<< From: Cryo Chamber

Micaela's nerves, which she had managed to squash on her way over here, flared up again at finding the reception area empty. She knew the ship's AI was compromised, but could it be worse than she thought? Was there still a sleeper routine in Marco that was looking for keywords in crew communications that would trigger some kind of hostile response program? Should she go back to her locker and pull out her tinfoil hat?

She looked down for a moment, at the tights and layered shirts, and sighed. Perhaps showing up in street clothes was not the best idea, but she was here now.

"Hello?" she called out. Wandering through security seemed a bad idea for many, many reasons.

   Jen had settled in with her second cup of coffee when the corpsman arrived.  "Thank you for being so prompt.  Is that the..."  She was about to say more when she heard someone calling out a hello.  "Excuse me, please.  It seems as if there is someone else who needs my attention.  I will be back as soon as I can."

   Lt. Maxwell stepped out of her office and went down the hall.  "Hello, please excuse the disorganization.  I won't have anyone for reception until tomorrow.  My name is Lieutenant Maxwell, Ship Security.  Are you Micaela Nieves?"

The other woman nodded, her posture straightening just a bit. "Yes ma'am."

   "Thank you for coming so promptly."  Jen smiled.  It was the friendly smile she had been working on before the freeze, not her usual cat finding a mouse smile.  "I read your report.  Allow me to ask a couple of questions, then I'll listen to what you have to say.  First, who authorized you to begin this line of investigation?  Second, had you considered the possibility that you were working at cross purposes to an official Security Office investigation?"  Lt. Maxwell's smile was not appearing all that happy at the moment.

Micaela's heart skipped two beats, but it was only because she didn't have a great relationship with authority figures to begin with, and she was about to get off on the wrong foot with another one.

"Staff Sergeant Blake Germaine and only if the official Security Office investigation was trying to cover up the truth. Ma'am."

During her response the woman didn't look the other in the eyes, but as she finished her gaze swung to meet Jennifer's. She didn't have a particularly high view of the American military personnel on board the ship. She knew why they were there, and even accepted the reason as mostly valid, but she wasn't keen on being intimidated.

   Jenni looked at the civilian for a long minute.  "You are not a cop.  I am.  If you continue working this case, you will do it under my supervision.  That means you work for me.  That means you work with me.  You do not send partial and incomplete evidence reports to everyone on the command staff, when one or more of them could be in on the plot.  You bring evidence you find to me."

   Lt. Maxwell kept her voice level and calm.  "I use your evidence as pieces of the puzzle.  I use the medical and autopsy reports as pieces of the puzzle.  I use fingerprints, DNA traces, and other physical evidence collected as pieces of the puzzle.  When I have enough puzzle pieces to put together, I get a picture of what happened."

   The Detective took a deep breath and let it out slowly.  "You have three options.  One, you work with me to solve this.  Two, you turn everything over to me and go back to your regular duties.  Three, you keep at this on your own, then I lock you up for interfering with a criminal investigation.  It's decision time.  Please choose wisely."

Now this was the kind of thing Micaela could get behind. None of that passive aggressive nonsense the cop had lead with. Direct, to the point and reasonable. She might get along with this other woman after all.

"I don't have any regular duties to attend to. Marco woke me up on accident. My job doesn't really kick in until we find a ball of dirt and we start poking at it. So all I've got is time, and the idea of waiting around patiently for the Marco AI to kill us all doesn't seem like a great way to spend that time."

"If I can be helpful I want to be, so I reached out to the ranking officer with permission to access Marco's code, and he sent me to cryo to check the logs. If that was in error then there might be issues with the chain of command because I'm fairly certain the Staff Sergeant is following roughly the same line of inquiry."

"But that's well outside of my business. If this is how I help, then let me know what you want me to do. I was planning to co-opt the maintenance and repair drones on the ship to do a manual sweep to look for physical blind spots on board, but if you have something better for me to do I'm all ears."

"Oh, and one last thing. I didn't send my findings to everyone on the command staff. I send one copy to the Staff Sergeant and one to the highest ranking member of the command staff. Since I didn't know who that was, I had to trust in Marco to route the message. If it sent the message out wide that's likely leftover code from the saboteur."

   "Marco, log Micaela Nieves as a civilian consultant to this office.  Duration of assignment is to be determined."

