Episode 36: "The Shuttle Search"

It was easy. Like taking candy from a baby. With the proper access codes, it was childsplay to get the necessary information. This was the missing link: all the information the Gibraltar had at the moment. Science reports, Captain's Logs, top secret data... everything. With this, the mission could really get started. 
When the computer beeped to indicate that the download was complete, all that was needed now, was to get out of here. However, the Gibraltar crew seemed to be made aware of what was happening. Well, no worries there. It would just be a matter of stealing a shuttlecraft. The first one in the bay seemed to be the Bixby. It didn't matter what it was called: right now it became an escape craft. With the Gibraltar's tractorbeam disabled, they wouldn't be able to catch the shuttle, even *if* they found it missing. All the evidence that anyone was here, was, of course, erased.
As the shuttlecraft made its way out of the Gibraltar's shuttlebay, it's sole occupant grinned. This had been too easy.

Earth. Starfleet HQ. Even though it was good to be back here, Captain McMillan and the rest of the Gibraltar crew who beamed down, were not happy. Not happy at all. First all the valuable data from the Gibraltar was stolen, then the shuttlecraft Bixby was launched without authorisation, and to make matters worse, the shuttle couldn't be recovered because of a disabled tractorbeam. To say this was turning out to be a bad day, was an understatement...

"Alright, we've got quite some ground to cover." McMillan told his XO, Fearguis, and the rest of the crew who had beamed down. "We know the shuttlecraft is around here somewhere. We just don't know where." This was information that the crew knew already, but McMillan figured it wouldn't hurt to repeat. Back on board the Gibraltar, the crew had made the plan. It'd been Ms. Johnson's idea to pursue the shuttle with shuttles of their own. The Gibraltar wouldn't be manoeuvrable enough in the populated area that was Starfleet HQ.

 

Without further ado, the crew spread out, to commandeer shuttlecraft, fighters and hoppers. The search went on for a while, without any results, until Ms. Johnson's tricorder picked up something. Not a shuttle, but... something. Something weird. Something out of the ordinary. Something... near Infinity Station.

A quick search under command of Commander Fearguis resulted in nothing... but the strange readings were still there. "Well something must be causing these readings," Fearguis stated, his voice betraying annoyance. McMillan couldn't agree more... it was as if they were being toyed with. He didn't like that. He doubted anyone would.

"Captain, I've got a clear fix on those readings now," Johnson reported. "They're... I don't believe it. Captain, they're up in the sky."

McMillan rushed to the science officer to check up on those readings. Not that he didn't trust her, even though she hadn't been on the Gibraltar for long. No, it was because he had to see it with his own eyes. "Interesting," he muttered to himself, only to turn to Petty Officer Thunderstorm a moment later. "Petty Officer," he said to the man who was still inside a shuttle, "Have a look around, and let me know if you find something."

Well, find something he did. Just a few meters above Infinity Station, a small building had appeared, out of nowhere. Taking the hoppers and shuttles, the crew managed to enter the building. It seemed to be a science lab. Upon a closer inspection of the place, it seemed to be a science lab from the Gibraltar!

"But how can that be?" Fearguis asked. Nobody had the answer to that... at least not just yet. "Captain," Fearguis then continued, "Look at these PADDs." It was classified Gibraltar information...

"Hey, I did this analysis last week!" Johnson stated, shaking her head. "How did this get in here?"

There were too much similarities to have this be a coincidence. This, McMillan figured, was where the stolen data was brought to. But for what reason? What purpose? And where did this building come from, as it seemed to appear out of thin air?

"It's a hologram." Fearguis finally deduced. "An incomplete one, I might add." he said, gesturing to the flickering of one of the walls. "Captain, this has to be the work of whoever cloned us. First we are duplicated, then the ship and the data. Whoever did this, has enough to start an invasion of Starfleet... without anyone ever noticiting."

McMillan let out a deep breath. "We cannot let that happen." he stated the obvious. "Search this place inside out... if there's any information on who's responsible for this, we need to know..."

As the Gibraltar crew went to work, a mysterious stranger flew away in the stolen shuttlecraft. These Gibraltar people were smart... but not smart enough. Yes, they might have found the hidden lab, but that was just a small setback. Pretty soon, all would be made clear. And when that would happen, everyone would know. And the Gibraltar would be there, to take the blame...

