S03 E07: Chronicles of T’Avaya: The Solpar Logs

 

S03 E07: Chronicles of T’Avaya: The Solpar Logs

(This adventure was inspired by “Solkar, Captain of the T’Plana-Hath” from the Mission Brief Growing Pains.)

The meeting room on Starbase 8 was moderately comfortable and not too ornate. Ambassador Solpar looked through the transparent aluminum window at the three Federation ships docked at the starbase. He found nothing special about them; he was just bored with this interview. The human journalist, Yuan Wu from the Federation News Network, had been at this for half an hour and was still as focused as when he started. Wu asked another question about the Klingon-Federation Alliance. Solpar had been against the alliance. Even though it may have been necessary during the Dominion War, the war had been over for two years now, and the Klingons’ ways of violence and ribaldry had not abated. Solpar took his gaze from the starships back to Wu. Then he picked up his personal data padd from the conference table. He opened up the file of his last recorded log concerning the Klingons. He started speaking slowly and cautiously, “the Klingons have alw--”

            Solpar suddenly clutched his chest and fell out of his chair. Yuan Wu immediately dropped his voice recorder and kneeled on the floor next to the Vulcan. “Solpar!” Then Wu ran to the wall comm unit and called for help. Solpar, who at first seemed to be in pain, now lay unconscious on the floor. His data padd lay on the floor beside him. Wu picked up the padd and placed it inside his carryall. He stopped his recording device and placed it in his carryall as well. Whatever illness had struck the ambassador, it was just the break that Wu had been waiting for. The starbase commander and medical officer arrived three seconds later.

 

            The Bolian restaurant on Starbase 8 was more than adequate, Yuan Wu thought. His plate of blue food was tastier than anything he remembered back on earth. So blue people eat blue food, Wu thought. Isn’t that some form of cannibalism? The person sitting across from him took another sip of his Saurian brandy. The Vulcan tried to look civil, though he was anxious to leave. “You have it?” Vin’re said. “Of course,” Wu answered. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a data rod. He placed it on the table and slid it over to Vin’re. The Vulcan took it and carefully placed it in his pocket. “Ambassador Solpar was quite undiplomatic for a diplomat,” Wu said. “Vulcans always speak their minds when it comes to belittling other races,” Vin’re said. Wu took another bite of his blue meat. “You put the money in my account?”

            “It will appear in your account in the next half hour.”

            Wu had set up an account with a Rigellian bank. His Federation credits as a reporter got him nowhere. Who needs this moneyless society? He thought. He wanted to buy a space yacht. And a life of luxury. Whatever the Vulcan was going to do with that copy of Solpar’s log, he didn’t care. Wu had already returned the Vulcan ambassador’s personal data padd to station security, telling them he had accidentally grabbed it when he grabbed all his notes. He had only needed the padd long enough to copy the logs; logs that were very valuable to Vin’re.

 

Mission log. Stardate 45137.5. Agent T’Avaya reporting. My team and I have been called by Starfleet Intelligence to a mission on Starbase 8. There has been an incident involving famed Vulcan Ambassador Solpar. I have never met Solpar, but I am familiar with his reputation. He has negotiated several successful treaties for the Federation.

Admiral Lapointe was a tall human with piercing blue eyes and a bald pate. He greeted T’Avaya with a Vulcan salute. She returned the salute. They sat at the conference table, and he apprised her of the situation. He told her that Vulcan Ambassador Solpar was in the station’s infirmary recovering from a heart attack. Apparently, the Vulcan also had Bendii syndrome, which complicated his condition. The Ambassador had come to the station for a diplomatic conference. While in recovery, he asked to see his personal data padd. When he started looking at it, he could tell it had been tampered with. Some of his archived files had been mysteriously retrieved. He knew he had it open when he was being interviewed by a Federation journalist. He had been holding it when he had his heart attack. The journalist had returned it to station security after Solpar was taken to the infirmary. DNA scans revealed that only Solpar, the journalist, and the security officer had touched the padd. When the security officer went to question the journalist, Yuan Wu, it was discovered that he had already left the station. He had taken a public transport to the non-Federation planet Amverlin. Starfleet security has sent someone there to find him.

Meanwhile, station security said that shortly before Wu left the station, he had met with a Vulcan named Vin’re. Station cameras showed that Wu gave the Vulcan a data rod. “We think,” said Admiral Lapointe, “the data rod had a copy of Solpar’s personal logs—logs that could be damning if made public. Solpar stated that his logs had inflammatory words against the Klingons. His personal logs, according to Solpar himself, are very damning and could cause serious diplomatic repercussions.”

“Where is Vin’re now?” asked T’Avaya.

