Mole Part 1

Captain's Log, Stardate 40451.6

A Supernova in the Sky

After reporting and making arrangements for the stolen derelict ship to be picked up and returned to Memory Alpha, we headed back towards the Baldaur system. Approximately halfway there, I received an incoming message from Rear Admiral Sextus Slate

Evidently, there was a situation developing on Pluuh II, a planet near Minos Korva, and also very close to Cardassian neutral zone. The central star was beginning to go supernova. Allegedly, it was not supposed to be of any danger for thousands of years, but radiation was rising rapidly. Due to this evidence, we were ordered to evacuate Federation personnel, a few thousand people, to Pluuh VII which had begun terra forming. We also needed to transport the planetary defensive equipment, 4 orbital platforms, as well. Our liaison was a man by the name of Fo Axem. No one knew why the star was undergoing such rapid changes so anything we could discover while executing our mission would be welcome. Lieutenant Silon was very interested in this pursuit.

We engaged at warp 9 and were scheduled to arrive in 3 days. One day in, Lieutenant Junior Grade Joran Maniersi reported that we had just passed a dark matter anomaly emitting interfereons and now our warp speed was fluctuating. Just as he was about to look into it, the ship jolted hard enough for all of the bridge crew to tumble out of their chairs. I paged engineering and they responded that out warp engines had gone offline. Lieutenant Commander Hazor Dyan promised to keep me apprised.

The dilithium crystals were glowing a strange color, but as they were starting to return to normal, Master Chief Petty Officer Sharon Jameson reported that Ensign Bennett Pugileesi had fallen into the containment field and was heavily contaminated. Maniersi beamed him out directly to sick bay. Hazor recommended we switch out the dilithium crystals as a precaution.

It took a whole day to get everything back and operational and thus, our arrival to Pluuh was a day late. We discussed the most efficient way to transport the citizens of Pluuh and the defense equipment with Fo Axem. In the end, we agreed to transport people on Niven in several trips and to take two of the platforms on first two trips and last two trips.

Unwelcome Guests

On the way towards Pluuh II, Dr Matthew O'Grady had a medical report for me. He stated that Pugileesi's injuries displayed that he was only exposed for a minute and a half, not the 5-7 minutes had he been jolted into the containment area as reported by Jameson and Hazor.

Then, Maniersi stated that our sensors and communications were offline. Something was actively messing with the computer system and every time I made headway to regain control, I got locked out. Feeling a bit alarmed at the number of suspicious situations we had on hand, I gave the order for yellow alert. Maniersi said he would alert shuttle bay personally in case we needed to launch shuttles so they would be ready and that the yellow alert was valid. I brought Lieutenant Commander Akoval th'Idrani lorTheel'zhiin in for a meeting in my ready room.

Behind closed doors I told him that we may have a saboteur on board which was cause for an emergency. Jameson was under my suspicion so I told him to find her and hold her for questioning. I also wanted Hazor on the bridge so I sent out Silon to find security officer to relay message.

Silon returned after a few minutes with Commander Devin West slung over his shoulder. West was unconscious and torn up. Silon was bloodied up too and said Ensign Therval Sheraan attacked them with a knife. I approached to patch his wounds to stop his bleeding, but he waved me off saying he'd be fine. At first I grinned and insisted, stating that he was blooding up my bridge. As I got closer to him, I noticed that he wasn't covered in his own blood; it was blue Andorian blood. I was a bit alarmed, but casually said that perhaps it wasn't as serious as I thought as it didn't look to be Vulcan blood and Silon made a move to draw a weapon. Luckily Akoval stunned him just in time and he dropped an Andorian ceremonial knife. I kicked it away and erected a force field from the nearest computer panel.

Just then, Maniersi sent a text-only message from the shuttle bay stating other crew members were compromised. I had him send out the same message to key personnel. The shuttle's sensors detected Cardassian warships approaching and Maniersi kept them at bay under the condition that the Niven will not move from current position.

Maniersi contacted a platoon of marines and he was able to telepathically check to see if they had been compromised. He split up the platoon in order to take back control of the computer cores. The marines were able to successfully secure both and I ordered engineering to send someone to each to get the cores up and running again.

In the meantime, the stunned Silon was regaining consciousness and we were able to communicate with an alien inhabitant. There was a bit of a language barrier, but we were able to discern that the aliens, called Minnerites, were sabotaging the ship because we had gone away from the dark matter anomaly that was their home and wanted to return. As if I didn't have my hands full enough, now I had Starfleet orders to evacuate Federation citizens, Cardassians poised to open fire upon us, and a band of stowaway aliens who wanted to go home.

Request for Backup

Given the crucial nature of all three tasks before the Niven, we sent out a message requesting help from any Federation ships in the area to assist us. We were able to negotiate with the Minnerites that as soon as we were done with our task, no more than 96 hours, we would take them home. The Cardassians were still a threat, but seeing that we made no move to close the distance between us, they left us alone. We set out to evacuate the citizens from Pluuh II as originally planned. With visual senors back up, we noticed that the sun's light source looked like it reflected the original calculations and did not appear to be on the brink of going supernova like we thought. A probe was launched into the sun for more information.

We soon received a response from our request for help from Captain Tennyson of the USS Farragut saying that he was increasing spend and had also contacted the USS Potemkin for further back up. His estimated time of arrival was in 31 hours. When they arrived, the Cardassians turned tail, especially after being reminded that they were the ones in violation of borders given that they were well beyond the McAllister Nebula. With three ships working together, we were able to accomplish our task efficiently and hurriedly returned to the Minnerites' home to uphold our end of the bargain. As promised, they vacated and my crew mates were back to their normal selves.

Now to return to the Pluuh system to retrieve our probe and to see if we can make sense of why it was thought that the system was in danger.

Flight Officer's Log

The USS Niven was ordered to assist the Federation colony of Pluuh 2 in evacuating further out in the system to Pluuh 7 due to instability in the local solar body. The crew had already made plans to meet back up with the Bajoran Railroad on Baldur IV, but Captain Koyanagi decided we couldn't ignore our duty in this situation, and with the support of the senior officers, ordered course set for Pluuh 2. The situation was odd because according to all previous data, Pluuh 2's sun shouldn't be unstable. Tricky as well, as Pluuh 2 was in a system bordering the Cardassian Union. In fact, the McCallister Nebula was half in Federation territory and half in Cardassian.

Along the way we ran into a weak-gravity interferon emitter, a rather rare spacial anomaly. This forced a one-day delay while repairs to the dilithium crystals were made by Lt. Cmdr. Dyan and his team. Travel continued, but the main computer began experiencing trouble once we dropped out of warp in the Pluuh system and we lost all higher command functions about midway between Pluuh 2 and Pluuh 7. Lt. Maniersi went to launch in a shuttle and discovered that some of the crew had been taken over by alien lifeforms calling themselves Minnerites. Plans were made to regain control of the ship and open up dialogue with the Minnerites. Maniersi launched in the shuttle and detected an advancing Cardassian ship and managed to bluff them from crossing the border. Maniersi also detected a very odd transmission from Pluuh 2 that called for investigation.