Troubleshooting

Posted on Sat May 13, 2017 @ 11:54am by Commodore Michael Aravan & Captain Madelina Weisz & Lieutenant Colonel S'er'in'e & Lieutenant Marisa Cheshire & Lieutenant Commander Arrda & Lieutenant Martha Cusack & Lieutenant Commander Kelani Tetanal & Lieutenant Commander Alex Rho & Master Chief Petty Officer Thomas Barnes

Mission: Avatar
Location: Ready Room
Timeline: MD 9 || 1430 Hours

Captain Michael Aravan paced the bridge until the last of the senior staff arrived and noted the looks on their faces. It seemed that he hadn't been the only one to have something happen to him and he still wasn't sure what to do about it. That's why I have senior officers, he reminded himself.

He motioned for them to go into the Ready Room while he gave orders to the helm for a full stop and ordered all nonessential shipboard functions to cease shipwide. He stopped Commander Weisz when she arrived. "Did something happen to you, too?" he asked quietly.

"You can say that," Maddy said, looking under to table to make sure everyone was wearing pants. After what happened, she didn't want to take any chances. "Thank the fates for that."

Michael followed her eyes for a minute and looked back at her. "What were you looking for?" he asked her.

"Just making sure that everyone is properly dressed," the redhead Commander responded with a furrowed brow. To be honest, she was waiting for the senior staff to get up and start dancing around her t any moment. Maddy was quite paranoid to begin with, and the things that were going on presently made her doubly so.

Tom, who sat near the end of the table, simply blinked. He hadn't spoken to the XO since breakfast. Had she had an unusual experience of her own? And if she was checking to see if everyone were dressed, did that mean she was expecting them to be dressed, or hoping that certain members of the senior staff, or the Captain for that matter, were not? Ultimately, he shrugged off the thought. His own troubles with the computer were concern enough for now.

Kelani had responded to the summons and entered the Ready Room, finding a seat and waiting for the meeting to begin. A frown formed on her face as she remembered the oddities she had heard crew personnel speaking of and the aftereffects which she had seen. It was an extremely unusual circumstance...

Standing at the corner of the desk with her arms folded, Marisa's glances around the room were met by haggard and spooked expressions. "You all look like you've seen ghosts." She noted with a slight upward curl to her lips "Mind filling me in on what has you all so spooked?"

Douglas was not spooked. Frankly, he had put the replicator incident out of his mind after it had been remedied. As he looked over the other officers around him, however, he had to wonder what in the Abyss had happened to them. The Commander's glance under the table, and her subsequent declaration that she was making sure they were all properly dressed confused him. Why wouldn't they be? Uniforms weren't replicated; one brought those with them. Now he was truly confused, but he kept his expression clear and waited for someone to clear up this oddness for him.

It was hard to not notice the towering presence that was S'er'in'e standing off to one side of the room out of the way of others yet height yielding him enough to see what was going on. The earlier events in his office troubled him and angered him, he was eager to hear what Master Aravan had to report when he returned to his office.

S'er'in'e had purposefully positioned himself away from Commander Wiesz and another female with which he'd yet to meet. A Lieutenant in blue. He didn't want to be effected by them at this delicate time for him considering his recent involvement with Major Petrova.

Alex shifted in his chair as he remembered what could have happened to he and Jacob. Something was definitely wrong. "Properly dressed, Commander?" he asked. "Or, is this something better left the corridors and bulkheads?"

Martha sat at the far end of the table and drunk the tea out of her cup slowly. Avoiding eye contact Martha kept her eyes looking down at the table in front of her - with her PADD which she'd brought along to take notes unusually lying in her lap instead.

Michael went to the head of the table and activated the oversized LCARS surface where reports from every department were laid out for all to see. "As everyone probably knows, something seems to be wrong with our computer and we're in the middle of an exploratory mission and going further out than most ships have in quite a while. That means we're going to be isolated except via subspace from the rest of the fleet. The table is open to ideas, suggestions, theories, no matter what you think I may feel about them."

