JL | Atarah, Comm Levine, VAdm Scholtz-Archer | "Say What?" Pt 2

Posted on 241710.25 @ 1:48am by Admiral Sabine Scholtz-Archer

Mission: Hush [BQ Plot]

Andrea watched her for a moment, then turned to face Sabine, smirking slightly, her other hand reaching to pull a PADD from her pocket. "You know, that's not bad for someone who only got a B in temporal mechanics class."

"B plus!" Dani called, her body already halfway through a small open hatch, her bare feet poking out of it like a lifelike halloween prop. "And the last question was unfair."

Andrea snorted and turned the PADD on, placing it on the table as it connected and synchronized with the ship's systems, running the same routine they've tried to run in the past two days (unsuccessfully) and connect to the beacon, hoping whatever Dani was doing to the internals of the ship, would make this time count.

"Please tell me that she's not going to drop our ship out of slip stream and send us hurling to some planet's surface?" Sabine couldn't help herself as she slowly found her feet and a made her way to the nearest replicator. Her eyes looked between the carefree Commodore and the sight of toes splaying and feet kicking as the former Engineer remained firmly entrenched in whatever it was that she was doing... Until they weren't there at all and the young woman had fully immersed herself in the inner workings of the Endeavour. A few commands later and a robe, emblazoned with the Endeavour's crest across the chest, appeared and the Admiral readied it for use for when the barely dressed girl re-appeared.

"I wish I could promise anything, Admiral," Andrea shook her head but couldn't avoid a small smile at the edge of her lips. "What I do know, is that Danielle Atarah knows her craft. She might be rusty on temporal mechanics, but when it comes to Engineering--"

"Ha!" the muffled voice of Dani came out through the wall, and the PADD on the table lit up like a christmas tree.

"-- she one of the best I've seen." Andrea finished, giving Sabine a satisfied smirk, and then glanced at the PADD, as if urging it to connect to something. A bang sounded, a muffled grunt, and then feet tapping on the floor as Dani stumbled back into the room, dust covering the upper half of her body.

"Good to know." Sabine nodded, perhaps a tad more comforted by the Commodore's faith in the rough shod girl that had disappeared into and toggled with a flag ship's innards... Then again... She'd allowed her when she had all the power in the world to stop her and demand she let one of the ship's own engineering crew take up the reins and get the job done. "Miss Atarah, before you catch your death I do suggest that you put this robe on before continuing on." Sabine drawled in her slow southern style. It was an order, thinly veiled under the premise of care, but an order none the less and she held the warm robe out to the dust swaddled woman. The custodial crew, or some poor lowly cadet, would have a lovely time removing the dust and grit from everything she touched.

"Now just what are we looking for?" Looking for? Needle in a haystack. Hoping for? A miracle.

"What?" Dani raised her gaze up from the PADD, momentarily confused, to look at Sabine. It was like her brain took a moment to realize what the woman was holding, and parse the request. She blinked, then huffed an amused smirk. "Ah, right, thanks," she muttered, a light red tint flushing her cheeks as she collected the robe and wrapped it around herself, then knelt towards the table where the PADD was.

"We've been working on an algorithm to translate the known frequency and encryption from the temporal distortions," Andrea explained, watching Dani cover herself with a shake of the head before returning her own attention to Sabine. "It didn't work through the past few days of trying, but now, with the adjustments to the deflector to compensate for the rotational energy, we're hoping for a connection."

"It'll work." Dani declared, staring at the PADD intently. The screen, full of executed commands and output data, seemed to slow its own noise down and settle on a rhythmic flashing dot. Dani's smile expanded, and, finally, she looked up at Sabine, as if they'd all just won the jackpot against all odds at Quark's famous bar.

"It's... it worked." Andrea muttered in surprise.

"Of course it worked!" Dani exclaimed and prodded the PADD. It beeped. Andrea cleared her throat, and Dani paused, her hand mid-air, then grinned, conceding, looking at Sabine and gesturing at the little device as if presenting the world's flattest, beepiest award. "Have the honors, Admiral. The connection is up."

Looking back and forth between the two women, Sabine could hardly contain herself both for the excitement and apprehension for the moment. It was like the device, pinging on the table, was both blessing and curse and she was the one to find out. She could only pray that it would connect and not further impede the Vindicator. Lord have mercy on their poor souls, she thought, finally pressing the device, "USS Vindicator, this is Vice Admiral Sabine Archer of Starfleet, do you read me?" It sounded so promising and stupid at the same time.

=/\= USS Vindicator =/\=

The day had been long the week even longer, Jorgun sat back in the chair where the ship's Captain should now be. Her ready room was not a reflection of his life and he felt out of place commanding her ship and sitting at her desk. When he had first heard the faint beeping he had dismissed it as coming from another room, but now the insistent noise was compelling him to track it to its source. Had someone entered the ready room, they would have thought him a mad man, fractured by the stress of the current situation. His head was pressed to the cabinets along one bulkhead of the room as he tried to home in on the noise. He seemed to crawl along the wall his ear pressed to and sliding along the smooth material.

