What about those sensor logs again?

Posted on 08 Nov 2023 @ 1:14pm by Lieutenant Callisi Veera & Commander Kristiana Petrova

1,051 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Miranda
Location: Petrova's Quarters

Kris had been quarantined to quarters, told she had to get some rest. However, she had not been told that she couldn't do any work at all. As such she was pouring over recent reports, wrapped in a comfy bathrobe, the temperature up a bit and some steaming pea soup standing by, waiting to cool off. At one point she tapped her comm badge,

"Petrova to Jacobson, got a moment? Report to my quarters."

Within the hollows of the Operations bay, those few who didn't succumb to the illness running rampant around the ship were taking extra precautions. Filter masks over their mouth and nose, and limiting contact with surfaces without sterilization. At the call, Jacobson perked up, "On my way." he responded, then turned to another human in the room, "Connor, you have Ops." and Connor gave a nod, "Aye, Ops is mine."

Jacobson arrived at Petrova's door a few moments later and rang the announce chime before being bidden to enter. Jacobson was a human male, standard by any deviation. Tan skin, black hair, and each step he took was crisp and planned. His time under Callisi had taught him well, and he'd have much to learn before too much longer. "You summoned, ma'am?" he asked, keeping a respectful distance.

Kris was wearing her mask as well. She hated it, but the doctor told her to when people were around, and Jacobson did count as a person, so she would have to comply. "Jacobson, thank you for coming," she offered, "We heard from the Montana, they've got an interesting theory that I want you and what's left of your team to investigate. Some of it you can do from here I'm sure, I'd like to see at least the preliminary scans and logs to see if their theory holds water."

He gave a nod at her welcome. His stance, his mannerisms, his responses, even his tone. There was so much of Callisi's influence there. "Of course. Operations is always at your discretion." a pause, "The Montana? I'll have Connor start an investigation into their theory." he offered, "You'll have a copy of the logs as soon as we do. I presume their theory is in regards to what's gotten everyone sick?" he inquired, more to narrow down the expectation of the task, but also to see if this was an incident isolated to THEM, or if this was more of a wide-area issue.

"That's right, here's what I have so far," as she indicated a PADD on her desk. "I'd like you to log in to my terminal and run some cross references between visitor logs and the moment this started happening, see if we can reach the same conclusion as the Montana did," she explained, taking a step or two back from her terminal as she explained, so he could approach without getting too close to her and risk infection. She al;so didn't quite tell him what she'd expected or hoped to find in the hope that he'd stumble across it on his own.

Jacobson gave her plenty of time to move away from the terminal before he moved over and started to check the system. It took a few moments for the system to start giving results. "Good that we have these already. Saves Connor the task." the ops assistant commented. Looking for a needle in a haystack was always considered a daunting task, but his time here on the Odin taught him to always bring a magnet for just such an occasion. "Hmmm, so the rise of symptoms started here." he motioned to a timestamp of the first recorded instance of the symptoms. "Minor at first, but if we assume there's an incubation period to this, we dial it back a few and..." he motioned to a series of entries all on the same day.

"Maintenance on EPS manifolds, nothing infectious there. Security logs show a visitor to the ship, a travelling merchant of some sort. Nothing in the log that tripped the bioscanner." he continued, "Hmmm, biogel packs in the merchant's assigned quarters needed replacement six hours after he left the Montana, interesting." a few tap tap taps, "They had been recently cleared by engineering, they last for months." he offered as he continued the search.

"Four days after he shows up, the crew is sick. Seven hours after he leaves, the gel packs in his quarters need maintenance. Nothing was triggered by the scanners or the filters when he came aboard. So, IF this is our person of interest, he didn't flag the scanners on the way IN, or OUT. So if he's the source, whatever happened happened on the Montana, and since HE didn't seem sick according to Medical's logs. He wasn't sick coming aboard, or leaving..."

Jacobson turned to regard Petrova. "Whatever happened, it either hitched a ride on this visitor and DIDN'T trigger any of our systems, or... it was made in his quarters out of samples that by themselves aren't registered as dangerous. One makes him an innocent vector, the other makes him a terrorist. Either way, that marks this bug as manufactured. Either that, or it's so new and undiscovered that our databases aren't primed to look for it." a pause, "And believe me, those databases are as up to date as we can keep them." the pride of the department was riding on that, and one could hear it in his response.

Kris smiled, tired though she was, at his explanations. "That's exactly Montana's theory too," she mused when he was done with his theory. "All of it. Same merchant, same idea that this bug seems manufactured. But we need more than just a theory. Take the PADD, it has all Montana's logs as well as ours. There's your hay stack. Find us that needle. Good man." It wasn't often that she gave compliments, but he'd earned this one.

He stood a little taller at the notice. "Consider it found." he collected the PaDD. It'll have to go through a mild decontamination first, just to extend the time until infection. At this point, it wasn't a matter of IF, but WHEN... expecially if this was a manufactured pathogen. All the rules of contagion potentially went out the proverbial window.

 

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