"I think... if anyone other than one individual aboard this ship shows up at my office naked, then they should be prepared to know how a puppet feels," Maddy said, and she was quite serious.

Tom blinked again, his cheeks running red for a moment. He was an adventurous fellow, but he'd never considered performing such an action. Filing that thought away for later, he refocused on the matter at hand. In fact, he attempted to make a suggestion, but someone else spoke first.

Douglas frowned. Appeared at her door naked? How did this sort of thing happen? Not that it mattered really,but it had caught him off guard. For a split second, his expression lost its neutrality, but he reclaimed it quickly and listened to the others before giving any opinion.

Continuing to avoid eye contact Martha thought that it would be best to ascertain the nature of the computer fault first. After thinking about it for a few moments she made her suggestion to the rest of those present.

"I think what we need to do first is find out whether it's a hardware or software problem - or potentially both. In the mean time I have instructed the Tactical Officer on duty to conduct a series of scans to make sure there are no cloaked vessels close to the ship which could be interfering with the computer" Martha said.

"We should consider, that if this is a problem with the computer, that if some systems are affected then all could be or will be at risk, including communications. I would suggest manually disconnecting the communications arrays lest we transmit what ever we have to others." S'er'in'e chipped in taking a step forward towards the group. "Being a military vessel we have time due to system firewalls, civilian vessels may not be as fortunate as we are and the results could be devastating."

"We could deploy one of the Talons or the Victorious so we're not out of contact, providing they've not been infected." Marisa added to the big cat's suggestion with a pensive tone. "Have we had any casualties from these system hiccups?"

"We can already assume that the Victorious is infected," Tom immediately said. "Her mainframe is automatically tied to the computer all while she's docked. If everyone has been experiencing strange occurrences throughout the ship, then the Victorious needs to stay right where she is."

"Well, providing the Triumphant wasn't infected before the last patrol my wing should be clean. I have Yellow Jacket 1 deploy." Marisa said with a nod before looking around the room again. "Still, I'd like to know, any injury or death? You know, ignoring any mental scaring that may have occurred. It'd be nice to know if we're dealing with something that's actively malevolent or just causing some glitches."

"None yet," Michael reported.

"Well, that's something at least." Marisa said in between a relieved exhale. She returned to an thoughtful pose, cradling her chin in a hand supported by an arm. The behavior of the malfunctions was bothering her. From the way the captain and commander were behaving it was like they had encountered something personally scaring. Without more information all she had was a hunch.

"I am concerned as to the cause of these malfunctions,". Kelani said softly. " It might be advisable to do as much of the investigation as possible without the use of the computer. If it has been corrupted, the readings could be inaccurate."

"With what equipment?" Tom asked. "Even our tricorders are continually synced with the main computer. We might be able to disconnect a few and restore them to factory settings, but there's still no guarantee that they aren't already permanently affected."

All this talk of disconnecting things and being cut off made Douglas think of when his ship had been sabotaged after the Earth Mission. He had been cut off from the rest of his ship, and it was failing around him. That situation had ended very badly for his crew, and he hoped this one did not share that fate.

Shaking off the memory, he considered what he might own that could help. The problem was that what little Marai technology he had with him either did not produce enough power to help run the ship or was likely not compatible with the Triumphant's technology. He kept it to himself for now, therefore, and continued to listen.

"Also, the timing of these malfunctions troubles me...."

Douglas looked to the science officer. "Please be more specific, Lieutenant Tetanal. The timing in relation to what?" he asked for clarification.

"It just seems very odd to me that we encountered an ancient probe and then we begin to experience these--oddities...."

"I agree with the Colonel on the point of disconnecting the communications array...and anything else that we are able to," said Rho, nodding to the Caitian. "We have already disconnected our link, subspace and otherwise, with Starfleet Intelligence Headquarters and my Assistant is working to close as many connections as possible with the ship's computer cores in order to safeguard the intel that we have." He paused a second and brought up something on his PADD. "Though, as long as we're entertaining suggestions as to finding the source, there is one other instance similar to this that I pulled from the Intel Database. On Stardate 42609.1, the USS Yamato and USS Enterprise D reported computer malfunctions that affected their ship's systems. I realize those were due to an Iconian probe and the resultant visit to Iconia and that we are from that sector, but there could be something similar affecting our computer."