“We do not know. We think he left the station. Internal sensors do not detect that he is still here. There are no transport logs of him leaving, but he must have used an alias and a fake ID.”

Then T’Avaya, a Vulcan, asked the question that is always asked when a Vulcan perpetrator is involved. “Is there any chance that Vin’re was a Romulan? Anything suspicious in his past?”

The admiral was expecting these questions and had already ordered his security team to investigate. “The records on Vin’re showed nothing suspicious. He is a Vulcan computer programmer. He was on the station for two days, though it’s unclear why he was here. No criminal record. We also don’t know how he knew Yuan Wu. But we are still looking into it. The only reason we could think of that he would want Solpar’s logs was to cause discord with the Klingons and the Federation-Klingon Alliance. Solpar has become very famous for endorsing alliances with many other cultures with many different views. If this got out, it would shake the view of other alliances and planets. Some of the worlds that favor Solpar might be swayed to agree with his views of the Klingons, causing more hostilities in the quadrant. And the Klingons themselves may turn against Solpar, and therefore turn against the Federation.”

T'Avaya asked to see the DNA scans and the ambassador’s padd. The admiral complied. The Vulcan sent the DNA records to Starfleet Security. They would send the records to all security officers in Fleet in case Vin’re ever turned up. She also let them know she would send her agent, Centurion Quintus (Cassandra) to Amverlin to help them find Yuan Wu.

 

The rings of Amverlin could be seen clearly from the planet’s surface, no matter the time of day. They were like beautiful silver bracelets that surrounded the planet and ensured its mystery and mythology. Some said the rings were a crown from the gods, marking Amverlin as the king of all planets in the system. Centurion Quintus—if there were any SI communiques, Cassandra would use her code name when on a non-Federation world--loved the myth. She thought it fit the beauty and wonder of the planet. There was lush blue and green shrubbery. The southern hemisphere had a large orange/red ocean. There were deserts with gold sand. There were mountains of emerald stone. It was no wonder the natives had opened their home as a resort planet.

Quintus stood before the golden Xintas waterfall. It was sixty meters high and three hundred meters wide. She looked up to the top, along with all the other tourists. She saw them bring their hands to their foreheads to block the sunlight. She did the same, even though her genetically enhanced retinas were strong enough to withstand the sunlight.

Quintus walked back to the tourist center. She needed to find Yuan Wu. She knew he had booked a transport to the waterfall. She also knew that he had skipped out on his next assignment from the Federation News Network. He had been told to cover the uprising of an underground religion on Idania. But he told his editor he was quitting the job. That was right before he had left Starbase 8. So now he was here on Amverlin, probably enjoying spending the payment that Vin’re had given him for the Vulcan ambassador’s logs.

With her enhanced vision and optical abilities, she was able to immediately spot Wu in the crowded lobby of the tourist center. She made her way through the crowd. She saw him go down a hallway. She followed him discreetly. He turned down another hallway and went inside a room. She went inside and saw the room was full of lockers. It was not for valuables, as there were no security guards. It was for tourists to store personal belongings so they wouldn’t be burdened with them while they enjoyed exploring the area. She watched Wu typing in a code to open a locker. He reached into the locker and pulled out a bottle of Brandrian wine. It was an expensive wine. But the more serious issue was that it was illegal to bring your own alcoholic beverages to Amverlin. And it certainly wasn’t sold here. So that would be his SECOND crime. She immediately identified herself to him, flashing her SI badge, and arrested him for stealing and selling Solpar’s logs to the enemy and for possession of illegal goods.

 

On Subspace Relay Station 1814, aka SRS1814, a Vulcan was sitting at a computer station. The Vulcan put his own code into the system. It was a worm he had devised himself. It would lead him straight to the subspace communication path to Qo’noS. Vin’re needed to send them a message. They needed to know just what Ambassador Solpar thought of them. Seeding as much dissension as possible between the Federation and the Klingons was Vin’re’s current assignment. This he did for the Empire. He inserted the data rod. The relay station had thousands of messages going in and out every second of every day. Its vast network extended to the far reaches of the Federation and beyond. Even though it was built for volume and efficiency, there was still a certain time delay. The message had to wait to be properly sequenced, coded and decoded, and queued up. He had done his research. And yet, he had no clue that his data rod, as used on a Starfleet station but not being Starfleet-issue, would not be properly coded.

 

The Starfleet lieutenant watched the monitors at her ops station. Many of the transmissions going through SRS1814 were daily status reports. She got a glimpse of each one as they scrolled up her screen; she saw the transmissions and whom they were sent to and from. She saw these reports all the time. Some were typed messages. Others were audio. Reports, love letters, advertisements, proposals, legal documents, etc. All these went through the relay station and out through its network of over a hundred satellite stations. But this was the main hub. Everything went through here at some point.

