Looking For A Needle

Posted on Tue Aug 20th, 2019 @ 11:52pm by Commodore Tyler Malbrooke & Lieutenant Commander Katherine Malbrooke
Edited on on Tue Aug 20th, 2019 @ 11:55pm

1,096 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Episode 8 - The Silence
Location: The Malbrooke's Quarters - Deck 2 - USS Pioneer
Timeline: MD002 1100 hrs

Kat was dressed in a pair of stretch pants and a t-shirt so she could be more comfortable while she worked. Since Ty was on duty. So, while she had the quarters to herself, she was sitting on the floor with stacks of PADDs surrounding her.

On one side she had a smaller stack where she put each PADD after she carefully went through it. It was a long, tedious process, but she'd come up with a plan and a system.

Her right foot was bouncing as she looked, item by item, through the list.

The perk of being the Captain was that you did not have to be on the bridge when there was nothing to do. So Tyler decided that it would be a good time to check to see how his wife was settling in to life on the Pioneer. He was still amazed at how Quinn pulled it off. Mission Advisor, I am still not even sure what she is supposed to be advising on. Quinn is very mum on that subject. Tyler thought as the doors to his quarters swished open.

There sat his wife surrounded by PADDS on in the middle of the livingroom floor. If he did not know any better he would have thought a child tossed them willy nilly. However, Tyler knew better, he knew that his wife always had a system. "Honey I'm home..." He called as he unzipped the top portion of his uniform and flopped onto the couch.

She looked over at him and grinned. "Hi, Cowboy!" She turned back to the PADD in her hand and finished going through it. Then she set it on the stack of completed PADDs and carefully stood, picking up the small stack as she did so so she could get over to her husband.

She set the stack on a table and kissed Tyler. "This is a very pleasant surprise."

"Benefit of being the Captain. I can go where I want when I want." He laughed "Hey that reminds me, not that I do not love that you are here. But why are you here. I mean officially you are a Mission Advisor and yet you have nothing to do with our current mission. Every time I ask Quinn he gives me that Irish smile of his and changes the subject. So how about I try you."

She chuckled and curled up next to him. "I'm part of a special team looking into what happened to the Pioneer over the past year." She waved to the stack of PADDs. "I ran a number of tests on the main computer. Everything came out fine. That bothered me. So, I did some digging. Someone went to a great deal of effort to keep anyone from looking around. I've found a number of places where data has been erased or simply deleted. So, I'm manually checking everything." She waved at the stack of PADDs. "It's going to take me a while. I'm looking through individual files at the moment."

Tyler rolled his eyes briefly he knew that Commander was interested in what happened to the Pioneer. However, he did not know that Quinn did not believe the reports. "Honey listen the ship was empty and adrift. She was found by Gunny Wilson and her team. There is no hard evidence to say that anything out of the ordinary happened to the ship. This is all the hunch of the XO. I am sorry that you got roped into this. I can't believe he brought you on for that purpose."

Kat sighed and got up to get one of the PADDs. She sat down and began to thumb through it. Then she handed it to him. "No, he's right. Someone went to a great deal of effort to make it look like everything's fine. But when I pull individual files, or groups of files, I see where data has been altered or deleted. Timestamps don't quite match up. Or something completely random has been inserted to fill a gap. I can't make sense of it yet, but the more I search, the more sure I am that something did happen." She sighed and stretched. "It's going to take a while at this pace. I'm starting with the more obvious areas first. Then I'll start digging in the automatic subroutines. Only Quinn and his team know about this." She smiled at her husband. "And now you."

The evidence was there, and yet Tyler was still not convinced. There simply was no way someone could have boarded her without setting off an ungodly number of alarms. "Make sure it stays that way..." For the moment Tyler was unsure if that was a request made by a husband or an order made by a Captain. "...The long and the short of it is no one and nothing could have boarded this ship without setting off alarms everywhere. They would have known back on Earth at Command. I mean you know that as an engineer. Why have no bells been rung back home then?"

"A worthy conundrum. And yet, someone got into the computer to hide something." She sighed, . "I don't have answers, Ty, but the more I dig, the more I believe that this was deliberate, and malicious." A slow smile spread across her face. "I'm going to enjoy solving this particular mystery, and I'm going to enjoy being with my cowboy every day."

"Deliberate as in someone messing with the timeline? But if that was the case surely we would have known by now. That headache I had the whole time I was in parallel universes is coming back." He rubbed his temples as he tried to forget about the ramifications of even these early findings. "I am happy to have my Kat here everyday as well. Perhaps a family?" He asked with a small spark in his eye.

"I don't know about the first," she admitted. "I'm just beginning to dig into this. As for the second," She leaned closer, her eyes lighting up with joy and anticipation as he'd just broached the subject she most wanted to discuss. "I thought you'd never ask," she purred.

"Well there is no time like the present..." Tyler said as he took his wife into his arms and kissed her.

A Joint Post By

Lieutenant Commander Katherine Malbrooke
Mission Advisor, USS Pioneer

Captain Tyler Malbrooke
Commanding Officer, USS Pioneer

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