Senior Staff Meeting - Oh My!

Posted on Thu May 15th, 2025 @ 7:30am by Commodore Phoenix Lalor-Richardson & Zyrani & Captain Gary Taylor & Commander Sthilg & Lieutenant Colonel Azhul Naxea & Commander Kyle Reece & Lieutenant Commander Alicia Kelea-Salik & Lieutenant Commander Rin & Major Kett V'Laass & Lieutenant Anna Esquivias & Lieutenant Thor Magnus & Consul Andrinn Orin & Lieutenant N'vok Holv

Mission: Season 6: Echoes of the Zynari
Timeline: MD4 11h00
2490 words - 5 OF Standard Post Measure

Phoenix had, dragged in several screens and as her senior staff entered, she got them to put their information up on the screens. Avalon was sorting it as each report was entered.

Kyle stepped forward and plugged his PADD into the interface. He then downloaded all of the reports he had, from both the Security and Tactical departments. The Zynari had been wreaking havoc on the various reports and systems, though nothing too damaging had occurred. Still, there had been a few stressful moments, like when the ship's phasers locked onto one of the starfighters that were on standard patrol. Then, the port side aft torpedo magazine suddenly armed itself, and the forty quantum torpedo warheads almost detonated. Then, the Zynari had shut them back down and moved on to other parts of the ship.

David added his reports next. Several of the Academy's classrooms suddenly became a peaceful prairie, then frozen tundras, before reverting back to their normal appearances.

Gary entered next, "Sorry for being late. Was chasing down LLs shoes as they floated about our quarters. "I was tempted to send her to day care bare footed." As he took his seat and reached for his PaDD. "They are playing havoc with command protocols. Shields are going up and down randomly. Commands are coming in through that are just silly, like the one that stated effective immediately Mrs. Barlow was the new commanding officer and that the Commodore was the new pastry chef. Mrs. Barlow by the way is 87 years old and a retired librarian."

Naxea sat down without saying a word to anyone, letting her report drop onto the table. She was tired, frustrated, and hurt with dealing with her divorce from S'hib and now these damn aliens were causing havoc with systems across the ship, including power loss in Marine Country that interrupted training. "The power losses caused by these aliens have interrupted several training segments, resulting in a few injuries among my Marines," she stated simply though there was an unmistakable edge to her voice.

Alicia entered next she’d had her hands full between worried crew, and playful aliens. “Sorry I’m a little tardy, our guests decided to use the replicator in Sickbay to replicate and throw items around. I ended up needing some medical treatment.” She sighed as she took her seat. “It’s turning into a circus!”

N'vok arrived and took his seat. "Science remains secured despite several determined attempts by specimens to escape. Unfortunately, we are still having trouble finding out how to get a good read on our guests but we have several promising theories to follow up on."

"Thank goodness for small favors." Gary commented after N'vok's report. "It has gone beyond being a circus, Alicia. It is becoming dangerous. By the way are you alright?"

Alicia nodded. “I’m fine Sir, luckily I was in Sickbay with my father at the time.” She offered Gary a warm smile.

"Glad to hear it. Don't want anything to happened to our chief counselor. " Gary replied, a smile on his lips and relief on his face that Alicia was alright.

The door slid open as in staggered the ship's MD. The lizard had a look of absolute terror on his face. The smell was obvious as well as the gorn smell of strawberries and cream. " Thirty five leaterssss." He said as he collapsed in a chair.

Before the door could shut behind the dear doctor, Andrinn strode in with his cheeks a bit red. Not from anger or anything, but more embarrassment. He was one of the last few officers to join the staff meeting and as he sat down, Andrinn looked around the room and said, "Sorry for being late. I had to stop a fight down in the diplomatic suites. Apparently, one of the mysteries plaguing the ship has now included the Universal Translator. During a meeting with some of the diplomats, the UT suddenly started translating everything into Shakespearian sonnets and Klingon Opera. I had to get some of the DPT to help when some tempers flared. However, the worst part of it was when I got onto the turbolift and it wouldn't let me off until I performed some interpretive dance."