   Jen turned her attention to the newest member of the Section.  "Welcome to the Security Section.  Find an empty desk and write up a report of what you found and the process you used to find it.  Then take the rest of the day off to help recover from the effects of thawing out.  Be here at eight AM shiptime tomorrow to start the duty day.  Any questions?"

Micaela was tempted to challenge her new boss right away. After all, it seemed like she had joined the team just to get put on the bench. But perhaps the caution was warranted. It wasn't like she had any experience with century long cryo-sleep. Reality could hit her upside the head any moment now. And besides...

"What do I call you?"

...the stranger in front of her would probably want to review the drone pilot's records before entrusting her to do much of anything.

"I'm sure I'll have more questions later, but what you're asking seems straight forward enough."

   Lt. Maxwell looked at her new hire.  "Good.  Let's start with Lieutenant or Ma'am.  We can figure the rest of this out in the morning.  Now if you will excuse me..."

   Jen headed back to her office and the corpsman with information for her.  She sat behind her desk.  "Sorry for the interruption.  You were about to tell me something?"

Hans is standing somewhat sheepishly, eyebrows raised
"Yeesh,if that's how you treat people you're offering a job I don't want to see what it's like when they actually make your angry"

He clears his throat and then holds up the folder before passing it over to her.
"All I could get for you's in there, I'll upload a copy to the database as well, but you struck me as the kind of person who likes to have it there in hardcopy."

He stands up straight and his voice takes on a matter of fact tone
DNA test shows him to be one Fred Green, 35 years of age and an IT specialist from from Langley,Virginia...Listed as a civilian assigned to pod 4997...His data's in the folder.

Cause of death is unsurprisingly the bullet wound, it is in fact his only wound...Bullet is a .22, from my knowledge of firearms it's a pretty common bullet used on eart-" He looks a bit uncomfortable as he catches himself. "or at least it used to be..."
He clears his throat again and starts again "I wanted to be thorough so I checked if any of the ships regulation firearms use .22 rounds, they don't. It could be a personnel weapon of course but that's more your department than mine..."

He finishes and stands back slightly awkwardly considering the spiel he just rattled off.
He clears his throat for a third time "That's all I have for you at this time Ma'am, If you need anything else feel free to let me know.
Permission to carry on?"

   Jenni looked at the man.  "Keeping armed people from getting angry generally seems be a good idea."

   She listened to his report.  "I saw the entrance wound.  It seemed to be too large for a .22 round.  Could you conduct bone density tests to see if his skull was weakened due to calcium loss or some other abnormality?  This could be important to future investigations.  Also, I have two DNA samples for you to run against your medical records."

   "I would prefer that in the future, your reports be transmitted by physical data chip.  Most of our machines are not connected to the ship systems for security reasons.  Ongoing investigations should not be available to any hacker with a good skill set."  Jen paused a moment, then continued.  "And that should be all."

Hans nods "That should be possible" He reaches into his pocket and draws out a small medical dish and places it on Lt Maxwell's desk, inside can be seen the fragments of a deformed bullet.
He frowns suddenly "Hm, about the bone density...I'm not an expert in that particular field but it is known for bone density to be affected by a lack of gravity...but that would require Mr Green to actually be exposed to an area of zero gravity...Thanks to the Hawking field I'm not entirely sure if there are any areas like that on board the Marco Polo.
I'll do what tests I can, bear in mind that we are dealing with a pretty old cadaver here..."

He comes to attention then walks out, back towards medical.

Medical==>
This message was last edited by the player at 17:54, Tue 04 Apr 2017.

Micaela wandered Security for a bit, seeing as she was now an intern and all. And, after all, she had to see all of the offices if she was going to choose one appropriate to her station. She ended up in the office of the head of IS operations.

Her mysterious boss had implied this was the case, but the operator was still suitably impressed by the technical hardware present. It would seem ship security had a powerful secondary system entirely cut off from Marco's main system. Maybe even an AI of their own. But, despite Micaela's newfound rank, she could only look at the pretty lights. The system would hardly be considered secure if the coffee girl could access it.

After dropping into the large and comfortable seat Micaela put her feet up on the desk and popped open her laptop. She was only half thinking about the work she was doing, taking her previous report and adding the relevant operational procedures. Instead she spent more cycles wondering which of the two women would drive the other insane first. The Lieutenant hadn't even given her name. That sounded like a challenge.

---

Micaela's work was done in less time than it had taken her to find the office. She knew how to write an operational status report. Hell, her original had been 80% there. Done, she admired the office one last time (Lou was hardly going to let her come inside again) before stepping out to find some real food.

