The Distress Call

• Real-Life Date: 9th - 11th of December 2023

• Stardate: 90938.7

• Archive Link

Starbase 777 received a distress call from a vessel from the Allied Fleet Service, known as the New Dawn. With the ship being not too far away, it was determined that 777's own ship, the USS Eventide, should respond. Upon arrival the Fleet Service's ship was found unmoving - but there was no signs of what may have caused it to become dead in the water, or any signs of damage whatsoever.Upon hailing them (which took a strange amount of time to answer) the ship's captain - a familiar face to some - expressed that there was nothing wrong. Apparently the distress call had been made in error while a communications officer was performing maintenance, and further comms issues explained the reason that the hail had gone unanswered for so long. After an unfriendly back-and-forth, the hail was cut off... Although the Eventide's crew then noticed a strange pattern in the other ship's running lights -- spelling out SOS in Morse code.

Under the guise of beaming aboard to investigate the issue with the lights, away teams headed over to the New Dawn. Going up and down the ship they questioned numerous members of the staff to attempt to find out the truth - and to find out why the commanding officer on the bridge had been so hostile towards the Eventide. It was discovered that people had noticed strange things happening aboard the ship. The CEO expressed concern that some members of the bridge crew had acted fine initially but had become more hostile as of late, even hosting secret meetings behind the backs of others. The CSO had also noticed people suddenly acting differently and that senior staff meetings had also not been going ahead. Additionally, the CMO expressed that multiple officers had not attended their physicals. On the other hand, some officers acted particularly unfriendly towards the away team, including the CTO and COO who became even more threatening towards the crew.

In the brig, one group met the COS who appeared to be interrogating someone - this was the comms officer who was supposedly responsible for the distress call's activation. It became evident that the commanding officer had lied, saying that this officer had been sent back to their quarters, but instead they were in the brig. Convincing the COS to step aside, the crew managed to speak with the officer in question. Ensign Gaal explained that, being Betazoid, they had become increasingly more aware of the change in personalities of some of the bridge crew. Not knowing who to trust, they had felt the only option was to bring another ship into the mix - hence the distress call. Meanwhile, another group investigated the uninhabited decks to find out the source of the ship's running lights acting up. They discovered an exocomp manually flicking the lights on and off to create the pattern of 'SOS,' and when they went back up into the ship again, they ran into its owner.  erei'Erein t'Xeret explained that she was friends with Ensign Gaal and had created a back-up plan in case it looked like the responding ship might leave without investigating their concerns.

After re-grouping and discussing their next steps, the away team decided to finally head to the bridge. There, they confronted the CO and XO - only to find the CTO, COO, and COS filing in behind them. After a confrontation during which the away team were told to leave and flat-out refused to, all of the New Dawn's crew which had been acting suspiciously suddenly acted in unison: triggering the ship's self-destruct sequence. A fight subsequently broke out on two fronts; melee combat on the bridge and space combat between the two ships, as the New Dawn tried to manoeuvre closer to the Eventide to take it down with them. After a struggle against the crew who revealed themselves to have some form of shapeshifting abilities, their efforts were thwarted by the away team defeating them on the bridge, and engineering officers managing to disrupt the self destruct sequence. The real crew of the New Dawn were assisted back to Starbase 777, any of 777's own who were injured during the fight were treated... And the shapeshifters of the New Dawn's senior staff were transported to 777's brig, where their motives remained unclear and yet to be discovered.