave.”

“Lieutenant Darame as soon as we have the all clear from number one, take us to the location. Do not enter the area of effect, let’s see what looking through the proverbial window shows first. Oh, and I hope I don’t need to tell you this but stay away from the Borg territory border.”

“