Something beeped on the neighboring terminal. She turned her chair to look at it. One transmission had been flagged as not coming from a proper terminal. Not every end user was using a Starfleet-approved terminal, but there were certain criteria to check. She pulled up the transmission. It was a file headed for Qo’noS. She pulled it from the transmission queue. She tried to trace the source. Someone had input it from a terminal on this relay station. But it didn’t have the same encryptions that the station uses. In fact, she wasn’t able to decrypt it. The relay station was programmed not to send anything it couldn’t decrypt first. She immediately reported the suspect transmission to the station’s CO, Captain Holler.

 

            Admiral Lapointe received a call from SRS1814. Someone had tried to send an improperly encrypted subspace transmission from the relay station. They had traced the source to a terminal and scanned it for DNA. The DNA on the terminal matched that of Vin’re. Well, that was fast, thought Lapointe. He knew T’Avaya had sent the DNA records to Starfleet Security headquarters, and they had put it in their database in case any Starfleet security personnel found a match. So a match had been found on SRS1814, one of the largest relay stations in the Federation. And it wasn’t far from Starbase 8. The admiral quickly hailed Starfleet Intelligence agent T’Avaya.

            When T’Avaya came to Lapointe’s office, he told her what Captain Holler at the relay station had told him. Vin’re had tried to send an improperly encrypted transmission to Qo’noS. The station’s ops officer was not able to decrypt or delete the file. But the system did keep it from being transmitted. The entire station’s systems had to be taken offline. They were able to use their network to keep transmitting communiques through other relays, but this put a strain on the network and slowed all communiques going through the network. There were also many Starfleet and private vessels that relied on this station for their comms.

            T’Avaya was about to say she would take her runabout over to the station when the admiral received an urgent hail. It was Captain Watin, the commanding officer of the USS Prophecy.

            Admiral Lapointe looked at Watin on the screen on his desk. “What can I do for you captain?”

            “Sir, it’s SRS1814. We were there for some routine maintenance and all communications suddenly slowed, and one hour later, life support on the station suddenly shut down. Communications directly from the station were also shut down, so they couldn’t call for help. Most of the station personnel were able to take shuttles and leave before the air was completely depleted. The ones that didn’t make it off are all dead.”

            Lapointe swallowed hard. That station was under his jurisdiction. He was responsible for those people. He looked at the El-Aurian captain. “How many casualties?”

            “Nineteen,” said Watin. “And fifty-three survivors. Ten on my ship. The others made it to other ships that were stationed here. But sir, we have another problem.”

            The admiral swallowed hard and braced himself. “What problem?”

            “The station seems to be on lockdown. Its shields are up, so we can’t beam anyone over. All of the docking bays are locked and won’t open. We think that someone has taken over the station’s computer systems remotely. We know, as you do, that someone had tried to send an encrypted message to the Klingons. It’s probably the same person that locked it down. This Vin’re person, whether Vulcan or Romulan, may be working with the Klingons to sabotage the relay station. This station is vital to Starfleet operations in this sector. With communiques now having to be rerouted, comms are already buckling under the volume. We are only able to talk to you now because we’re in close enough proximity to send this subspace transmission without going through the station.”

            T’Avaya had been listening. She walked over to the admiral’s desk so Watin could see her on the viewscreen. “Captain Watin,” she said.

“T’Avaya!” he said. “What are you doing there? Not that it isn’t good to see you again.” T’Avaya used to be chief engineer of Station Tyrellia, the station where Captain Watin’s ship was assigned.

            “I’m here on assignment from Starfleet Intelligence.” She knew that Watin was aware that she now worked for SI. “And the incident on the relay station may be related to my assignment. I had a hand in designing that station. If I take my runabout there, I may be able to get in and take back control of the computer systems.”

            Admiral Lapointe and Captain Watin agreed that it was worth a shot. T’Avaya went to her runabout, the Shavokh. It would take three hours to reach the station at warp five. She ordered Agent Miadere to continue the investigation on Starbase 8.

           

Miadere visited Ambasador Solpar in the infirmary. He was awake and lucid. She asked what he remembered about Yuan Wu. Solpar said the reporter had seemed anxious to do the interview and finish it. The Vulcan did not remember anything after his heart attack. He said that his personal padd has been for his personal use only. Yes, it contained some damning observations about the Klingons that could destroy his reputation if ever revealed to the Klingons or Federation citizens.

