====== Somewhere on Aeran ======
Shane was holding a little comm. Badge in his hand, staring
blank at it, obviously deep in thought. They've found the
badge immediately after beaming down. Knowing their
business, all twelve ODA soldiers proceeded to secure the
area. Shane was clever enough to stay out of their way,
waiting for the ODA Lieutenant to do his job.
The area was secured quickly. Half of the troop covered the
area with their weapons while Engineering and Science
specialists scanned the environment. Performing a wide
variety of scans, the ODA 1LT was soon able to report the
area as secure. There were mo hidden explosives, no enemy or
any other sort of trap present. Just the badge.
The badge was scanned carefully as well. It was confirmed to
be genuine SSF badge, carrying personal ID of Commander
Summers. If it was the original … or a duplicate, could
not be said. There were no other DNA fragments besides
Rangi's present on the badge. Since the badge was a
relatively simple item, all that could be found out was the
fact that the last message was send to Commodore Guzman and
that it was relayed from a remote source. Origin of the
source could not be identified. The ODA guys continued to
scan the area for more clues, but it was obvious that there
was just nothing more to find.
Turning the badge a few times in his hand, Shane realized
that there was something wrong in play. But to find out
more, Shane needed help. Turning to the ODA Leader, he said:
"Lieutenant, please finish scanning this area and then
return to UNTITY"
When the Lieutenant nodded, Shane tapped his badge:
+TAPS+ Guzman to UNITY. One to beam up +
====== Task Force operations centre, SB 234:
UNITY ======
"No trace of Rangi, little Michal or Major Liev on
Aeran" Terek replied. Of course, it was not possible to
scan directly for them, but Terek made his scans for several
distinct alternatives. First was Liev's badge, other was a
couple of a human woman with a human child with the
respective ages of Rangi and Martin … but none brought any
success. Local militia on Aeran had no evidence about the
three of the eighter, there was no evidence that they even
made it down to Aeran.
The case was now beginning to clear. Rangi and Martin,
presumably Major Liev as well, were kidnapped by force in
the civilian transporter room. The kidnapper killed the
transporter chief and beamed them all to presumably a hidden
ship. The coordinates where the ship was presumed to be were
scanned by a fighter wing, but were found empty. The ship
was most probably using a cloak to hide itself. The question
now was if the ship was still somewhere nearby, waiting for
whatever … or if it already left the Aeran system.
This part was an interesting one. UNITY and Aeran system
were of a great tactical value for Starfleet and since
Romulans were using cloak all the times, the whole system
(and UNITY specially) was protected by a dense tachyon
detection grid. For capital ships it was nearly impossible
to creep undetected to UNITY … but a smaller vessel could
do it, but it would need a hell of a pilot … or very
actual plans of the tachyon grid … alongside with SSF
access codes.
Starting to get paranoid again, Shane immediately suspected
the Romulan … Tal'shiar to be precise. It was the threat
of Tal'shiar that made Shane sending Rangi to the Chimera
and Martin to Rise not so long ago. Intel suggested that
Tal'shiar gave the hunt up … but today proved that
information wrong.
"Can you, please, have a look who accessed information
about the tachyon grid in the last 2 weeks or so?" Shane
asked.
Terek sighed: "Sure I could, but I presume there will be
hundreds of accesses … with all the traffic in this
system"
Shane nodded: "Do it anyway, Terek"
====== 1 hour later ======
Called by Terek, Shane immediately came back to the TF OPS
centre. Terek seemed to be a bit tired and somewhat puzzled.
"What's up?" Shane asked.
"Well, there were a total of 986 accesses in the last 14
days. Most by the operations and tactical staff on UNITY.
Some 23 were a bit suspicious, so I isolated them for
further analysis, but I've found something weird"
Shane remained silent, waiting for Terek to continue.
"It's Major Varis Liev. He accessed information about
the grid three times … and to an extensive amount" Terek
said. Once again, Special Forces (somewhat paranoic and VERY
data storage place consuming) all-what-you-do logging proved
its value.
Shane shrugged: "Hmm … he might needed it for some JAG
work or something. What's weird about that?"
Terek smiled. "Let's presume that that time of the
explosion in the civilian area was the time of kidnapping. I
compared the time of kidnapping with the time of last access
of Major Liev to the requested information … and it was
FIVE minutes afterwards. Not even from the UNITY … the
access was logged as remote and the relay station that took
it up is in the range of the last transport coordinates from
the civilian transporters."
"Damn good work, Terek" Shane said. "That means that
the enemy captured the Major as well and it's using his
codes … taken by force most probably, to get through our
sensor network."
Terek nodded back: "But no more … since you locked the
codes as well as Rangi's ones."
"Any info about the ship the kidnapper is using?" Shane
asked.
"None so far" was the reply, "but I am not yet done
with searching …"
"Go on … please"
======= End of log ======
Commodore Shane Guzman
CO, 1st TF, SSF Command
CO, SB 234: UNITY
