When there's something strange, in the neighbourhood.

Posted on Fri Aug 15th, 2025 @ 12:44am by Lieutenant JG Damien Blackford & Petty Officer 3rd Class Josef Forstinger

Mission: Season 6: Echoes of the Zynari
Location: Security Offices
Timeline: MD2
1623 words - 3.2 OF Standard Post Measure

Damien groaned, running a hand through his hair as his eyes skimmed over yet another security report. For the last few days, numerous reports had been coming in, all saying variations of the same thing. They'd started simply enough. Crewmembers reported hearing strange whispers or weird noises while walking in the corridors or alone in their quarters. But whenever Security arrived to check it out or ran sweeps of the affected areas, they found nothing. Damien was starting to think that being in this unknown land was starting to have adverse effects on the Crewmembers. It was almost to be expected. They were alone in an unknown land. Their brains were bound to start playing tricks on them.

Then, the reports started changing. People's items were going missing. Noises were getting weirder. And just this morning, Damien had found something odd in his locker. When he'd gone to grab his Phaser at the beginning of his shift, it had vanished out of his locker. And if that wasn't bad enough, it had somehow been replaced with a duck toy that made an irritable honking noise every time it moved.

He was pulled out of his momentary reprieve by the console beeping at him once more. "Oh, for god's sake." He muttered. "What now?!" The exasperation was clear in his voice. He glanced up on the clock on the wall. Surely he wasn't going to have to spend the entire shift by himself?

The answer to his question came soon enough, in the form of a loud impact against the offices door, followed by some rather colorful cursing.

For Forstinger had just ran face first into the door, the sensors for some reason not picking him up. And after several tries of stepping back and forth to which the sensors still didn't react, he just decided to open the door by hand.

After a bit of struggling, Forstinger squeezed himself through the door which quickly shut behind him. Letting out a few more cursewords before spotting Damien.

"Oh, hello Lieutenant." Josef greets him with a wave of his hand-which was immidiatly picked up by the doors sensors as it flew open behind him with a swoosh. Making him turn to look at it before returning his gaze to Damien with a sigh.

"I swear to God either someones trying to play a prank on me or im going insane. First my new Uniform gets hidden around my room like its an Easter Egg Hunt and now none of the tech wants to cooperate. I spent 10 Minutes trying to get the Turbolift to take me to the right Deck !"

Damien looked up as he heard the loud bang, and the colourful language come from behind the closed door, and couldn’t help but grin slightly to himself. The ships systems had indeed been on the fritz the last few days, and it seemed whoever was trying to come in had just found themselves the unfortunate victim of the latest technological hiccup.

When the door finally opened, Damien offered Josef a small smile, returning the wave, the grin spreading a bit wider as the door, now seemingly extra sensitive, flew open behind the man.

Upon hearing of Josef’s troubles however, Damien’s grin quickly faded, replaced by a raised eyebrow and a small sigh.

“You too?” He asked, leaning back in his chair, running a hand through his hair. “Seems like just about everybody on this ship has had some sort of problem, or personal property gone missing.” Leaning forward to look at Josef, he continued. “Just this morning, for example, I went to grab my Phaser from my duty locker, and found this instead!” Opening the drawer next to him, he pulled out the offending item, slamming the rubber duck onto the desk where it admitted a loud ‘Honk!’

“I did eventually find my Phaser. It was, for whatever reason, in my kitchen cabinet! And I know definitely didn’t leave it there.” He sighed again. “There is definitely something strange happening.” He muttered. “Just look at all the reports we’ve got coming in.” He said, gesturing to the computer on the other desk for Josef to look at.

Josef's clear irritation faded for a second as Damien presented the duck, letting out a surprise chuckle before catching himself again, walking over to his duty locker to retrieve some things for the upcoming shift, trying to remember the passcode he put into it. Though he did look over while punching in the code-trying several times while reading the reports.

"That is strange. What do you think, maybe this is some elaborate prankster ? Or maybe a Ghost." he grins at Damien before finally unlocking the locker-grabbing into it to retrieve something, only to produce a banana. Looking at it puzzled, before his grimace darkened slightly. Going back in to frantically rummage around it before finding nothing, slamming the locker shut and sitting down on the desks chair opposite to Damien.