            Miadere used a secure starbase terminal to check the Starfleet Intelligence database on Ambassador Solpar, Yuan Wu, and Vin’re. There were no red flags on any of their records. Solpar had become famous in Federation circles for his long and distinguished career. Wu had been an adequate and fairly mediocre reporter for FNN. Vin’re was born in the H’Tal province on Vulcan and performed his job well as a computer programmer. The SI agent looked at the DNA trace that was found on Solpar’s padd. There was just enough there to identify Vin’re. She cross referenced the records of Solpar and Vin’re. They were from two vastly different municipalities on Vulcan. But wait. Solpar had once been governor of Vin’re’s home city. That was twenty-five years ago. There was no way to tell if they had met before. But something relevant could have happened back then. Solpar had introduced several new programs in the small city. He had mostly been well-liked. She cross referenced Wu with the two Vulcans. She did not find any place where they might have crossed paths.

She checked starbase security footage of all three persons. The only thing notable was the meeting of Vin’re and Wu in a Bolian restaurant, which she already knew about. She got clearance from security to check the rooms that Wu and Vin’re had occupied at the station. She also searched Solpar’s room. She found that Vin’re had left his terminal running. She knew starbase security had already searched the room, so maybe it was they who had left it running. Still…

 

            When T’Avaya reached SRS1814, she hailed Captain Watin on the USS Prophecy. He told her there had been no change in the situation. The Vulcan told him she had a plan. She closed the comms channel and piloted the Shavokh over to a satellite of the station. The satellite, which had been named SA-1, was a rectangular piece of titanium, ten meters long. It was part of the station’s relay network. It had its own transponder code, which she was able to access. If she could trace its signal to the relay station, she would be able to form a dual control point. She tapped her controls. SA-1 was functioning normally, sending and receiving thousands of video/audio communiques. She sifted through the data stream to find a signal to the station.

She received a hail from Watin. He told her that scans showed a single person had just beamed over to the station. The shields had only gone down for a second, just long enough for a transporter signal to get through. And it was not just any person, but Prophecy’s sensors showed it was a Vulcan. Watin and T’Avaya were thinking the same thing. It was probably Vin’re. T’Avaya closed the channel with Watin and tried to hail the station. There was no answer. She used her own scanners and saw that Vin’re had brought the station’s life support back online. If he knew what she was trying to do, he would be able to block her. She had to find a way to stop him before he sent that transmission to the Klingons. She could only hope he would not be able to figure out how to get through the lockout that the station commander had ordered, and that he would not be able to decrypt the file and send it.

She was still trying to find a way into the system when she decided on another plan. She could possibly get into the system if she had more time, but she needed to get that relay back up ASAP. She determined that she could break through a section of the station’s shields with a low-grade particle beam from the Shavokh’s tractor beam. Then the Prophecy could beam a security team over to apprehend the intruder, and she could beam over and get the computer system up. She let Captain Watin know her plan. She had designed the basic comms system that Starfleet used for all its relay stations, starbases, and starships. She saw that there had been an upgrade to this one. She expected that. It was always Starfleet’s practice to upgrade and enhance, especially two years ago when they had the Dominion at their back door. She had designed the system to be robust. She had worked for Starfleet as a civilian engineer. She felt it was to their mutual advantage that she could work for Starfleet as an outsider to give them fresh ideas, and pursue her own goals outside of Starfleet. As a Starfleet Intelligence operative, she was also a civilian, and had the advantage of having missions where she couldn’t be as easily traced by Starfleet’s enemies and the advantage of having missions outside of Starfleet that served the Federation’s interests.

She changed the settings on her ship’s tractor beam. She fired it at the station. It worked. She had successfully broken through part of the shields. She immediately closed the comms connection on her console. She attached her personal transport device to her wrist so she would be able to beam back to her ship at will. She made sure she had her SI utility belt. Then she stepped onto the transporter pad and said, “energize”, verbally activating the transporter controls.

When she was on the relay station, she saw that two security officers from the Prophecy and the station’s commanding officer--who had escaped from the station to the Prophecy--had just beamed over. Their scans showed that Vin’re was in the Command and Control center. Captain Holler led the way. When Vin’re had cut off life support, he had shut down all power to the station. Right before he beamed over, he had restored life support and all systems except the comms relay system. That system had been locked down and only Captain Holler could restore it.

They entered the CNC and saw Vin’re coolly tapping at a terminal. Holler ordered him to cease, as the security officers cast their phasers at him. Vin’re held his hands up. His Vulcan face did not betray any emotions whatsoever. A security guard removed the disruptor that was hanging from the Vulcan’s hip. “I have another copy of the petaq’s logs,” Vin’re said. “Without this relay station, it won’t reach the Klingons as quickly, but it WILL reach them. Your precious Vulcan ambassador is finished. And so is your alliance with the Klingons.”

