The Chirpers funerary rites involve supporting the bodies on three-metre tall platforms and gathering around the area, chanting songs about the virtues of the deceased. Only the adults participate in the ritual, the juveniles watching the children in the meantime. Billy gets close with his tricorder, recording every nuance of the proceedings. He's been able to identify the leadership of four separate groups and notes how their leaders interact with Chiree as they celebrate the lives of the decedents. It seems to him that although their is an undertone of grief the main gist is to remember the positive impact the deceased Chirpers had on their families and flock, as well as the contact they had with the other flocks. Even their rivalries are cast in a positive light. Competition is seen in Chirper society as an impetus for the individuals to make themselves better and improve the whole society. At the end of the ceremony, Chiree uses a primitive fire-starter to light a torch and set the biers—which have been doused in an accellerant—alight. The bodies blaze away and are quickly reduced to ashes which are gathered and spread over the field. From beginning to end, the cremation ceremony takes about six hours.

Billy notices Cdr Glaucus observing him intently and seemingly approving of Billy's attention to details.

Lt Nathan decide to continue helping the little Chirper.
Setting up an area so they can come to him for medical help.
The help he give he carefully balances not to be to much to make them over dependent on him.
If any of the Chirper seems to have any medical understand of their species and willing to talk to Lt Nathan then he does his best to learn what the Chirper know.
Trying to learn more about the little creature.  He also tries to find if this knowledge is passed down and how they do this.

OOC: Thank you, rest saved for reading at work

In reply to Relic GM (msg # 12):

Jon, not being a xenologist or sociologist, does not find the funeral rites as fascinating as some of the Starfleet personnel in the crowd. After the excitement of the last 24 hours, he welcomes the chance to relax a little. But he eventually starts to become a bit bored, and spends more time looking at the surrounding landscape and sky than at the Chirpers.

-------------quote--------------
Suffice it to say that Billy does not personally have much, of this information, but can readily access it through the LCARS system or in the stack of PADDs he's been given as deep background hand has not had time to peruse.

The Kapecki seem to be biological androids

(Snipped, but read)

With regard to the Computer security measures, Olivaw says, "The Computer Avatar is a self-aware AI subroutine which was largely able to resist the Finorii hacking attempts. We do not as yet have an understanding of how the Romulans gained access to its systems, but Thera is our foremost computer security expert and we'll also be working with Starfleet experts with knowledge of Romulan information technology."
Relic GM
-------------quote--------------

OOC: Okay!  Thank you.

-------------quote--------------

The Chirpers

The Chirpers funerary rites involve supporting the bodies on three-metre tall platforms and gathering around the area, chanting songs about the virtues of the deceased.

[Snipped but read]

Billy notices Cdr Glaucus observing him intently and seemingly approving of Billy's attention to details.
-------------quote--------------

How people relate to death tells us important things about how they relate to life.

OOC: What are they going to do with the Damaged Kapecki fellow?  He may be one of the earlier attacking Kapecki.  They'll need to find a safe place to repair him, but keep him from doing any harm.

And how are such creatures repaired/healed?


-------------quote--------------
Lt. Nathan Pierce MD
 Medical Officer, 24 posts
 Betazoid male
 Lieutenant

Lt Nathan decide to continue helping the little Chirper.
Setting up an area so they can come to him for medical help.
The help he give he carefully balances not to be to much to make them over dependent on him.
If any of the Chirper seems to have any medical understand of their species and willing to talk to Lt Nathan then he does his best to learn what the Chirper know.
Trying to learn more about the little creature.  He also tries to find if this knowledge is passed down and how they do this.
-------------quote--------------

OOC: Good idea!

In reply to Lt (jg) Jonathan Clare (msg # 15):

While Jon is looking around, examining this and that, he notices a sudden movement in the grass. Looking more closely, he spots some scorched spots on the vegetation. Nearby, he spots something skittering along the ground. He also smells a faint trace of burnt lubricant. Pulling out his tricorder, he detects airborne particulate matter which appears to be the residue of the plasma fire. Looking closer, he sees a heat-discoloured bit of metal inching its way through the undergrowth. The tricorder does not detect anything other than the plasma residue. The object appears to be a part of a self-sealing stem-bolt assembly warped out of shape and barely recognisable. The object does not seem to be giving off any heat, but Jon is wary of touching it. There are no energy readings coming from the object.

Tony comes up behind Jon and says, "Ay, paisan! What's up? You as bored by all the administrivia as I am?"

Jon is so intent on observing the object that he almost jumps out of his skin at the interruption.
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:27, Mon 05 Aug 2019.

