Disturbing Discoveries

Posted on Mon Aug 5th, 2019 @ 10:38am by

1,047 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: What Stalks The Night
Location: CO's Ready Room

The small pack laying harmlessly on the ground, glistening in the ambient light of the ship was what caught Bianca's attention. It was out of place. Trash on the otherwise clean floor of the ship, yet no one else seemed to notice it. With a sigh of annoyance as she crouched down to pick it up, Bianca turned it over in her hand before cursing, turning sharply for the nearest turbolift.

Her first thought had been to go straight to the Chief of Security, but a security breach this major was not something that would be taken lightly, and Captain Hood would need to be informed immediately.

The path to the CO's ready room was one she remembered easily so it didn't take long to get there, gel pack in hand, hitting the chime and waiting for him to allow her entrance.

His door chime was getting a work out today, he'd not long been back from talking to Lt Luthar about the arrangements for a passenger ferry back to Earth that his door chimed informing him that someone was waiting. Will sighed, there seemed to be no end to it. "Yes, come." He spoke as he placed his old Coffee cup into the replicator again. When the doors opened he peered round the corner where the replicator was to see it was his First Officer. "Number One, getting settled early I see." Which was good to see. "What can I do for you?"

"Sorry to barge in on you like this Captain, but I have something I think you're going to want to see," she said calmly as she walked across to his desk, setting the gel pack carefully on the desk. "I think we may have a security issue involving the cargo." There was no point mincing words or wasting time.

The word cargo brought Will to a sudden stop. The Gel was not some average run of the mill stuff, it was highly classified, regulated and the records kept breathtakingly accurate. "Where did you get that?" Will asked. "Why is it here and not in the storage under guard?"

"I picked it up off the ground on deck ten," Bianca said quietly. "I almost missed it, just happened to glance down and there it was. I don't know how long it's been there or how it got there, but if this was laying in the middle of the deck then I'm going to assume that this can't be the only one missing." She drew in a sharp breath. "I'm about to head down to security, I want to review internal security footage and see if we can work out how it ended up on the deck at least, but I thought you should be aware first."

This was a disaster, not only was the cargo to be secured but this kind of breach would just be one other thing stacked up against him. Will ran his hands down his face in disbelief, this was serious. "I want everything by the book, recorded and logged." Will's only chance was to make sure that everything done after the discovery showed that he did what he could to make it right.

"Yes Sir," Bianca said quietly. "If we can identify the last person that had this particular pack how do you want it handled?"

"Take it to Sickbay, have Dr Patrovski run a DNA trace on it. Also have him check to see if the gel has been tampered with in any way." He hoped the gel was fine but he needed to be sure, he needed procedure. "I want a name, Commander."

"Understood Captain," Bianca replied quietly. "In the interim, I would suggest that we increase security within the cargo hold. Are we able to clear a delegate of armed guards for the inside of the cargo hold for a more hands on approach? Go with that whole, shoot first, ask questions later response?"

"Up the security, but, be mindful. Security was supposed to protect the cargo and this has happened so before you walk out of the Cargo Hold I need you to make sure that you are 100% satisfied of the arrangements, and a report written up for it." He'd use that report within his incident report that he was already dreading submitting.

Bianca grimaced. Report writing was one of the things she truly loathed, and it seemed that this was going to require a multitude of them. "Yes Sir. Do we have any Marines that might have appropriate clearances? It may help if we shake up security, bring in some Marines for extra eyes and arms?"

"We have over 800 marines, but none of them have been approved. Only yourself, Chief of Security, our Chief Engineer, Dr Patrovski and myself have been approved. We can perhaps see if Bradshaw can install additional surveillance devices within the cargo hold." Will suggested thinking that Bradshaw could probably enjoy something to do.

"Then perhaps some kind of a proximity trip might be beneficial as well? A silent alert that notifies us of any physical presence in the cargo hold, excluding our bio signs?" Bianca asked. "It shouldn't be hard to whip something up for it, a lot of the base programming is already in the ships security systems."

"Raise it with Bradshaw, we need to plug this breach of security." Will spoke, this incident concerned him deeply, he was trusted with the cargo and someone tampered with it and he knew there would be many questions that would be asked and he better have the answers to them.

"Yes Captain. Is there anything else or shall I go and get started?" Bianca asked, picking the gel pack up again and holding it carefully in her hands.

"Get started...." Will sighed. "I have...much more work to do now." Will resigned himself that the brisk few hours left of his shift had just become jam packed full of reports, details and write ups.

With a nod, Bianca started toward the door, then paused and turned back toward him. "I suggest a good old Irish Coffee Captain," she said with an easy grin. "It's good for calming the nerves." Without waiting for a response she disappeared through the doors and started for security. This day suddenly just got VERY long.

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