Strategy Meeting

Posted on Sat Oct 24th, 2026 @ 11:00pm by Captain Mikoto Misaka & Commander Alisha Reno & Lieutenant Jane Sinclair & Lieutenant Ami Rori & Lieutenant JG Kenneth Hunt & Lieutenant JG Erskin Mon & Lieutenant JG Feeva Drylo

1,215 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Preparations
Location: Observation Lounge - Deck 1

Misaka had assembled the entire senior staff in the observation lounge for an impromptu strategy meeting. The Ermiana had been constantly searching the Badlands for the offending Cardassian Ship. The Mine-Buoys had been a wild goose chase and it was frustrating. Frankly, Misaka felt more annoyed at herself for following the trail. She had taken the bait and it was now possible that they could be anywhere across the Badlands area.

"First things first," Misaka started. "After reviewing Commander Juutilainen's report, I have decided to allow Commander Lurath back to duty." She explained. "It would seem that he was..." she wanted to find the right words for the situation which wouldn't embarrass the Klingon Chief of Security, "Occupied during the ambush on the ship." She explained. "However, we still have a saboteur on board, and this person seems to know their way around our computer systems."

She paused for a moment. "Therefore, I am effectively immediately changing all command access codes for every member of the senior staff. I also want tighter security across the entire ship, especially around sensitive areas."

“Are you kidding me?” Ami said in mid-yawn, “I have a hard enough time remembering the one I have right now…” She gave a pouty face and sighed, “Everyone make sure you get me the codes within an hour and I’ll have them all updated by mid-watch.”

The diminutive doctor sat perched on a bench with the rest of the senior staff. However, today's meeting seemed like she was needed to be there, for once. For the most part, Medical officers were mostly superfluous...until they weren't. Which was normally any staff meeting, most of an away mission, and generally in the day-to-day operations of the ship. She was there, of course, but it wasn't until someone got hurt-or worse-that CMOs really needed to shine. That's why she'd chosen that job-she could be mostly anonymous. She liked that. That, and a need to help people, of course. She realized that Captain Misaka had spoken.

"I will ensure that Medical remains secure. Will I need a security officer?" She asked. She hated that-usually. Medical was already a touchy place-most of the time, you saw people at their worst. Adding the stress of a posted security officer would heighten the tenseness. Still. She was one of the more sensitive places on the ship-take Medical out, and you were up the proverbial creek. "If not, I would prefer not to until I need to," Feeva explained.

The acting helm chief took notes on a PADD and sat quietly, waiting for instruction on where and how to fly.

"Changing all command codes won't fix our vulnerability if the saboteur is already masquerading behind a valid administrative node," Erskin noted as he shifted slightly in his chair. He tapped a quick sequence into his PADD to review the ship-wide access logs. "We'll push the new access hierarchy to your terminals within the hour. In the meantime, I'm rerouting secondary diagnostic filters to monitor unauthorized code injections across primary routing nodes. If anyone tries bypassing the new security barriers, we'll isolate their terminal instantly."

"Well, new codes is a start at least," Misaka stated. "Now. We need to get our stolen weapons back. The Cardassian ship led us on a wild goose chase, so I think its only right that we lure them into an ambush."

"A tactical trap requires a convincing decoy, Captain," Erskin noted, tapping his PADD. "Operations can broadcast a false distress signature or mimic a crippled Warp Core to draw them out."

"What if we play possum?" Misaka asked. "We send out a short range distress call, make it look like we've taken heavy damage. Then play dead?" She suggested. "Once they're within range we can strike."

"Would they risk it?" Hunt questioned. "They already what they came for. Anything else would risk losing what they have obtained already."

“A small cargo ship.” Ami pointed out as she furiously typed on her PADD, “Give them something they want, or would want to have at least, weapons of some sort or precious gemstones? Doesn’t have to be carrying them, of course, but just a manifest that I could dump into the system as a last-minute shipment if we can come up with a reason why.” She flipped her PADD around and a crude drawing of a star system, “Ship drops out here, we’re behind a moon or planet or something, the Cardy ship drops out behind the cargo ship, ship runs towards the nearest planet in panic,” The crude animation showed the cargo ship with a panicked face on it while the Cardassian ship had a menacing and joyful face on the bow, “We pop out hen they get close and pounce!” The animation ended with a cheerful rendition of the Ermiana dancing on the X’s of the eyes of the Cardassian ship.

The helm officer smiled at the cute animations. "We could even control the cargo ship remotely," she suggested. "Install something to emit false lifesigns, implying there's a full crew aboard, and then from the helm station I can have the ship react like in the cartoon."

"That is a good idea. But we need a cargo ship for that." Misaka reminded them both. "We don't have the time to locate and secure one. We only have a few hours until our deadline is up."

"What about a false transponder on a shuttle?" the nameless helm officer in red suggested. "It would likely confuse the target at least until they reach visual range."

Misaka pondered for a moment. She then turned to the ships chief engineer. "Can you rig up an old shuttle with a holographic projector and alter its readouts to look like a transport ship?" She asked. "If we can trick their sensors, we will also need to trick their eyes."

"Two shuttles, tandem configuration." Ami mused, "The holographic emitters would be able to work together, give each one less work to do to maintain the ruse, plus if we have each shuttle fake one nacelle, we can focus on faking the lifesigns and other aspects rather than the energy signature." The half-Trill smiled brightly, "Probe between them and forward can squawk the transponder, Keeping them flying in tandem will make the turn slow by necessity, fake it better. It'll take an hour, hour and a half to rig up?"

Erskin leaned back slightly, tapping the edge of his PADD as he evaluated the proposed tandem shuttle projection. He remained silent for the moment, waiting for Commander Lurath's tactical input while mentally drafting the necessary Operations protocols to slave the probe’s transponder routing to the two shuttles.

Misaka turned to Lurath. "Commander I want you to prepare a boarding party. Ideally, I want to secure that ship once we disable it." She looked at the others in the room. "Lets get those weapons back people and get to Deep Space Nine as soon as possible." She rose to her feet using the table in front of her to push herself up from her seat. "Dismissed."

Posting by:

Captain Mikoto Misaka
Commanding Officer

Lieutenant Jane Sinclair
Chief Flight Control Officer

Lieutenant Ami Rori
Chief Engineer

Lieutenant JG Erskin Mon
Chief Operations Officer

Lieutenant JG Feeva Drylo
Chief Medical Officer

 

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