Akron Incident

During April of 1520 in the Sol (Terran) System while the Nimbus Station and several other fleet elements from Solas Tempus were also present, the USS Akron was identified as appearing in the system while phased in an very peculiar way. Several ships identified that the vessel was very likely to be specifically configured to have a continuously cycling phase variation of several microseconds before and after being in sync with real time. The vessel was discovered to be moving at a slow rate of speed on a linear trajectory through the system cycling from one end (negative displacement) to the other (positive displacement) in a regular interval.

Initial Actions

The INV Cabur, INV New Hope, and the Fabber Vulcan were on site and used a drone to board the vessel when it's phase variance was at 0. They lost signal from the drone after a short time, discovering that an unknown substance was on several consoles in engineering and there was a considerable amount of control damage to the engineering deck. Several bodies were also found that suggested some kind of struggle may have occurred. The drone was retrieved and then an unknown computer virus was activated and the drone itself produced a specifically coded sequence of light bursts which overloaded several systems on the Cabur and New Hope. This lead to the virus being introduced to both vessels. Both vessels were able to repel the virus and resume normal operations. The probe itself was destroyed.

On the INV Cabur a particular R2-Droid successfully destroyed the ability for the virus to propagate through the systems by uncoupling several control circuits and causing a plasma explosion in the transporter room was was infected. This act very likely saved the ship.

Shortly after this, the Akron came to a full stop, though was still cycling through phase-states making communication and beaming very difficult. It was speculated that since the configuration of the warp drive system of the Akron was possibly done intentionally that someone could have configured it that way to either keep people off the vessel or keep something that was on the vessel from leaving.

Study of Initial Incident

The initial incident provided inconclusive data on what happened to the Akron, however, it was deemed likely some sort of infectious agent may be involved and quickly the idea came that it was likely technological in some way, linking the events trying to study the vessel to the subsequent computer virus activity on the New Hope and the Cabur. The events that unfolded on the ship required more study.

Hostile Acts

The ship woke up for no discernible reason and, still phased, fired its impulse engines at full power. While multiple vessels attempted to use tractor beams to slow the vessel, due to it's phased state, they are unable to. Nimbus responds by ordering it's shields to full power when it realized that the Akron is headed right for it. It was decided by Fleet Admiral Thomas that the Cabur was authorized to form a boarding party to disable the ships engines and gather more information.

Boarding the Akron

The initial boarding party was exnteisve, consisting of:

• Nigrantibus Alis
• Aytise Alshat
• Zalsosh C'tykt
• Tal Ravis
• Flask
• Kanto Sanquin
• Joshi Nuva
• Jyn

Boarding the ship revealed much the same as the probe had, an unknown substance they called the gunk was in play at the time, and seemed to have infested the bodies, consoles, and some of the other surfaces. Kento touched a console and became infected with the gunk which seemed to give him extreme mental distress. Further, the crying of a little girl seemed to fill the air, giving a high degree of distress to Zalsosh, Jyn, and Aytise who sensed a dark energy on the ship. The sound of the crying made it more intense, Jyn herself was convinced by the unknown force that the cries were real and started to move forward. At the same time, Aytise used his own powers with the force to push back against the psionic energy, which allowed Jyn and all those around to remain unconvinced, except for poor Kanto who was already infected.

At this point, the bodies began to revive somehow repaired or otherwise operated by the gunk which covered any wounds the bodies had. The party attempted to fend them off, Tal was using his M56 with explosive rounds, took out 4 of the 7 corpses which had risen, causing them to explode. This further caused the infected bodies and gunk to be splattered onto nearby people, including Tal himself. Flask, who had perviously kicked a corpse that was infected, now had multiple infection points. Aytise was attempting to call for incendiary ordinance to be delivered from Nimbus Station, but could not get through and found that once the gunk touched his armor there was a short span before it began to malfunction. Tal, as well, found the same thing that his gun and sights began to malfunction not long after touching the gunk. Meanwhile, Flask, in pain and trying to avoid further infection uses his abilities and severs his own arms and one leg, leaving him unable to continue even while Zalsosh attempts to help him. This drops his communicator to the floor, where his arm begins moving again.

Nigrantibus and Aytise pull up the schematics for the ship and head for the turbolift to exit the area, finding that the've got a jefferies tube hatch to the impulse engines lower bay, where the impulse manifolds are. At this point, Mike-037 and Orn'Ornomee show up with several Elite's from Orn's ship. The Elite's waste no time at all and begin to incinerate the bodies including Flask's severed armed and leg, as they had all started to move on their own. At this point, three of the corpses came out of the turbolift, at the same time as Virus, Aytise, and Nigrantibus were trying to figure out how to disable the ships impulse drive using the manifolds. Deciding not to blow up the manifolds, as the explosion could cause a warp core breech which might be devastating while the ship was out of phase, they opted to use the emergency shut off valves. Aytise along with Virus managed to disable the reactor and the impulse drive, the Akron was pulled into orbit around Jupiter.

At this point, the team was beamed out, except for Flask who lost his communicator and was left on the Akron.

Retaliation

After the events on the Akron, Kanto was infected but the biofilters on the Cabur missed it and he was cleared to return to the normal population. Kanto then was convinced by the entity controlling the gunk to touch a control panel, where it began to infect the station. While HAL fought to fend off the infection, it soon began to use its other abilities to outmaneuver HAL, namely that it had a physical presence in the computer system via the console. Additionally, the more it replicated the more it was able to process and do. The entity convince Kanto to, futher, touch Tex who had found Kanto touching the console. It then infected Tex, who once he realized the infection disabled himself relying on his OS backup.

With a group in Sickbay consisting of Drem Confoscho, Zalsosh, and Clockwerk attempting to help there, having taken Kanto there to be treated. The computer systems were inoperative there, and doctors were scrambling to save patience who were in the middle of surgery. Drem was able to hold them in stasis for a short period of time, though an Automated Infiltration and Combat Drone attacked that at point. Once the Drone was distracted by the efforts to fight the virus within the computer system, Drem and the doctors were able to disable it and pull its power core. After this, however, the virus began trying to overload the power conduits with the sickbay doors sealed trapping everyone inside.

In the control room, another such unit attacked, and was only defeated when Mike-037 blasted it with a plasma grenade. Meanwhile, Lance left the control room to release the AI Leo in the system to help fight the virus. During this time, the virus took control of the city shield and dropped it, while the New Hope and the Epoch beamed bodies that were exposed to space aboard for treatment. Leo and HAL were able to fend off the Virus while Jyn, Emily Damion, and Mike headed to the Interface Chair room. Jyn arrived in the room first, but Emily and Mike got caught in a power conduit explosion... When Jyn sat in the chair she was able to take full control of the city overriding the virus and purging it both physically and within the computer. This returned all power systems to normal and computer function resumed.