"Hitching A Ride"
(The Rihannsu Tangent)

Lt. (JG) Naranda Sol Roswell
Engineering Officer

Second Lieutenant Steven Jonas
SFMC, Furies Detachment

****
Rihannsu Central Police Headquarters
Ki Baratan, ch'Rihan
****

Much like their counterparts on Earth, the central office of the Rihannsu police was a hub of activity. To be precise, the place was a madhouse. Not only was the temperature in the main lobby stifling, but there were people everywhere. The large crowd awaiting their chance to see one of the police officers had parked themselves on any piece of realestate they could find. The large number of police who worked in the building were heading every which way, in and out, to and from the lobby and through the security gates that lead into the inner sanctum of the headquarters.

It was through those doors that Steven and Nara had proceeded. Their guide was a portly Romulan with a slight bald spot starting to appear on his crown. Past other offices they meandered, heading to one of the end offices in the hallway. Jonas couldn't help but stare as he spotted a couple of Orion women, obviously getting nowhere diplomatically, try a new tactic in the seduction of a Rihannsu officer. With an annoyed look on his face, moreso from Jonas' stare rather than the affections of the Orions, - at least that's what Steven surmised - and a quick jerk of his arm on the dangling cord, the blinds closed and Steven lost his view of the beautiful love slaves.

Nara rolled her eyes at Jonas before looking at the Romulan before her. She held a straight face for diplomatic reasons, but kept a keen eye on the man, watching his body language. She remembered her father telling her how he watched people and how certain, subtle movements meant they were lying, afraid, or something.

Their destination reached, the Rihannsu opened the door and stood there waiting for the duo to enter.

Seating himself in his chair behind his desk, he tapped a few commands on the console in front of him. "We have located the information you requested Mr Jonas. But protocol dictates that I ask you a few questions before I hand it over to you."

Steven smiled. "I expected no less from the Rihannsu Police. Please proceed."

He leaned back in his chair, eyeing up the Federation officers in the room before him. "Why do you seek this soldiers' family?"

It was the first question he had been expecting and he had previously thought through what he was going to say. "It is a personal matter relating to my tenure in the Starfleet Marine Corps." When the Rihannsu nodded as if wanting more, and Jonas had known he would, Steven continued. "A few weeks after graduating from the Academy, my unit was called in to a small planet near the Neutral zone when a Rihannsu force had landed on the planet. It was my first major battle and after some heated weapons fire, I managed to kill a Rihannsu soldier. Though at the time I hadn't realized that he looked even younger than I, upon closer inspection, I found him to still be alive barely. His dying wish was that I contact his family and give them the dagger he wore around his belt. It is for this reason that I seek the information."

He nodded again and furled his brow thinking. "What was the name of the planet called? And when did this battle take place?"

"At the start of 2369, on the planet Nimbus." He responded.

The Rihannsu, Jor'Karne, as the nametag on his desk called him, scratched his bald spot. He turned towards the woman. "And your reason for being here is?"

She kept her expression flat as she answered just as flatly, "Once in a lifetime opportunity."

He nodded again. "And the two of you are..." he questioned.

"Shipmates." Nara ended for him before he could imply anything.

Jonas nodded, confirming Nara's comment for the officer.

The Rihannsu officer sighed. Leaning back again, he looked the young man in the eye. "Before I make my decision on whether this information is passed onto you, I need to tell you that my son was killed in that same battle." A tear formed in the corner of his eye.

Steven's eyes widened in shock. He was definitely not going to get the information now. Unless the officer before him was the soldier's father. Then the info wouldn't matter and he'd probably end up dead somewhere in an alleyway. And then there was Nara, sitting beside him. If Jor'Karne did anything to him, he was sure that he would also do the same to her. And he hated the fact that he had involved her in this. That anything the he did to her would be all his fault.

Nara kept her face stern, but something about the man before her made her wonder. That didn't matter right now. Jonas had information to get and she was there to make sure he didn't get killed doing it.

The Police officer continued. "And though my son is not the one whose family you are looking for, it does lend weight to my decision." He paused. Opening one of the desk draws, he pulled out a PADD and tossed it towards the young Marine. "It takes a lot of guts to come down here and locate the parents of someone you killed in combat. But I know in my heart that my late wife, had it been our son who you had defeated, would have wanted to have had the chance to find out how brave our son had been during his last minutes."