"Where are you?" He asked aloud. He had moved along the length of the wall with no luck. The sound had grown louder but had not given up its hiding place. He moved on to the drawered end tables and there he hit pay dirt. The beeping stopped and a voice came across the device, "USS Vindicator, this is Vic... Sabine... Starfleet, do you read..." Jorgun could fill in the missing pieces. Vice Admiral Archer was trying to contact the Vindicator. Jorgun searched the tiny device for a minute looking for a transmit button and then setting it down on the desk noticed it seemed to be pressure sensitive much like a combadge. He pressed the device and an audible chirp led him to believe he was transmitting. "This is Commodore Jorgun aboard the USS Vindicator. I am receiving you Admiral." He depressed the device again and waited.

=/\= Endeavor =/\=

"IT WORKS!" Dani jumped up like a child acrobat, dancing around with her robe clutched to her chest. "They're there!"

Andrea shushed her, but the gesture was empty of authority; she looked like she wanted to do the same thing. She looked like she was about to do the same thing, jump up, and dance around with Dani like an idiot. Thankfully -- and unsurprisingly -- Andrea Levine's sense of decorum was much more established than that of the younger woman near her. Dani, on her part, didn't seem to give one ounce of damn about decorum at all, as she kept dancing her victory dance in slow moving laps around the sitting women.

Mouth slightly agape, Sabine watched the robe clad engineering genius dance around them in some bizarre orbit best reserved for ancient Earth football players in the end zone. Touchdown dances were beyond her scope, but Led how she was tempted to join in, "Commodore Jorgun, where is Commodore Ivanova? Is the crew alright? The ship?"

The small communicator in his hand scratched out a few more words, "...Jorgun, ...is Commodore Ivano... crew alright? The ship?" Jorgun assumed they were asking about the condition of the Commodore. "She is on the planet. The ship was damaged but has been repaired. We are trying to figure out how to reopen and stabilize the rift. Any ideas are welcome." The big Orion did his best to keep his message short and concise. They could read about the full events in the crew's various logs when the Vindicator was back in its own timeline. Jorgun walked out of the Ready Room with the communicator in hand. His intent was to find Groffaaf to see if the little Tellarite could lock on to the source of this signal as a navigation beacon to their own time.

"Planet," Andrea mused, her brows furrowing in the familiar scientific curiosity fashioned anyone who knew her could recognize immediately.

Dani stopped her dance and leaned forward over Andrea's shoulder. "The rift is open, we use it for the comm." She paused, giving the receiver time to make sense of what was probably a choppy reception.

"It isn't completely stable if the communication is broken," Andrea pointed out, putting a hand to the PADD to mute their side. Whoever was communicating with them didn't need to hear the concerns. They needed the answer. "Can we stabilize the vortex, Dani?"

"Hm." it was the younger woman's turn to think, her eyebrows mimicking her friends expression. Andrea bit her lip, thinking a moment, her eyes moving across an invisible equation.

"A tachyon burst at the center of the accretion disk should stabilize the vortex enough for matter to get through safely."

Dani blinked, still thinking. "They'll have to do that on their side."

Andrea nodded, and took her finger off the mute, hoping the Vindicator was structurally sound enough to produce a coherent beam.

"Mr. Jorgun," She spoke into the device, slowly and clearly, hoping the message passes properly, "you will need to produce a tachyon beam."

"Aim it right at the source of the comm link," Dani chimed in, smirking at Sabine knowingly, "and don't forget to polarize your hull and adjust the shield frequency." She noted, then muttered, quietly, under her breath, "Don't want to get in just to have the hull peeled off like a banana."

Andrea gave her a stern look, and Dani shrugged, as if to justify the lack of tact with the necessity to voice out her thoughts.

Having received the message clearly enough to deduce that the Vindicator would have to polarize their hull and adjust their shield frequency after firing a tachyon beam at the signal source, Jorgun replied, "Copy that, Admiral. As soon as we retrieve Commodore Ivanova and the away team we will attempt our return. No one here wants to stick around any longer then necessary. Jorgun out."

Jorgun had the science officer lock the source of the signal and set up the tachyon beam while tactical began the calculations for shield adjustment and polarizing the ships hull. With the problem of returning to their own time potentially solved, Jorgun could turn his attention to getting the away team back before the star went supernova. Ivanova, you had better get your ass in gear, he thought to himself as he reviewed the fluctuations in the stars corona.

"ha, did you hear?" Dani smirked at the PADD with sarcastic satisfaction, "he called me Admiral."

Andrea snorted, and tried to give the younger woman a scorned look, but even the seasoned Professor had a hard time overcoming her excitement. The Vindicator was intact, and it's crew alive, and they were coming home. That was enough to allow for shenanigans, even from Dani. The look and attempted failed, morphing into a smile she couldn't stop from spreading, until the sheer force of it extracted a chuckle, and then a laugh. A long, quiet, sincere, relieved laugh of satisfaction.

---

Vice Admiral Sabine Scholtz
Commander, Alpha Quadrant
Starfleet

Commodore Jorgun
Commander, Cheydinhall Sector
TAD - USS VINDICATOR, NX-78213

Commodore Andrea Levine-Grant, PhD
Dean of Science, Starfleet Academy

Danielle Atarah
Privateer, Ex-Starfleet Engineer
Earth Syndicate