"We should also consider disconnecting the majority of the primary systems and powering them down," Tom added. "The warp core, antimatter injectors, impulse engines, any sort of computer control. The computer is capable of refusing commands. If it gets the idea that it can force an antimatter injector to remain open, or even adjust the intermix ratio, then we'd have a warp core breach that we would not be able to interrupt."

"Chief, do you think if we extracted the cores from a few of my fighters they could operate primary systems while we isolate the issue?" Marisa interjected with a slow flip of her wrist. "I mean they run smaller versions of everything a larger class does, minus some advanced laboratories, holodecks and replicators."

Tom gave the matter a bit of thought. "It's possible," he supposed. "We'd have to tie probably no less than ten cores together for the warp core alone, do some reformatting to let each core handle separate aspects. After all, there's an entire level of the main computer core dedicated to the injectors, intermix chamber, PTC's and the field coils."

Marisa nodded "We've got about a dozen in storage, guaranteed to be clean. If you need more I can strip a few from fighters in rotation."

The Bolian Engineer who had been quiet up to this point nodded. "I have Engineering locked down and have been monitoring power consumption and activity levels, but so far, I have no detected any unusual activity which has been reported in other departments. Speaking of that," he said as he looked around. "Where is Medical?"

"The Chief Medical Officer is monitoring from Sickbay and we've taken the EMH offline for the time being, as well as holodecks, recreation facilities and most holoemitters which aren't instrumental to the ship," Michael said as he listened to everyone. "Mister Barnes, you have a good idea. Get with Lieutenant Cheshire and Lieutenant Gefel to see what can be done. Mister Rho, continue to isolate Intel."

Tom nodded. "Will do," he confirmed.

"Lieutenant Tetanal, what's the status of that satellite we brought aboard?" Michael asked. "It seems things have started to go haywire shortly after that."

Douglas had considered that too, but they had scanned it before bringing it out of isolation. Then again, they had not been looking for computer malfunctions; they had been looking for things harmful to the crew. Mentally, he cursed himself for not thinking of that. But he pushed his self-recrimination aside equally quickly; it would not help the situation now. The damage was done, and they had to deal with it, not place blame.

"The device is an ancient first contact probe, programmed with a pre-recorded greeting in all of Earth's languages. We noticed nothing untoward, but given present circumstances, I feel I must re-examine my findings."

"Lieutenant Cusack, make certain that no unauthorized use of Tactical systems occurs," the Captain continued. "Lieutenant Mallory, increase patrols to critical areas of the ship and work with Colonel S'er'in'e for extra personnel."

"Yes Captain" Martha confirmed.

Douglas nodded. "Yes, Captain. We can meet after this to coordinate our efforts." He was already sending orders via his PADD to his people to increase those patrols. In their current state, and that which they were preparing to be in, they would be vulnerable to outside attack, and he was not going to be responsible for allowing someone or something to sneak aboard and harm his crew.

After sending the message and gaining acknowledgment, he frowned at the PADD. "This is a small matter given what has already been discussed," he stated, looking up and meeting every set of eyes in the room, "but these" he held up his PADD "remain constantly sync'ed to the computer. We cannot trust any information that they display. And we should likely find an alternate means of intership communication as well." They had discussed the subspace communications, but their personal communicators were tied to the ship's computer as well.

"Given that we've seen what the computer is capable of," Tom suggested, "we can assume that it will only be a matter of time before it starts to initiate its own transmissions, or even altering what we're saying to each other in real time. I suggest members of Operations, and with the Colonel's permission, the Marines, be conscripted into page duty. Communications will be far slower than what we're used to, but the accuracy will be guaranteed."