Steven nodded. "I'm sorry for your loss."

Inside, Nara was feeling more and more like a heel. How many had she killed in the Sakarian civil war? How many families had she tried to contact? She never really considered it when half the planet considered a hero - either with the rest of the soldier's or by her bloodline - and the other half resented her and everyone else who stood against the rebels. Still, she kept her face neutral, but her eyes were not so hard upon the officer before them.

"I must warn you though, that tension is high amongst the populace in regards your Federation and it would be prudent, once you get to where you are heading, to stay away from any populated areas."

Steven nodded.

The officer stood up and adjusted his belt. "The location listed on the PADD is on the other side of the planet and I dare not let you go out into the streets to make your own way to the nearest transfer station due to the tension. I will see what I can do about getting a shuttlecraft to give you a lift. Please wait here."

He turned and exited the room.

Turning to Nara he smiled briefly. "Are you sure you still want to come along?"

Nara took the look of her face and gave him a small smile as she shrugged, "Too much trouble to get a transport out of here. Might as well stick it out."

Steven nodded. "Though it sounds like we aren't going to get to see much of the city."

She shrugged and whispered, "I think I'm quite fine with that." The less of these people she saw, the better.

**** Aboard a Rihannsu Shuttle ****

The unease aboard the small shuttle was intense. Jor'Karne had managed to get them a couple of seats aboard a shuttle that was going to the province next to their destination. But had Steven known that they would have to share a small cramped cabin with a couple of ice cold Rihannsu, he might have changed his mind about the whole trip.

For twenty minutes now, the duo of the Engineer and Marine had sat watching the Rihannsu couple in front of them. They barely moved, and only occasionally blinked. And during the whole trip, they hadn't said a word, or even acknowledged the two federation officers' presence.

"Do you think they're meditating?" Steven whispered to Nara.

Nara had watched them out of the corner of her eye, sometimes right at them. She decided to see if he could hear her mind-speak, ~Whatever they're doing, I don't trust it.~

While waiting for Nara to reply, Steven sat thinking; of the past. Of the people he had killed; The destruction he had caused; The mayhem and great sadness he had brought to so many. The loss of the first woman he had really loved. The death of the Romulan soldier. A great many things crossed his mind.

Salvation!

Such a small word and yet it held so much of what Steven now wanted. And he hoped that the old woman he was going to visit would help give him the salvation, and the forgiveness, the he so desperately needed.

He closed his eyes briefly, before turning towards Roswell. She hadn't responded yet. Perhaps she too was meditating. But no, she was looking at him strangely, almost quizzically.

Nara looked him in the eye, thinking that would create a stronger link to help him hear her. ~I don't trust them. Keep your eyes open.~ Even if he didn't hear her mind-speak she hoped he could discern her concern by seeing her eyes.

Steven started at the sudden intrusion in his mind. He had only ever met one telepathic person before, but now wasn't the time to be bringing up thoughts of her. He was shocked, and truth be told, slightly intrigued, that Roswell possessed such abilities. Having none himself, he was at a loss as to how to respond. Speaking in response might alert the Rihannsu to her ability. Coming up blank, he decided to just try 'shouting' in his mind, hoping that she would be 'listening' for such a response. ~Can you hear me?~ He thought.

His words were a bit muddled as well as loud. Her eyes were still locked on his, yet she was not quite focusing fully on him. After a moment she created a link between them. She had never done that before, but with the type of training she assimilated, she had knowledge of how. ~I've created a link between us.~ She turned back to watch the couple before them. ~Be ready to fight at an unexpected moment.~

She knew this was his personal mission, but she had somehow gotten into warrior mode. Making sure to keep him ready so he wouldn't be surprised.

Steven looked the Rihannsu over. They didn't look like they were going to start a fight, but having barely known the Rihannsu people, he wasn't taking any chances. Having no weapon at hand, he mentally prepared himself for anything they might try and do. His mind drifted towards the knife that rested in the bottom of his small rucksack. ~You think they will attack?~

~I don't know. But I never trust people so silent. It's not natural.~ Nara kept her face blank.

He chuckled slightly. ~You do realize that by talking like this, we are the silent people you don't trust.~ Then thinking of their fellow travellers, he looked at Nara before speaking. "Sorry, just thinking of something an old mate from the academy once told me." Hopefully they wouldn't get too suspicious over his chuckle. But with what he had heard about the Rihannsu, it was very plausible that they would.

