A Little Nght Music - Part 3

“Mistry to Crewman Brice.”

Nola was nodding off in her chair when she was startled awake by the announcement, and she banged her knee on the table as she sat up and reached for her wrist communicator. “Brice here, Ma’am.”

“Where?”

“Sorry?”

“Where is ‘here’, Brice?”

She glanced around. “The, uh, Mess Hall, Ma’am. Commander Gallop said I should-”

“Good, good. Bring up some chips and gravy.”

Nola blinked. “Um, aye, Ma’am. On my way. Brice out.” She rose, swivelled her bruised leg around a bit as she checked the chrono on the wall: 0130 Hours. She was alone.

And she noticed that they had stopped, and she looked out the windows to see… not what she expected to see: a black billowy cloud stretching out over many light years, but one that was laced with electric blue energy discharges, reminding her of the Martian sandfires she grew up observing. Why was it like that? Was it dangerous? Why didn’t she pay more attention in Astrophysics class?

And as she moved to the food synthesiser panel, she wondered why the Captain would want gravy with her potato chips. She almost keyed in the unusual entry… before she stopped and had a quick check in the Captain’s order history, hoping this wouldn’t be seen as a misuse of her temporary security level promotion.

Oh… ‘chips’ was apparently another term for ‘French Fries’, a favourite snack food of the British, usually smothered in gravy, curry sauce, or – ugh – vinegar and salt. Traditionally purchased as a takeaway food from outdoor venues, served in trays and wrapped in paper to keep the contents warm during transport home.

She smiled…

*

Minutes later she returned to the Bridge. Commander Gallop was still there, engrossed in a conversation with the Security Chief and the Helmsman over what looked like an elliptical course on the display over the Tactical station, and the general mood was even busier and more tense than when she was last here. Nola decided to not just stand there, and proceeded to the Captain’s Office, feeling more confident this second time.

The office had grown messier, with PADDs and old-fashioned books open and scattered about, along with the Captain’s jacket and the tray from the earlier meal.

Mistry was in view this time, the sleeves of her white undershirt drawn up past her elbows like some Shuttlerat moving crates, and she was pacing, her bare feet somehow managing to avoid her discarded boots and socks, and talking to herself. “Run the sine wave analysis on Recording 4401. Yes, you can go pee. Wait, on second thought, cross your legs and run it first.”

Nola watched, and as the older woman turned, she could see that Mistry had an old-fashioned silver receiver plugged into her left ear; it was a huge, clunky cylindrical device that looked like an ancient artificial satellite. She barely acknowledged Nola’s presence as she added to whomever she was talking to, “So? Everyone pees themselves a little once in a while; I’m doing it now, waiting for you to do your job.” Now she nodded to Nola, pointing to the clutter-topped desk.

Nola understood, bringing the parcel and clearing the space – which now included a Starfleet regulation bra, which she gingerly removed and dropped onto the chair – being more careful this time not to awaken a PADD and get another verbal lashing from the Captain. She set the paper-encased food down-

And barely avoided Mistry striding up and unwrapping the parcel with an expression that reminded Nola of a child with a birthday gift, the other woman’s eyes widening at the sight of the pile of gravy-covered chips. Greedily she began lifting them up with her fingers, consuming and breathing out quickly in response to the heat of them. She licked gravy off her fingertips as she looked to Nola and announced, “I’m promoting you to Admiral. This takes me back to rainy nights growing up in Walmington-on-Sea, and the old-fashioned vendors with stalls on the pier. What made you think to wrap them in paper?”

Nola flushed at the sudden change of attitude and the compliments. “Well, um, I was doing some-”

“What?” Mistry suddenly exclaimed with a frown; it took a heartbeat for Nola to realise she was responding to something she heard on her earpiece. “It has to be there, you pillocks! Do I have to come down there?” She paused as she ate another chip, listening and calming down visibly. “I do? Oh, okay. I’m on my way.” She paused again. “No, chips and gravy.” There was one more pause, and then she declared, “Get your own bloody food, Greedy Gutso!”

She removed the earpiece, setting it down beside her chips as she continued to eat. “Listen, Brice, I’m sorry if I was abrupt with you before, I get that way sometimes when I’m working on something-” Then she stopped and sniffed the air. “Is that you, or me?”

Nola flushed. “Ma’am?”

Mistry raised an arm and sniffed again under it. “It’s me, of course. How long have I been in here? Four days? Five?”

“Um, only one I think, Ma’am.”

The Captain winced at that. “I’ve always had a Low Putrefaction Threshold; another day in here and guaranteed I’ll be setting off the Biohazard alarms. One Mo.” She proceeded to the bathroom, leaving the door open as she ran the water in her sink and passed a facecloth under the stream. “How are you finding life on the Harken, Brice?”

