Translate This!

Posted on Tue Aug 21st, 2018 @ 11:53am by Lieutenant Commander Akira-Ri Sato & Lieutenant Jera'turak Ros & Lieutenant T'lon & Chief Petty Officer Malcolm Reynolds

959 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Memento Mori

The whine of the transporter died as the beam released the two newest members of Akira's detail. Glancing over her shoulder, she caught sight of Lieutenants Ros and T'lon as they glanced around the bridge of the Romulan warbird. She and the chief had cleared the bodies, but the smell of burnt flesh and insulation remained, and it wasn't a very pleasant one. Turning back to her work, Akira finished quickly before she turned and stood to face the two new arrivals. "Thank you for getting here so quickly," she said. "The captain's getting pretty impatient, so I had to grab you two for this. We need access to the computer, and I'm not very good reading Romulan, much less trying to decode a cypher written in it, so I needed our two experts."

"Understood, although I will admit that it may prove to be difficult," T'lon said. "Breaking into a Romulan military ship's computer systems will not be an easy task."

Jera rolled her eyes and glanced around the bridge before she located the operations console. As typical for most Romulan ships, most of the bridge stations didn't have chairs, but fortunately this one did. Sitting down, she frowned as she studied the readouts for a moment before she entered a command. "The primary power conduit powering the computer is damaged, but it seems to be running off of auxiliary power. Because of that, most of the interface is not available. There's also a full lockout in place, but that's no problem," she said.

"How so?" Mal asked as he walked over and peered over the engineer's shoulder. Everything on the screen looked alien to him, so he mentally shrugged and headed over to another console that had a chair. "I thought a computer lockout meant that you either had an access code or you'd have to hack your way into the computer."

"I have a secret," Jera said as she entered a code from memory. It was a long code, but one she had worked hard to memorize, even though she had never thought that she'd ever be able to use it. When she was finished, she pressed the final key and leaned back. "Let's pray that this works," she said.

The computer interface beeped, and half of the darkened screens across the bridge activated. "Ehtea nnea ohrie fihaele. Simhoni temohrie," the computer announced.

Akira blinked as she translated the announcement in her head. She blinked several more times before she turned towards the chief engineer. "Did I understand that correctly?" she asked.

"I believe the ship just accepted Lieutenant Ros as the ship's new commanding officer," T'lon said as he raised one eyebrow. "Fascinating. You are full of surprises Jera'turak Ros."

"I want to know just how in the hell that happened," Mal said, not exactly sure how to react to the news. He was only an NCO but he was still on this Romulan hulk and he really didn't want to be.

"I'll explain to the captain, and I'd appreciate if it stayed there," Jera said as she entered a number of commands. "But I'm lifting the lock down and converting all system interface to universal standard. Any personal logs or restricted data will still be in Romulan, but the central computer will be able to give a translation if you tell it to over ride."

"So everything will be translated to standard? Well, well, well," Akira said as she sat down and rubbed her hands together. "Let's get started on our digging, then," the Japanese officer said with a grin.

"Indeed," T'lon said as he accessed a console and started shifting through systems readouts. Most of what he shifted through ended up being computer systems reports and schematics, but he found the information fascinating all the same.

Jera raised her eyes and carefully studied everyone else before she lowered her attention back to the computer interface. While running a search for anything that the Endeavour would be able to use, she started a subsystem search and waited. The response came back almost instantly, and the information that scrolled across her screen was along the lines of what she expected. Clearing the information out of the computer cache, she moved on to the next item on her list, which was checking the operational status of the ship. It was severely damaged, but still able to move from one point to another. Satisfied, she leaned back in her seat and waited.

Mal shrugged and leaned back against the bulkhead. He was only here to make sure these officers didn't get shot or anything, not to dig around a computer core memory bank. Besides, he wouldn't even know where to start. He just wanted to get on with everything.

After nearly half an hour, Akira straightened in her seat and tapped a quick series of commands. It was a pain to have to wait for the translation program to run because of the delay that it caused, but in the end she grinned. "I believe we have what we came here for," she told the team. "Lieutenant Ros, can you please set the computer systems to automatic?"

"Of course, it's already on half powered stand by," Jera answered as she entered the needed command.

"Sato to Endeavour, stand by to beam us back. We've got what we need," Akira said after tapping her comm.-badge. Standing, she checked that everyone was ready before she nodded. The ship was on stand by, and they had what they needed. Ensuring that everyone on the team was ready, she tapped her comm.-badge again. "Sato to Endeavour, energize."



Lieutenant Commander Akira Sato
Chief of Security and Tactical

Lieutenant Jera Ros
Chief Engineer

Lieutenant T'lon
Chief Operations

CPO Mal Reynolds
ASEC

 

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