~You're right but I rather the suspicious be suspicious than the suspicious be enemies we weren't ready for.~

The Rihannsu pilot turned in his seat and called out, "We will be landing in a minute."

Steven nodded in response, though he doubted the Rihannsu gave a hoot that he had.

**** A Short time later, A couple of miles away ****

The shuttle touched down and the Rihannsu couple nodded to the pilot and stepped out. They had orders. Orders to follow and observe the Federation officers that had made the request with the Ministry. Someone didn't trust them and it had fallen to the two of them to observe and report on their movements.

Cresting the hill, the duo crouched down and pulled out ocular devices, allowing them to watch, and listen, while not being seen in the process.

There in the distance, they could see the two starfleet officers approaching the main compound.

"The Gods Are Dead, and the Night Cries Bitter Tears"

Captain Vergh
Commander Kol, XO USS Galaxy

Klingon Compound, Planet Cheron

=========================

Cheron's setting sun brought little prospect of restful slumber for her Romulan inhabitants. Temperature dropped only marginally to the high nineties, and if the day's windstorms abated significantly, nobody cared to notice... especially not this night.

This night, Kotar, the First Klingon stepped upon Cheron's umber sands and sang with unbridled rage to the black and star-filled night. This night, the forgotten gods of the Klingon race quailed in fear at fury and power of their creation. This night, the barren, dust-scarred hills rang with primal Klingon voices telling of the glory of honor and battle.

The recording was, as Vergh was want to admit, flawless. A sampling of the Quin'lat Company's signature performance of the Kotar Saga for the Chancellor, the isolinnear chip captured the exacting pitch of tenors and bass singers perfectly. It raised the spirits of his men, and even his nocturnal Reman allies seemed to appreciate the finer aspects of the Klingon opera.

But sweetest of all, like bloodwine to a parched throat after battle, was the Romulan administrator's reaction to the music. The sleep deprived Leto quivered in his demand for the opera to cease, and Vergh could swear on his father's bat'leth that the Romulan was on the verge of breaking down and begging for silence... not that Vergh was of a temper to grant it.

The Festival of Ger-Chacg was an ancient one for the Klingons, and many warriors had seen their families cease to observe it in their grand sire's time. Vergh, however, was a traditionalist and had insisted his men observe the rites since his first command before the Dominion Wars. Leto would certainly retaliate in some petty, vindictive way, but for the moment the Klingon Captain savored the music and song that played upon his heartstrings like a bow pulled by a warrior aiming at his prey.

The heavy doors at the front of the Klingon compound's main hall burst open then, as a large man - large even for a Klingon - burst them open with both hands. He was, oddly enough, clad in a Starfleet uniform. His height meant he certainly wasn't Worf, the brother of the Chancellor, but Vergh was uncertain of any other warriors bearing the rank of a Starfleet Commander.

Then the man barked in his deep voice. "I am Kol, grandson of Kor, the Dahar Master! I have come for wine, women and song!"

The Klingon Captain looked upon the newcomer skeptically. "Hmmm... bloodwine and song are aplenty, warrior." Casually, he thrust a large tankard of wine to the tall Commander. "Women? Perhaps you have been too long removed from your people, Kol. They are not as docile as the females you now serve with - the women on my crew have faced Jem'Hadar in hand-to-hand combat. If you seek their muSHa', be sure you're Klingon enough for it!" The crowd of warriors laughed and cheered at the banter.

Grinning, he tilted his head back and drained his own tankard. Refilling it, he offered Kol a brief toast of encouragement. "Qapla', Kol. You are welcome to celebrate the rites of Ger-Chacg. But by Kahless's beard - someone get him something fir to wear! You'll get no muSHa' dressed as a Human!"

Kol just smiled wickedly.

"Efficiency"

(Takes Place four days After 'Temptation Waits')

Major Corran Rex
Lt (JG) Victor Krieghoff

****

Mosanalea Free Trade World
Atlantis Sector
Outside Federation Space

Victor finished packing his things away and made a final check to determine that he had everything which might mark him as a federation officer segregated. His uniforms, combadge, and other issue gear were piled neatly on the bunk he'd used since boarding Captain Greyheart's ship, and the last check found nothing that needed to join it. His Type 1 phaser was so old that it wouldn't draw comment, the compressed tetryon beam pistol wasn't Fleet issue, none of his other weapons would arouse suspicion, and he had no keepsakes or memorabilia that would give him away.

