Episode 1: Fading Sun

Jiral can sense the Venture's current bridge and engineering crew are trying to figure out what's draining power from the engines. The power drain was threatening to either drain all the energy, leaving nothing for life support, or simply overload the core, which would cause a catastrophic breakdown. After Dr. Mosa's transmission, however, they seem to be making some progress. She hinted at the method Cordal used to stabilize the core, and they are now trying to use the same method to siphon off some power for shields and life support.

Cordal and Sumek spends some time trying different phase variants until they make a breakthrough. It seems the lifeforms are slightly out of phase with our reality, and they are now honing in on what the variance is. Once that has been determined it should be much easier to identify the nature of the lifeforms.

Reiter's efforts to assist with the medical tricorder have him stumped. He shrugs and notes absently, "They didn't really cover preventive medicine against radiation exposure in First Aid." Figuring he's better off putting his talents to good use, he continues to wander about the room encouraging the scientific personnel with his inquiries and general good nature. Stiff upper lip. Buck up. Good job. That sort of thing.

Sumek sits with Cordal, doing his best to help where he can.

Perhaps Commander, it would be good for us to discuss any proposed First Aid class changes when we are back aboard the Venture. I imagine several of our standard protocols and regulations will require adaptation after we synthesize the information we learn here. Sumek says, mind already thinking of the logical documentation required and station-side changes that could be undertaken to prevent things like this in the future.

We should focus as much effort as possible on solving this problem now.

Reiter is momentarily taken aback by his Captain, despite being somewhat used to the quirks of Vulcan command staff. "Ah. Of course, Captain. That only makes sense."

Encouraged by the success, and greatly aided by his Captain and Commander, Cordal makes an effort to figure out the enigma of these lifeforms.

Cordal finally makes sense of all the data. "Sir! Sir! I've found it! Look here... " He points at a looping time lapse of the Osarin sun, and zooms into the heliosphere.

"See here, you can see super-heated gases near the surface are simply vanishing..." He switches visible bands, and overlays the triolic radiation patterns. "..at the precise area where the triolic waves are being emitted."

He makes a few more adjustments to the sensors, shifting wavelength and compensating for phase variance, and you see several massive blobs on the surface of the phere. "I had to pull some older data to compare, they are so massive that they almost look like sun spots or normal dips in activity, but with the right variance... These are lifeforms! Massive entities, many kilometers in diameter, the largest look about a fifty or hundred times larger than this station!"

He zooms into one of the entities and bring up some data on it. "As we suspected, they are slightly out of phase with most other life-forms, with a positive phase variance of 0.004, which renders them undetectable without using a precise setting. There are hundreds, and maybe thousands, of these entities. And they appear to be consuming vast quantities energy form the sun, which is probably what's causing the increased decay. The triolic waves look to be a byproduct of this process."

He zooms to a spot near one of the larger ones, where you se slight shimmers of entities that are starting from almost nothing to a solid shape. "They are spawning, each of them seem to be making smaller, new versions of themselves. They are mostly oblong in shape, about one meter in diameter and 2-3 meters in length. It's these that have been leaving the sun, heading into deep space, probably in search for new stars to feed on. It would seem that our generators drew them towards us. Our core is food to them.."

Excellent discovery Cordal. Is there anything that we can do to attempt to contact them, to make them see that they are killing us by harvesting our core? If they can sense this energy, perhaps a modulated beam of some sort, anything to draw them away. Sumek says, lost in thought.

"I've made telepathic contact with the Venture. The crew is safe, although the power drain from the creatures is threatening to cause a catastrophic breakdown. They're making progress towards stabilizing the core and are attempting to restore power to shields and life support.

Captain, I can attempt to telepathically relay information we've discovered here and coordinate our efforts with the ship, at least until we can restore subspace communications."

Cordal replies to Sumek: "I'll look into it sir. Although, at this time I've got no indication that they are sentient." He glances at the readouts on the viewscreen, then includes. "About the beam, sir. I should be able to set up a modulated beam that emits a power signature that looks like food for them. Just a matter of finding out what they deem tasty. I'll get right on it."

"Can phasers injure them, Lieutenant?"

Cordal studies the readouts for a moment before replying. "We'd need to do some modifications to account for the phase difference, but we know the variance now, so we should be able to. Well, that's for the ones outside. The ones inside are still invisible to the naked eye..."

Jiral attempts to project his thoughts to the bridge crew of the Venture through Betazoid Telepathy. Knowing that there are very few other telepaths on board, he tries to keep the message as clear and concise as possible.

Space-faring lifeforms. Out of phase. Positive variance .004. Reconfigure sensors and phasers.

Reiter nods, "Captain -- if these beings aren't sentient, we must see to the protection of the crew on the ship and the station."

Agreed Commander. Mr. Jiral, please instruct the Venture to use phasers at their earliest possible chance. We need to configure our handheld phasers for the beings here.

Jiral senses that one or two crewmembers get the message, and after some initial confusion, the crew scramble to battle stations. They are now aware of the lifeforms on the sun. Problem is, they are focusing too much on those, and not on the ones in their core, so life support systems are still ailing. Cordal looks up from his terminal. "Sirs, I've got something. If we can get the Venture back, and get the core free of the malign entities, we could modify the main reflector dish to emit a beam that replicates the energy signatures they feed on. It wouldn't take too long, and we'd only have to overload the engines a bit, but it should work as a lure. They seem to be moving in sub-warp speed, so we could lure them to the edge of the solar system and point them in a relatively safe direction. It would take them centuries just to get to the nearest star. No leads on way to communicate though, I've tried a wide band of emissions, but they don't make any responses as far as I can tell."

Dr. Mosa looks up from her own terminal, and joins in. "We still need to clear our core and the Venture's core of entities. We could either try to look for ways to cloak or alter the energy signature so we can lure them away from the core, or we could look into ways of making them visible so we can pick them off with hand phasers. Both are long shots though."

Jiral concentrates as he sends another brief telepathic message to the crew aboard the Venture.

Lifeforms are in the core. Use phasers as soon as possible.