“Where is the other copy?” T’Avaya asked. Vin’re was silent. She continued her line of questioning. “Why did you do this? Are you working with the Klingons? The Romulans?”

“The Romulans have more backbone than we do. We Vulcans have become weak. Yes, I am working with the Romulans. The Tal Shiar has agents within the Klingon Empire. They will make sure that when the Klingons receive this file, it will start an insurgence that will eventually make them strike out against the Federation. The Romulans will simply watch as the two powers destroy each other, making them ripe to be conquered in the aftermath.”

Cocky and unrepentant as he was, the security officers took him to the Prophecy, which would escort him to Starbase 11 for trial. Captain Holler said to T’Avaya, “I’ve never seen a Vulcan quite like that one.”

“Indeed,” she replied. “There are known Vulcan dissidents who logically conclude that our enemies should be supported over our own kind. The Romulans as a race have been known to be ‘attractive’ to some Vulcans who see our notions of peace and unemotionalism as outdated. Of course, not all of them resort to criminal activity.”

T’Avaya received a hail from Miadere, who told her she had found another copy of Solpar’s logs in the computer terminal in Vin’re’s room on Starbase 8. It was set to automatically send the logs to Qo’noS if a code wasn’t entered within ten hours. And it was set so that any tampering would prematurely trigger the transmission. Miadere had been able to stop it by locking the terminal with an SI encryption code. She was able to retrieve the copy from the console and save it to a disc. “Excellent,” the Vulcan told her, and she ended the call.

“Now let’s see how cocky Vin’re is when we tell him we found his other copy,” said Holler. T’Avaya agreed that Vin’re would not be happy.

“Thank you for your help,” said Captain Holler. She bowed her head to acknowledge. The he went to the command console to unlock the system. It still had the encrypted message that Vin’re had uploaded. It could not be purged. It needed to be decrypted. Holler put in his command codes, first to unlock the system, then to decrypt the message. The decryption process took ten minutes. It was now unencrypted. The logs appeared on the terminal screen. T’Avaya glanced at the text and saw a few words like “inferior Klingons” and “illogical alliance”. She inserted a data rod and uploaded a copy of the file; it would be needed for evidence against Vin’re. Then she let Holler delete the file from the system. The captain called the Prophecy and the other ships where his crew had taken refuge. They could now return to the station.

Now that the mission was over, T’Avaya called Captain Watin and asked for permission to come aboard his ship. She had several friends there she would like to visit, including the Orion chief engineer, Emac.

 

Cassandra had, by this time, made her way back to meet up with her teammates at Starbase 8. She had turned Yuan Wu over to Starfleet Security. They would take him to Starbase 12 to stand trial with Vin’re. How had Vin’re and Wu met? Apparently by chance. During separate interrogations, both of them revealed that they met when Wu had a reporting job on Casperia Prime and Vin’re was vacationing there. Wu, with his journalistic instincts, knew that a Vulcan on Casperia Prime, a decadent resort planet, was a unique thing and wanted to know more about him. The resort planet did not have a record of Vin’re’s visit because he had used a pseudonym. The two of them had kept in touch by using communication devices that Vin’re had programmed for secrecy.

Solpar had recovered well enough to leave the infirmary. He knew his ailing health meant that it was time to retire. He had had a good career. And now, no one would know how deep his feelings about the Klingons really were.

Miadere and Cassandra were once again amazed at the diversity within the Vulcan race. On their mission to Vulcan not even two months ago, they had seen Vulcan dissidents who went to extreme lengths for their beliefs. Now, in Solpar and Vin’re, they witnessed two more Vulcans who each had their own individual mindset. And there was T’Avaya. Of course, they knew T’Avaya had her own ways that she was different from other Vulcans, but in a much more subdued way. She told them that even in the small Vulcan colony where she grew up, she found there were many different personalities of her people. One could never get a good feel for them by only knowing a few. Vin’re, with his attraction to Romulans, she could understand. She also found their sister race to be fascinating. But, she had to admit, even SHE was surprised at Solpar’s bigotry. How could a diplomat, someone who was trained and made a career out of getting along with people, forming bonds with people, have such strong negative feelings against an entire race? How had he never learned to accept differences? It was staggering to realize that some Vulcans still had that stilted mindset that their race had had over two hundred years ago.

 

-by the Honorable Kavura, 2/25/25

 

Thank you for reading my Star Trek Adventures: Captain’s Log mission report. Captain’s Log is a solo role-playing game by Modiphius Entertainment.