SD241909.12 || Joint Log || "We're All Mad Here"

Posted on 12 Sep 2019 @ 6:19pm by Captain Mallory Thorne & Lieutenant Tye Beryl

1,083 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Tyr's Hand
Location: Bridge

=/\= Begin Log =/\=

"Uh... Captain. We're being hailed."

Mallory blinked and looked up from where she'd been staring at the small screen set into her armrest. Although power and functionality was still limited, at least some reports were coming in and she had been reviewing the latest update on the state of her ship before hearing a set of words she had truly not expected to her. She blinekd again. "Excuse me, Lieutenant?" she said, feeling a bit daft. "Could you repeat that?"

Tye looked up from her console, "We are being hailed. The woman says it's the Owens Valley Radio Observatory or OVRO? I'm searching our database. . .and from what I can see OVRO was used by a university for various astronomy and physics experiments. It was abandoned and fell into disrepair after the third world war."

"So, like, any day now..." Mallory muttered, rubbing at her temples. "Are the sensors managing to get a location on the source of the signal? Does it look like it's coming from where she says it is and not some sort of trick?"

The CHelm officer looked back to the console, her brows furrowed deeply, showing her own concern and confusion, "As far as I can tell, the woman is calling from somewhere in east central California, which is where OVRO was. . .is located."

The channel she'd been listening to crackled and the woman's voice came in once more, "Look, I know you're up there." The next bit sounded a bit muffled, "Or rather something's up there, and there shouldn't be. Is it you don't understand what I'm saying? Something that big wouldn't be a probe, would it? Just. . .I'm not going crazy, am I?" There was a soft curse and something about leaving the microphone 'on' before the woman's voice came back unmuffled, "Unidentified object, please acknowledge my transmission. Please respond." There was a distinct sound of a meowing cat in the background.

Tye looked back to Mal, "Do we respond, sir?"

This was fairly literally a no-win situation, Mallory thought to herself with a small amount of distress. They had been seen, which was bad. She didn't want their appearance to make it into the history books in any form. "If we do, we need a story. Something that will play it off so she doesn't record us for what we are. First, though, is there any way to move the ship so she can't see us anymore? Would mark us up to an anomaly? And without going somewhere that the shuttles can't find us when they come back?"

Tye considered the captain's questions as she looked intently at the console, her fingers flying over it as she checked a few things, "It would depend on whether the network is still tied in with other arrays elsewhere. Scans are a bit iffy, but there is such low power coming from the center, that I doubt it is. If we were to move to the other side of the planet, and go into a geosynchronous orbit, I don't think she'd be able to 'see' us. From what I know of the time, I don't think she has an actual picture, but we are showing up as a very big object in orbit when the only other big thing is the international space station, and it's in a lower orbit, on the other side of us."

The CHelm's head snapped up, "And that gives me another idea. . .we could move behind the ISS and follow its orbit, though if our systems are a bit erratic, that could get a bit iffy. Either option, the shuttles would pick us up on their sensors, sir, though I think the first option might be the safest and least complicated.

"It looks like engineering's just gotten impulse engines back on line," she added.

Mallory considered it. Hiding with the ISS didn't sound like a good idea. "Go with the first option, and let the shuttles know what we're doing."

Tye smirked as she pushed herself up from the Ops console and moved to her station at Helm, "Aye aye, Captain." Sliding into her chair, the helm officer started plotting a course that would move them, though she didn't want to do a straight line move. She wanted to somehow make it appear as if they were an anomaly to the woman watching them from OVRO. There was no easy way to really do that, though she started by simply pulling back from the planet. The smaller they appeared, the more uncertainty, right? It wasn't as if the woman had sensors like the Odin had, and while you could produce images from the data collected by a radio telescope, those images weren't photo quality. What the woman was seeing wasn't exactly the ship, but likely some disruption in the normal radio waves the woman might be used to seeing.

With this in mind, Tye hoped a slow back off might confuse the woman. The Helm officer noted there were a few satellites that were tracking more or less in the direction she wanted to go, so she eased the ship up to roughly the same velocity. It only took a couple of minutes to get to the other side of the planet, where she settled them into a geosynchronous orbit over a remote part of Siberia. Once the ship was in orbit, the CHelm sent an encrypted message to both shuttles, sending them their new coordinates.

"That should do it, Captain. The good news is I don't think she could have gotten a clear image of us. . .that's not how those radio telescopes really work. She might think she's going mad, though," Tye said as she looked over her shoulder to the Captain.

"I'm pretty sure we're all going mad, Lieutenant," Mal said wearily. "I'm pretty sure we all are..."

=/\= Meanwhile, at OVRO =/\=

Patty tilted her head as she studied the data coming into to the telescope array, "What..." The anomaly seemed to shrink. Pushing herself from her desk, Patty made her way to the door that lead out to Owens Valley. The main dish sat to the southeast of the building, with a string of smaller dishes directly north of the main dish. When she looked out, she saw a massive dust devil that was moving off and away from the complex. She let out a defeated sigh, "I must be going crazy. I should have checked the dish first."

=/\= End Log =/\=

Captain Mallory Thorne & Lieutenant Tye Beryl

 

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