NAZGUL #4: The Call of the Curious

Posted on Mon Oct 28th, 2024 @ 8:48pm by Captain Tore Bjorgo & Lieutenant Sheyla {MD} & Lieutenant JG Ainkara "Kara"

Mission: NAZGUL: {CD&MISSION} Return to Basics
Location: USS NAZGUL
Timeline: Current

ON:

Having moved from the Bridge to the Ready Room, and sitting down behind his desk, Captain Bjorgo began going through all the logs he had not been privy to. He read the reports from each department, signed off on them as having read them so the department heads would know, and closed down the program. Leaning back in his chair, with it close enough to access the computer from his sitting position, he would take time to think on things, come up with another idea, and then dive into it. Using his command override, Tore got into the internal sensors and began to watch the happenings on the ship since he had left. Though Green was treated well, Bjorgo could see that the crew had had a hard time adjusting to her. And, after witnessing what she had done for Billi by whatever means, healing her on the spot right there on the Bridge, Tore could see that the crew began to look at her with suspicion. Getting passed that he continued to watch feeds for a while, taking it all in. Finished with all that, he rubbed his face and eyes, realizing he was getting tired.

As an augment he did not require sleep like the average Human, but it had been a couple of days and those days had been filled with quite a bit of activity. Standing and stretching, Tore left his Ready Room and headed for his quarters. Upon entering his cabin he came to s top as the door slid shut. His augmented hearing took in all the sounds present, one of which was the steady, heavy breathing of someone sleeping. The lighting was all turned down, with only the ambient illumination from electronic panels, and the station exterior lighting through the viewport to see by. With his enhanced eyesight it was not hard for Tore to make his way through the cabin easier than most others, sitting down on the sofa in his lounge area to remove his boots.

"Did you really think I wouldn't feel you moving around?" Sheyla's tired voice came from the bed section, which happened to look through to the lounge area. She was on her belly, the covers down to her waist as her vibrant blue skin was exposed, the swell of her left breast able to be seen as she slept in the nude.

"Not at all," Tore replied with a smile. He could see she had not opened her eyes, speaking from her still sleepy mind. "I was being polite, Blue."

"Ooookaaay." She said through a long yawn. Knowing he was here allowed Sheyla to relax, and she got on her left side, facing away from him and his side of the bed, her body too tired to consider any mooftie-wooftie this late in the night. She kept the sheets and blankets at waist level, her torso uncovered. As an Andorian she ran hot with her dual circulatory system, and too many covers in a standard starship environment tended to get a bit warm for her. Her body now relaxed with his presence she spoke again before going back into dream land. "I love you."

As Sheyla was moving around to get comfortable, Bjorgo had stripped down to the buff and went around and joined her in the bed. "I love you, too." He said lightly, kissing her shoulder as he got in the spoon behind her, leaving his portion of covers at waist height, too. He did not get cold easily and he knew that if he lay against her for any length of time then his own body heat would make her uncomfortable. Instead, he through a lazy right arm over her torso and gripped one of her hands as he too fell into slumber.

***

Lieutenant JG Kara sat at the main controls for the astrometrics lab. Before her, in the center of the room, was a three dimensional depiction of the Milky Way galaxy, swirling in place at the same rate the actual galaxy was spinning. Honing in on the border lines for all the known governments in this area of space, Kara continued to zoom in closer and closer to Federation space and the corner of it that M-69 sat in. Looking to her personal, coded PADD as Science Chief, Kara began to reverse the logs for Nazgul to coincide with the time frame that the unusual anomaly had been surreptitiously discovered by the ship's sensors. After a few more adjustments, again being kept under wraps and coded to keep it classified for now, Kara began to zero in on all the possible places this anomaly could be. Was it a star system, an asteroid cluster, a cloud of ionized gas? She would not know until her investigation led her to the right place.

Hours into her research, Kara got up and went to the replicator and gathered a bowl of a dozen Earth oranges with peel and all, and a secondary bowl for the refuse of peeling. She placed them at her station and then went and gathered a bowl of tepid water and two cloth napkins, going back and setting the cleaning items for her hands and face to the side. Tapping a key to allow for the data streams to begin scrolling on her screen again, Kara then took up her first orange and began to peel it, using her thumb nail to tear a gash in the side and then hooking it inside to begin removing the peel a piece at a time. Once the orange was ready for consumption she began to peel apart the wedges and place them in her mouth. All this being done while her eyes remained fixed to the screens and the swirling section of space on display before her. Data stream after data stream began to line up with her sensor logs. Over an hour went by, and three oranges consumed, before the computer found a hit and the scrolling stopped to give her a chance to examine it and then tell it to keep going if need be. There was no need.

Kara popped the last wedge from her third orange into her mouth before making sure to clean her mouth and hands with the water and cloth napkins, making sure there would be no sticky residue to mar the console. Satisfied, Kara began to tap away. All the data seemed to point to the Unre star system, one she knew well from the first missions of the USS Nazgul. A system full of mainly gas giants, and a few rocky, uninteresting planets that had been scanned by long range sensors. She paused. When we were on the outskirts of the system, she thought, we got no closer than long range sensors. There were pockets of gases that caused particle fluxes and ionic disturbances, which would and could bedazzle any sensor readings that were not close enough to burn through. Curious, she thought. The computer could not hone in any closer than just showing that the anomaly had come from within the system, but could not narrow it down any closer. ~Time for a drive~

Getting up and cleaning up all her items, Kara then uploaded all the data to her personal PADD before scrambling her search pattern here in astrometrics, making it hard for anyone to investigate what it was she had been looking for. Not trying to hide anything for nefarious reasons, Kara simply wanted this to be her own discovery, and with the ship docked and leave being on the table, she knew exactly what she was going to do for leave time. Frist thing, despite the late hour, Kara called Billi to request a week of leave, and to inform her she would be away from the ship and the base for that week as she wanted to check out a small craft and do some stellar cartography on her own time. Billi, who had been awake, gave her clearance and asked her to be careful, and that the Captain would be informed. Grateful, Kara gave the usual pleasantries before she hung up.

An hour later, dressed in her original all white catsuit, Kara boarded the Delta Flyer she had checked out for personal use. All her bags and personal equipment were loaded, and then the three bags of oranges she had acquired from the station atrium. Fresh fruit instead of replicated was always better. Once closed up she went to the Bridge and sat down in the tactical seat instead of the down low nose section pilot's seat. Up here she could read all the other screens at the other stations, which she would be using, and she could also see ahead of the ship through the main viewport as well as the pilot could. If she needed to fly by stick all she had to do was tap a key and the stick would come up out of the floor between her knees and provide her that ability. Kara signaled that she was lifting off, and a lane was provided for her through the docking bay to the open bay door covered by a forcefield.

Kara followed the lane and within a minute was flying out into open space. Turning her Delta and coming about over the base superstructure, Kara angled her craft for the outer markers that were in the general direction of the Unre Expanse and star system. At one-quarter impulse, the trip to the outer markers took about twenty minutes. When she crossed the door mat for M-69 she tapped her console and set for warp six. When the ship was ready she placed her fingers on the warp slide and pushed them up to six, with the Delta Flyer gathering itself and jumping to light speed. ~We are on our way~

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