Kett appeared to be one of the last to arrive as he straightened his uniform. It was "Apologies" said Kett without feeling as he looked to take his seat. His reasons for tardiness were not as interesting as the other staff in the room. His was a more simpler excuse. It was his first senior staffing brief and he was late because he had not been able to find the office. So Kett kept to himself, concentrating on his PaDD as he did.

Thor Magnus the mild manner Chief of Engineering was sitting quietly in his chair. Finally he spoke, "Another day in Paradise."

"It has been quite the day," Andrinn offered up, knowing that this wasn't the first or last bit of stuff to happen that day.

"Has anyone tried to speak with them?" Phoenix asked curious as she watched the information compile.

"I haven't." Gary admitted. "LL may have tried to talk to them, I'm not sure. She did say the glitter people wanted us to be happy. When we had glitter falling from the ceiling. I'm also not sure when she said us, if she meant she and I or the whole ship."

"I haven't personally tried, but don't we have an AI within our computer? Maybe Avalon has made contact without even realizing it?" Andrinn offered up, thinking about the AI system the ship had onboard.

"Science has tried several communication protocol to no avail," said N'vok. "The problem is that we are still unsure what the beings are. How they exist and what wave lengthlength of energy they perceive. Communication is difficult when you cannot be sure if you are even being heard,"

Anna came in last and, while she was wearing a dry uniform, her hair seemed to be dripping. "Sorry I'm late," she said. "I just had a fresh incident. Fun and games with a replicator." She plugged her PADD in, downloading an endless string of scary, silly, and outlandish incidents operations had had to deal with. She took a seat next to N'vok and let out a heavy sigh. "No meaningful communication with them on my end. Just incident after incident."

"Do I need to have one of the Engineers look at replicator?" Thor Magnus asked.

" Can you remove ssstrawberriesss and cream ice cream from the medical replicatorsss?" Sthilg asked clearly, having been annoyed to no end having had to spend the last few hours cleaning up the mess the guest had left in the medical storage unit,

" LL seemed to know what they wanted. Maybe all the children do or at least sense what our guests want in a nonverbal way." Gary put to the group.

"That is possible, many younger people have a basic sensitivity to certain unusal phenomena," said N'vok. "Though I am not sure how we can use that to aid communication with the beings."

"I was the one looking at the replicator," Anna said with a trace of professional defensiveness. "I wasn't the original user. I think we've all figured out by now that we're not going to solve this repairing things as they get weird. It's like scooping water out of a sinking boat with cupped palms."

"Lieutenant Esquivias is correct, we need to focus on stopping the problem before they start," said N'vok. "It is far easier for these beings to cause problems that it is for us to fix them. There are a variety of more exotic means to try and facilitate communications, but we are again limited by our knowledge, as we cannot use anything that might cause them harm as that would just make the situation worse. So far them seem . . . provocative rather than hostile and we do not want to change that."

"That's why I thought about Avalon. If this new species somehow got into her system without her knowledge, she'd be able to help us figure out if they did and maybe even get in touch with them. She should have a universal translator that's integrated into her matrix, if I remember correctly as well, and she'd be able to quickly learn the language to translate," Andrinn offered, thinking back to what he learned about the ship when he first arrived onboard all those moons ago.

"We will figure this out ," Thor replied.

"Why not allow the children to help us?" Alicia looked around those at the table. "These entities seem to enjoy their presence, so why not set up communication under protected circumstances for the safety of the children?"

"That's not a bad idea Alicia. The entities enjoy the children, and the children seem to be able to communicate with them. It is worth a shot." Gary agreed.

"Unless that's a trap." Phoenix said softly. "I cannot help but think of the Thaih’ea, and how they have a device that made people see nightmares. How do we know they are actually the Zynari and not some... illusion?"

" If it were the Thaih'ea sssurely sssomeone would have been sssuffering from knightaresss by now." Sthilg chimied in.

"If the Thaih’eans could manipulate our system in such a way," said N'vok, "the results would not be so benign. They would be disabling important systems to make us vulnerable. While some harm has been caused, these beings seem almost playful."

"For now" The Commodore replied. She was not very trusting. "We shall see."

