Brainstorm

Posted on Sat Jun 13th, 2009 @ 4:37pm by Captain Vorn Krace & Lieutenant Bradley Openhouse

Mission: Dark Discoveries
Location: USS Iapetus - The Ridge
Timeline: MD9 1445hrs

Vorn was sitting at one of the tables in the largely-empty mess hall of the ship as Bradley entered with Elizabeth and Jade. Smiling up at them, Vorn made sure to make himself remember all the while the reason he had decided to discuss this with them here; neither of them were members of his crew, and as such needed to be treated differently, since they weren't used to following his orders and treating him as a senior officer. Elizabeth, though having been in Starfleet many years, was a civilian, and Jade was only a second-year Cadet, not even supposed to be on an active ship other than for transport purposes until her fourth year. Vorn had to think a little less like a Captain around these two.

"Please, have a seat," he said, indicating to the three of them the chairs situated around this end of the long table, running parallel to the viewport.

Bradley took a seat and waited to see what the Captain wanted to see them for.

Elizabeth quietly sat, watching the captain. She was curious as to why he would need her help, but she was certainly willing to give it.

Jade sat down, she got slightly nervous around the superior officers and listened carefully.

"I'd like to use you three to bounce some scenarios off," Vorn began. "A kind of mental exercise, if you will." He knew that both Elizabeth and Bradley would know that it was more than a simple exercise, but he didn't want to risk frightening the Cadet.

"Now then, suppose hypothetically, there is an organisation which has been conducting illegal activities - say, arms trading. We want to infiltrate and shut them down within a short amount of time - how would you suggest we go about it?" He knew that so far, this wasn't in either of these people's specialised fields yet, but he was hoping to get some ideas from those who weren't privvy to the sort of training that officers who did specialise in this did receive - an outsiders perspective, so to speak.

Bradley cleared his throat. "What about sending over a covert team?"

"Yes, but how about getting them in?" Vorn asked, trying to dig into their creativity.

"You could get them in under the cover of a smaller organization looking to merge," Elizabeth offered. "Perhaps give them some arms to help negotiations."

"Or, we could get them in under the cover of an organisation already working with them." Vorn said, picking up on the thread of thought to lead it in the direction he wanted.

"Now, suppose we have a small, civilian ship which we believe to be operating for this group - how could we proceed then?"

"Well we could disable them and talk to the CO and get information." said Bradley throwing out things that came to his mind.

"What about getting engineering to reprogram their computer system?" Jade suggested. She wanted to try to sound good.

"Yes, good; but what would we reprogram it to do? And bear in mind that the captain of the ship may not have all the information; he may just be being used by the group."

"You would have to make sure no word of the capture gets to the larger organization," Elizabeth said slowly. "If you could somehow completely detain the entire crew of the ship and replace it with a team of special operations officers, you could get inside the larger organization."

"I agree. But it would take significant time to gather the needed intel to fully staff the ship; we would need to find out the procedures that the ship would normally use, find cover stories for at least the senior officers. Do we have any shorter-term options?" Vorn responded.

It was just at that moment that Vorn's badge chirped a message.

=/\=Bridge to Captain Krace. Sir, the away team are coming in on an emergency transport, transporter room 2.=/\=

"Copy that, Krace out." Vorn stood as he spoke, already moving towards the exit of the Ridge. "If you three will excuse me, there is something I have to deal with. Thank you for your time."

----
Captain Vorn Krace
Commanding Officer

Lieutenant JG Bradley Openhouse
Chief Counsellor

Cadet Jade Crossland
Medical Student

Elizabeth Narton
Civilian Observer
USS Iapetus