"The only issue there would be maintaining the line. We would need people in Jefferies Tubes, corridors and access ways. If any one of those points is sealed off from the line, the line is cut." S'er'in'e replied, though admitted the idea had merit.

"Make it happen and get with Lieutenant Rho," Michael said as he looked at the Intelligence Chief. "Your department has the site to site transporter armbands, don't you?"

"Yes we do, Captain," said Alex. He turned towards S'er'in'e. "I'll have to escort you to the Intelligence Center, though. It's on lockdown at the moment."

S'er'in'e nodded at the comment as the scene unfolded before him.

"Sir, might I suggest you allow me to deploy a combat patrol?" Marisa asked with pursed lips "We're not in exactly the best defensible position at this moment in time."

"Do that," Michael ordered. "Just keep them close and keep your transporters active. The moment anything goes wrong, get back to the ship. We'll use the tractor beams to bring the fighters back in, but your safety comes first."

"I'll can them run on the analog backups. We probably won't be able to be as impressive as normal, but everything will be running on hardware only. If I remember my Compsys 101 course correctly that should make them immune to a data infection. That would take transporters off the table though." Marisa said, putting her hands on her hips with a contemplative expression. "But if this goes worst case scenario the safest place will be in one of those cockpits." She finished with a resigned smile and a shrug.

"Unless the ship decides to lock tractor beams on your fighters or use them for target practice if things get that bad," Michael said.

"Oh, and I realize it might be a little difficult given some of your faces," Marisa continued, looking around the room as she suppressed the urge to smirk. "But I would recommend that we all complete reports of our experiences and share them ASAP. If we can determine a pattern to the malfunctions narrowing down solutions might be easier." She also thought reading them might be amusing, though she didn't articulate that.

Douglas could see the validity of the fighter commander's suggestion, and he had no problem with it. Granted, whatever had been happening to others, he'd only experienced a spazzed-out replicator. But even if it had been more serious, he would still have seen the value in the suggestion and been willing to do it. "She's right. It might, at the very least, help us to track the malfunctions back to their source system by creating a timeline of the occurrences." he added helpfully.

"I also suggest that we leave the Main Computer up and running," Tom said. "My systems in Operations were acting strangely, and it stopped the moment we disconnected from the primary trunk. We're currently running on the backup core, but I wouldn't trust that either. Not for too much longer anyway."

"While I do not seek to be the one with all the negative considerations." S'er'in'e spoke taking another step towards the group. "We have to accept that if whatever is causing this got into the Main Computer then every system has to some degree been effected and prone to an accident or failure." S'er'in'e paused. "Since we are discussing options, we should consider at least of evacuating the Triumphant." He knew that wouldn't sit well.

"With Life support potentially at risk moving everyone to a few decks is only a stop gap measure, we may ultimately end up fighting the very ship we are trying to save at the risk of nearly 4,000 lives." S'er'in'e looked around expecting a harsh rebuttal. "We here are trained, we know what we face but as I understand from the ship's specifications there are 1,500 civilians on board who are not as talented."

"There's something wrong with that plan, Colonel," Michael said. "All the lifeboats, shuttles, runabouts and Victorious are all linked to the ship in one way or another and could be affected." He paused and looked at the others.

"Personal experiences," he started. "Shortly before I called the briefing, what I thought was my wife entered the briefing room and locked the doors and turned off communications. She knew everything that I liked and the only thing that tipped me off that it wasn't her was where our children were. I tried to shut down the holoemitters and it told me access denied, which let me know it wasn't Spencer. The computer has access to all of our personnel files and would know the people closest to us, which means that if you have someone close to you, the computer could mimic them and lead you into a trap."

An unusual clanking like sound filled the room momentarily before it was followed by something that sounded as if it was beginning to short circuit. Maddy found herself looking at Michael with a look of panic just before gravity in the ready room went out. She found herself starting to float and muttered a curse as she gripped the arms of her chair. This was most certainly not okay with her.

