Find the Founders XI

[Mark]

What kind of questions would you like to ask? It's not as if we all went to the academy together you know.

[Sionnach Glic]

Well, let's think this through logicaly. Obviously, we need to figure out who's a legitimate Starfleet crew and who's a pirate crew posing as Starfleet officers. Obviously, the pirates will attempt to kill off whoever's beginning to guess along the right track to preserve their own secrecy. Thus the only thing we can really do is start tossing accusations around and see who starts to get killed off. That may give us something to guess on.

[Lt. Staplic]

as bad as it sounds...I agree, my ship's begun the facial recognition, however if, as Cpt. Hindenburg stated, this was being set up for months, wouldn't have been that hard to change the Starfleet pic.

[Mark]

Well, I think its safe to assume that Captain Hindenburg wasn't a pirate. You know, they offered me the first officer billet on the Titanic when I made Commander. It just sounded like a bad idea then, even though many called me superstitious.

It seems they were wrong.

[stitch626]

NIGHT!

[stitch626]

While doing their best to weed out the pirates, power on the ships begins to fluctuate. The captain of the U.S.S. Rochey orders the fleet to a stop and for the starships to form a ring around the freighters. Just as the last ship gets into position the darkness comes. First the comm system goes dead. Then sensors are lost. After being deaf and blind for a few seconds, life goes from the ships as main power goes offline. The lights dim to less than twenty percent. As the crews go to their windows to keep an eye on their suspects. Little do they no it will do no good.

In the darkness of space, two ships slowly break formation. With short bursts of their thrusters, they move to a preplanned distance from the circle. Communications are not needed; they know their target.

The captain of the Nickswitz stood from his chair. "Prepare the reserve generators and power up the enhanced sensor arrays. Ops, set up a comm buoy. If you detect on torpedo inbound I want you to launch it. We can't be too careful."
"Sensors online. We can only scan one ship sir before the generator must be recharged."
The captain thinks for a moment. "Alright, scan..."
"Captain torpedoes incoming!"
Before the order needs to be given, the operations officer launches the comm buoy. As the buoy leaves the launch bay, photon torpedoes plow into the bridge of the Intrepid class ship. Another volley hits the central engineering section, and seconds later the antimatter pods rupture. In an instant, most of the ship is consumed in a ball of light. Then the darkness returns.

Under the cover of darkness, the two ships return to their previous positions.

Everyone saw the torpedoes during the "night". Everyone saw the U.S.S. Nickswitz destroyed. But only two know who did it.
As main power returns, the comm buoy hails all vessels simultaniously.
"This is the Nickswitz. If you're hearing this, then we are no longer with you. Which means we were unable to make use of our enhanced sensor arrays. All we ask is that whomever survives this lets Starfleet know what happened. God speed."

[Mark]

Damnit! That was the strongest ship in our fleet!

[Lt. Staplic]

probably why the Pirates went after it...

[Sionnach Glic]

Damn them.

Alright, I hate to say this, but we need to make a decision. We need to down one of the ships amongst us on suspicion of them being seized by pirates. We can mourn the dead later, but if we don't act now then we'll be joining them and our vital supplies will never get where they're going.

In short, people, we need to start accusing one another. Then we need to kill whoever's aroused the suspicion of the majority of us.

So, name your suspects.

[Mark]

I see your reasoning, but we are talking about the lives of an entire crew here, Captain.

[Sionnach Glic]

Those lives are all doomed anyway if we sit around here and do nothing. Along with the lives of everyone else in this flotilla.

If we act, and we're wrong, then a few hundred innocent souls die needlessly. If we don't act, then thousands die. I'm no Vulcan, but I think it's a safe bet which course of action logic dictates here.

[Monroe]

"Well then I nominate the Rochey for being so gun hoe about killing Federation members and for being against every idea that might have worked so far such as a lottery selected mixed away team and for still not activating the view screen!"

The Captain of the USS Monroe activates his shields and weapons but doesn't lock on yet.

[Lt. Staplic]

The crews are obviously sympathetic to the Pirates, for all we know the entire crew of these two ships could be pirates..any starfleet officer would have done everything possible to notify us his ship was run by pirates, and I think them slipping away to shoot would be a pretty good hint.

Now that that's out of the way, I've been a little suspicious of Monroe since we got out here, just getting a bad vibe, now he wants to kill Rochey for stating the obvious. We have to act, even if we destroy each other, the frigates will make it. So does anyone else agree or am I completely off my base.

[Monroe]

"Completely off your base. Rochey has refused to show us his image. Is against a lottery away team which is the only fair way to manually search each ship. And he was against us moving close to each other. Pirates usually are not suicidal, that's not their MO. Using each other as human shields is the only way to prevent our deaths. And the fact you're so quick to defend him in light of overwhelming evidence has me a little suspicious of you."

[Sionnach Glic]

My viewscreen is on, Monroe, for all the lack of use it is anyway. Tell your crewmen to start doing their damned jobs. The only one getting gung-ho here is you.

I've already outlined the problems associated with sending a shuttle around to each ship in turn. Please do pay attention. And moving closer together just makes it even easier for the enemy to down more than one of us at a time. Do I really need to explain basic tactics to you?

Huh, between not being able to figure out how to use your viewscreen and being ignorant of the most basic of Starfleet tactics, one might think you never attended the academy.

You know, I'm finding compelled to agree with Captain Nick. To date, Monroe has failed to figure out the correct use of his viewscreen controls, tried to draw the fleet closer together where a single salvo could down several of us at once, advocated a strategy for dealing with the situation that would take a long time and is fraught with problems, been the first to arm weapons and shields, has demonstrated total tactical ignorance inconsistant with someone who supposedly attended the academy, and accused the one speaking the harsh and unpleasant truth of being an enemy agent as soon as said captain begins urging people to act quickly.

Am I over-analyzing his actions so far, or does anyone else believe my suspicions are well-grounded?