Nola felt dizzy from the whiplash directions in talk and action that Mistry took. “It’s- It’s- It’s been-” She stopped herself.

Mistry was reaching beneath her undershirt, washing herself, when she leaned out of the bathroom doorway. “It’s been what?”

The younger woman flushed, wishing the older woman would move onto another subject. “Nothing, Ma’am.”

But the Captain wouldn’t let it lie. “Brice… you need to know that a reluctance to properly communicate is a cardinal sin on my ship. So, it’s been… what? There’s no wrong answers to this question.”

Nola cleared her throat. “Well, at first it seemed… routine. No offence, Ma’am, honestly-”

“Why would I be offended? Most of Starfleet life is routine. That doesn’t mean it’s not unimportant.”

Nola’s face heated up. “It doesn’t feel that way now, of course, Ma’am! What with what’s going on!”

“Why, what’s going on?”

“Um...” Nola hesitated, wondering if it was some sort of test. “Our diverting to the Agocho Cloud?”

“Cloud? What cloud? We’re at Beta Omicron. The logs say so.” Without waiting for a response, Mistry returned to her desk, picked up her chips and headed for the door. “Come along.”

Nola glanced down; the older woman was still bare footed. “Um, Ma’am-”

Mistry emerged onto the Bridge, took in the Cloud on the viewscreen and the activity around her and barked, “Commander! Contact the other ships and advise them to focus everything on the 600 to 700 Millicochrane subspace bandwidths! They’re at their most vulnerable in that sensor range! I have to go knock some heads together!”

Gallop glanced up at her, nodding, “Aye, Captain!”

Then Mistry motioned for Nola to follow her to the turbolift, Mistry ordering it, “Radio Shack.”

“Um, Captain,” Nola continued finally as the turbolift descended. “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable wearing something on your feet?”

She looked at her quizzically. “Why? Haven’t you and the Baby Blues being doing your job keeping the floors clean?”

*

The Radio Shack was the tallest room on the ship, encompassing Decks 2 and 3, a circular room originally designed for Stellar Cartography purposes, able to produce multiple holographic images overhead. The centre was dominated by the display tower, currently creating a holomap of the Agocho Cloud, criss-crossed with lines and curves and vectors, and audio waves dancing to their own music.

Nola followed directly behind Mistry, taking in the sight of the so-called Shack Pack: six civilians of various races, most visible and working at various stations… except for Professor S’Li, who reclined in a chair in the corner, eyes closed, snoring, his tail sticking out through a hole in the back of his chair and swishing lazily to his breathing.

Mistry ignored him, drawing up to Dr Leavitt. “Ruth?”

Leavitt was rubbing her eyes, accentuating her normal hangdog expression. “Nothing yet, Audie. Still working on it.” Then she noticed Nola, and smiled. “Hi again, Kiddo.”

From a nearby station, Dr Thizheris glared at her, antennae pointed in her direction. “The spy! You brought a spy in here, Captain!”

From another station, Haluk, a young Vulcan male with the stirrings of a neat dark moustache and beard, glanced up warily. “A spy? Should we not alert Security?”

“She’s no spy, Haluk,” Leavitt assured him. “Just stay focused on those algorithms.”

“We should have an armed guard in here,” Thizheris groused, still glaring at Nola.

Nearby, a diminutive humanoid, hairless but for his eyebrows, and smooth, almost infant-like features, sat at a station adapted for his size, and chuckled, speaking with a voice that sounded far older, with more than a hint of playful mischief to it. “Ahh, but what if the guard is a spy, too, Itath? What then?”

“Good point, Fesarian,” the Andorian replied. “We’ll need two. Maybe more.”

The humanoid laughed boisterously now. “And more and more and more, ad infinatum, ad nauseam! But could we ever have enough to confound this obvious master spy in our midst?” Then he looked over at Nola and winked.

Nola offered a sheepish smile back. Colossale was a Fesarian, one of the founders of the First Federation, once a vast political power in the Quadrant long before the current Federation. They had gone into sharp decline in recent centuries, and now restricted themselves to their own sector, keeping their huge worldships guarding their borders, and limiting contact with the rest of the Galaxy… though they didn’t mind exporting their alcoholic drink tranya.

And, in the case of Colossale, hiring themselves out as civilian experts in various fields, such as warp dynamics and propulsion theory. He had been friendly enough to Nola in those few times they had personally interacted, and she tried not to judge by appearances, but there was something unnerving about someone who seemed so old and worldly, but looked so young.

Thizheris looked to Haluk. “If Starfleet is too spineless to provide us with guards, maybe you should contact your masters in the Vulcan Security Directorate for assistance?”

Haluk straightened up. “As I have repeatedly informed you, I am not a member of the V’Shar.”

Colossale cackled. “That’s exactly what we would expect a member of the V’Shar to say!”

