Chapter 8: A Minor Malfunction in Probe Seven
Uhura, as her first task, sat down to comms to complete and amend her cultural analysis of the transmissions emanating from the planet. Although the computer was reasonably intelligent when it came to language analysis, the cultural conclusions it tended to draw were almost always lacking.
She had already submitted and filed the Captain's logs for the day and organized them in accordance with the stardate, which was itself a rather difficult thing to accomplish due to the inerrant and constant shifting of the timeframe. Her work was further complicated by the fact that the landing party had apparently been accepted to an actual party. This required further support in that Uhura now needed to create a profile of etiquette and considerations for how this ought to be accomplished, which was of course almost impossible considering that there were only limited radio transmissions from the planet and that they had not given her any access to whatever databases the planet might have had.
Toward this end, she had considered asking the pony scientist who they had recovered from the alien ship. From what Uhura had been told, the pony, Moondancer, was to be a guest on the ship to assist in the salvage of the remnants of her own vessel. Uhura had decided to accomplish this later, though, as the pony had only recently awoken from her coma—and leveled half of sickbay in the process.
Instead, she elected to dispatch the yeoman to get the necessary clothing in order. Dress uniforms for Kirk, Spock, and M’Ress were absolutely necessary especially for the latter; considering the likelihood that as a woman—even a cat woman—M’Ress might be expected to wear a dress rather than the standard uniform. Consideration of that fact was ongoing, although from Uhura's understanding it seemed that pony civilians spent most of their time in the nude. Therefore, she was not sure if this too was a critical aspect of parties, or if nakedness was merely optional. In any event, the yeoman would be sending the uniforms to the ship’s laundry and then packaging them for transport.
As she performed these tasks, Uhura looked across the bridge at the viewscreen and at the others diligently at work. They were of course busy, but it was nice to see that nothing exceedingly critical was going on. No alien attacks, no sudden presence of tribbles, no strange disease outbreaks. Just a tense diplomatic situation with adorable ponies. That was a nice change of pace.
Uhura, though, did notice something strange. A slight expression crossing the young ensign’s face. Not something most people would notice, perhaps, but something she had been trained to identify.
“Ensign,” she said, removing her earpiece and standing up. “Is something the matter?”
Chekov nearly jumped out of his seat. “L—Lieutenant! No, no it is nothing. Nothing worth reporting. An error on my part.”
“Chekov, there is very little on a starship not worth reporting. Even if it seems small, a second set of eyes might see something you’ve missed.”
Chekov looked at her, and then down at his readings, and moved some of them onto the viewscreen. “I have been observing the satellite probes used to analyze the planet and lunar surface,” he said. “However, I have noticed that there is a point-seven nanosecond shift in probe seven’s primary spectrometer. At first I had thought it was noise, but...”
Arex looked up. “It’s too consistent to be noise. That is a calibration error in the sensor. It has been prepared improperly.”
“I had considered that, yes, but I was unable to re-calibrate the system, no matter how hard I tried. So I adjusted the course of several of the other probes to compensate.”
“You did not have permission for that.”
“Well, no, not technically but...”
“What is it you found, Chekov?” asked Uhura, calmly.
Chekov looked up at her. “The sensors, Lieutenant. Regardless of which probe passes the area, it has the same red-shift, always when pointed in the same direction.”
“Where?”
Chekov adjusted his controls, shifting the image to one of the planet. A red outline appeared over an area. “I have localized the position.”
“And what do you think it is?”
“You are asking me, Lieutenant? I’m just--”
“Yes, ensign. And yes, I am asking you. I don't see anything there. What could be causing this?”
Chekov looked at her, at his readings, and then at the screen. “It is consistent with...with a cloaking device, Lieutenant.”
Uhura paused. Things had just gone from tense but somewhat exciting to potentially highly hazardous. “How big?”
“That is very difficult to say, Lieutenant, but not large, probably about the size of a standard wessle--”
“Have you attempted to scan them directly?”
“No, Lieutenant, I have not. I adjusted the probes to cycle with a reasonable orbital algorithm. If someone where to see them, hypothetically, it would look like I have been taking readings of the planet’s high atmosphere. Which has its own interesting properties if the truth is to be told--”
“You can talk about the atmosphere when Spock gets back. Are you sure it’s a cloaked ship?”
“Well...no, that is a working hypothesis...we can scan it directly, if--”
“No. Because you're not wrong. Right now, they think we can't see them. We can’t alert whoever it is that we know that they’re there. If you hadn’t seen it on the probes, we would have no idea. Arex?”