It struck him as he loaded the clothing and combadge into the replicator and watched it disintegrate to be recycled again as raw materials that he was a ghost; a wraith moving through the universe that collected nothing to mark his passing. That was pointless, though. He had such things back on the Galaxy: a coffee mug from Gunny Goldstein, a broken model of the Voyager that Lieutenant Grey had never asked to be returned, the costumes that Angelienia had made for him, and a few things from his Aunts and his sister. Maybe wraith was a bad word? Maybe this whole line of thought was pointless. Maybe…

The replicator signaled that it was done, and Victor abandoned his line of thought to check that all the items had indeed been broken down. They had, so he turned away, shouldered the weapons case that now held what items of clothing and other things he was carrying, and left the small cabin. It wasn't a good thing, he decided as he moved through the ship, that he felt more alive now than he had ten minutes before. The faint whisper of a few lines in Hindustani surfaced in the back of his mind. It hadn't been good for the people of Jhorjah; that was for sure.

The Major had similarly eschewed all his standard Starfleet accoutrements, looking as rough-and-tumble ready as any born spacer in his own worn pants, shirt, and a beat-up old jacket that looked to be made of actual leather.

What looked like a modified century-old phaser pistol – Starfleet issue, maybe as far back as 2286 or so - hung low on the holster from is waist, along with a large vibroknife strapped to his other thigh. Such weapons would draw absolutely no attention on this world – but their absence certainly would.

Corran watched as Kreighoff marched down the ramp, and had to take notice that there was something about his erstwhile partner he'd never noticed about the man before.

Victor was… different. His uniform – he'd worn it until they landed here today – was gone, and in its place was an outfit of unrelieved black. His boots, pants, and jacket were all black leather, the pants and jacket made – to Rex's experienced eye – by Klingon tailors. His shirt was also black, but appeared to be a natural fiber of some sort. His face was darkened by the shadow of a beard he hadn't bothered to shave that morning, giving him an air that was, if anything, more dangerous than the one he wore aboard ship. He paused a moment at the top of the gangway, and then prowled down it in a walk unlike his normal controlled pace, moving like a predator in search of his next meal.

He looked like the first time Rex had met Krieghoff's uncle, when the elder Krieghoff had been an undercover police operative who'd ended up on his ship

As he came down the ramp, the sense of menace that preceded Victor reached Rex sooner than normal, and felt different, as if the man he knew had been holding something back within him before and, without the uniform he never seemed to be without aboard ship to hold it in, it had gotten out – or part of it had. Victor stopped at the bottom of the ramp next to Rex and scanned the area slowly, professionally, before saying, "Ready?"

"Absolutely." the Trill nodded. "First people we need to talk to is the local authorities. I don't know how much information we'll get out of them, but at the least, we can figure out where we need to check first."

"You don't expect anything from them from the sound of your voice," Victor replied without looking back. "How are they going to help us?"

"By finding out where they checked already, so we can do the same," Rex replied with a bitterly cynical note in his voice. "Because I guarantee you they were.. less than efficient."

"Ah. A world where the degree of law enforcement response – or lack thereof - is determined by the size of the bribe applied, then." Victor smiled a trifle unsettlingly. "I'm familiar with similar places."

"Yeah," Corran replied as they began walking towards the door out of the docking bay. "Me too.

Victor looked around them again as Rex started to move. "Are you good with computers, Major?"

Rex had to grin at that. "Corran was training for that very specialty before we were joined."

"A good thing to know."

"Yeah, but why do I get the feeling you knew that already, Vic?" the Trill asked rhetorically. "Nevermind. Where're you going with this?"

"Because following the money back to anyone making donations to the 'Police Benevolent Fund' – or whatever they call it here – at the right time to bury the investigation might yield us some results if we determine that such a bribe was tendered. Personally, I'm not good enough to do something like that without security codes and passwords that are meaningless here. If you are, then we avoid having to hire a local to do the work for us."

"I wouldn't trust a local here to shine my shoes." he snorted. "They'd be gone before you knew it."

"They wouldn't be running for long," Victor said with a finality that was chilling. "That wouldn't help solve your problem, though."

