"Breadcrumbs can be hard to find"

Posted on Sun Feb 14th, 2016 @ 2:06am by Commander Cor Cordale

Mission: Vipers and Scoundrels
Location: Main Engineering, USS Victory.
Timeline: Current

Kevin had given the situation a lot of thought. His engineering know how was limited, and in the end, he decided he required help from the one person with whom he had previously spoken with....Lt/Commander Cordale.

As he entered engineering, he saw the Thux speaking with one of his engineers. Catching the Commanders eye, he made a gesture that silently asked if the two could speak in private.

When the Thux came over Kevin said "Sorry to pull you away from your conversation Commander, I'm a little short of time. I was wondering if I could have a moment to ask you a couple of engineering questions please?"

"Don't worry, it's all routine." Cordale said, excusing the interruption, "And absolutely, engineering questions are kinda my job." he chuckled as he lead Kevin towards his office.

The Engineering Chief's office was covered in pictures of other places, with other faces along with his own. Smiles all the time. It appeared that either the Thux had a ton of really happy memories, or was just trying to surround himself with smiling faces. The true star of the office, though, was the percolator. An ancient device used to brew one of the most ancient beverages in existence: Coffee.

"Help yourself to some brew if you want. So, what can I do for you?"

"Firstly, and I hope you don't mind me saying this, the questions I'm going to be asking aren't 'official business' if you see what I mean, so if you could keep this to yourself for the moment I'd be grateful" Kevin said.

Cordale gave Kevin a nod. "Hush hush."

"Very much so" Kevin replied then continued "If someone wanted to make sure a ship wasn't tracked in any way, how would they go about masking their trail?"

"There's about thirty ways to mask a warp signature, plus a few extra variations based on the reactor. Stellar wind can scatter a trail, a nebula can hide it entirely. Heck, give me an hour and I can reconfigure the Victory's shields to scatter our trail. Last ditch effort, a magneton pulse can scatter a trail. Not necessarily mask, mind you, but certainly scatter it to the four winds, if you would."

"If that same person wanted to make sure the ships onboard flight recorder didn't record the ships journey, how would they stop it from doing so without raising concerns that the ships systems have been tampered with?"

"See, that's more an ops question. I mean, you could cut power to the recorder system and call it 'routine maintenance' over and over again for various things. Give it power every now and then when you're not somewhere crazy." Cordale theorized, "Or, let it record everything and then swap it out at the end of the trip."

"And how long does an ion trail last?" Kevin asked the questions.

"Theoretically, until it disperses or is dispersed. They're energized particles." he pointed out. "They'll disperse naturally over time, get nudged by stellar phenomenon, gravity, what-have-you. Though, I think the safe bet will be that after a week, any conventional unmasked signature will be too contaminated by background radiation to be easily isolated."

Kevin thought long and hard about the answers he'd just been given. He looked at the Chief Engineer for a while as well, on the brink of saying something, but not quite committing himself.

"Oh hell, might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb!!!" Kevin said eventually in exasperation "This has to do with that bastard Admiral Gates! Before the situation we found on that space station, SFI has him taking a journey on a ship, hand picked the crew himself, no destination logged, nothing logged on the ships computer, and by the sounds of it, we've been unable to trace his ion trail to give us any indication of where he went. However, it would seem that this 'Project Parasol' began again not long after he returned. We need to find a way of tracing where he went, who he met with and why, and what the link to 'Parasol' is. I'm in a bit of a bind Chief, that man caused the deaths of the entire station crew and also people from our own ship, but we need something to link him."

Cordale gave a smirk and a nod, "You know, I knew there was more to this then just Engineering 101. Here I thought you were taking an honest interest in subterfuge and warp travel. Though, to be fair, if you knew this stuff then you'd know warp trails are kinda the basics." and with that, the Thux sat down. "Finding a trail is tough if they're actively hiding it, though even if he wasn't, we'd be up the creek unless we know the ship he's in. That's step one. Of a sort. If we know the ship, then even if he's scrambled the recorder then there are still a few low, low, low tech ways to kinda sorta track him."

"Step one, the navigational map updates. See, everytime a star explodes, or a black hole forms, or any other major gravity event occurs it kinda nudges everything in the universe a few inches away. Gravity waves and all." Cordale explained, calmly and oddly casually. "Now, I know what you're going to say. Inches? Big deal. Well, it is. That's why whenever a starship docks at a starbase or any sufficiently large port, their navigational charts get updated, if needed, with the latest maps from the various astrogation stations out there. If an update is NOT needed, however, that's still logged." a pause, "See, they can smoke their own navigational logs, but station logs? Those are under the control of the station, not our wayward Admiral."

"It's better than nothing." Cor admitted that even it was thin, "But again, it all comes down to one important question: Do we know the registry of the ship he's on now?"

Kevin gave a knowing smile to the Thux as he replied "Unfortunately he's shining a seat with his arse right now back on the Starbase, but, we do know that the ship he took out was the USS Arnold Bell, registry number NCC one three six four five eight. Is that enough to get you an 'in' to poke about?"

"One Three Six Four Five Eight, you say?" Cordale said with a smirk, and then he gave a nod, "Oh, I think that's enough to start a poke. Inquire here, confirm there. You know, we engineers stick together. Someone's bound to have fixed something on a ship called the Arnold Bell." another smirk. Damn that Thux was the devil sometimes.

"Good....good...." Kevin said, sounding a bit far away in thought. Finally nodding, he looked at Cor and said "Ok Chief, I'll leave this in your capable hands. All I ask is that 'if' you do find out anything, you come back to me with the information first please. This is a delicate matter, and as you so rightly pointed out, all rather hush hush as well, we'll need to tread lightly."

He stood up and held out his hand to the Thux "Fortune favours the brave.....or kills the Goffers, let's hope we're the former eh?"

"You got it." and Cordale took Kevin's hand in his own living hand. A firm handshake, from a hand that was no stranger to hard work. "Let's hope, cause I have no idea what a Goffer is."

"It's an Earth creature that when one of them does something stupid, the rest copy them" Kevin replied, a sad smile on his face. With that, he nodded his goodbye to the Thux, turned and left Engineering.