S'er'in'e felt the gravity stop and dug the claws on his feet into the carpet, he still felt the weightlessness take hold as it did everyone else. Claws were not always used for weapons and this situation proved it, he reached out to take hold of anyone near him to help them from floating upwards.

"What now.....?" Michael started to say before his feet left the floor. Instead of flailing, he reached for and grabbed the back of a chair. "As you can see, this is escalating. The sooner we can get this taken care of, the sooner we'll be back to normal."

Kelani stifled a gasp as she felt the gravity go out. She reached out trying to find something to keep her from floating away, and encountered a powerful furry hand. Realizing who it was she said softly but urgently, "Please help me Colonel."

Seeing the young female in blue call for help he took gently took hold of her arm and brought her to him and nestled her against his side but low enough that her feet would touch the floor, there was pride in his action as female asked for aid and he provided, culture and tradition had been satisfied.

Tom grabbed onto the table before he could float too far away. He wasn't about to move anywhere just yet, nor did he want to get stuck in the middle of the room with nothing to latch onto should he need to move anywhere or lest the gravity kick back in.

Douglas was no more prepared for the gravity to shut off than anyone else. The sound preceding that had made him frown, but he'd had no idea what it meant until he found himself floating off his chair. Instinctively, he curled his legs around the base of the chair and pulled the chair forward so that his knees were under the table, effectively anchoring himself. He would have helped the science lieutenant, but she was on the opposite side of the table, so he left it to the Caitian she had petitioned.

After a few moments of this weightless game S'er'in'e's patience wore thin. Making sure the office he aided was against a wall and feet on the floor he dropped to hands and feet like the feline he appeared to be. He didn't like others seeing him like this but given his size and weight it was not something he wanted to throw around in a weightless environment. Using his claws, which he also tried to hide from view he latched onto the carpet and padded his way to the door.

When the door didn't open it left S'er'in'e unimpressed. He stood up with claws out and strength exerted he tried to pry the door open. His efforts were not productively rewarded, instead his claws slipped from the centre seal and with the strength he put in, left 8 distinct, deep gouges several inches in length in the Captain's door. A low rolling growl followed, evident that S'er'in'e was not amused.

Not only had he damaged the Captains carpet, but now too his door.

Marisa slowly started drifting upwards followed by a sudden desperate grab for the nearby desk by reaction alone. Once her brain had caught up she let go, comfortable with her predicament. The cockpit of one of her fighters were rarely subjected to gravity so the weightless sensation wasn't alien to her, and she had plenty of practice on how to move. Rather her thoughts turned to the others around the ship.

"Sir, if the gravity generators around the rest of the ship have failed we could have casualties very shortly. We should send response teams with thrust packs and mag boots to the larger cargo bays, hangars and the arboretum." Marisa said, images of civilians dropping from the highest point on the 4 deck high chamber as the gravity generators came back on line crossing her mind.

Martha was surprised as she floated upwards and after reaching a sufficient height she clutched the back of the chair she was sitting in with one hand and her PADD with the other.

By the time Alex realized what was going on, he had nothing to grab. The chairs and table were below him and he was floating towards the ceiling. Happy for his zero-G training, he began 'swimming' out over the floor so he could land without hitting the table. Just in case the gravity came back on.

"Captain...I strongly recommend that some of us beam to the nearest EV suit storage room before the transporters fail and everyone starts floating on the ceiling - and dare I say it - life support" Martha said.

Tom was amazed how much they'd come to rely on the computer and how much they took for granted. "That's one hell of a risk," he remarked. "It's likely you could rematerialize as a man or a potted plant. There's a portable generator in the emergency lockers on the bridge. If we can get out there, we can sever computer control and at least get basic life support running off that generator until we get the system in full patched."

Michael had been watching the huge Caitian while listening to the others. "Colonel S'er'in'e," he said after a moment. "There is a manual door release in the hatch beside the door. Try that, please." He looked at the others. "Find out what's causing this and get it under control."