Episode 35: "There's always more than one"

As the transporterbeam delivered the small away team molecule by molecule - or in Mr. Weatherwax's case, photon by photon - Captain McMillan pondered about what could be hidden on a planet like this, that would give out a strong signal like the one they had been receiving. The planet itself was lovely enough: a small waterfall, some farms in the neighbourhood, and a stone paved road, that he and the rest of the team were standing upon. It led up, to the hill, towards a sturdy looking monastery.

"Where to, Commander Braveheart?" McMillan asked the Chief Science Officer, who was holding a tricorder. McMillan was at least glad that Braveheart had been able to join the away team, since Cmdr. Fearguis, Lt. Desade and Ensign Debbydo had been otherwise occupied, trying to scan the planet from orbit. But something could be said for a small away team: it was easier to keep track of everyone.

Or well, not always. "Just follow Petty Officer Thunderstorm." Braveheart said, as he gestured to the PO3 already walking up the road, towards the monastery.

I see I'll need to discuss away team protocol, next time. Captain McMillan pondered to himself, as he started moving.

It didn't take long for the group of four to arrive at the monastery. It was old, that was certain. There were cracks in the stones that were used to build this building, showing the effect of hundreds of years of erosion. And yet, the building hadn't lost any of its majestic touch. It was as if it said 'you're entering a house of worship, show some respect'. It was hard to ignore that.

The building seemed to be deserted though, as the small away team arrived inside. No, wait, a door suddenly opened, and a man stepped out, dressed in a simple robe. His hood was up, so it was impossible to see his face. "Good day visitors," said the man, who was clearly a monk. Behind him, two other monks nodded politely. They too were clad in similar hooded robes. "Welcome to the Monastery of Mailem. I am Brother Faustus."

The Captain nodded in respect. "Thank you, Brother Faustus. I am Captain McMillan, and this is my crew of the Gibraltar."

"Yes." said the monk, without any explanation. "I know."

McMillan frowned at this remark, but tried to ignore this. Perhaps these monks had some technology anyway: sensors to identify the ship in orbit. "We do not wish to intrude," McMillan continued, "but we've founds signals coming from this place that don't belong there. With your permission, we'd like to have a look around."

"We are a simple community." Brother Faustus stated, before actually answering the Captain's question. "But feel free to visit the public spaces. However, the inner sanctum is restricted."

As the monks moved away, Braveheart spoke up. "If I might be so bold Captain... but this monastery reminds me of another monastery, a few hundred years ago. A monastery with the name of P'jem, which was actually a cover up for a spy satellite."

Even though McMillan didn't want to jump to conclusions, he had to admit that there was something odd about these monks. "Let's keep our eyes and ears open, shall we." he said, as the group followed the monks inside.

In the monastery's library, the crew encountered the three monks again. One of them seemed to be curious about the visitors, while the other two, including Brother Faustus, remained more in the background. "We study." said the monk, after a while.

"As do we." McMillan stated, jumping on the chance of finding something in common, so that they would identify with the Starfleet crew, and perhaps be more forthcoming with information. "We study the unknown, since we wish to understand." He paused. "What do you study?"

"Our history." the monk answered. "Our ancestry. What has been, seeing as we have no history."

Braveheart chimed in. "How can you have no history?" the scientist asked.

"We have flashes of memories." the monk continued, as Brother Faustus moved closer. "I know I travelled the stars, but... we do not even know our names."

"Brother, we mustn't speak of such things." Faustus' voice was heard. "The One will not appreciate it."

But McMillan had a hunch. "Can you drop your hood for me please, so that we can see your face?"

The monk complied, and slowly dropped his hood. The face that stared back at the Starfleet crew was unmistakably that of... "Snapper Desade..." McMillan muttered as he took a step back.

Mr. Weatherwax chimed in. "But... we left him on the ship!"

"Who is this... Snapper?" the monk with the face of the Gibraltar's crewmember, stated in confusion.

But before anyone could answer, Brother Faustus pulled a phaser from underneath his robe, and shot the monk. To see Snapper Desade die, or at least a man who looked like him, was quite a shock to the Gibraltar away team. "You should leave." Fautus said, not even looking at the corpse of his fellow monk. "Now."

But McMillan wasn't willing to leave that quickly. As Lt.Cmdr. Braveheart made some scans, McMillan stepped forward. "What happened? Why did you kill him? Who is he?"

These questions, sadly, remained unanswered, as a transporterbeam caught the two remaining monks, beaming them away from here. These monks, if they were indeed monks, were gone. The Gibraltar crew was left with a dead monk, with the face of Lt. Desade.

