The Wheat from the Chaff
Posted on Mon Feb 4th, 2013 @ 1:50pm by Captain Elsie Halliwell & Lieutenant Jimmy Cooper & Captain T'mpest Michaels
870 words; about a 4 minute read
Mission:
Sowing the Seeds
Location: USS Ranger, Astrometics
Timeline: Mission Day 4, 1800 hours
ON:
Barker arrived in astrometrics, and got to work immediately. First, he opened the garble of data the captain had already strung together. Immediately, the main display started flickering, then showed unfamiliar stellar cartography.
"Computer," Barker enquired, "can you locate the approximate position of this data?"
"Searching..." Blue bars flowed as the computer did the math. "No matches found in stellar database."
Elsie strode through to the lab and walked confidently up to the main console where Barker had already stationed himself. "What have you got?" she asked quickly, looking up to the main display on the screen.
Barker turned and faced the captain. "Well, it looks like a stellar chart of some kind, but as far as I know, it could be the replicator receipe to make coffee molecules. The computer has no clue either at this point, Captain."
Elsie looked to one of the auxiliary display panels on the side of the main viewer and something caught her eye. "That!" she called, pointing to the readout. "It looks like sensor readings of some kind. How's your algorithmic deciphering, Lieutenant? As rusty as mine?"
"Been a while, but I'm sure I can figure something out. It seems the sensor data is misaligned in some way... Give me a moment." Barker started with an incremental increase in the resolution of the sensor data, which made the images flicker in and out, changing constantly, enough to give even the most experienced sailor motion sickness.
Elsie's impatience grew as the same wave of nausea washed over her also. "An ETA on this, Lieutenant?" she questioned through her teeth; the feeling of unease growing in her belly.
"Give me a minute, Captain, I'm not your wonderboy Cooper." Barker answered annoyedly, then stopped as the sensor data started lining up. "That should do it well enough for now."
Elsie peered at the data now streaming the screen with a coherent, understandable rhythm. "Now this, I understand," she said more to herself than Barker. "Put readout 3-Beta on the main screen," she asked as she waited. "That looks like a recent memory file. A log of some kind." It shot up onto the screen as she read it with a deflated heart. "Civilian subspace letters," she mumbled.
"Great, all that work for some messages in bottles," Barker grumped. "Anything useful in here?" As not to disturb the captain, he opened the memory files on another auxillary monitor, and started searching through it via algorythms. "Bah, this is much more up Commander Michaels' street..."
"Then perhaps that is who this should be left to," Elsie remarked quietly, looking away from the screen. Her headache was now getting worse but she still decided to ignore it.
"Well, the shuttle should be back soon anyway, Captain" Barker said. For some reason, he was feeling queasy. "If you'll excuse me, I'm feeling a bit under the weather."
Elsie shot the lieutenant a look and cleared her throat; her annoyance at his comment blatantly displayed on her features. "You'll have to forgive my bluntness, Lieutenant," she seethed, wrestling with her own ill-health but masking it, "but a bout of space-sickness is not a valid reason to dismiss you. Request denied. We've all got a lot of work ahead of us so you're going to need to shape up and do your job!"
"Very well, but don't expect me to clean up if I hurl all over the place." He said gruffly as he kept his eyes on the screen, 'doing his job'.
"Don't push me, Barker!" Elsie countered through gritted teeth; her steely look now turning to stone. "You'll live to regret getting on my bad side if you continue with that tone. Am I understood?"
"Aye aye, Captain." Barker answered, mostly keeping the sarcasm out of huis voice.
At that point, Jimmy came over the comm: "Captain, we have just landed the shuttle. Do you need assistance?"
Elsie tapped her combadge and sighed. "Astrometics, Lieutenant. And bring the commander. We could utilise her skills here."
"Aye, Captain. Cooper out."
Several minutes later, T'mpest and Jimmy walked into Astrometrics. "Hello, Captain," T'mpest said.
Elsie regarded her with a brief and curt nod, returning her gaze back to the screen she was working on. She inhaled, shot a glance to Barker and simply said "Dismissed" with a disappointed, gnarling manner. She finished tapping on the controls and then straightened herself and nodded to Jimmy too. "We didn't get much from the console at first. Just some personal data and irrelevant logs. But, once you downloaded the partial computer core, we managed to access a lot more of the Dubai's information." She sighed, squinted her eyes and then added. "This is more your expertise than my own," and she stood back from the console with a gestured hand.
"Very well, Captain." Barker immediately turned towards the door, and without even acknowledging either entrant, stamped out.
"God, what is his problem?" Jimmy said.
"Me, it would appear."
T'mpest paused to watch Barker leave. Then he turned to Halliwell and nodded, stepping up to the console to look over the data. She accessed one of her programs and began to recompile the data.
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