Stardate: 53830.91
Enroute to Starbase 74
ETA: 6 hours
Lieutenant Kiera Medart worked over the holograms carefully as frustration set in. She slammed her hands down on the controls of the console. She knew that the holograms had been altered, but understanding what the alterations were was another story. Each of the hologram's alteration held some type of significance, but what she didn't know. As time passed, she started to realize that she was out of her league. She wanted to impress the Captain but she couldn't allow pride to get in her way of finding answers for the captain. She needed help and it was that simple. So she put a call out for help and it was answered by a handful of specialists from the Computer Control department. With them came their lead programmer, Lieutenant Paaleia.
For hours, the team poured over the matrix of the hologram. They dissected the hologram one matrix after another till the hologram was nothing more than simple lines of code on the screen. It was then that they were able to uncover the secret to the hologram and its alteration. In their success, the group starred in disbelief at what was before them. This was much more than just a alteration as first suspected. It didn't take long for them to isolate the lines of code and the pieces all fell in to place. It was in that moment they realized what was going on. Lieutenant Medart taped her comlink, "Lieutenant Medart to Captain Campbell" she said looking at the alterations.
The Captain's voice came over the comlink, "Go a head." He seemed as if he had just woken up. And if his voice was any judge of it, his sleep was not very sound or well.
'Great,' Lieutenant Medart thought and flushed in color, 'first I spilled coffee all over him and now I woke him up.' She took in a deep breath before continuing, "Sir, you need to see this. We are in Holodeck Two. Please come down here at once."
It didn't take Captain Campbell long to reach the holodeck on deck three. The entire team of fifteen officers and crew stood along the walls waiting for the captain's arrival. As he walked in to the center of the room, Captain Campbell noted that Commander Bonham was already waiting there with the rest. As he did, a very excited Lieutenant Medart leaped at the chance, "Sir, you won't believe what we found."
Lieutenant Medart didn't wait for the captain to say anything before she continued, "So the alterations you were talking about were in fact there. On the surface you were right. The last series of images where the woman named Seona playing her violin free from her snow globe prison was in fact of Bajor. But not just anywhere. She choose Rakantha Province which is a geographical region on Bajor. Once one of the most productive agricultural lands on the planet, it was poisoned during the Cardassian Occupation and became barren wasteland. Clearly a place of suffering and hardship, allow me to show you."
Her hands flew over the control of the holodeck and the Rakantha Province came to life aboard the Thunderchild. Her excitement could easily be heard through her voice, "In 2371, the Bajoran Agricultural Ministry developed soil reclamators that could detoxify the soil. Kai Winn Adami, during her brief tenure as First Minister of Bajor, ordered the reclamators be deployed to Rakantha in the hopes of growing cash crops for export, such as boton, moreka, and salam grass. However, the reclamators had already been promised to Dahkur Province, and Winn's attempts to force their early removal nearly led to civil war."
"Then" she added, "In 2374, instability in the Bajoran wormhole caused by the Reckoning led to widespread flooding in Rakantha, destroying two-thirds of the wheat harvest. But this was not the only thing on the surface within the hologram. The bat you see in one frame then it turns to a butterfly and then back to a bat again. It too was not part of the original program. What that means just yet, I...we don't know but we are digging. Also....." she said as she said with excitement, "well I will allow Lieutenant Paaleia to explain this part."
Lieutenant Paaleia stepped forward and gave a raised brow to Lieutenant Medart. "If you would" she said in a calm and level voice, "Draw your attention to these marks along the subject hologram of Seona's body during the hight of the song." She said as she worked over the controls, "here allow me to show you, Sir."
She continued as the image changed to that of a frozen Seona. "As you can see these markings have a pattern. At first we nearly over looked them till we discovered that they were numerical figures written in ancient Vulcan. I have to admit, even I was challenged with these figures. I contacted the monastery of P'Jem on Vulcan. They were able to send us a translation matrix for the figures. However the solution only arose another question. These figures," she said as she continued to work the controls and lifted the figures off of the holographic image and lined them up in their correct order. "Are in fact mathematical equations." She moved the equations off to the side and then turned to face the captain, "Sir, it will take us several hours to solve them and then gain the meaning from them. However we believe that the message was intended for you and Commander Bonham."
Captain Campbell looked at the figures, "Message?" It was becoming even more confusing to him.
It was in that moment that Lieutenant Medart stepped up again, "Yeah, that is the exciting thing about all of this. You see, the hologram is only part of a three part message. Call it part of a lock that was meant to be unlocked. And oh my god this was so clever. I mean we are talking, gods of clever here. If we didn't actually stumble on it, we would have never discovered it. Well that was till it would be activated against us."
Commander Bonham finally stepped forward, "Lieutenant I think you need to get to the point."
She nodded, "Yes Sir. So when we use the hologram and activate this hidden matrix." she noted the concern on the faces of both command officers' she laughed, "Don't worry we deactivated the harmful stuff. So there is nothing to worry about." She explained as she activated the new hologram.
Before them Seona with pink hair came in to existence as all others faded.