“This is why I hang out in my office,” Mistry informed Nola sotto voce, handing her the remaining chips. “Guard these with your life.” Then she asked loudly, “Where’s Kisdi?”

From high above, a woman’s deep voice announced, “Here, Captain.” Seconds later, a large-framed, dark-skinned Wakandan woman with a mass of sable hair and white face tattoos leapt down from her perched position three metres up. Dr Kisdi Dzenabe straightened up without any ill effects, appearing more like a Security officer than a scientist specialising in sensor technology and subspace physics. “I needed respite from all the testosterone.”

Leavitt crossed her arms. “Thanks, Sweetie. Way to boost an old woman’s ego.”

Dzenabe remained unrepentant. “You could have climbed up with me.”

“I’m an astrophysicist, not a spider.”

In the corner, Professor S’Li’s snores grew louder.

“I hear a lot of individual voices,” Mistry noted. “I need a choir working with me – Professor, cut it out and get over here, I know you woke up the moment you smelled my chips! – and I need results!”

Nola looked over at the Caitian, who suddenly stopped snoring, rose, lifted up his cane from beside him and hobbled over. “Of course, Dear Captain, of course.” He looked at Nola… and the chips she had. He reached out to it. “Those are bad for you, Dear Cub, here, let me relieve you of them-”

Nola drew back. “Forget it, Professor.”

His honey-gold eyes widened behind his spectacles with a look of shameless pity-mongering, and his muzzle quivered as if ready to burst into tears. “Such paucity of spirit, towards a helpless old cat like myself-”

“Enough,” Mistry cut in sharply. All of them stopped their banter and faced her. “I want this bloody ship found! How difficult can it be?”

“Very,” Leavitt replied, moving to the main display tower to enhance the image of Agocho. “Between the dark matter and the ionic cascades, this galactic carbuncle is a giant static-generating nightmare. These things defy all the sensor technology known to the Federation and the Klingons.”

“And my people,” Colossale added, leaning forward, pudgy fingers pointing up at the sculpture of photons. “And the First Federation has had warp drive for twelve millennia.”

Dzenabe crossed her muscular arms. “So what did your people do when they wanted to find someone in a dark matter nebula?”

The Fesarian shrugged. “We didn’t. If someone was clever enough to hide in one of those without getting ripped to shreds under the gravimetric shears, they deserved their privacy.”

“I don’t have the luxury of making that decision,” Mistry informed them. “Ideas?”

“A series of modified probes,” Haluk suggested, calling up a theoretical spread pattern that criss-crossed the Cloud. “Offering a maximum sweep pattern and extending our own mapping abilities within the Cloud.”

“It won’t work,” Thizheris responded sourly. “Even with the, ah, unconventional modifications we’ve made to the Harken’s probes in recent times, they would still have the same problems scanning and navigating as we, or any other starship known, would.”

Dzenabe drew up to the tower, the Wakandan keying in a new set of objects: particle wavelengths. “Chronitons have no problem with dark matter; the latest intelligence provided by Haluk’s associates in the V’Shar-”

“I am not associated with the V’Shar,” Haluk reaffirmed in a low voice, as if a token denial.

Dzenabe continued. “-On the latest Romulan cloaking devices and their chroniton residue could be adapted to the probes.”

Colossale made a noise. “Not feasible. The power requirements to produce and manipulate sufficient chronitons would exceed any probe’s generator capacity.”

“And would flood the probes’ sensors anyway,” Dzenabe reluctantly agreed as she acknowledged the problem. “If you want to drive a dozen probes blind and mad, however, that’s the way to do it.”

Nola stepped back, watching them all in fascination: a collection of eccentric but brilliant minds, all working together! She felt…

Well, she felt like an utter idiot in their presence.

But at least she’d been right about there being a secret mission, though she was still pretty much in the dark about the details. A ship was hiding in the Cloud, safe and undetected? Who? Romulans? Tholians? Klingon renegades? And how? From what she read on the subject, even a cloaked ship would get destroyed in the heart of a dark matter nebula.!

“I don’t think probes are the solution,” Mistry finally concluded, moving closer, looking up at the simulated cloud and breathing out audibly. “We live in such a noisy Universe: cosmic wash, echoes from the Dawn of Time, pulses from stars, black holes and quasars, discordant rips and renders in the very fabric of the continuum. In space, no one can hear you scream... because it’s already deafening out here. And dark matter nebulae are particularly cacophonous sods.”

They went quiet for a moment. Then S’Li stepped up beside Mistry, peering up at the display as he rested both hands on top of his cane. “You need the astrophysical equivalent of a translation matrix, Dear Captain. Something to make sense of the noise.”

She looked at him. “You think you can adapt the UT’s matrix to sort out Agocho’s noise and detect the ship?”

