Raktajino over Evidence

Posted on Thu Sep 25th, 2025 @ 6:09pm by Captain Mira Rodale Lance & Commander Kevin Lance

1,264 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Hide and seek
Location: Roanoke
Timeline: Current

on:
{Roanoke Computer Core}

Mira awoke with a start as someone tapped on her shoulder. She turned to see Kevin, without his helmet, standing with a mug of steaming liquid. She blinked to clear her vision and make certain see was seeing him correctly. It was him. His smile teasing her from his bearded face. “Thought you might want a cuppa.”

By all that was holy he knew her weaknesses coffee. Cold, hot or in any other form. The sensors in her helmet displayed to Mira that the atmosphere was breathable so she removed her helmet as well after all if he was going into quarantine after this then she might as well join him.

Quarantine procedures has been broken a little dot showed up on her wrist PADD but since Kevin had already done so they would have to deal with that later. The aroma of raktajino reached her nose as she did so and she gratefully took the mug with a smile. “How did you…” she began.

Kevin held up a hand. “While the computer was running the data compilation I requested it,” he told her, “I had time to play with the environmental controls. The limited power that we have the reactor producing was enough to run life support in the computer core, though I wouldn’t suggest running a marathon. There was even enough in the power budget to get the replicator working.”

“That’s good,” she said before taking a sip of the hot liquid and wondered how long she had been out, “Have you been able to find out anything?” she asked as she checked in the away team member’s. All their dots were moving around doing some thing down one more level. She felt relieved that area was safe from the storm.

“The computer is still complying some of the data but I think I have a pieced together a pretty good idea,” Kevin stated, “First, remember how I thought that the use of ‘it’ denoted an environmental force?

Mira nodded she had thought also.

“Well, that wasn’t entirely correct,” Kevin admitted, “They thought that they were describing one thing but when you collect all of the evidence from the station logs, personnel records and environment telemetry, you begin to see a causal relationship.” He began tapping at a console.

She moved to see better and found her body sore. That zap had been powerful. She looked around quickly to see if any more of them was around because they felt like a Klingon pain stick.

The large viewscreen in the center of the computer core glowed to life as the lights dimmed. “Compensating to limit our power draw,” Kevin explained.

The viewscreen displayed a graph with multiple lines all closely following one another. “What you are looking at is an overlay of the terraforming output, power generation and storm activity across the past week.

Mira narrowed her eyes as she considered the data. “The parallel progress of the power generation and terraforming makes sense,” she said, “You would need more power as you went along. But the storm activities, it is like it is responding to the terraforming.”

“Exactly,” Kevin confirmed her suspicions, “I looked back through the earlier data and when similar levels of energy were generated during construction of this base, there wasn’t any correlation with the storm activity. It only shows up in the recent terraforming efforts.”

“The storm was reacting to the terraforming?” Mira speculated, “Surely not.”

“The geoengineers certainly thought so,” Kevin said as he typed more instructions into the console. A bar graph with lines that increased steadily was projected onto the line graph. “This is a graph of the incidents of references to the storm as an entity. Things like ‘the storm is watching us’ or ‘it’s following our movements.”

“That’s a strange way to describe it.” She whispered almost to herself.

“Mira,” Kevin said soberly, “that is how you describe being stalked.”

Mira’s eyes widened "but... " She thought about it. "It felt intelligent and" she rubbed the back of her neck with her gloved hand. "it raised the hair in the back of my neck like we were being hunted."

"All phrases that I found in the personal logs," Kevin nodded, "So the storm demonstrates sentience, both empirically and anecdotally. How does that happen?"

"The initial surveys of the planet's ecosphere didn't indicate anything like this," Mira pointed out.

"So, it is something recent," Kevin tapped additional commands into the console and another set of bars appeared much further to the right on the x-axis, "Here are the incidents of colonist disappearance. Since the storm demonstrates thinking behavior prior to the first incident, we can rule out that they the colonists are responsible."

Mira frowned as an idea hit her. “What if this storm or entity was sleeping or hibernating. Lying dormant for a long period of time because it didn’t have the energy to survive. The colony some how awaken it. That might explain the original inhabitants going underground to survive from it and the cold. They did not developing any technology that might awaken the entity. They just lived their lives for the time they might be free to ascend above ground again.”

"I think that it is highly probable that the colonist antagonized the storm entity into a reaction," Kevin agreed, "but if the original inhabitants went underground to escape the storm, where are they?"

"Well, the carvings on the wall hinted at an ascension of some sort," Mira replied.

Kevin nodded. "One of the official logs mentioned the same finding, although they lacked the expertise on the team to follow up on it. But the translation of ascend is telling in itself."

"How so?"

"If you were to describe going beyond the limits of something, you would use the word transcend, "Kevin speculated, "Ascend means to move upwards but implies staying within the system. So if the translation is accurate, where did the ancients go?"

Mira shook her head.

"What if the ancient ascended to become the storm?" Kevin asked.

Mira’s eyes widened at the idea “joined the storm. Joined what they thought was their God. “ She nodded “its possible and would make more sense to the other translations I am trying to work out. If that’s true then the storm God added them to its power and then went into hibernation. But that would also mean all the colony was added as well and we might be next if we stay.”

"I am hoping that by keeping the power generation output at low-levels we can lull the storm back to inactivity," Kevin said, "then we can make our escape. But what about the colonists?"

Mira’s fingertips rubbed her lips as she thought “how can we descend people? Maybe bombard the storm with something to makes it inactive or disperse the storm from the ship but then the prime directive might come into play here. Because we would be killing an alien lifeform or lifeforms? “ she closed her eyes. “I am not sure. Fighting and combat is so much easier. You defend, protect or deflect. This?” she sighed bring the hot coffee to her lips.

"Well," Kevin shrugged, "I guess that is why, as they once said, you get paid the big bucks. Hopefully, Trace will be able to find out more about how the ancients ascended. Then we can figure out how it can be undone."

:off

Commander Kevin Lance
Executive Officer
USS Chuck Norris

&

Captain Mira Rodale Lance
CO USS Chuck Norris

 

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