Mission Briefing

Posted on Thu Oct 8th, 2020 @ 12:45am by Captain Rhenora Kaylen & Commander Savar cha'Salik hei-Surak Talek-sen-deen & Lieutenant Commander Shylow Vitari & Lieutenant Bonnie "Bon-Bon" Durnell & Lieutenant T'Strella Drake

Mission: Diplomatic Masquerade
Location: Briefing Room

Captain Kaylen Rhenora strode into the briefing room 15 minutes early, smiling to see that Ronson was already in the room setting up for her. Padds lay neatly at each chair's right hand, two large jugs of water with several standard issue glasses next to them were placed at impeccable intervals on the tables surface.

" Thank you Ronson" She smiled before loading some information onto the large viewscreen and reviewing it for herself one last time. She had a feeling this particular mission was going to be made or broken on the details and she was sure they were going to be as accurate as she could.

A short time later the senior staff started arriving.


Savar came in first. He looked at the Captain, the viewscreen and the table in that order/ He then proceeded to sit in the first chair to the right of the Captain's. "Captain." He greeted before speaking to Ronson. "Mr. Ronson. I see you have not been cleaning deck plates with a toothbrush."

Yeoman Ronson Mitchell had the self control to raise an eyebrow at the ships XO and do nothing more. After the last incident he was sure deckplates and toothbrushes were to be the rest of his career. Thankfully the Captain had seen otherwise.

Lieutenant T'Strella Drake. Left her office, PADD inland, she walked into the Briefing room early. She, also had a strong cup of coffee in the other hand. She found her chair and sat down. Nodded politely to the Captain and said quietly. "Good morning Captain Nodding also to the XO and Yoeman. She looked through her PADD, making changes to a letter and sending updates to her executive assistant. Sipping her coffee and waiting for the meeting to commence.

Another day on the Liberty and her first meeting of the higher ups. To say she was nervous would be an understatement. She prepped herself like normal, choosing to pull her hair back and to the side for a more professional look. Data PADD in hand she found her way to the deck 1 conference room with no problems. As she entered she immediately began questioning why she was there. She felt all eyes on her, a young Lt. in charge of the computer core who for some reason was filling in as chief Engineer. Well this should be interesting she though as she sat down without incident averting her gaze for fear they might call on her.

Vitari's chair spun slowly as she revealed herself, fingers steepled before her, arched forward as she surveyed the other assembled crewmates, her visage only broken by the small wink at Ronson, who had kept her veiled position a secret as long as she'd been carefully smushed into the corner chair, not at all allowing herself a gratuitous use of her toys to make her appearance, letting herself sit in the soft quiet as she took up her assigned PaDD with a small nod around the table.

The Captain waited until the senior staff were seated, settled and ready to begin. She'd not had the opportunity to interact with them on a team level since the ship had launched and looked forward to more collaborative efforts.

" Good Morning Everyone" She started, making eye contact with the senior staff " I've called this meeting to advise you all we have received new orders from Starfleet Command" She started, rising from her chair and heading towards the large viewscreen embedded in the wall. Activating it she brought up a starchart featuring the Orias system.

" This is our destination - Orias III. Whilst it is recognised as within Cardassian space, there seems to be a humanitarian aspect to our mission. The planet was claimed as uninhabited, yet recently the Federation received a distress call from an indigenous population threatened by the new mining regime." She paused to see if there were any questions so far.

After a moment the Captain continued.

" So our mission is to conduct negotiations with the Cardassians and achieve a favourable outcome for the population on Orias III. The Cardassians have agreed to meet with us to discuss the issue and I can only assume they too are well aware of the non-aggression pact currently in place. Orias III is desolate wasteland, hot and arid the population has been found in the northern mountainous region. Presumably living underground. We need to find out how long they've been living there, and how the Cardassians 'missed' this particular detail when they annexed the system."

"Excuse me Captain, we may be proceeding from a false position if we think the Cardassians missed the population of Orias III. Who is to say that they did?" Savar spoke up.

"Perhaps they were hoping to 'remove' the problem of the population before the distress signal was received."

"Perhaps" The Captain mused, he had voiced her internal thought process already " We however are to remain impartial and under the facts before any outcomes, hearsay doesn't cut it here. We can safety assume that the Cardassians may not be too favourable for us conducting our own investigation on the planet to ascertain a timeframe of indigenous occupation."

"Of course Captain." Savar agreed, "I was merely pointing out Cardassian past behavior and that nothing should be ruled out." He replied unruffled.

" I wholehearted agree with you on that." The Bajoran said with a wry smile on her lips.

"Lt Command Vitari - since we are still waiting on our Intelligence Chief to arrive, I need you to step into that role, congratulations" She added, having completely forgotten to notify the Intel officer of her change in role. Focus Rhenora FOCUS.

The slim officer blinked, her head tilting slightly as she pondered a moment, "Well. It's not the fastest promotion I've had... but it is definitely cutting it close, Captain," the corner of Vitari's mouth quirked a little as she held her mild amusement in check, "And here I thought I was escaping a desk job, just to be slunk under more paper work."

"To that end, please refer to your padds for assignments. Commander Savar, Commander Vitari and Lt Drake along with myself with be leading the negotiations. Commander Lexington will man the bridge and co-ordinate any shipboard activities. Commander Vantic will ensure the safety of all parties. Lt Cavanaugh and Lt Durnell will provide any computer and linguistic support as required. We will need your expertise if we do get to visit the planet and speak to the native population" The Captain rattled off the assignments, making sure no-one was missed.

"Are there any questions?"

Bonnie had many questions but only one escaped her lips, mostly rhetorical and pointless as she followed the question by answering herself. "What size population are we looking at? Because an industrial society usually denotes a population of over 500,000. Unless they've experienced a boom. Most industrial revolutions throughout history are followed by a... population..surge." She stopped when she realised ahe was rambling and all eyes in the room were staring at her.

The Captain blinked a few times, trying to comprehend what just happened. She paused and considered her reply

"Lt Durnell, I wasn't aware of your interest in the history of colonisation. This could be useful if we get the opportunity to get down to the surface. As for the numbers of the indigenous population, we're not sure" she finished.

"It's also possible that it may have been an abandoned crew or small colony lost, such things have been known to happen and go undiscovered for, at times, generations," Vitari mused softly, "For them to get a distress signal out as far as they did as swiftly as they did, they must have at least a little bit of reasonable communications tech on hand. All supposition, of course, until we can pull some more information out of them."

"There are many theories, all of which shall remain as theories until we gather some evidence. I would like to start to establish communications with the local population as soon as possible, if such things are even possible. " Rhenora commented, flicking through the details on her padd " There is no information regarding the strength nor detail of the distress call - only that one was received"

"There are many possibilities for this situation. Guessing and overt speculations.... what next? Reading tea leaves and chicken entrails..... We know how the Cardassians proceed, we know they use cloak and dagger methods to hide what they are truly after. We also know that they never truly reveal their intimate goals... Why? Because they, like the Romulan Tal Shi Ar... have so many agendas that even the Prater can't keep up with everyone's greedy agendas."

" Which is exactly why we are here - to ensure the safety of those people on the planet. Too many innocent victims have fallen to an 'unfortunate accident' at the hands of the Cardassians. I will not let that happen here. Once we get to Orias III we will take a low orbit above the mountain region where the distress call emanated. I want all efforts to communicate with those people. Information here will be our trump card. The Cardassians will do everything in their power to stop it. You have your orders - dismissed" The Captain rose from her chair, picking up her padd and her coffee as she did so - nodding to the team as they filed out of the briefing room. She had a gut feeling things were about to get interesting.