In reply to Billy's concerns, Olivaw says, "As androids, we do not see ourselves as true individuals but rather as autonomous units in a vast network. No, not like the Borg that Captain Samson has described. We are not a hive intelligence, but you can think of us as an advanced peer-to-peer network. It's difficult to put it into terms you can understand constrained as you are by spoken language, but the closest I can come is comparing us to the Bynars, a Federation species. Indeed, several Bynar pairs are on the liaison team with us at Starbase 21. We find dealing with them most... satisfying.

"With our damaged compatriot, we will copy his entire engram to a buffer and run a thorough scan to detect any... malware, I believe your term is... and check his components and operating system for his original identity. We will them scrub his cortex and reinstall software to his original specifications and reintegrate the recovered memory engrams. This will take approximately six of your stardates, or two days. During that time, a surgical team will be repairing his injuries. It's closer to biological microsurgery than anything you would recognise as robotics and should be done by the time his reprogramming is complete.

"After R. David [He pronounces it Dah-veed, much the way it is pronounced in Hebrew] is restored to operational status, he will be inspected by Commanders La Forge and Data of the starship Enterprise in coordination with Cdr Bruce Maddox of Starfleet Cybernetics, all of whom consult with the liaison team at Starbase 21. Once this review is completed, he will be assigned to Dyson Station."
This message was last edited by the player at 21:47, Mon 05 Aug 2019.

In reply to Relic GM (msg # 17):

Jon takes a moment to calm his racing heart. "Dammitall Tony!" he hisses quietly, not wanting to interrupt the last moments of the funeral rites. "Don't sneak up on me like that!"

Jon then points to the piece of metal that is making its way slowly across the ground. "Look at this! I have no idea what it is"

[OOC: How big is this piece of metal?]

Double checking that the metal is not giving off any heat, Jon very gently nudges it with the toe of his boot.

When Jon looks back at the ground, the bit of metal is nowhere to be seen. The only trace is the hand-sized patch of burnt grass and the smell. The tricorder still does not reveal the piece of metal, though Jon runs it through a full spectrum of bands. The airborne particulate still shows up and he takes a full scan of it and the burnt area. Jon even notes a small pebble immediately adjacent to where the metal bit was. It gives him a size reference—the pebble is about 2.5cm across, and the metal item was about twice that size. It was flexing at the half-way point and was heat discoloured an iridescent range of colours from deep titanium gold to vivid violet.

Tony says, "What're you doing on your knees? Praying or something? Didn't know you were religious."

When Jon describes the item, Tony replies, "That's odd. Let me get my kit. Wait right here!" and runs off. He returns about five minutes later with his tech assessment tricorder and a small engineering tool kit including a sample container large enough for an object twice the size of the one Jon had described.

By then Jon has located the metal item under a leaf, which seems to be completely inert and now shows up on the tricorder as a simple bit of monotanium. There are no energy readings and no sign of a joint where it had been flexing. It is no longer hot even though it is clear that at one time it had been hot enough to burn living plant matter, at least a few hundred degrees. Jon wisely does not touch it with his hands. Tony hands him a pair of insulated gloves.
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:47, Tue 06 Aug 2019.

In reply to Relic GM (msg # 20):

"That's odd!" exclaims Jon. "I've never seen a piece of metal hide before"

Jon puts on the glove and then gingerly tips the piece of metal over so that it is lying on its "back". If that doesn't provoke any reaction, he gently picks it up and puts it in the sample container.

"Any sign of residual heat?" Jon asks Tony. "Just a few minutes ago this was scorching grass!"

Jon also looks around to see if there are any other patches of scorched grass. Maybe this thing left a trail, or maybe there is more than one of them.

Actually, the grass was scorched several hours ago, consistent with the crash time. There is no smell of freshly burnt grass, just the burnt lubricant smell. The trail of disturbed soil from the burnt patch of grass to the leaf where the metal was found shows no signs of heat. The metal is not flexible or jointed but just a bent piece of monotanium, according to the tricorder. Jon's never heard of monotanium, but the database indicates it to be an alloy only previous logged in the Delta Quadrant by the USS Voyager, as reported via Project Pathfinder. Monotanium is a metallic alloy typically used in the armor plating of Hirogen warships and space stations. It also has the added effect of scattering targeting beams. Although the metal seems to be part of the wreckage from the Romulan runabout, there is no record of the Romulans using the alloy.

"Where in Finagle's Damnation did the Roms get an alloy from these Heerogen. Would this property of scattering targeting beams futz around with the tricorder?" Tony muses as he links an engineering PADD to the LCARS network and begins typing on the touchscreen."See any more?"