Within moments, the hologram spoke, "Captain Campbell and Commander Bonham."
Lieutenant Medart whispered to them, "Don't worry the program is designed to scan the people viewing it and name them in the recording. It was strange to see her speaking to Paaleia and myself."
The hologram continued without interruption, "I know what happened on Velos. Soon so will everyone else. Your secret will not survive this, even if I don't."
A world came in to view behind the holographic image of Seona. It moved as if she was speeding her way towards that world. "That is Cardassia Prime" commented Lieutenant Medart. A sharp glare from Commander Bonham silenced Lieutenant Medart as the hologram continued to speak.
"The suffering of millions will be brought back on those who caused it. I will burn Cardassia under an anti-mater firestorm. Nothing you can do, can not stop me. Not to prevent me from bring my revenge on those who deserve it nor to expose your secret."
The hologram fell silent as her eyes seemed to burn right through the two command officers. The room was silent for a long uncomfortable moment. Finally Commander Bonham asked, "tell me lieutenant, what else was the program supposed to do?"
Medart turned her head as she looked at him, "Once activated, it would have activated a series of malfunctions across our warp core sensors and impulse engines. Each of those systems would be taken off line by the computer in preparation for a level one warp core ejection." She made a major effort to contain her excitement, "Clever little program even cloned my voice from the engineering computer security subroutines. This way the computer would actually hear me, well the fake me via the program, issuing the commands and my access codes to start this procedure."
She turned to the captain as she continued, "This would have effectively rendering us powerless in space. The strange thing about it was that the program was encoded to ensure that both systems would safely power down first before shunting power. The code could have caused a massive cascade across the ship's power systems that could have made us look like a minor supernova. But the program had safe guards written in to it to prevent this."
The captain continued to look at the hologram as he thought about the new information. "Tell me" he said not taking his eyes off the hologram, "You said that this was to be activated later, right? What would have activated it? It didn't activate when we got the holograms, so what would have activated it?"
Medart nodded, "That we couldn't find. There must be another piece of this program that is the activation sequence. Something we don't know yet. These files were designed to remain hidden within the computer core till activated later by another program. Till activated, it was designed to clone itself with ships operating with us. Luckily our virus here was never able to clone its self. We would have never identified them because the independent lines of code were non-hostile and were embedded in low priority subsystems. But some of these codes were added prior to the holograms coming aboard. She must have uploaded them when she invaded the ship. Truthfully I really don't know how she got these other lines of code in to our systems.
She paused a moment before continuing, "our systems are clean now. The only reason why we were able to identify and isolate them in the first place was because. Well," she glanced at the rest of the team. With a nod from Lieutenant Paaleia, she continued, "I didn't really trust your priest friend so I used an isolated computer core that didn't have any links to our ship at all." She looked at the captain with a bit of sadness in her eyes, "Sir, I'm sorry but we just don't know anything about him."
Commander Bonham stepped forward and patted her on the shoulder, "it was a good call Lieutenant. What you did might have saved us from a tight situation." Commander Bonham turned back to the captain, "Sir we need to notify Starfleet Command in give them an update on what we know." Commander Bonham reached up to his comlink to call the bridge.
Captain Campbell's eyes never once left the holographic eyes of Seona. Everything pointed in one direction but something was screaming that there was more to this than met the eyes. Just over sixteen hours ago this all started with mirrors, shadows and misdirection. 'What was it that the Father said, that she loved hide and seek' Captain Campbell thought. He raised his hand and took hold of Bonham's wrist in mid motion. "Not yet Number One. Despite multiple times she had the opportunity to take life or even to allow someone to die, she did everything in her power to preserve life. No, this is part of her plan but not what it appears to be."
Commander Bonham lowered his hand, "okay Sir, I will back your play. But we better make sure that we are right on this. Or we both will hang for it."
Captain Campbell nodded, "I know, but I can't explain it." he said walking up to the holographic image of Seona. "She wont commit mass murder. I just feel this" he said as he looked closer at the formation of force fields and light before him. After a moment he turned, "Lieutenant Medart, you pull everyone in Science if you have to. I want to know what those equations mean" he said as he started to storm off, "Get Lieutenant Kinchlirah also on this. Everyone on this ship will eat, sleep and talk mathematics till those are solved!"
Captain Campbell motioned for Commander Bonham to follow as he continued to speak. "Her message to me was clear. 'I know my life is over, please don't forget who I was before it all changed' that was what she said. I know this sounds crazy but she wont kill anyone. She is after a goal. Something that needs us to have faith in her." Captain Campbell said as they walked out of the holodeck, "I need to confirm something, but I am sure that she wont harm anyone."
Hours later Captain Campbell nodded, "Thank you once more for your time Father." The image on the computer screen faded to black as Captain Campbell looked up at Commander Bonham, "The two men after Seona copied that data file when they questioned Father Douglas."
Commander Bonham nodded, "A Trojan Virus sort of trap for those pursuing her." He said then fell silent. "Very clever girl"
Act One, Scene Two