When the team returned to the Gibraltar though, they were welcomed by the man who they watched die: Lieutenant Desade, along with Ensign Debbydo and Commander Fearguis. "Sir?" Desade asked as McMillan and the away team stepped off of the transporterplatform. "You look like you've seen a ghost?"

"We may have." McMillan stated, gesturing to Braveheart. "To the science lab. I want that tricorderdata processed, now."

A few minutes later, as everyone stood in the science lab, Braveheart had the answer. "They were clones, Sir." he said, giving McMillan the one bit of news he had hoped he wouldn't have to hear. He had been cloned already, after all. But apparently whomever cloned the Captain, cloned more Gibraltar crewmembers. "Lt. Desade's clone, we saw." Braveheart continued. "But the other two monks were clones of Ensign Debbydo and Commander Fearguis."

This piece of information only brought fourth more questions. How did whomever created the clones, get the genetic material? Perhaps that had something to do with the PADD from the Gibraltar the crew had found a while back, during the mission in the Borg base? And then there was the question of why... why would anyone want to clone Gibraltar crewmembers?

These questions, they all knew, would probably plague them for a long, long time to come.

Episode 34: "Tribble Trouble"

4 weeks ago:
 
Captain McMillan of the Gibraltar would never forget the Carolina crew. It had seemed like such a simple mission: go to the planet, get one of the Carolina crewmembers and bring him to Starfleet for questioning. As it turned out, the mission went south bigtime, and several Carolina crewmembers came to his rescue. And yet he had his orders. Starfleet really wanted to know the secret of the sentient starship, after all.

He sighed to himself, once again sitting in the comfortable chair of his office on board the Gibraltar. He hadn't obeyed his orders, and Starfleet wasn't happy about it. Not happy at all. Next time, a very high ranking Admiral had said with a booming voice, he would need to do everything in his power to get his hands on either the Carolina or its crew. In other words, he'd better not screw up again, or else...

2 weeks ago:

Ensign Jones didn't often like his job. Making sure that all the right crates and containers were sent to the right ships, wasn't exactly what he'd call his dreamjob. He had never expected to end up here, at Starbase 38, in the middle of nowhere, sending cargo containers to ships like the USS Gibraltar here. Yes, his job usually sucked.

Usually. For right now he was staring at something that made his job far more interesting. The legs of a beautiful woman. And the rest of her was amazing as well. She wore the uniform of a Starfleet Lieutenant. And the best part of it was... she was telling him about her upcoming leave. He didn't pay any attention to the cargo containers now being delivered to the Gibraltar. And why would he, when he could be staring at this beautiful woman?

And that was how it happened, that one of those containers, which shouldn't have been brought on board, was put in the cargobay of the USS Gibraltar... carrying a surprise.

One week ago:

A subspace signal travelled through the galaxy, from an unknown point of origin, to the Intrepid Starship USS Gibraltar.  It wasn't meant for the Captain, or any of its crew. No, it was a covert signal, meant for one of the cargo containers in the ship's cargobay. Upon receiving it, the container opened. Out of the container jumped something furry, something small... and it gave a purring sound.

September 12th:

It had happened once again. Starfleet Command had received intelligence indicating that the Carolina crew was on its way again, and that they were close to the Gibraltar. Captain McMillan knew what this meant. No screwing up again. He would carry out his orders, to the letter.

There was just one problem. Well... technically it was a bunch of problems. Hundreds of them. Thousands even. And the name of this problem was...

"Tribbles!" McMillan shouted at his crew, as they all gathered in the transporterroom. "They're everywhere! In the corridors, on the Bridge, in my *tea*!" He gestured around the room, to indicate the nature of the problem. There wasn't a deck on board the ship where the pests hadn't crawled into. Even the transporterroom was occupied with the furry, purring, breeding creatures. "I want them off my ship, understood?"

Tribbles in the tea...

The crew quickly went to work... as quick as they could of course, without stepping on Tribbles. And since they were everywhere, that wasn't easy. "Sir," Doctor Lovevamp suggested, "We could sedate them. Use darts filled with tranquillisers on all of them."

"With this amount of Tribbles, that could take weeks." XO Fearguis commented. "I suggest we give them all the same treatment as they did about a hundred years ago, on board the original Enterprise." Kirk's encounter with Tribbles was, of course, legendary. As a Cadet at the Academy, McMillan had found these stories funny. The great Captain Kirk, up to his armpits in Tribbles. Now that he was in the same situation though, he found that there was nothing funny about it.

Tribbles everywhere!