"But yeah, it's a good plan. That can be the second thing we do at the police station."

"The second thing we do at the police station," Victor repeated slowly. "Why there?"

"Because the police always have the best systems for that kind of thing. What better computers to use for a little hacking than ones designed to find hackers?" Corran asked impishly. Truthfully, he found the idea wonderfully apropos.

It would, Victor decided, be interesting if nothing else. He'd done many things, but hijacking a local planetary law enforcement computer net to trace a bribe paid to members of that same local law enforcement wasn't one of them. "Assuming that an opportunity presents itself for such a thing, is there something you need me to do?"

"Sure, if you can cause a distraction," Rex said, still grinning. "If you think you're up to it."

"People," Victor observed, "often find my presence distracting when I do nothing at all." He smiled again, causing a pair of starport technicians to veer away hastily. "I've never found anyone who could ignore me when I was *trying* to be noticed." He was silent for a step, and then added, "I may need to alter my normal technique in this case, though; I doubt it will help the investigation any if a large number of local law enforcement officers simultaneously suffer incapacitating injuries."

"You never know, Vic. You never know."

"Far Too Early"

Cmdr. Kol, XO
SCPO.Renora Loret, Tactical Analyst

The raucous sounds from what Renora would describe as a leisure tent come battle arena could be heard from the edge of the camp as she approached. Her purpose was to help assess the Klingon defences and show signs of willing between the Federation and the Empire. The guards had let her pass with little trouble, possibly because they were upset at missing out on the fun further inside the base.

As she approached the door of the main building she stepped over a few 'warriors' who had clearly lost the battle of the blood wine and were now lying as casualties of that epic conflict. If only you could get up from all battles with little more than a headache and a sore stomach. She pushed open the door and steeped inside.

The Klingon camp was, honestly, an archeology station in name only. What they were really here for was to provide "insurance" than the Romulans would not take advantage of the Remans.

Which really meant that a bunch of Klingons got to go strutting around on a Romulan planet like they owned the placed, which amused them to no end.

There was a good deal of reveling at this fact (not that the Klingons needed the excuse), and after so many months on Starfleet vessels, Kol had quite enjoyed the night with others of his kin.

The aftereffects showed in the massive Klingon's eyes - and in the large bruises adorning his unclothed top. Still, in his half-awake state, he recognized a particular scent. "Chief?"

Renora turned and saw something that would probably stay with her for many years to come. The sight of her commanding officer, half-naked, half slumped half standing at what had probably been a makeshift bar until someone had fallen straight through it. Renora opened her mouth but couldn't find the words, she settled for a simple. "Commander." Before adding. "Are you quite alright?" She'd never been the mans biggest fan but she was quite taken aback, having never seen any of her previous commanders in such a state.

Kol frowned, drawing all of the ridges across his bald head downward. "Of course."

"Glad to hear it." She glanced back towards the door. "I note some of your comrades in arms didn't fair so well."

He simply shrugged, and then began the process of looking around uselessly for his tunic. Truthfully, Kol wasn't quite certain when he'd lost it, whether that was during the brawling matches that had gone on for some time, or later, when the women had arrived. Ah... the women....

He also wondered where Vergh had disappeared to. He found the man a kindred spirit, and greatly enjoyed the company of a fellow warrior. He was right - too much time around humans HAD softened Kol.

His toothy smile spread wide as he was lost a moment in reverie.

Renora looked around still surveying the wreckage that was strewn about the room. Something moved under what looked like a pile cloth and fur. Upon closer inspection it seemed that it WAS the cloth and fur that moved, the Klingon that it was turning over in his sleep. She returned her attention to her commander.

"Why are you here, Chief?" he finally asked forthrightly, settling on a half-empty cup of bloodwine to clear the fog from his brain - no one appeared to have brought any raktajino in yet.

"I'm here to asses the defences that the Klingons have here, hands across the ocean you might say. I'm also supposed to look over the battle site to try an piece together the tactics behind it. I don't know about the dig site yet but, from the state of things in here, the biggest threat to the Klingons looks to be the Klingons themselves.

Kol blinked slightly at the early hour. "As bad as humans." he muttered under his breath. "There's nothing going on on this planet, Chief. Just some rambunctious settlers playing with the Romulans."

"That's as maybe but if something happened right now, we'd all be for it."

