A Deeper Investigation

Posted on Wed Jun 10th, 2026 @ 4:34am by Lieutenant Alice Durant

765 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Episode 2: Mine of Taurus
Location: Deck Three, Substation Charlie-Romeo
Timeline: During The Events of 'Heave Ho'

The engineer known as Bianca Lee had vanished into a Jeffries Tube shortly after exiting the turbolift on Deck 3. Unbeknownst to most officers or crew, there was an interface that was connected directly to the main computer and she had that cover panel off within seconds of reaching it. A light flashed on the screen as she activated the interface with her ID, a personal message. It would take a minute to dig down to the programming she was looking for, so she keyed the message to life.

It was exactly who she expected it to be, the contact that had always sent the return messages to her as her 'mother' for this cover. Alice automatically began to key other things into the console to get deeper into the system as she listened.

"Hello dear, I'm sorry to hear about Markus, I did like him, so maybe I'll see if anyone else is interested in him." The face gave a sad smile, "For now, it sounds like you're having a good time on your new ship, the Scharnhorst was it? What I think would do you some good is to keep to some familiar surroundings and get some rest. You know we'll tell you if anything exciting happens at home, so don't worry about coming back until you're good and ready to. Let us know if you move off to another ship and be careful. Love you, pumpkin." The image froze as the recording stopped.

The trail had gone cold, not a peep from Gneisenau, the other ship that she thought could have been the next move. But the good news was there was no rush to move assignments, so once Scharnhorst was at another starbase, she could vanish into that population and make her way back under another assumed name to where she'd pick up her next assignment. That meant she could investigate other things in the meantime.

Herophilos was an intriguing ship and she pulled up the personnel roster once again and selected Nicole Anderson for another quick perusal of her file. Yes, it was as she recalled it on the bridge, it was too perfect. She knew it was because her own cover as Bianca was a little too good, though she'd included a few flaws and even a demerit to go along with the minor commendation that was in it. Someone who would be seen, but not remarked upon. She perused it even closer, looking for the little telltales that would indicate some tidbit remark that would provide more insight, but it was just too clean.

Alice backed out of that one and went to the next name on the list, Penelope Naroot, human, okay, a bit old to be an XO, her eyes went to the file image and stopped. If Penelope there were the age her file stated, Alice was a telepath. Another inspection of the a personnel file and this time there were clear omissions that had no tagged explanation from Starfleet Intelligence. There would be some, if this were legitimate and missing what it was.

Backing out into the main screen again, Alice glanced down the roster and wasn't sure whether to cringe at the name of 'Markus Davenport' or not. It was purely coincidence that the name they were using for the smuggling ring was the same, but she committed these names to memory for now, then went back into the Captain's file and used a little known hack in Starfleet's system to try to crack open any hidden data even more. The problem was, while the command was accepted, there was no additional information to show. That was very odd, improbable but not impossible, but there was a virtual wall still there, now that she could see it. She hesitated a moment, then keyed in her unique override code that she used for investigating sensitive data.

It still got nothing.

'Fine.' She thought to herself, backing out again with a mental sigh and debated trying the XO's file the same way, but opted against it. Things seemed to have gone unnoticed and she needed to vacate this location, get back into circulation and visual by other members of the crew once more. She cleared the console and wiped all trace that Bianca Lee had ever accessed this location before reseating the panel cover and crawling away again.

This was getting more and more interesting. Maybe this would keep her occupied until they reached that starbase, then she could really dig into this Herophiles ship, when she had access to the assets she really needed.

 

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