"And now my guns gone. Whoever is doing this just made it personal AND pissed me off." he lets out with a sigh as he sinks into the chair.

Damien lent back in his chair, watching Josef with a slightly amused grin. Whilst he was used to all the tech used in daily life, he supposed to someone like Josef it was, quite simply, completely alien.

He shrugged, going back to his computer, flicking over to another report. "Well, whoever, or whatever, it is, they seem to know just enough about the crew to target specific things. My Phaser, your uniform. All of the strange technological glitches. They're targeted. They aren't random."

Seeing him produce the banana, he couldn't help but grin. "Good source of potassium, that is." He said, chuckling slightly, the grin and laugh fading as he heard about the missing weapon. "Well, that's a bit more serious." He said, sitting up in his chair. "What kind of weapon is it?" He asked. "I'll get an alert sent out. Hopefully we can find it quickly."

"Ah yes, Potassium. So when we get boarded by Space Pirates or whatever ill just fire this nifty Potassium Ray at them and explode their ship." he joked, holding the banana like some sort of raygun while doing a shooting noise, but threw it onto his Desk as Damien brought them back onto topic.

"Glock 17 Gen 2, 9x19 mm Parabellum-" he lists it off almost robotically at first, as if he had done so many times to some Quarter Master-but then realized that the person he was talking to might not have a clue what he was talking about-and so simplified it. "An Antique Handgun-" he pauses for a second and rummages into the locker again, producing 3 magazines. "....with one Mag missing, great. What, is there some Poltergeist floating around the ship now armed with a Handgun ? Wait-there arent like-actual space ghosts, right ?"

Damien couldn’t help himself this time. He let out a short bark of laughter at Josef’s actions, shaking his head slightly. “Hey. You never know.” He said with a shrug and a grin. “Maybe theres a species out here whose weakness is Potassium.” He laughed again. “Then who’ll be laughing?”

He chuckled slightly, letting out a soft sign, before turning back to his console. His fingers danced over the keyboard, transcribing what Josef was saying, even if he didn’t fully understand everything, then chuckled again as he quickly modified his description. Whilst there might be a few history buffs who would understand the description, he wasn’t so sure everyone would.

“Well. The missing mag is more of a concern than anything else. I’ll flag this as a priority. Hopefully one of the Security Officer’s will find it during an inspection.” He hesitated at his next question, before signing softly. “Ya know, I wish I could tell you no. There’s all kinds of unexplained phenomena in the Universe. Sometimes it has a scientific explanation. Sometimes it doesn’t. And that’s at home!” He exclaimed. “Out here, in the unexplored regions? Who knows whats waiting.” He couldn’t help but grin at this last comment. “It’s kind of exciting, isn’t it.”

Josef listened to Damiens words nodding along. "I mean, I guess you could see it that way." he responds with a shrug. Suddenly though, his expression and tone turned rather uncharacteristically grim. "Just from personal expedience. The Unknown usualy is what gets you killed." after a few second though, he taps at his terminal.

"Welp. Guess we will have to go Ghost Hunting then." was the sudden proclamation as he procceeded to enter, look up and note down several scientific questions he asked the computer.

Damien, nodded along, shrugging softly. "Well, we all knew what we were signing up for when we joined Starfleet." He trailed of slightly, glancing over. "Sorry. I guess, technically, you didn't actually sign up to Starfleet, did you."

He grinned, chuckling slightly. "Well, that's certainly not something that was labelled in the job description when I was deciding which path to follow at the Academy. Maybe I'll volunteer to teach it when we get home."

Damien sighed as he ran a hand through his hair, finally getting to the end of his reports. “Alright.” He said, pushing himself away from his desk, and standing up. “I’m scheduled for patrol duty in about ten minutes time. The report for your missing weapon has been sent out to all personal, so hopefully that’ll turn up soon. I’m gonna grab a coffee, then head out. Stay safe, and watch out for space Ghosts and random banana’s.” He said, grinning, before turning around and heading out the door.