The conversation continued: suggestions like holographic Klingons, lethal injections and simply ignoring the Tribbles, flew over the table, until the meeting was suddenly ended with a tremour that could be felt throughout the ship. "Internal sensors are offline." Lt. Weatherwax reported. "A tribble must have eaten through those systems." But that wasn't the worst part. "And it seems some sort of explosion damaged the warp engines."

Tribbles on the Bridge...

"Explosion?" McMillan was pretty sure that the Tribbles couldn't cause an explosion to happen. At least, not intentionally. That meant that something, or perhaps someone, else was behind this. "Commander Fearguis, Lt.Cmdr. Braveheart, Doctor Lovevamp, you're tasked with getting rid of the Tribbles." He turned to the rest of the crew: Desade, Weatherwax, Four of Nine and Debbydo. "You, get your tricorders, and come with me. It's time to find out what's going on here."

It didn't take long for McMillan and his team to arrive in Engineering, though the trip there could have taken shorter if they didn't have to dodge all the tribbles laying in the corridors. Engineering itself wasn't spared either: there were Tribbles everywhere. At the consoles, the top level, even near the - now inactive - warpcore! This, McMillan knew, was bad. Very bad.

"Sir!" came the call of Four of Nine, one of Starfleet's former Borg drones. "We have a problem." It seemed that someone was uploading a virus, along with different star charts, to replace the ones they currently had. If the Gibraltar could move, it wouldn't be going anywhere. These star charts were an important instrument when navigating the cosmos...

Tribbles in Engineering!

It was clear that all of this wasn't an accident. The Tribbles, the virus, the explosion... "Who could be behind this?" McMillan wondered out loud.

Surprisingly, Four of Nine had the answer. "A... Kelly Heron, Sir." Apparently there was a signature attached to the virus.

Kelly Heron. The name brought a shiver down McMillan's back. Lieutenant Kelly Heron had been a valuable officer on board the Gibraltar once. She was powerful: there were even rumours that she had the powers of the Q. She had also completely disappeared from Starfleet's radar. And, McMillan realised, she was one of the former members of the Carolina crew, too... The very ship the Gibraltar was ordered to find, just before the Tribbles boarded the ship. Coincidence? Probably not.

"Alright Kelly," McMillan started shouting, knowing Heron would be around here somewhere. If it was her, she wanted to make sure her plan went according... well, to plan. "I know you're here. Show yourself."

For a few moments, there was no response. McMillan frowned, wondering if he had misjudged Kelly. But then all of a sudden, a voice came from *inside* the warpcore. "Good evening Captain."

McMillan was in no mood for games though. "What are you doing here?" he demanded. "Are you responsible for all of..." he gestured around. "This?"

Kelly looked back with a surprised look on her face. "Moi?" she asked. "No, I just got here."

But McMillan wouldn't fall for that. "Oh come on Kelly. I know you better than that." He was about to say more, when all the Tribbles in here suddenly disappeared in a blue light: apparently Commander Fearguis and his team had found a way to beam these critters to a single room, where they'd at least be containted, until a solution was found.

Kelly Heron, the cause of all of this...

Their problems weren't over yet though, as Kelly showed. "By now your main computer will have accepted my uploaded star charts, I have no wish to harm you or your ship Captain, but I can't have you chasing us all the time either." McMillan frowned at her, giving her a 'I'm your former Captain, throw me a bone here' glance. And apparently, Kelly did. "I am acting on orders from Temporal division, Timeline alpha is skewed and only the Carolina can correct it." she explained.

But McMillan was no fool. "I am under orders to find the Carolina, and that's what I'll do, Kelly. Now, unless you can give me some evidence that the timeline is wrong, I will continue on that mission."

Kelly just smiled in return. "Then I guess we'll be seeing each other more often." she said, as she moved closer to the Gibraltar CO. "I am leaving now, since my job here is done. Not that there is anything you can do to stop me."

Sadly, McMillan knew that she was right. Internal and external sensors were offline, the warpcore was down and even if it wasn't, there was a strange computervirus and some unknown starcharts to deal with. "This won't be the last time we see each other."

The smile on Kelly's face remained. "I know Captain." she stated. "Oh, and I'm sorry for the broken leg. Don't take it personally." With that, the dematerialised in what seemed to be a Klingon transporterbeam.

McMillan blinked. Since Kelly Heron was a timetraveller, odds were that he'd meet a past version of her, who would do something to his leg. Not something to look forward to, that was for sure.

"Alright folks," McMillan said with a sigh, shaking his head. "Let's get back to work. We've got a computervirus to extract, and a warpcore to restore." At least, he figured, the Tribble problem was nearly solved...