“I have been working on matrix algorithm variants for explication for non-humanoid and non-corporeal races.” S’Li moved to the nearest station, raising his tail to wrap around his cane and hold it up while he used both paws on the keyboard, entering data quickly, the pretence of a doddery old cat momentarily cast aside.

Further scrolls of information appeared overhead, before the Caitian finally grunted. “The Universal Translator’s success is based on there being commonalities among all languages, thus quickly developing a matrix. This is not a proper language, however. We would have to teach it to differentiate between the wavelengths caused naturally by the Cloud’s internal reactions, and those of an artificial object hiding within it.”

Mistry leaned in. “But can it be done?”

S’Li nodded. “Of course… given a few weeks of recording and analysing.”

Her face went taut again. “We don’t have weeks! Even with three starships out here surrounding Agocho, the Orions could still slip past us! They may already have done so! And if they take the Spectre back into their space-”

Colossale steepled his pudgy fingers together. “The possession of an interphasic cloaking device like the Spectre, something that could not only render a vessel invisible, but allow it to pass through matter, would make things interesting for your people.”

“I question your use of the word ‘interesting’,” Leavitt grumbled.

Nola set aside the tray of chips onto an adjacent worktable, feeling the tension rise in the room, and understanding more now. The Orions? With a cloaking device that sounded like it could even surpass what the Romulans possessed? If they did have that, and equipped their pirates and slaver ships with them…

Mistry was saying something quietly to herself; Nola focused, and realised she was singing. “If you’re listening to this song / You may think the chords are going wrong / But they’re not / They just wrote them like that…” She crossed her arms and turned away, her face creased in thought.

Professor S’Li’s gaze followed her. “Perhaps if we combined Mr Haluk’s cryptoanalysis programs from the V’Shar-”

“I am not associated with the V’Shar-”

“-With the translation matrix to quicken the process-”

Mistry waved off the suggestion, continuing to walk away, before glancing over her shoulder. “Crewman Brice, come here.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Nola complied, drawing up to her Captain. “Ma’am?”

Mistry seemed to be staring at the wall, arms still crossed over her chest, never looking at the younger woman but quietly asking, “May I borrow your jacket until we return to my office, please?”

“Hmm? Oh yes, of course, Ma’am.” She slipped out of her jacket, handing it over. Mistry unfolded her arms… and Nola saw the other woman’s chest through her undershirt, and with a blush realised why the Captain made the unusual request.

“Thank you, Brice,” Mistry responded, closing the jacket and tugging the sleeves down to her wrists. “Not that I’m embarrassed, but when it’s cold they hurt like a bugger... and can cut through duratanium plating.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Nola knew that feeling, having been almost incapacitated during her Cold Weather Training in Enlisted School.

Then Mistry stopped, frowning, before turning around to face the others. “Ruth, what causes the ionic cascades in dark matter nebulae?”

The other woman leaned against the tower. “Ordinary matter like dust and debris that has drifted into the Cloud, gets electrostatically charged, and then stimulated when the dark matter exerts pressure around them, and then multiplied furtherb as the ionised particles are attracted to each other. Why?”

Mistry didn’t answer, turning to Dzenabe. “Can you create sensor algorithms to let the Harken focus on where the ionic cascades are at their strongest in the Cloud?”

The Wakandan shrugged. “With some aid from Mr Colossale, yes. Why?”

Colossale chuckled as he made his own inferences. “You believe there may be a connection between the more potent cascade bursts, and the location of the Orion ship?”

“Not the ship itself… the Spectre, or rather, its generator. The device needs a large, separate power source to function, right?”

Thizheris glared at the Captain, as if suspecting the woman was trying to trick them somehow. “Most cloaking devices do; significant power requirements have always been a drawback for them.”

Mistry nodded, looking to Haluk, her face brightening with possibility. “The Intelligence reports on the theft indicated that the Orions had also taken an ion generator from the labs, yes?”

The young Vulcan male raised an eyebrow. “Yes, an experimental model, as ion generators and drives have proven problematic for large-scale applications.”

Now Leavitt was catching up. “The generator could be an attractor for any cascade reactions… and with some adjustments, we might be able to detect their general location. It won’t be with pinpoint accuracy-”

“But it will be better than trying to scan the entire cloud.” Mistry looked up at the holographic display. “They rushed in there before the Memphis and the Sirocco got to them, thinking none of us could follow… but not thinking this would make them that much more visible to us, with the right adjustments.” She looked around the group. “Get onto it, feed the new algorithms to the Bridge as soon as they’re ready. Brice: get my chips.”

As the sextet went to work, Nola went to where she left the Captain’s chips… and found the tray empty, and S’Li standing nearby, licking his fingers. He looked up at her innocently. “Something wrong, Dear Cub?”

Before Nola could respond, Mistry rested a hand on the younger woman’s shoulder and guided her out of the Radio Shack, shaking her head. “I asked you to do one thing…”

Part 4