At that moment, the hum of the warp drive powering up was heard and the ship gave a lurch.

Gefel tapped his combadge =^=Gefel to Engineering. What's going on down there?=^=

=^=We had to evacuate Engineering=^= came the voice of Zander. =^=Some sort of gas and now we're locked out. It looks like the transwarp drive is coming online. Oh crap...let me get back to you!=^=

With another lurch, the massive ship jumped to transwarp and Michael pushed off the chair and towards the door hatch. "It's time go!" He said. "Move!" It was a matter of minutes and the door opened, the Captain being the first one out into normal gravity where he hit the deck with a muffled curse. "Helm, Engineering! Get this ship under control, now!"

The Flight Chief nodded and ran down to the helm and went to access the holographic interface before it and all the others on the bridge flickered out of existence. "Sir," he said. "We may have a problem."

"There must be some kind of back up." Marisa said to the helms man after finding solid ground again. "The first thing everyone who read that these ships were getting holographic displays said 'What if the holographic systems fail'."

She then looked behind her towards Barnes. "Chief, we should hurry to the Ops and quarantine this thing the best we can before the lifts go out too." The pilot said with an urgent tone.

"Ops isn't going to be useful at all," Tom warned. "The best place to be is either Engineering or the computer core itself. Which, given what's going on, we've got to head straight for the core." He suspected this was going to get far worse before it got better.

"Fine, lead the way!" Marisa said urgently.

When he got out to the Bridge, Alex hit the floor and then stood back up. He was on his way to the nearest interface to reconfigure it for Intelligence when he saw them all flicker off. First a lurch and now this.

Michael went to his chair and activated the manual release for the consoles, which began to rise out of the floor in front of every station. "At least that still works," he said. "Rho, pass out the secure combadges to all department heads, too, please."

"Understood, Captain." When the console finished rising, Alex sent a quick message to his Yeoman to have her gather enough secure combadges for the Department Heads as well as personal transporter armbands. He and S'er'in'e could distribute the rest to the others as time allowed.

Inside the ready room, gravity restored itself. Maddy breathed a sigh of relief and rose to her feet, making her way out to the bridge. Sadly, her relief was short lived as the familiar blue waves of the transporter began to wash over her. Relief was replaced with panic, and those who witnessed the ordeal could see the foreign expression written all over her features just before she disappeared.

Gefel started to follow the Commander out and stopped as she was enveloped in a transporter beam and vanished. "Guys! Captain! Commander Weisz was just transported out!" he shouted before he took his combadge off and tossed it down.

"Get your combadges off, everyone!" Michael ordered as he heard the Engineer and looked around as he took his off and tossed it into the empty seat next to him. "If it locks on to us, there's no telling where we'll be sent. Barnes, find out where it took Commander Weisz!"

"What?" Tom demanded, distracted by the announcement. He had been heading for the turbolift, but quickly doubled back. There was no telling where she could have been beamed to, especially if the computer continued to exert its control.

Shaking it off, Tom threw his badge on the floor, not paying attention at all to where it landed, as he ran to his console. As he tried to manipulate the console, lights all around it began to flash, and buttons were disappearing just before he tried to tap them. "Captain," he said looking up, trying to maintain his composure. "I take it back. We've got to shutdown the computer. We've got to shut down Triumphant."

"Acknowledged, Captain, turbolifts now offline," the computer stated. All over the ship, each turbolift stopped suddenly regardless of being occupied or not. In front of the doors, though not seen by anyone, force fields were erected.

In the middle of the officers present, the familiar blue hue of the transporter began to form close to the ground. It didn't take long before the figure of Commander Weisz was revealed, only she didn't look much like she did moments ago. She was unconscious, her once tanned skin a shade of blue that would belong to someone exposed to below freezing temperatures, and her fingertips were bloodied and torn.

"Maddy!" Tom shouted, running over to catch her. She was cold... damn cold. This ship picked a hell of a time to go without a Chief Medical Officer. "We need a medic!" he shouted, even though he was sure there was not one on the bridge.

