Post 446: Gaps in Coverage

Stardate: 70920.1347
Title: Gaps in Coverage
Author: TC Blane
Scene: Bridge Time: During and a few Hours after "I don't have time for this"
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"Scan the ready room- I want to know if one molecule of oxygen in the artificial atmosphere was displaced in the last five minutes! I want something- ANYTHING- that we can go on that will allow us to explain how the hell he does that!"

TC had been hovering over the Ops station when the captain came out of the ready room. Her demeanor and voice caught more of his attention then did her unexpected order.

"How the hell who does what, Captain?" He frowned as her approached her, his hand instinctively reaching for the small phaser concealed at his hip. "Are you all right?"

"I just had a visit from your friend, Lt. Margolis." Zanh replied, addressing Fox. TC moved to her side, more then slightly confused.

"Oh," Fox's hand immediately gravitated toward the pendant which hung from a chain around her neck. "He's back?"

*He WHO? * TC thought to himself.

"Yes, he's back, and I-" Zanh stopped as she heard herself being hailed by a very unhappy sounding Dr. McKenna.

[McKenna to Zanh, please report to Sickbay.]

"Can't this wait, DM? I've got a bit of a situation up here."

[No,] McKenna replied flatly. [It can't.]

"Mr. Blane, see to it that every inch of this ship is scanned, focus on the bridge and go from there. I want to know how Corbinsky is getting through. I'll be in Sickbay."

TC nodded as the Captain moved off of the bridge and into the turbo lift. The doors slid shut behind her and TC turned back to Fox.

He recalled what he'd heard in an earlier senior staff meeting concerning Corbinsky; but he wished he had more to go on. He needed details. "I want to know more about our target. Is there anything you haven't told us yet?" He asked Fox.

Fox glanced side to side nervously, obviously not wanting to discuss the matter on the crowded bridge. TC nodded and waved for her to follow him to the ready room. She stood from the Ops station and followed TC in as her seat was quickly taken by a waiting ensign.

As soon as the doors closed he turned back to the nervous Fox. “OK, Spill it.”

“I’m, not sure I should, chief,” She responded nervously but TC’s gaze convinced her that was not an option.

- A Short Time Later -

The doors to the ready room slid open and Fox exited followed closely by Lt. Blane. Fox moved back to the Ops station as TC made his way back to the center of the bridge to stand behind the center seat..

“Fire up the sensors, gang.” All heads turn to face him. “Ops, start with pulling data from the life form sensors. Mainly keep and eye on the crew counts over the last hour. Look for additional crew or the lack there of.”

He turned to the other side of the bridge. “Tactical, review your sensor logs. Look for anything that might indicate a temporal shift or anything along those lines.”

“Science, review everything in any of the sensor logs that might be unusual and I mean anything, no matter how small. Also review everything we know about individual time travel, time travel, or anything even closely related to it.

”In unison all of the crew manning the bridge responded with a resounding “Aye” and set about their work.

- A few busy hours later -

TC and the other on duty bridge officers stood around the center seat discussing the results of their research.

“So this is everything?” TC asked.

“Yes sir.” They all replied.

“Good work.” He glanced at the information. In all reality there was not much there. But what they had gathered was useful. The sensors never showed any signs of an intruder but they did show a gap in coverage of the ready room for a span of 4.47 minutes during which time no information was gathered.

The logs also show that during that time the Captain was not on board the ship and that her last documented position was the ready room.

“So in short this Dr. Corbinsky is not only finding a way onto the ship without being detected but he can hide from us also?” TC summarized.Fox nodded.

“The internal sensors are designed to detect an intruder by identifying new additions to the standard environment. It looks for changes in the standards, anything that it not part of its typical readings of the ships environment would trigger an alarm. Such as bio signals, chemical changes, even temp and humidity.” She explained.

"The catch is this," Lt. Zaundros from tactical chimed in. "The complete lack of data from the sensors will not trigger any alarms because the computer thinks that it is an outage, or a problem with the sensor. Because the ‘outage’ is under the five minute mark the sensors do not report the issue as it is common for internal sensors to go offline for short periods for diagnostics and maintenance.”

Zaundros looked around at those gathered. “This Corbinsky guy is simply fooling the computer into thinking that the sensor is faulty and therefore not triggering the intruder alert.”

TC glanced at the Engineering representative to the discussion, Rada Dengar, who nodded his agreement.

"As long as it is one small scanning area and is under that five minute timeframe, it is generally not considered a security issue."

TC nodded. “Until now.” He stated flatly.

All gathered concurred. TC scratched his head. “Any temporal disturbances?” He asked. All shook there heads negatively.

“OK, anything at all that would suggest that anyone else was in that room?”

“There were minor trace elements of Benzyl alcohol and Limonene in the air sample we took.” Lt. Zaundros added.TC shrugged his shoulders questioningly, obviously missing any importance to that revelation.

“Those are common ingredients in men’s cologne and no male crew members were in the room for at least an hour before the captain reported the incident.” The lieutenant summed up.TC nodded.

“Excellent work. I’ll go over this with the Captain.” The group dispersed back to their stations.He turned and made his way to the turbo lift.

“Lt. Margolis you have the bridge.”

Lt. TC Blane
Chief of Operations
USS Independence NCC-90791