In an unconscious imitation of the many Vulcans he'd served with, Kol raised one massive eyebrow. "Oh?"

Renora pulled up a...crate, and sat down. "I don't like it. I've got this feeling in my pah that something bad is going to happen here. Things aren't what they seem."

That got a snort out of the big Klingon. It would be good if the Caitian was right, he decided. "I sincerely hope you are correct, Chief."

"Hunh?"

"I have not felt the call of battle in far too long. The change would be.. refreshing."

"INFINITE WISDOM"

Lieutenant Saul Bental, Chief Tactical Officer, USS Galaxy
(as Lt.Commander Audris Schneider, Intelligence liaison, Challenger)

Lieutenant J.G. 8-Ball Hunter, Chief Science Officer, USS Galaxy
(As Ensign Rob Crestine, Science Officer, Challenger)

The satisfaction Audris Schneider felt as she located her target was hidden deep beneath her stony face as she stepped briskly toward him. For the past hour, after her extremely brief bridge duty, she tried to find a weak spot. It was one of the most basic intelligence gathering methods: find the weakest person with access, and press on him. She knew the names of all the people involved in Delilah, and all seemed to be unapproachable. All but two.

And since she already spooked Raj, she now turned her attention to the other person.

Gianna Crestine.

Audris never spoke with the woman outside senior staff meetings, but she

knew her fairly through her husband's stories. Rob Crestine was one of these officers everyone else on the ship knew, and she found herself sharing a table with him more than once in the officers' mess since she came on board.

Today was the first time she saw him sitting by a table alone. It would also be the last. She poured herself the last cup of Denobulan red tea she'll ever drink, and sat next to the grouchy-looking science officer.

"Good afternoon Roberto.", She greeted him.

Rob snorted. He was attempting to eat a small stack of pancakes---one of his favorite comfort foods---and failing most miserably. He pushed the pieces of pancake around so that the syrup on his plate made a thick oozing smiley face. "I'm close with a lot of people," Rob said, watching his smiley syrup face drip slowly away. "My father, my brothers and sisters, a lot of friends, some ex-girlfriends...my wife." He paused for a minute as he forced a small piece of pancake into his mouth and chewed it without really tasting anything.

He looked up at Audris and tried to smile---a task he imagined he was failing at as well. "You and my mother are the only people in the known universe who call me Roberto. Everyone else calls me Rob or Hey guy or *Ensign*." The word tasted bitter in his mouth, but he supposed it was better than the non-taste of the pancakes.

Audris wasn't famous for her sense of humor, but even she had her moments. "Hey, guy or Ensign, you sound depressed. Is it about tomorrow?"

"Actually, I'm just bummed that I've fallen off the wagon," Rob said blithely. "Look at these pancakes; do you know how many calories are stuffed into these things? I'm a disgrace to the dieting man; I eat because I mourn and I mourn because I eat. It's a cruel cruel universe."

Then he sighed. "I'm having kind of rough day," Rob admitted. "And frankly, I'm just too damn tired to put the energy into being funny. So is there something in particular you want, or can I just sit here and sob into my syrup?"

"You can tell me what is eating you, to begin with."

Rob rolled his eyes. For an Intelligence officer, Audris wasn't taking the hint of 'leave me the hell alone' too well. "Giana," he said. "Giana's what's eating me."

Rob paused there and had to smile. "I could make a lot of dirty jokes about that. But I won't because I know you aren't the giggling kind of girl. Giana and I sort of fighting right now. This probably sounds kind of lame, but we really don't fight that much. I mean, we pretend fight all the time, tease each other, joke around, but this time. . ." He let himself trail off for a minute before he started pushing his food around on his plate again.

"Anyway," he said, "that's why I'm here, eating pancakes like a man drinking bourbon. My mama raised me on comfort foods."

"Pancakes ARE tasty.", Audris commented the obvious. She sounded a little distracted. She was about to say something but decided that an example from her private life but decided against it. "If you don't mind me intruding... what is the fight about?"

"Well, that's up to speculation," Rob said drily. "It had something to do with making time for each other and trusting each other and understanding each other. Also, some sort of top secret Starfleet gig, and possibly a lesbian lover named Delilah."

Despite years of experience, Audris' failed to hide her surprise. "What did you just say?"

