-The ARATUS, a DANUBE class Runabout-
Maybe this was a mistake, Dee Lipton thinks to herself as she waits on the bridge of the Aratus. Her legs crossed, her free foot tapping an impatient rhythm in the air. I hate waiting.
Before her on the control panels of the Danube class runabout are views of the contact team in the bio-containment module currently docked with the runabout. The module is entirely sealed off from the rest of the runabout; it has its own power and life support and is loaded with the best scientific and medical gear the Federation could cram into its’ hull. The contact team is already in their hazard suits: full-body protective gear with better protection than a space suit. They’re testing the final connections to the outpost’s external airlock before opening up the module to the interior of the station. Doing things carefully and by the book. Excruciatingly but necessarily slowly.
“You okay, Doc?” the pilot of the runabout asks her from the other command chair on the Aratus. Costes Vandalore has an infectious smile and a flyboy’s confidence. “I got some PADDs loaded with literature, games. Unfortunately they turned down my request to install a Dom-jot table onboard, even though I swear it would fit in the rec space.”
He jerks a thumb back towards the space behind the four command seats: the ‘rec’ space -as he calls it- is lined with stacked bunks, a replicator and a fresher closet. There’s a bench around a table, and very little room for anything else, much less a gaming table capable of handling a roulette wheel, dice throw trench and spaces for strategic card placements that a proper Dom-jot game requires. The smallest Dom-jot setup Dee had heard of fit in a suitcase and used holograms for everything but the actual money bets.
Despite the seriousness of the situation, she smirks. “Oh, I never gamble with money, Chief. Only lives.”
Costes chuckles, but in that awkward way that shows she’s thrown him off his groove.
“What I WANT,” she continues, shoving herself out of the command chair and walking into the rec space; “Is to be on the other side of this bulkhead, getting involved directly.” She puts a hand on the aft wall of the deck, as if she could will herself to the other side.
Costes ‘Ahems’ and says: “Well I could beam you over there with the Aratus’ emergency transporter. But then I wouldn’t be allowed to beam you back.”
Dee sighs. “Yes, yes. I know that Chief. I’m just being dramatic.” She returns to her seat at the front of the runabout. She watches the team go about their work for a moment, then keys open a channel.
“Lipton to contact team. What’s your status?”
She sees one of the team turn towards the camera, tap their own comms badge. “Contact team here. We’ve just completed the last seal checks.” He reaches out of view and returns with a remote sensor probe the size of a large fruit, maybe ten centimeters across. “We’re about to deploy the survey remotes.”
“Terrific,” she tells the team leader, “Set the data streams to copy me here, and I’ll set up a bridge for the data to the Asclepius. And let’s keep this channel open.”
She returns to the ‘rec’ space, orders up several holo-screens to surround the table, and orders a coffee from the replicator before sitting down. One by one the mid-air holographic screens fill with visual and data streams from each of the survey drones as the contact team activates and links them to the Aratus’ network. She in turn opens a channel to the Asclepius and routes the same data there in real time. Entire teams of analysis and specialists were on standby, waiting to see what was going on inside the outpost. She idly wondered if they’d break out the popcorn.
Costes Vandalore puts his boots up on the center console, and activates a PADD and starts to read.
The bio-containment module features a secondary airlock system, which the activated survey remotes hover within on their own tiny lift engines. The outer locks are cycled, and after an initial moment to confirm nobody and nothing was waiting on the other side for them, the remotes then sped off into the interior of the station. They work as a coordinated team, splitting up to cover ground. Gathering information on many wavelengths and beaming it all back to the containment module, then to the Aratus, and then on to the Asclepius. The probes have enough intelligence to coordinate with their siblings, and to recognize points of interest and stop to investigate and ask for help. It doesn’t take long for the first anomaly to be brought to the team’s attention.
A ruddy pink mist filled the first habitat deck. Dee pushed the non-visual data to an analyst team on the Asclepius and asked for an evaluation. Meanwhile she compared the location of the remote with the initial scans from the Asclepius. Sure enough, this was one of the zones of vague lifesigns.
“Proceed with caution,” the contact team lead ordered to the team member controlling that particular remote. The remote floats forward at half its previous speed, scanning in continuous arcs as it goes.
The analysis team reports their preliminary findings, which blossom across a new holo screen around Dee’s impromptu desk. She draws her attention away from the distraction that the remotes’ varied views provide to give the prelim report a once over. The problem with remote scans is they’re inherently probabilistic; layers of intelligent guesses. Inference and supposition matrices. Bio-organic compounds, almost certainly. Signatures for proteins from half a dozen Federation races, probably. The mist was likely a soup of people. Deirdre Lipton has seen death, dismemberment, even a transporter accident. But this? This was bizarre. Addendums append themselves to the report as the remote enters the mist, direct samples are taken, and the analysis team collapse probabilities into facts.
The other remotes soon encounter other mist fields. Identical properties. Identical mysteries. Maddeningly, there was no obvious cause for this. Weapons fire burned and vaporized organic compounds, and the signs were detectable. Plasma fires denatured proteins when they didn’t vaporize them as well. All known and detectable causes of death. None of which fit the current circumstances.
What she and the crew of the Asclepius had was a puzzle with a couple billion pieces, and no idea what the assembled picture was supposed to be.