Jon's been looking around and finds only a couple more burnt spots, both associated with spatters of molten and cooled alloys of diburnium and osmium, conventional in Romulan space vessels. He collects these in a pair of small sample tubes.
This message was last edited by the GM at 01:34, Sat 10 Aug 2019.

In reply to Relic GM (msg # 22):

Jon scans the monotanium sample again.

"Tony," Jon says. "Give me a hand here. Can you help me determine when this fragment was broken away from whatever it was attached to?" Jon explains his hypothesis that the monotanium was not part of the Romulan ship, and that it was already here when the ship crashed, or was part of its cargo.

"Hah!" says Tony. "Gotcha. One of my specialties is metallurgy. Let's get back to the Thames where I can do some more specific scans!"

He takes the sample box and leads Jon back to the runabout  and enters the functioning airlock. He heads over to the Technological Assessment station and places the piece of metal on a scanning platform. "Hmmm," he says, " It looks like pitting from some sort of welding process. I'll run a check to see if it was welded to another alloy." He positions a scanner probe over the metal fragment and activates a display screen.

"Mmmm-hmmm... Yeah..." He mutters to himself. "OK, definitely gamma-welded... Molecular traces of diburnium... Residual antiproton traces... Chroniton readings twice background level... What does that all indicate to you?"

He focuses more closely on the specimen. On the screen, Jon can see several bits of slag on the surface. They look like microscopic spiders melted to the chunk of metal. "What the hell? You see that, Jon? Those look like nannites, but a plasma fire should have vapourised any known type of nannite."

Jon gets a sinking feeling in his gut...

In reply to Lt (jg) 'Fast Tony' Gazzo (msg # 24):

"Ah, shit Tony!" Jon exclaims. "Could there be active nanites in the area? Was that what was making this piece of metal move? Start scanning!"

Jon taps his comm badge. "Lt. Clare to Lt. Sloane and LCdr. Glaucus! Could you come to the runabout please? We may have a situation!"

Jon also starts scanning the area, hoping that knowing what to look for will yield more informative results.

"Gotcha. Calling up external sensors," reports Tony, tapping away on the planetary mission ops console. "Scanning for nanites... Beginning a scan of a hundred metre radius centred on the crash site."

Jon's combadge chirps. "Glaucus here. What's up, Sloane? Just saw you and Gazzo running for your ship. What do you have for me?"

In reply to Lt (jg) 'Fast Tony' Gazzo (msg # 26):

Jon answers his communicator "Sir, we've detected what appears to be an unknown type of nanites mixed in with the debris of the crashed ship. We've also found other discrepancies with the debris, but the nanites are our main concern. We are doing more detailed scans of the area now."

Jon turns to Tony "Does your scanning area include the runabout and the place where we found this weird sample? We don't know if what we've found is actually related to the crash." To be on the safe side, Jon starts doing a detailed scan of the runabout, and kicks off a diagnostic of the runabout's computer systems.

"Nah, we're almost a klick and a half from the crash site. The monotanium was found about 90 metres from the crash, so it's within my scan radius. I can increase the scan to two klicks if you want but it'll wa-a-ay slow down the processing time." says Tony. "Damn, if we had an intact sample it'd be so much easier, but all we have are nanoscale crispy critters. The plasma fire altered the molecular makeup of the nanites."

The door opens and LCdr Glaucus steps in. "Sloane's right behind me," he says. "Got any imagery on these nanites?"

Jon calls up an image showing the fried nanites.

In reply to Lt (jg) 'Fast Tony' Gazzo (msg # 28):

"Just to recap," Jon says, "Tony says that, although these are partially melted, the plasma fire would have completely vaporized any known nanites. Also that piece of metal is monotanium, previously only seen in the Delta Quadrant.

"One more thing..." Jon hesitates for a moment, "I know this sounds crazy but I swear I saw this piece of metal crawling over the grass outside. That is what brought it to my attention."

"Excuse me, but you're getting a bit out of my area of expertise. I'm primarily a social scientist. This looks like a simple piece of metal. How does a solid chunk of alloy move? Were the nanites responsible somehow?" Glaucus looks puzzled.

Tony breaks in, "If I can get it into a full Technology Assessment lab, I may—just may—be able to tease out some of the subatomic makeup of the nanites. That could possibly point to an origin. The only way I can conceive that the nanites could be responsible would be if they were manipulating one or more of the four basic atomic forces."

Glaucus's eyes glaze over. "Four basic forces? You mean like electromagnetism and gravity and so on?"

Tony nods, "And the strong and weak nuclear forces. That's right. Unfortunately," he grimaces, "We don't have the equipment here to work at that level."

"Anyhow," says Tony, "Here's a standard medical nanite as used by Starfleet." He displays an image on the screen.


