Pohl stepped out of the runabout onto the landing pad. The atmosphere of New Circini surrounded him, the tangible moisture in the air mixed with the scent of vigorous plant life and the exhaust of small craft. The reddish sun was temporarily blinding; he lifted an arm to shield his eyes.
Ships of all sizes were moored at the colony’s extensive docking facilities. Little coracles and skiffs clustered around the smaller terraces. The eye-bending shapes of freighters hulked up against the largest platforms.
He turned away from the docks and the settlement, dropping his arm as his eyes adjusted. Green treetops and gentle hills rolled away from the elevated spaceport, followed by a brilliant azure strip of ocean. The great curve of the launch loop was just visible in the distance.
Lt. Morgan trudged down the ramp behind him, tugging at his collar. “Bloody sauna,” grumbled the lieutenant.
“Pace yourself on the sniveling, lieutenant,” said Pohl without sympathy. “We just got here. Wouldn’t want you to run out.”
“It’s unlivable,” declared Lt. Morgan in disgust, wiping sweat from his forehead. “There. Job’s done. Let’s go.”
The rest of the specialists that comprised the survey team passed them, including Commander Sivath. Pohl fell into step with Sivath as they headed for the lift that would take them down to the main concourse. Lt. Morgan followed.
A group of New Circinians was waiting for them at the bottom. Ten sentients of varying species, clad in well-worn grey fatigues, stood at group attention; each wore a small pin with the emblem of the New Circini colonists. Each also wore a sidearm. Pohl glanced at Sivath, which was pointless. If the Vulcan was disturbed by the armed guards, he gave no sign.
A Bajoran woman in a suit stood beside the guards, armed only with a PADD. She smiled at the group of Starfleet personnel, and Pohl recognized a kindred bureaucratic spirit. “Members of the Federation Survey Team, we welcome you to New Circini. My name is Eva Cepro, the Administrator of Means.”
She gestured to the grey-clad enforcers. “These officers of the Guard will be your guides and your guardians while you do your important work. New Circini, as you will see for yourself, is safe and prosperous, but we prefer not to take chances with our Federation guests. Please permit them to accompany you into any public space you desire to visit, and your security is assured. Now, if you’ll follow me, I’ll show you to your accommodations.”
“I feel safer already,” muttered Lt. Morgan quietly.
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Sivath's first stop on his guided tour of New Circini's operations was Orbital Traffic Control, a dense command center at the heart of the spaceport. The thing that struck Sivath first about it was the calm. A few hundred coordinators were packed into tight clusters in a room the size of an Odyssey bridge, yet there was no bustle, no chaos. A constant, quiet murmur underscored the words of the Chief Flight Controller as he led the tour group through the facility.
"We handle about ninety-five hundred flight plans a day on average, including departures and arrivals," the Chief was saying, with a wave of a hand toward a large ceiling-projected hologram displaying current traffic metrics. Sivath made a quick calculation to convert the figure to a Federation standard day; it was close to 11,000 plans, an impressive figure for an operation this size. "Above and beyond keeping ships out of each other's way, we collect a lot of data about the traders that pass through here, which helps us keep on top of the volume. With the help of the eggheads upstairs, we can analyze the migration patterns of our wander-prone customers and aggregate predictions for return date to plan ahead for spikes or troughs in traffic. We're always refining the system but right now we're achieving about eighty-five percent accuracy." The Chief spoke this last figure with barely-concealed pride.
Cmdr. Lensh, the Colonial Command senior ops specialist, gave no sign of being impressed. "So you're using meta data for prediction, but what about targeted application? How detailed are these individual profiles you're building, and what are they used for?"
"The number-crunchers upstairs can tell you more about this, but I can tell you that here in OTC the only details we're required to collect for every ship passing through are name, registry number, class, captain, and arrival and departure timestamps," the Chief explained, ticking off fingers as the items were listed. "The rest is voluntary disclosure at the discretion of our customers. But I know from firsthand experience that a lot of them appreciate this level of attention. Here's an example for free: we get a report down here daily of the ships that our prediction matrix are expecting to see soon, and last month that list included a regular freighter who runs her route like clockwork."
"Is this a long story?" Lensh asked.
