The truth of the tubes (Backpost)

Posted on Fri Aug 29th, 2025 @ 9:06am by Petty Officer 1st Class Ayol & SubCommander Saa & Lieutenant Commander Atna & Master Chief Petty Officer Gaz & SubLieutenant Attania Viren
Edited on on Fri Aug 29th, 2025 @ 9:07am

812 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: The Serpent's Tooth [3]
Location: D-Dock Lounge
Timeline: 0900 - MD09

“Let us begin. I wish to preface this conversation with the following: this is not a formal investigation or an official inquiry, my purpose is not to assign blame, it is merely to assemble an official record of facts for the Captain.” Atna hoped they had all had more sleep than she had.

“The Goa’uld Engineer Polyphron, I understand you worked together aboard Hera’s ship to assist her. I understand from preliminary reports you assisted her with repairs that proved potentially hazardous. It is also my understanding that you developed some rapport with her. How did that come to be?” Atna asked, wondering at the last minute if it would not have been better to do this in the Main Engineering conference room.

“Well we had the same hair coloured hair, to start with. And she was so effortlessly confident, with the scar and everything, but that only made her sexier…” Sublieutenant Viren had exhaled into the silence that followed the question, having not slept for almost three days now, having been awake since the Atenists first arrival.

Suddenly she realised with slight horror her response had emerged instead of staying in her head as intended, “Uh! but you’re probably talking to the senior officers.” She smiled, and tried to play it cool.

"She was switched on and knew her stuff." Gaz grunted, letting his curiosity about where the Romulan was going with that pass him by. "We helped her, she helped us. It was a productive relationship until she hacked our systems." Gaz wasn't trying to be vague, but that was the high level view on how why they'd got along. He knew Atna well enough to expect she'd ask if she wanted details.

At the Chief's last words, Saa's gaze tightened in a grimace of stung pride. The galling fact that an alien force had managed to subvert their main computer, antiquated though it was, would not soon cease to torment her systematized mind.

"'Rapport' might be overstating it," she hedged, finally leaving the viewport, with its view of one of the gleaming pyramid-ships being scoured by salvage teams, and swam over to join the others at the table. "The time constraint we were under ruled out an independent analysis. We had to trust her."

"It is understood that brevity was encouraged at the time due to the workload, but the details beyond the aim and result of the efforts aboard the Ha'tak are not made substantially clearer by the initial reports. Are there any details that you feel may better explain the ease with which she earned the trust of the crew that allowed her to wander into the lower dock? Beyond any potential familiarity in her aesthetics." Ayol asked, reviewing the image of Polyphron's distinctly bottlenose-shaped vacuum-sealed armour that had been confiscated from her and catalogued. The mechanism that allowed the armour to shrink down to something that fit in a band around her upper arm wasn't yet fully understood.

"She threw herself into a moving filtration forcefield to protect one of us from it. I'll reserve who for the pride of those involved, but we were all grateful, we thought it killed her at first. But she was alright, just a bit shaken up." Chief Yan spoke up. "Took a lot of guts. I think we were all impressed. Besides that, she knew all she needed to tell us to get us in and out of that water thing in ten minutes once we got where we needed to be."

Atna made a few notes on her pad, she would ensure all the salient details were prepared for Admiral Gali's inevitable questioning. "How are the repairs looking, Chief? Do we have a timeline yet?" She asked, moving on to the next topic of discussion.

"We do, but I don't want to be the one to give it to Gali. The easiest task will be the spot-fixes where fighting broke out. A few shorted panels. Some turbolift doors need to be replaced in the lower dock. Those zat-nikky things are hell for any circuitry they hit. There's no fixing the ODN relays it shorts, gotta pull it all out. It's a good thing our replicator stores are still full. Command centre won't be working again for at least a few weeks. Anyone suggesting more than a month won't be accused of crazy talk. As for Alpha Dock, that's going to be the Subcommander's problem." Gaz said, looking to his cetacean comrade.

"Well, I'm sure any relevant updates will be sent along the appropriate channels." Ayol said, looking to Atna for confirmation. With the missing detail about the forcefields, he was confident the Admiral would not ask any further questions.

"Indeed." Atna said with a nod. "Thank you all for your cooperation. I will ensure the Admiral understands that our estimates are all best possible speed."

RSS Feed