"Message sent to Engineering and acknowledged." the officer at the Engineering station reports. "All systems within normal tolerances aside from the power distribution overload on deck 12. Repair teams will arrive to address the problem shortly."

Kotar returned to the bridge but did not relieve his junior at the Opps Station. He had an imminent meeting with the captain in the Ready Room and stepped to one of the auxiliary control surfaces to initiate a ship-wide diagnostic survey. A failure in a small sub-system might be chance, but this was a newly refitted ship, and if the refit crew had been hasty . . . He'd rather be safe than sorry.

@Kotar Perform a Scan 19:24, Today: Starfleet, on behalf of Kotar Krenn Sogh, rolled 8 using 2d6 ((6,2)). WEAK SUCCESS Hold +1

Precise Scanner +1 Hold

Spending 1 Hold on your behalf to answer the question: 'what has happened here' - you keep 1 hold to use as you see fit.

The operations diagnostics confirm that the refit was done by the book. The fail safes on deck 12 didn't malfunction, they were deactivated. You track the cause of the problem to a manual over ride; someone using the former Captain's access codes deliberately shut down the power buffers.

Kotar squirts the relevant data to the Chief Engineer and the Captain on a secure channel. He notices that Norn has already placed a security alert on any use of those credentials again and begins a deeper probe to see if he can determine exactly when and where the override was initiated. And what other "updates" may have been authorized by the same credentials in the last few days.

@Kotar spend 1 Hold.

The power distribution buffers were shut down back in repair dock, just over 24 hours ago, during the welcome reception on Starbase 211. The overload was caused by the power fluctuations that Engineering has been working to fix and wouldn’t have been a catastrophic failure if the buffers hadn’t been sabotaged.

There are four other instances of access using the same authorization. All from the same time. Three target overload buffers elsewhere in the ship.  Engineering can probably figure out how solve those issues.

The fourth lies deep in the communications array.  You can’t tell what it does or how it works, you’ll need to take the array offline to get at the potentially malicious code…

Norn made his way to the bridge, checked in, and then made his way to the ready room. There was a lot to discuss.

He tried to keep the concern off his face, well, more than a junior officer would have just for having his position.

Iren took a moment to finish checking over the console (and making sure of the layout).  Then he proceeded to the Ready Room, as per the captain’s order.  Maybe some explanations at last.  And they’d have to be good.  Good enough that - at the least - the Romulans couldn’t easily dismiss them,

—> Ready Room
This message was last edited by the player at 09:06, Sun 13 Mar 2022.

Commander Brynn looks up from whatever bit of reading she'd snuck into the brief moment of calm. "Senior staff, to the Ready Room?" she politely offers the order, a smiling request. "Lieutenant Monroe? Please watch the bridge. It's easy. Just make sure we don't run into anything."

—> Ready Room

"Aye, Commander," Valéria replied, logging out of the terminal.

With a nod, she allowed a Junior Lieutenant female Kelpien named Seelo to take the Tactical Station. That done she followed the Commander into the ready room, her face already set in a grim line.

To: Ready Room

Only once everyone was present and seated did the Captain turn and take her seat. "We will begin this meeting with a briefing by Lt. Norn and Lt. Krenn. Please inform us what you what whilst analysing the power grid and attempting to determine the cause behind the loss of power to Sickbay."

Edit: moved post to Ready Room
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:04, Sun 13 Mar 2022.

Returning to the Bridge, Kotar does not relieve the junior lieutenant at the Opps station, leaving her in charge of the routine functions of helping to run the massive starship. Instead, he moves to one of the side panel interfaces and summons up a series of utility screens to plot his deep analytical probe of the many subsystems. He will spend time here putting together an overall strategy of how to find any hidden pitfalls the saboteur may have created.

Ready Room —>

Arriving back at the Science station, Iren sets to work.  Figuring that the sensors might be sabotage targets, he commences scanning local space with the full range of instruments correlating the results and looking for anomalous readings.

@Kotar Perform a Scan 10:26, Today: Starfleet, on behalf of Kotar Krenn Sogh, rolled 9 using 2d6 ((6,3)). WEAK SUCCESS Hold 1

@Iren Perform a Scan 10:27, Today: Starfleet, on behalf of Lieutenant Commander Iren Thatyil, rolled 10 using 2d6+2 ((3,5)). STRONG SUCCESS Hold 3

As you both probe the ship's subsystems, you are met with another signal doing the same thing. It looks like someone working in Security is chasing after the same ghosts in the machine. With a few quick adjustments to your control panel, you are able to network your panels directly to the security office.

"Crewman Laillalos here Sirs." comes the reply, "I'm currently scanning the communications and subspace emitters, but haven't noticed anything amiss. Whoever buried these problems in the system was really good with automated subroutines and algorithmic manipulation."