"Not that long," the Chief replied to the Tellarite without missing a beat. "So I know this captain, and I know she's never late, and I check our profile and sure enough she's overdue, and she's shared the specifics of her route with us. So we were able to cross-reference this with other ships making overlapping runs, and we asked them to keep an eye out. Last week she showed up here with a patched up ship, telling us that she'd been hit by pirates. They took her cargo and left her for dead; if not for us putting the word out, she might not have been found in time. We took that information and added a warning bulletin for any ships logging a flight plan that took them near the system she got attacked in. So everybody benefits."
Lensh harrumphed. She looked just the slightest bit impressed now, though. Sivath had a question of his own. "How much traffic do you see from Source scavengers?" Sivath's assigned bodyguard, Bidan, gave him a suspicious look.
"Funny you should mention that," the Chief Flight Controller said curiously. "We don't have very good data on them as a group, but we noticed a sharp decline in visits a few months ago that lasted about a month and a half. We've never gotten any explanation for it. If you Starfleet types happen to know what that was about, you could settle a few bets around here."
"The most likely explanation is that Source scavengers were minimizing contact with outside parties to avoid infection by a deadly piece of malicious software developed for a different purpose and inadequately contained by Starfleet approximately one hundred fifty years ago."
There were a number of glares thrown Sivath's way by the Starfleet contingent. The New Circinians mostly stared in bafflement.
"Oh," said the Chief. "Got that under control, did you?"
"Eventually," Sivath said.
"Good. Good. Glad to hear it." The Chief shifted gears. "Back over here we have our master flight plan imager, which visualizes . . ."
"We handle about ninety-five hundred flight plans a day on average, including departures and arrivals," the Chief was saying, with a wave of a hand toward a large ceiling-projected hologram displaying current traffic metrics. Sivath made a quick calculation to convert the figure to a Federation standard day; it was close to 11,000 plans, an impressive figure for an operation this size. "Above and beyond keeping ships out of each other's way, we collect a lot of data about the traders that pass through here, which helps us keep on top of the volume. With the help of the eggheads upstairs, we can analyze the migration patterns of our wander-prone customers and aggregate predictions for return date to plan ahead for spikes or troughs in traffic. We're always refining the system but right now we're achieving about eighty-five percent accuracy." The Chief spoke this last figure with barely-concealed pride.
Cmdr. Lensh, the Colonial Command senior ops specialist, gave no sign of being impressed. "So you're using meta data for prediction, but what about targeted application? How detailed are these individual profiles you're building, and what are they used for?"
"The number-crunchers upstairs can tell you more about this, but I can tell you that here in OTC the only details we're required to collect for every ship passing through are name, registry number, class, captain, and arrival and departure timestamps," the Chief explained, ticking off fingers as the items were listed. "The rest is voluntary disclosure at the discretion of our customers. But I know from firsthand experience that a lot of them appreciate this level of attention. Here's an example for free: we get a report down here daily of the ships that our prediction matrix are expecting to see soon, and last month that list included a regular freighter who runs her route like clockwork."
"Is this a long story?" Lensh asked.
"Not that long," the Chief replied to the Tellarite without missing a beat. "So I know this captain, and I know she's never late, and I check our profile and sure enough she's overdue, and she's shared the specifics of her route with us. So we were able to cross-reference this with other ships making overlapping runs, and we asked them to keep an eye out. Last week she showed up here with a patched up ship, telling us that she'd been hit by pirates. They took her cargo and left her for dead; if not for us putting the word out, she might not have been found in time. We took that information and added a warning bulletin for any ships logging a flight plan that took them near the system she got attacked in. So everybody benefits."
Lensh harrumphed. She looked just the slightest bit impressed now, though. Sivath had a question of his own. "How much traffic do you see from Source scavengers?" Sivath's assigned bodyguard, Bidan, gave him a suspicious look.
"Funny you should mention that," the Chief Flight Controller said curiously. "We don't have very good data on them as a group, but we noticed a sharp decline in visits a few months ago that lasted about a month and a half. We've never gotten any explanation for it. If you Starfleet types happen to know what that was about, you could settle a few bets around here."
"The most likely explanation is that Source scavengers were minimizing contact with outside parties to avoid infection by a deadly piece of malicious software developed for a different purpose and inadequately contained by Starfleet approximately one hundred fifty years ago."
There were a number of glares thrown Sivath's way by the Starfleet contingent. The New Circinians mostly stared in bafflement.
"Oh," said the Chief. "Got that under control, did you?"
"Eventually," Sivath said.
"Good. Good. Glad to hear it." The Chief shifted gears. "Back over here we have our master flight plan imager, which visualizes . . ."
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