Now, the next problem would be how to explain to Starfleet that he was once again unable to locate the Carolina...

Episode 33: "The plot thickens..."

Oh my...

 The view Captain McMillan had of the damaged, battered structure was... disconcerting, to say the least.  It was damaged severely, as if someone had attacked it from orbit. Several of the doors in this room were blocked, beams had fallen from the cealing and fire was spreading everywhere. Nevertheless, that wasn't what worried McMillan the most.

This place was definitely Borg.

"Alright people, explore this level... but be careful." McMillan knew the risks of the Borg better than most people. Two years ago, he had been assimilated by the Borg on a routine away mission. He'd only been Borg for a few weeks, but it'd been terrible. And now he had found out that the Borg hadn't only assimilated him: they had also extracted some of his DNA, thereby cloning him. They had violated him, in more ways than one. He hated them for that... but he also knew that he couldn't let this hate guide him. He and his crew had a job to do, so they would do it.

Right now, their job was to explore this structure, even though there was the danger of debris falling down from above. It didn't take the crew long to discover some strange features about this Borg base. First of all, it was damaged badly, and there were no drones to repair the damage. Second, there were small Borg ships leaving the base at high speeds, ignoring even the Gibraltar. And third...

"Captain, you should come here, we've found something." The voice of Commander Westland rang through the internal communications system of McMillan's EVA suit.

"Report, Commander?" he queried.

"Sir..." Westland simply gestured at one of the consoles. Borg who used consoles like these... that alone was mind boggling, but what was displayed really blew McMillan's mind. On one console, there were logs. Not that the Borg used logs, so these shouldn't even be here. On the second console though, McMillan saw a picture of the Gibraltar.

"These," Commander Westland so adequately described, "Are the crew files of the Gibraltar. All 183 of them."

It didn't make any sense. Why would the Borg have copies of the Gibraltar's crew manifest, and their personnel records? For a moment McMillan wondered if he was dreaming, but that wasn't the case. This information was definitely here. But why? What would the Borg want with all of this?

"Captain!" Now, it was Fearguis, who demanded his attention, just as Mr. Thunderstorm came back with even more sensor logs. McMillan dismissed Thunderstorm, letting him know that they had to go over the logs when they got back, and quickly made his way to his XO.

Apparently Fearguis had tkaen it upon himself to climb the fallen beams up to the next levels. It was a dangerous climb, and McMillan nearly fell off. When he got to the top level, he wondered why his XO would have risked falling down... until he saw what Fearguis was so excited about.

A Federation PADD. How the hell did that get here? Sure, Borg often took technology along from races they conquered, but they would assimilated that technology as well. That hadn't happened with this PADD, since it was perfectly intact. "Sir, there's more." Fearguis commented, adding to McMillan's shock. "This PADD had Federation encryption codes. Ms. Zwilling and I managed to decipher it, and we now know where this PADD originated."

The pause was almost too much for McMillan. "Well? Out with it man!"

"Sir..." Whatever the news was, Fearguis sure took his time in saying it. "The PADD... it belonged to the USS Gibraltar. Our ship, Sir."

McMillan remained silent for a few moments. How did a PADD, from his ship, make its way down to this structure, without the Gibraltar ever having been here in the first place? "Bring it along, Commander." McMillan finally ordered. They'd have to study the device when they returned to the ship.

It was becoming clear that this place wasn't as it seemed: a conclusion Commander Westland confirmed. "Sir, this place isn't just Borg in origin." she started to explain, after having opened a small panel. Behind it sat two bio-neural gellpacks: definitely Federation technology. "It's Federation as well. And not assimilated either."

Before McMillan or any of the crew could say anything, an alarm suddenly sounded. "Based upon these readings," Westland quickly reported, "the self destruct system has been activated. We have to get out of here."

There wasn't much time. The crew hurried to get back to the beam-in point, so that the Gibraltar would be able to beam them up. All around them, consoles and panels exploded, debris fell and the ground seemed to open up from underneath them. Lava started pouring in. It was now or never. "Gibraltar!" McMillan shouted through the communications device, "Energise!"

Just as the blue beams grabbed the crew, the entire structure exploded, and turned into a big pile of rubble. As the Gibraltar crew rematerialised on board, they realised that they'd been lucky. "Come on." McMillan said, just after he took a quick breath to recover, "We need to get to the bottom of this." As he removed his helmet and started walking towards the Bridge, he realised that this mission had created more questions than that it had brought them answers.

The plot, so he thought to himself,  thickens...