Solving Fornen

Posted on Sun May 31st, 2020 @ 5:02am by Captain Gary Alexander & Lieutenant Audrey Chester & Lieutenant JG Alexandra Campa & Lieutenant JG Serenity Hayes & Karina Tell

909 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Mission 2 - Encounters of a First Kind
Location: Meeting Room
Timeline: 2168/07/27 1330

Several moments after Bullock and Flowers left with Fornen, Gary sat back down. He addressed his Chiefs and Kat that remained. "So, what do you think?"

KAT waited a moment to see if anyone was going to speak. Seeing no telltale signs, she plowed right on. "Well, for a first meeting, it went better than expected, I think." No fistfights or verbal attacks. They were all breathing and still in possession of their ship. KAT and her over-active imagination stopped considering much worse possibilities and finished up with, "I think an alliance with them might be mutually beneficial."

"I agree," Gary told his yeoman. "But I am concerned that they may not be all that they seem to be. I just wish we had more information. Surely our chiefs must have some other observations, though...." He looked at the remaining department chiefs in the room.

Audrey grimaced and shook her head. "I'm not quite sure what to make of them - their mannerisms were too... theatrical to get a read on their truthfulness."

"Even if they're being completely honest from their own perspective, we're just getting their side of the story," Alex said. "I'm all for making friends but I don't want to plunge right into other people's disputes without knowing more about them. Not that we're necessarily doing that but," she shrugged, "it's something to be careful of, I think."

Gary nodded sagely at Alex. "It is very difficult to sort out anything at this point. We could be associating with the biggest criminals in this galaxy or two completely delusional individuals. Any suggestions on how to find out more information?"

"They seem to love sharing information," Alex answered, "but we won't get a more balanced view until we've met more people." She hesitated. "Unless we asked them for art and literature from different species in this area of space. That might give us an idea of what some of these other species are like without directly questioning their account of things."

He gave an interested grin over at Serenity? "You've been rather quiet, Lieutenant Hayes. Do you have any thoughts that you care to share?"

"I'd advise caution. We don't know enough as yet and we'd have no way of validating anything they told us," she said with a slight shrug. "So, how would we know if they were telling us the truth about anything? Maybe ..." She spread her hands slightly. "... a test of some sort? Though I wouldn't phrase it that way. Something we could check out on our own. Something easy."

"Such as?" Gary led Serenity. "We don't exactly know the neighborhood. What points of reference do you suggest?"

Audrey pursed her lips, suddenly reminded of an old movie about a casino heist... she pulled out her PADD and started calling up information while the others kept talking.

"Biometrics!" the doctor exclaimed suddenly, interrupting their discussion. "While you ask them verifiable questions, I'll monitor their responses and build an algorithm that can gauge their honesty."

Serenity subsided, drawing back, as the doctor interjected his thoughts.

"Sorry, sorry," she waved her hand apologetically, "it just popped into my head. I can scan them while you run your test, and I can use the data to build a lie detector, of sorts."

"Can we even be certain that it would work? Do we know anything of their anatomy? Or how their nerves would react? Is there a chance that you could extrapolate, Doctor?"

"I'm fairly certain we can program our internal sensors to do more in depth monitoring of them - if need be, I could borrow an engineer and we can outfit a padd or," she paused, thinking, "or, something that they'd be in physical contact with, ideally."

The blue shirted doctor turned to the more technical persons seated at the table, "I can provide programming, but tinkering would be more your part-ship."

"Indeed," Gary replied with a smile. His former department had been engineering. Tinkering, whether with ships or women, were definitely a specialty of his. "I will personally assist you with that, Doctor. In the meantime, Ms. Hayes, while Ms. Flowers seems to be able to translate well on the fly, let us see if we can get a library from our new friends and put it into our translators. I am certain that Ms. Campa might be able to get a good look at their ship and perhaps get that downloaded from there. Any questions?"

"I'm wary without doing that without their agreement, sir," Alex said. "If it were detected, it might damage our relationship with them. Most computers would have a record of any download, even if they didn't actually observe me."

"I am inclined to agree with you on both counts, Ms. Campa." He gave the woman a tired smile. "So, it sounds like that we are just going to have to go with our gut instincts, then?"

"At least for now, sir," Alex agreed cautiously.

It seemed that the meeting was winding down. A lot of information was logged and categorized, with a checklist of items automatically generating from KAT’s PADD to the Captain’s personal notes and schedule. There would be much to do once this meeting was over.

No other ideas coming forward, the Captain said, "Very well, everyone, thank you for your ideas. When our guests our done with their tour, I'll invite them to stay with us, either as a caravan or on board. Dismissed."

 

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