>> To: Barracks section

   Lt. Maxwell waited until Micaela had departed.  The Detective then read the report.  A lot of the pieces of information were things Jen had already uncovered, but the woman had meticulously documented her her research.  Micaela Nieves seemed to have a bit of an attitude, but as long as she followed procedures, Jen figured that they could make things work.

   Jen was about to close down the Section, when she reluctantly realized that she all had was the pistol on her hip and the clothing on her back.  She locked down the Section and headed over to the cargo hold to draw her initial issue of uniforms, equipment, and supplies.


To:  Cargo Hold

===>Medical

Hans enters and looks around the security reception, if there is security personnel there to give the lab results to or a mailslot of some kind he deposits the results, if not he resolves to give it to the Lieutenant next time he sees her.

After that he yawns and starts to look for the sleeping quarters assigned to him  as well as his belongings.

To:Cargo
This message was last edited by the player at 18:41, Sat 08 Apr 2017.

After his ordeal they call a workout Stephen once again visits security, still very much troubled by the missing fusion rods.
Yet once again, Lt. Maxwell is not there. He knew she wasn't, she was still at the gym, but he had deliberately decided to go here first. The reactor room was beginning to feel cramped to him, a prison instead of an office, an ordeal instead of a job. Seeing the security office empty pleased him. He grabbed a quick cup of coffee from the machine and sat down in a chair in the small lounge, intent on waiting for the lieutenant to show up. He was certain his crew wouldn't bother him while he was here.

From:  Barracks - Mess Hall

   Lt. Maxwell arrived at the Security Section at about seven thirty.  She had planned on getting an early start to the day only to find someone already sitting in the waiting area.  "Good morning, Mister Cornell.  I take it that this isn't a social call.  Give me a minute or two to open up the actual office area and then you can tell me what brought you here."

"Take your time Lieutenant. I'm not in any hurry to get back to the reactor core."
He waited for Jennifer to open up shop, relishing the cup of machine coffee he had managed to grab for himself. Despite the morning gymnastics pulling an all-nighter was beginning to have its effect on him. Weird really after 115 years of sleep.
"And no, it's not a social call, it's a matter of some importance really."

   Jen opened up the office area.  She then joined Cornell in the waiting area.  That way she could keep an eye out for any new arrivals, a task she couldn't do from inside her office.  "Let's sit out here.  This way it looks as if we're just having a friendly chat.  So, what is this matter of some importance?"

Cornell hands Maxwell a dataslate. Its the inventory of the reactor room storage. One piecve of it has been highlighted.
"As you can see, after inventory it turns out the storage is missing two cold fusion rods..."
He hesitates to continue, his face red in shame, or maybe fright.
"One of them would be enough, in the wrong hands, to blow up a small moon. Two... well... I have no idea what could be done with two. And I have no idea when they went missing. That could be anywhere in the past 115 years..."

   Lt. Maxwell looked at the display.  "This is serious news indeed.  I will need to make a copy of this information for my investigation.  I'll look at this from my end.  I'd like you to continue to look for the missing cold fusion rods.  Maybe they were mislabeled or stored somewhere else and are safely in storage somewhere."

<< From: Gym

The surprise workout had forced Micaela to raid her storage unit again, and when she walked into the security station she was wearing a tank top and cargo pants, her messenger bag with her laptop in it slung over one shoulder and across her body.

Seeing Lou was not a surprise, but seeing Mr. Cornell was. With her new provisional credentials she could get a list of everyone who was awake and what their job was on this ship, and seeing a senior engineer talking to her boss caused her no small amount of concern. Sabotage is what got them into this mess and the thought of finding more caused her stomach to drop.

She didn't immediately approach though. This conversation was not her business until Lou said it was, so she made sure the other woman knew Micaela was there, then she waited.
This message was last edited by the player at 13:41, Wed 26 Apr 2017.

"Thats just it Lt. I've already checked the entire inventory twice, and wherever they are, they are not in engineering. Its one crate, containing two rods, that is not in its place."
He looked troubled.
"I have even dispatched two men to the cargo bays, to check there. But they will probably need weeks just to work through all that."

   Lt. Maxwell smiled outwardly.  She still wondered what three people would do with all of the supplies and equipment they had stolen.  "I'll do what I can.  Thank you for bringing this to my attention.  I have the beginnings of an idea which might provide a solution to what has been happening.  May I call upon you for help once I get to the investigation stage?"