1.5 Sabotage on Station 7 (mission)

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## Mission

The *Tempest* is ordered to investigate the apparent sabotage of Sentry Station 7, a Starfleet listening outpost along the Romulan Neutral Zone. One of the station's five crewmembers must be the culprit and most likely a Romulan agent. The crew must determine which of the station's crew is the guilty party and close any security breaches they have created.

## Summary

### Cold Open

In a quiet and otherwise empty shuttlebay, someone in a spacesuit uses a laser drill to puncture the station's hull and cause a breach. Atmosphere begins rushing out of the small hole into the vacuum of space and automatic alarms begin to go off.

### Part 1

En route to the station, the *Tempest* crew review the information they have so far. The outpost has suffered three significant malfunctions in recent days. First, the station's sensor array went down, leaving it blind to any Romulan ships that may have crossed the Neutral Zone in that time. Second, a rogue isotope was introduced to the station's power system, forcing the station to operate on emergency power for the better part of a day while the power system was purged and restarted. Finally, the third incident is a hole drilled into the hull of the station from the inside, causing a small breach that vented a small but non life threatening amount of the station's atmosphere into space and activating automatic alarms.

The *Tempest* arrives at the station and conducts a scan, finding nothing suspicious. The crew beam over to the station, where Goodspeed and Holden examine the hull breach and Maddox and Teal begin interviewing the station's crew. Goodspeed finds that the hole must've been created using a standard Starfleet laser drill, and could match the drill if he had it, though no drill is found in the vicinity of the hull breach.

Meanwhile, Holden investigates the power conduit in the shuttlebay but can only tell that the rogue isotope was not introduced into the system through that junction. On the operations level, Maddox orders the station's various equipment be gathered for inspection. There is no power inverter - the necessary tool for sabotaging the power system - among the equipment, but one of the station's two repair kits is missing its laser welder. Maddox and Teal then move to the shuttlebay to begin interviewing the station's crew, while Goodspeed and Holden search the crew's quarters.

In his interview, the station commander, Lieutenant Commander Robert Slocum, casts his suspicion on one of the station's two intelligence officers, Lieutenant Cynthia Milder. But Teal also senses that he's hiding something that he is not revealing. Maddox presses him on Slocum's apparent poor command abilities given the situation, though while Slocum is irritated at the challenge, he doesn't reveal anything incriminating as a result.

During the interviews, Goodspeed and Holden move to the station's habitat level to investigate the crew quarters. They search Slocum's quarters first and find a dear john letter from his wife, explaining that she is leaving him, partly because he has been assigned to a small, remote outpost and she doesn't want to leave Mars. Next they search the station's senior engineer, a Vulcan woman named Siral, and although she has a past history that includes support for reunification between the Vulcans and Romulans, they find nothing incriminating in her room.

### Part 2

The crew continues to review the timeline, focusing on which of the station's crewmembers responded to the various incidents. Next, Maddox and Teal interview Siral but don't learn anything useful. Goodspeed and Holden search the junior engineer's quarters, a Bolian and recent Starfleet Academy graduate named Chax and don't find anything suspicious. Meanwhile, Maddox and Teal interview Chax who is clearly nervous and overly talkative, but neither is unreasonable given the situation and the general tendencies of many Bolians. Otherwise, his story lines up with Slocum's and Siral's, though Teal senses that he is also hiding something.

Goodspeed and Holden search the room of the other intelligence officer, Lieutenant Rhonda Garcia, but find nothing suspicious while at the same time, Maddox and Teal interview Garcia who also casts her suspicion on Milder. Then, Slocum calls up from the operations deck, alerting Maddox that the station's sensors are picking up potential cloaked Romulan ships nearby. The *Tempest* goes to red alert and scans the area but does not detect anything itself. Slocum presses Maddox to return to the *Tempest* in case of an attack while Goodspeed and Holden search Milder's quarters and find nothing - not just nothing suspicious, but nothing one would normally find in a person's quarters including family photos and leisure material.

Holden moves on to find the power conduit juncture where the rogue isotope was introduced, while Goodspeed goes to the operations deck to investigate the readings Slocum claimed the station detected. He notices a brief slight of hand by Siral as she works at a console, realizing that she is somehow manufacturing false readings. He then orders the Tempest to travel to the location of the supposed readings to investigate more closely.

### Part 3

The *Tempest* arrives at the location of the potential sensor readings and conducts another scan, again finding nothing. The *Tempest* crew now suspects multiple of the station's crew, including Slocum, Siral, and Chax. Further, their attempts to point the blame towards Milder now make the crew suspect that they are working together and attempting to pin her as a scapegoat. Maddox and Teal interview Milder, who refuses to answer any questions and invokes her Seventh Guarantee rights against self incrimination. Teal attempts to read her telepathically but is unable to do so. Teal asks her point blank if the drilled hole was some kind of cry for help. Milder does not answer though she does look at Teal with an intensity that seems to signify something.

Holden continues his search for the conduit juncture and discovers a hatch leading to a crawlspace on the station's bottom level. Inside, he discovers a set of data pads with reports on all of the crew except Milder, as well as a power inverter and the missing laser drill. He beams the evidence back to the Tempest for closer investigation and informs Maddox of his discovery. Maddox gathers the station crew to the station's operations level. On the Tempest, Lieutenant Eele reviews the datapads discovered by Holden and confirm that they're reports written by Milder about the other crewmembers and also verifies that the laser drill and power inverter were in fact the ones used to sabotage the station.

The *Tempest* crew leans towards concluding that Milder is the culprit but also acting as a whistleblower to expose the others. Maddox and Teal speak to Chax in private, successfully pressing him into confessing the truth. He admits that he shut down the sensor array on orders from Slocum and Siral, prompting Goodspeed to take both into custody aboard the *Tempest*. Maddox, Teal, and Chax return to the operations level, where Chax and Garcia exchange a brief look, prompting Maddox to pull his phaser on Garcia.

A distress call comes in from a nearby civilian transport, which claims they are reading a Romulan warbird on their sensors and need immediate assistance. The Tempest arrives but finds that there is no warbird and the readings came from a decoy buoy. The Tempest returns to the station and Holden brings Milder to Main Engineering, trying to connect through their shared background in intelligence. She still chooses to say nothing, telling Holden that she does not trust easily and if he really had a background in intelligence, he would understand. Holden is nonetheless convinced that her motivations are honorable and it's the other crewmembers that are engaged in something nefarious. Maddox puts the station crew into the *Tempest* brig except for Milder, whom he confines to quarters.

Following their official report to Starfleet, Maddox is contacted by Commander Marta Batanides, the case officer for both Garcia and Milder. She confirms the crew's conclusion about Milder and explains that Garcia had been an undercover agent in the Orion Syndicate, but believes she had been turned and was attempting to plant herself as a double agent within Starfleet Intelligence. She arranged for the other crewmembers, excepting Milder, to be assigned to the station with her because she would be able to manipulate them into going along with her scheme. Milder was a late addition by Batanides as part of an attempt to expose Garcia, though since a Starfleet Intelligence agent had been compromised, Starfleet Intelligence itself couldn't be trusted to conduct the investigation.

## Elements

* Characters
	+ NPCs
		- Lt. Commander Robert Slocum
		- Lieutenant Siral
		- Ensign Dorun Chax
		- Lieutenant Rhonda Garcia
		- Lieutenant Cynthia Milder
		- Commander Marta Batanides
	+ Supporting Characters
		- Lt. Eele Notus
* Ships
	+ *SS Lorava (NFT-17695)*
* Locations
	+ Sentry Station 7

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