"Well, we've got to figure something out. Otherwise, they're going to keep happening. Think back to what happened on the Enterprise-D when Wesley Crusher accidentally let out a thing of nanites. They started replicating and eating up the computer core, but they didn't know much better and were just trying to survive. Maybe something similar is happening here and it's coming out as jovial games," Andrinn offered up, thinking back to what he heard back on Earth all those years ago.

"Communicating with them still seems like our best option, Commodore," Anna said. "I don't deny it comes with significant risks and I do have reservations about the children being the ones to take those risks, even if they are most in touch with the Zynari."

"If these beings wanted to communicate, don't you think they would have done so by now?" Naxeas said sharply. "We need to devise a way to trap them. I bet they'll want to talk then. The fact is, games or not, they are causing harm to the crew and disrupting ship operations."

"Perhaps these pranks are their attempt to communicate," Rin suggested. "They are certainly causing harm. I'm not arguing that, and that harm needs to be mitigated, but I don't think we should simply write them off as not wanting to communicate. I agree with others that the children might be a useful avenue. They are already communicating to some degree. I think it unlikely that encouraging that would further endanger the children. Have any of the children been hurt by pranks, or is it only the adults?

Rin then turned to Sthilg. "Doctor, have you had anyone report injuries that were directly caused by the Zynari, as opposed to injuries sustained as a result for these 'pranks'?" Rin asked. "Clearly they can shut down computer and mechanical systems, cause massive malfunctions, scramble data and the like. And they can physically manipulate things, to the point of seemingly contradicting physics. But have they done the same to biological lifeforms? Raise blood pressure, scramble memories, induce vomiting, and so on. If not, it's a notable limit, whether by their choice or their nature. We're really just organic machines."

Kett scratched his beard thoughtfully, with a typical emotionless Vulcan expression on his face. Though he recognised the logic in using children to support in the investigation it did not sit right with him. Kett raised one quizzical eyebrow "are we preposing that these 'pranks' are in fact some form of communication in of itself?"

"I don't know if I would go that far. I would say these 'pranks' are an attempt or an overture to communicate." Gary answered.

Rin nodded in agreement with Gary as she focused her attention on Kett. "I'm simply suggesting we should not be quick to judge the situation. This is a First Contact event with a race vastly different from our own."

"That is a logical Lieutenant Commander" said Kett to Rani in his dulcet tone "Though I question the logic of using our young to further this endeavour."

"Well, something I'd like to offer up is depending on what the next moves are and how long that they're going to take, I'd love to see what the data has told us too. We've had multiple recorded incidents throughout the ship and maybe we could see what kind of pranks they've been pulling and where. Maybe, if they're truly communicating that way, we could see what pranks happened when and where to see if there's a pattern to them?" Andrinn offered up, remembering back to his exolingustics course back at the academy, where the instructor taught him to think outside the box when communicating with other species.

Phoenix listened and after a moment she spoke up. "We are like toys to them." her tone soft. "Consul, you and Lt. Commander Rin, use the intel area and gather all this information. I suggest everyone work together to see if we can find the pattern. But I want Consul Orin and Lieutenant Commander Rin to take the lead."

Andrinn nodded and replied, "I'll make sure to get with Commander Rin and we'll start to figure everything out about this new species, Commodore. Hopefully, we can get something rolling in the next few hours, so that we can hopefully stop the various incidents around the ship."

"Yes, ma'am," Rin acknowledged with a nod.

"As science gets more information, we will pass it on," said N'vok. "We are pursuing several avenues of research but so far, we have no results."

“This may seem an odd suggestion but what about the children?” Alicia looked at Phoenix. “These entities seem to enjoy the company of children, maybe we could ask the children to help with communicating with our mischievous guests?”

Gary remained silent at Alicia's question, his eyes going to Phoenix as he waited to hear what her answer would be.

Phoenix shook her head. "No the children should be left out of this for now. I do not want to risk them."

"Commodore," said N'vok, "while I do not advocate for placing children at risk. We should place them and their environments under closer watch, both for their safety and for what information it may reveal."

"That's fine but we are not to use them in any other way." She was against exploiting children where possible. "Dismissed"

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