“It is difficult to surmise. Romulans are believed to possess cloaking technology, although we are quite spatially distant from where their territory is believed to exist. Klingons also possess similar technology.” He paused. “It may even be a Suliaban remnant.”
“In orbit around a planet that just developed warp technology? The question there, Arex, is why?”
“Again. I do not know the answer to that question. But based on the ensign’s readings, any ship it conceals appears to be inactive or even derelict. Considering the presence of the alien satellites in orbit around the planet, this may be a natural part of the technology that sustains it.”
“Is there a way to tell?”
“Not without scanning it, no.”
“Well,” said Chekov. “Not...technically.”
“Ensign?”
“There might be a way to scan the object...without scanning it.”
“I do not know what the inverse of a tautology is,” sighed Arex. “But you seem to have made one.”
“A paradox, Arex,” said Uhura. “And how, ensign Chekov, do you propose we do this?”
“The probes, Lieutenant. They are fitted with a small antimatter charge. Not enough to do any real damage, but enough to vaporize the probe. So that they do not end up contaminating culture of pre-warp planets. The annihilation explosion releases very characteristic waveforms across the electromagnetic and subspace spectrum. It is...what is the word? Oh! It is like a lantern!”
“And if we shine it through the cloaked ship, we can use the ship’s scanner to identify inconsistencies in the cloaking field.”
“Yis! To fingerprint it, so to speak! To use the ship like it a great spectrometer!”
Uhura thought for a moment, then sighed. “Mr. Chekov, from what you are telling me, probe seven appears to be miscalculated.”
Chekov’s expression fell. “Oh...yes, I had been mistaken, I suppose, I am sorry to have bothered you...”
“I would not be surprised, then, if its orbit started to decay. In a very unpredictable way. And if it had to be terminated early.”
Chekov realized what she was saying, and began tapping on his controls. “Yes, Lieutenant, I understand. Even if this planet is warp-equipped, it would be a shame to ruin their development with a Federation probe.” He paused. “Ah, yes. I see that the orbit is indeed decaying. One of the thrusters has just accidentally fired and it is going into a fatal spin toward the planet. I am now positioning the probe into a safe position...and the probe is ready for detonation.”
“Remove it, ensign.”
There was no sound. It was extremely distant, and of course there was no sound in space. The only noise was the beep of Chekov’s controls as he engaged the explosion.
“Probe removed,” he said.
“And the results?”
“It will take time for the ship’s computer to perform the analysis,” said Arex.
“Yes,” said Chekov. “But I have already done it instead.” He looked up. “The cloak, Lieutenant. It belongs to a Klingon Bird-of-Prey, of the group-four Warbird configuration.”
Uhura looked out through the viewscreen, and sighed.
“And today was going so nicely.”
“Should we alert the Cyaptain, Lieutenant?”
“Not yet. I’m trying to think of a way to do it.”
“Lieutenant?”
“That is a cloaked spy vessel, ensign. We need to work under the assumption that every transmission we send or receive is being monitored. It seems that we are being watched.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.032 seconds
Total duration
993 users online
176,550 hits today, 2,054,621 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Now things are getting really interesting. Keep it up!
That makes things a lot more complicated. I wonder what the Klingons are doing there and the crew of the Enterprise no doubt wonders the same thing.
Oooh, that ain't good.
Oh, snap.
I was kind of hoping the cloaked wessel was actually Princess Luna keeping an eye on those
sexyshifty aliens :)11041005
Obviously they were there first, and therefore the planet belongs to them. How dare the Federation interfere in their affairs!
11041572
the Planet belongs to the Ponies.
“Should we alert the Cyaptain, Lieutenant?”
Yes dear Chekhov, we must alert the Cyaptain.
Well, that's certainly a complication. And given what we've seen of these ponies, they're not going to take it well. We'll see how this develops.
11043865
The Cyaptain needs to be informed of this enemy wessle as soon as possible.
11043865
11041572
"
11041827
Klingon Commander: "Anything not nailed down and we can carry away is ours. Anything we can pry up is not nailed down.
Please tell me the Klingon ship is off the starboard bow! It has to be!
So.... this is going to be awkward... especially for the Klingon red shirt that gets his butt whooped by the small, adorable pastel equine.
As to covert message passing... just slip a note in Kirk's laundry when you have it delivered.