Spend Hold to ask a question or add a detail.

Taking his findings, and Crewman Laillalos‘ information into account, Iren assesses the situation, and formulates a plan to uncover any further sabotage to the computer systems.

Spend 1 Hold: What should I be on the lookout for?

@Iren Running through the diagnostics logs, you see that so far the saboteur or saboteurs have focussed their efforts on sub processors controlling major subsystems. They tampered with existing code to make the systems less robust and prone to failure while avoiding inserting something foreign that would be picked up in scans. Nothing about the systems they have tampered with seems targeted. The Sickbay incident could have happened in Astrometrics, Auxiliary Systems or Communications. It just happened in Sickbay first.

I spend 1 Hold to Establish a Fact, and I think this will qualify as Spout Technobabble (even if it doesn’t strictly match the description). Regardless of that Insightful Analysis lets me give Advantage Forward to the first roll following up on this

Iren looks over the data, until he sees another anomaly.  He reports over the comms to the others working on the problem  “The saboteurs have inserted a worm program interfering with authentication - it hides the revocation of Captain Maxwell’s command codes from the subsystems..  We must eradicate the worm and revert the subsystems to untampered code.  We may require a phage program to guard against further instances of the worm.  Until the worm is neutralised our efforts to undo the sabotage may swiftly be undone.”

"We are barely under way and already we are fighting poisonous code," growls Kotar. "Should we not return to the star base and have the main processors restored from a clean copy of the ship's memory banks?"

He's well aware that the Klingon way would be to tough it out and fix it on the fly, but he had thought the Federation more level headed in their approach to problems. And their Captain is a Vulcan, legendary paragons of logic. Surely it makes most sense to get the problem fixed by experts while they have them close at hand. They have barely left the ship yards.

Of course there may be saboteurs back on the star base who would simply reinstall the bad code more carefully hidden next time, but it is equally probable that the saboteurs are actually on the ship right now, among the many new crew members. Or even someone from the previous complement who knew the old captain's codes.

To use an analogy from the age of wheeled traffic, it seems like they are trying to fix a flat tire while the car is still moving.

@Kotar As you mull over human fallibility and the futility in continuing the voyage while the ship systems are compromised, fate seems to intervene.

On your comms panel:

>>>Priority Transmission
>>>All channel distress call

"zzzt science vessel Horizon en route zzzt Gamma Lilsis 26 Dubhe Sector zzzt attack, ambushed we lost our sensor array and zzzt zzzt unknown can't tell if zzzt still out there zzzt zzzt impulse malfunction, warp offline, dead in the water zzzt zzzt zzzt ... mayday mayday, science vessel Horizon..."

You get most of the message before the subspace channel collapses.

"Captain!" Kotar slaps his communicator to initiate a priority channel. "I am picking up a distress call from a science vessel . . . the Horizon, en route to the Gamma Lilsis 26 Dubhe Sector. They have been attacked and may still be in danger from an unknown assailant."

He pushes the original message thread to the Captain and the Science Officer, adding routing to Medical and Engineering as an afterthought.

<---- From: Ready Room

"Yellow alert," the Captain said as she stepped into the bridge. "Set an intercept course of the Horizon, warp seven. Ready weapons and shields."

She looked at her First Officer and nodded. It was time to get to work. She glanced over to her Ops Officer and nodded to him. They would see what this ship could so but also use the opportunity to try and flush the saboteurs into the open.

"Engage."

In reply to Lieutenant Commander Iren Thatyil (msg # 46):

"I see what you mean Sir," replies Crewman Laillalos over the networked array of workstations. "My review of the central computer confirms that Maxwell's access codes were removed according to security policy. It seems like the worm allows a local over-ride but fortunately it isn't system wide."

In reply to Captain Tleera (msg # 50):

"Aye Captian," reports the officer at the helm. "Estimated arrival time, 9 hours 37 minutes."

“Very good Lieutenant“ Iren levellly replies to Norn.  “Do you believe that you can solve the problems within nine hours? We have a developIng situation”. As he speaks, he touches controls on the science station, monitoring the situation

"Perhaps we can work together," Kotar approaches the other two officers: Thatyll and Norn. "We have some hours during which the ship will be in warp flight and our juniors can man our stations on the bridge while we adjourn to the Auxiliary Control Room and wrestle with the worm there. So we do not disturb the others."

He laughs, a short barking sound.

"I have a tendency to use . . .  colorful language when I am trying to solve a knotty problem."

“That seems like an acceptable plan” Iren replies, nodding.  His antennae swivel, surveying the atmosphere on the ridge.  “Captain, with your permission?”