The bridge was chaos as Douglas emerged from the Ready Room, having discarded his comm. badge in the room behind him. This situation was really starting to remind him of his sabotaged ship, even the computer acting crazy. When the commander reappeared, he started to move forward to catch her, but was beaten to it by Barnes. Immediately changing direction, he made his way to his console and tried to assess the security situation.

A flicker appeared near Tom and Maddy and the EMH appeared. "What is the nature of...holy frozen Executive Officers and males in need of neutering!" it said in a voice between shock and disgust.

She knelt down and checked Maddy's pulse while watching Barnes as if he were going to try to do something male to her. "Get me a medical kit!" she snapped at him.

Immediately, an aide appeared with a kit, opening it and handing the medical tricorder and a hypospray to the EMH.

Kelani sighed with relief as she felt the deck firmly under her feet again. She hurried out of the Ready Room, quickly discarding her comm badge at the Captain's order, making her way to her station to begin analyzing the pattern of the various occurrences.

She was brought up short when Commander Weisz rematerialized. She moved to he!p.

At the appearance of the EMH she paused, waiting to be of assistance. Her lips tightened at the actions of the EMH.

"There is no need to be so gruff," she chided the hologram. "There is quite a bit of stress here now."

She watched the EMH warily.

Priscilla, Alex's Yeoman, appeared on the Bridge. "Good afternoon, Alex," she said, holding out a container. "The transporter armbands and secure communicators you asked for." She handed the box over to her Chief and smiled. "Is there anything else?"

Alex reached out to take the box and smiled. "That'll be all for the moment," he said. "Thank you for you promptness, Priscilla." He watched her smile and disappear again. Alex set the box down, opened it, and began handing out it's contents. There were enough personal transporter armbands and secure communicators for the Senior Staff there. While the others were getting theirs out, he hand-delivered a pair of each to Chief Barnes. "Here," he said. "One each for you and the Commander. With the EMH's permission, you should be able to transport her and yourself straight to Medical. And don't worry. They're connected to an isolated section within the Intel Computer Complex."

Tom just glared at Lieutenant Rho. Though Barnes was a senior officer, he was significantly outranked by every single other member of the panel. Hell, he was the only enlisted person on the bridge. Between the shiny EMH, the beaming in and out, gravity cutting out, and even the dysentery on the Ops screens... Tom didn't trust anything about the computer at all. There was not a chance in hell that he'd take that communicator. All of the ship's systems were connected somehow, and whatever was in the computer had made very quick work. There were no guarantees, in Tom's mind, that it would work.

He looked down at the frozen woman in his arms, where a thought struck him. Looking up at the Captain, he said in a strangely calm voice. "Captain, I think it's time to consider that we are dealing with a lifeform." After all, it made perfect sense. The computer had no reason to beam Maddy back onto the bridge. Yet, here she was.

"Agreed," Michael said. "See what you can do."

"Life form or no we need to disconnect it from primary systems." Marisa said with a pressing cadence as she tossed her badge to the ground. "We've got 4000 souls on board this ship and our primary concern should be making sure they're safe. We can worry about the computer becoming self aware after that, but right now we need to move." She looked at Barnes with an intense expression, she'd heard some water cooler talk about the him and the XO. She knelt down next to him and placed an arm on his shoulder "Chief, you need to leave her and let the bridge crew look after her." she said, her inflection softening a bit "You're the best bet and reigning this thing in before it starts playing with the intermix settings."

Tom was torn. In his twenty years of service, he had seen a lot. Among the rare moments were privileges to greet five new lifeforms, and thankfully only two were hostile. And, even in his time teaching among the enlisted schools, Starfleet placed a high value on lifeforms, regardless of how they were discovered.

And then, in his arms, was Maddy. They had not been together long, but he cared for her deeply. No matter how much he loved her, he still had to remember that he was a member of Starfleet, and he had an oath to maintain. For that reason, he locked eyes with the Flight Commander for a moment. "With respect, ma'am," he said as calmly as he could make out. "You may outrank me, but you're not the captain, much less my supervising officer." With that, he turned to look at the Captain.

