Monitoring

Posted on 30 Mar 2023 @ 8:12am by Commander Kristiana Petrova & Ensign Kat Walker & Lieutenant Callisi Veera

526 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Deus ex Machina
Location: Bridge

Like it or now, Operations was the department that dealth with these kinds of things. Monitoring readings from recon craft. In this case, the recon craft was Ensign Walker, shipboard AI. And the Operations officer on duty was Lieutenant Veera. Who's dislike of Ensign Walker was second only to her distrust of the Ensign.

"Launching now. Wide spectrum sensors online, running. Setting course for high altitude flyover of station Alpharius, Ma'am." the Ensign's artificial voice sounded over comms.

Callisi monitored the incoming feed from the craft's sensors. "Receiving telemetry, all scopes five by five. Continue with the operation..." "... Ensign." she added Kat's rank as practically an afterthought, while the cyclopean rabbitess turned her full attention to the incoming scanner feeds. She'd turn a brief glance to the status feed from Kat's fighter-turned-living space, but it was little more than a cursory glance. The last thing she was looking forward to was putting out another fire. Literal or otherwise.

The flight down to the right altitude over the base didn't take long. Kat seemed happy to be able to spread her proverbial wings, doing a starboard roll, followed by a port roll. Just making sure her flight controls were still functioning, she would answer if asked. "Performing flyover. All sensors running," she transmitted.

The scans didn't reveal anything new. Which in itself was revealing. The fuzziness of the images had increased, even as Kat did a flyover at around a quarter of the altitude Odin was holding at. There could only be one explanation for this. Something down there was actively blocking the Ensign's scans.

"Are you seeing this, Odin?" the Ensign asked. "This interference does not seem passive. It seems active."

"Hmmmm..." Callisi mused, looking at the readings. "Agreed. Ten koku says if it's active they already know we're here. Switch to optical and thermal, give me a flyover, eyes out. One pass then RTB, over." the rabbitess had done her share of recon runs in the past, and found that no matter how advanced things got, if all else failed you just took lots of pictures.

"Switching to optical and thermal, swinging about for another flyover," Ensign Walker replied. The fighter described a lazy turn, making use of the space and lining up for another flyover. She transmitted the footage live, using a significant portion of bandwidth, but it was still very fuzzy and pixelated.

Around when she was halfway across the facility though, the footage suddenly scrambled and cut off, followed immediately by a transmission from Kat. "Sys-system u-under-er at-at-at-at-", a transmission which cut as suddenly as it began, as Lieutenant Veera could see the fighter waver and bank, seemingly losing control, before diving down and making an emergency landing on the lunar surface, a few miles outside the facility.

Once the feed stopped, once the image of Kat's fighter made its proverbial splashdown, Callisi was on her comm badge. "Veera to Commander Petrova, we have an emergency. Kat is down. No sign of weapon discharge, I suspect it's electronic warfare." she advised while keeping the commander appraised.

"What th - fuck! Sound yellow alert! I'm on my way!" Kristiana replied, sounding rather annoyed.

 

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