"And here's a Borg nanoprobe..." A second image replaces the first.


"A lot of what we know about these li'l buggers comes from LCdrs La Forge and Data, based on their examination of nanoprobes taken from Capt Picard after he was briefly assimilated. The rest comes from USS Voyager by way of the Pathfinder Array. Apparently they have a tame Borg on their crew. Gotta wonder how they keep it in check," he muses. He gives a shudder. "Nasty stuff. You'll notice they're smaller and more versatile than our medical nanites. The USS Challenger, Talja's sister's ship, just got back from being MIA in some sort of time loop where they were in a Borg-infested alternate reality for two years. Let's hope thay brought back some useful intel."

"Do you think these nanites are actually Borg nanoprobes?" asks Glaucus.

"Nah. How would the Rommies get hold of Borg nanoprobes? At least without getting 'similated, anyhoo?" Tony scoffs.

OOC.  Getting caught up.  Will post a reply tonight or tomorrow.

In reply to Lt Zedrick Sloane (msg # 32):

Zed questions.  “First are we sure it came from the Romulan runabout or is it just a coincidence?  Second we have to assume like the Federation, the Borg have engaged the Romulans as well.  So they may have had similar success obtaining nanites. If it is the latter, we need to ask why a Romulan runabout would bring them here.  Is it possible that they were hoping to utilize them to take control of the sphere? Lt. Gazzo, can you tell if these are Borg tech, and if they have been modified?”

"Well, like I said, Boss, there's evidence that it was gamma-welded to something, and when we do some deeper scans we should be able to detect atomic traces of just what it was welded to or at least what specific gamma-welding techniques were used. It's kinds like forensics—every bit of info we can find is just another brick in the wall. 'Nough bricks and we can reconstruct the most likely culprits. Starting out, we already have some bricks—The material is monotanium, the only known source of which is the Delta Quadrant. Secondly, the Delta Quadrant is the territory of the Borg. Third, the Romulans had contact with the Borg before we did, back on stardate 41986.0, when they assimilated several Romulan bases along the Neutral Zone. Not jumping to any conclusions, that does give us the basis for a working hypothesis. Could be nothing. We need to ask Cdr Olivaw what kind of nanotech they have, and whether they use monotanium." This is a long speech even for Tony, but he eventually stops for breath.

Glaucus looks toward Zed. "Sloane, what's your opinion - do you trust these Kapecki? Are they actually potential allies or are we jumping to conclusions led by a story of victimhood? After all, we've had some unfortunate encounters with android societiesmdash;the Exo-III androids, Mudd androids, even the Borg—yes, I know they're not technically androids but they are computer intelligences merely wrapped in stolen bodies. It reminds me of a century ago on Magna Roma before First Contact with the Federation. Artificially created beings are not so different from the slaves we used to depend on. We have horror stories about slave rebellions. Earth had its share as well, like the story of Spartacus though we of Magna Roma regard it as perverse that he's regarded as the hero of the story."

Tony says, "Yeah well, Terrans have some crazy ideas. Back in the 20^th and 21^st centuries they has whole genres of fiction about robots, androids and cyborgs revolting and causing an apocalypse. Talja showed a a holodrama called Frankenstein where a primitive android causes a panic even though he's just a misunderstood goombah."
This message was last edited by the player at 00:24, Sun 25 Aug 2019.

Meanwhile, while R. Olivaw is seeing to R. David, Dr. Adonidas takes Nathan in hand and inspects the hospital in the medical module. This is the special-purpose lower module dropped off by an Atlantic class runabout before the sleep break. Nathan is familiar with the specs of the medical module, but since the Atlantic class is new he's never seen one in operation.

The module has two rows of medical beds along the walls (11 beds) and a nursing station, with a transporter module between the entry airlocks. At the front of the module is a low alcove with two stasis beds, and at the aft end are two surgical suites with sterile fields. Between the two surgical suites is a double door leading to a triage space with an external ramp, flanked by medical and drug storage rooms. Chirrip, Chiree and Churuu's bearer, has been moved to one of the medbeds and is sleeping peacefully, a terile dressing over her wounded arm and the stump of her wing. Unusual among creatures with compound eyes, Chirpers—and presumably Droyne or Finorii—have eyelids and new scar tissue generated by the protoplaser is visible on the eyelid over her damaged eye. Churuu looks up at Nathan with a look of deep and abiding gratitude which Nathan can also feel through his empathic senses.

Billy, on the other hand, seems to have been left to his own devices. He decides he has two logical choices—go over and talk to the gathered flock leaders after the funeral rites—or follow Glaucus to see what the urgent message from Jon was.