Marisa retracted her arm and looked at the Chief quizzically "That was a firm suggestion, bordering on a plea, not an order chief." She managed to say with a slightly apologetic inflection.

Michael looked at Cheshire. "Lieutenant Cheshire, why are you still here? Get those cores out of the fighters so we have something to work with." He went to take one of the transporter armbands and combadge from Rho and put them one. "Everyone, get a transporter armband and combadge and report to your stations. We have to take the main computer core offline."

"Aye aye sir." Marisa responded, some exasperation ebbing into her voice as she stood upright to her feet. Taking the items from the intelligence officer she looked at them skeptically. She place them on her person and punched in the relative coordinates to the hangar before vanishing in a shimmer of blue light.

"Captain," Tom said quietly, trying to indicate with a nod that someone needed to take Maddy from him. No matter how true Cheshire's words were, Tom didn't want to leave her side. But, he did have work to do. And if this life form was real, he was bound to not harm it unless the Captain ordered otherwise. The next few minutes were going to be critical for all.

Meanwhile the redheaded EMH had pressed a hypo to Commander Weisz's neck and ran the tricorder over her. "It seems that she was nearly flash frozen to just before the point of permanent injury," she said as she checked the tricorder. "She needs to be taken to Medical immediately."

Michael could sympathize with the look in Barnes' eyes and he nodded to the EMH and looked back at Barnes. "She'll be in good hands, Tom," he said, breaking tradition and crossing rank barriers in a moment of empathy. "I'll keep you updated."

Tom nodded, albeit slowly, before turning back to the EMH. "Take good care of her."

The EMH knelt down and lifted the freezing cold Commander in her arms and activated the transporter before the two shimmered off the bridge.

As soon as Maddy disappeared, Tom picked up the armband and combadge given to him. He eyed them suspiciously and then looked at where Maddy once lay. Regardless of how little he trusted the system, Tom knew he had no other choice. He activated the badge and the armband and transported directly to the computer core.

Kelani frowned at Tom's mentioning the possibility that this might be a lifeform. She spoke slowly, saying,"That is possible. This new lifeform is learning the parameters of his new body--Triumphant. We must not allow him full control of the ship."

So saying, she picked up a PADD and examined it, saying, "If there is a way to isolate the tricorder from the central computer in order to find a way to restrain and communicate with this lifeform.....if it is such."

She accepted a comm badge and transporter band, then moved to her station saying, "We must find a way to limit this being's actions and to communicate with him or her as well."

So saying, she began to pull up files and make notes on her PADD.

Douglas looked up from his console when the Intelligence Yeoman entered the bridge and watched what transpired between the officers clustered about Commander Weisz. He cared what happened to the commander as much as anyone -- except for Mr. Barnes, perhaps -- but he needed to be on top of the security situation, so he had stayed where he was.

The order by the captain to take the transporter armbands and secure communicators pulled him from his console only long enough to do as ordered. On one hand, he could understand why Barnes was suspicious of them; Starfleet ships did not really have any truly segregated systems, and secure protocols would only keep out a determined hacker for so long. Still, an order was an order.

Putting on the armband and the communicator, he returned to his station. His mind was processing the idea that they might be dealing with a life form, but the others seemed to be operating on an theory that the computer itself was becoming sentient, based on the things they'd said. He knew what sentient computers looked like, and this wasn't it. But something moving into the computer and learning what it was capable of was another matter. There was also the possibility that something was on the ship and hacking the systems, and that worried him.

Tapping the new comm., he called, =/\= Mr. Barnes, this is Mallory. Are the internal sensors still Reliable? =/\=

Tom's voice returned over the secure comm, =/\= "I wouldn't trust anything, Lieutenant." =/\= At least he was grateful to have materialized in one piece.

Not knowing what would happen next, Michael went to his chair and engaged the seat belt and prepared for the worst.