Rob considered himself intelligent, but he figured that the most idiotic man on the face of the planet. . .or in this case, the starship. . .knew that Audris's reaction had nothing to do with what he had said about trust or understanding. Instead, Rob said, "Delilah. Our fight was about Delilah."

When the woman in front of him finally replied, something in the way she spoke spooked Rob to no end.

"Roberto, it is very important that you tell me everything you found out about it."

Rob looked at the remainder of his pancakes, sighed, and pushed them away. "So you're involved too, huh? Am I the only person on this ship who *doesn't* have something to do with this chick? And yes, before you say anything, I know it's not a chick. I don't know what the hell it is, but I know it doesn't walk or talk. Or maybe I should say it doesn't bleed; that's what it takes to be human, right?"

Audris had opened her mouth to say something, but Rob kept talking. "Honestly, Audris, I don't know what the hell you're doing, I don't know why the hell you're doing it, and I don't know if I even care at this point unless it's something that could get Giana hurt. If you don't believe me, if you think you can't trust me, we could do some Intelligence gathering torture sessions for awhile---my suggestions are the rack or having to listen to ancient Terran divas like Celine Dion---but it's up to you."

"It IS eating you, isn't it.", She said quietly. "I'm not involved, but I think that something pretty nasty is going on this starship, and it revolves around this 'Delilah'. I could really use some help. Especially from someone in sciences. Someone from sciences who wants to ensure that 'Delilah' is not a Lesbian clone of Celine Dion. Would you help me?"

Rob sat silently for a minute. "Well," he said finally, "I don't know that anyone in Sciences wants a clone of Celine Dion, lesbian or not. Seriously, did you ever hear a recording of that woman? People complain of bagpipes. I say bagpipes are a sweet serenade after Dion's screech. Not that any of that's important or even in the slightest bit relevant after the moment. My mama always did say that I liked to talk. I guess what I'm actually trying to say is yeah, I'll help you."

"I'm glad."

"Good," Rob agreed, and the two sat for another moment of silence that Rob seemed to find both frustrating and uncomfortable. After the moment stretched into another, Rob leaned forward, making sure to keep his elbows away from the syrup.

"So," Rob said, "where do we start?"

"With your permission, I think we'll start with Mrs. Crestine."

* * *

When 8-Ball crawled into the Challenger's bridge, the first sight that greeted her was Saul Bental's butt. The Tactical chief was leaning over a shattered console, trying to run some calculations. Other than him, only the tall Quentite was running around. The rest of the people on the bridge - namely the Romulan, the Reman, and that mysterious blue lady Saul kept in his quarters - looked bored out of their wits. And 8-Ball knew how THAT felt.

"I've gotta hand it to you, Saul," 8-ball said lightly. "You have got just the FINEST ass known to man. If I replicated some tight jeans, probably dark blue, maybe just a little faded, would you wear them and bend over a lot, just as special favor to me?

Saul's butt was replaced by his face as he spun around. "This is just plain wrong...Oh, thank you, 8, I'm sure you know a thing or two about the subject. Found anything interesting?"

"Yeah, a little," 8-ball said in an offhand way. "But more importantly, I'd like your permission as sort of leader of this expedition to murder Running Tree. Seriously, I promise you won't miss him. I've got plenty of other guys in Sciences---okay, I've got a guy in Sciences, as my department runs on a skeleton crew ALL THE TIME---but I bet anything I can pay some guy to act smart, look for things, and say depressing, solemn bits of wisdom at the appropriate moment. And then we really don't need Running Tree around anymore because he really has nothing more to contribute than saying things like 'The dead are around us' and making my life a living hell. What do you say?"

Saul laughed. "Permission denied. Unless you're willing to compensate me for the time I'll spend filling paperwork and contacting his family. Besides, if you'll kill him, his spirit will hunt you or something like that - I think that's how his people work."

"Probably," 8-ball said. "And the last thing I really need at this point is a pissed off Native American spirit running after me with his little spirit spear. I've got enough ghosts already."

Then, as she realized that was an extremely awkward thing to say, especially given the fact that Saul's laugh rattled the bridge, 8-ball quickly followed up with, "Still, it might be worth the risk. I don't think I've EVER met a man that irritating before in my entire life. And it's been a decently long life...and I've met more than a decent amount of men." She thought about continuing on this vein, perhaps flipping her hair a few times for the fun of it, and then noticed that Saul had adopted a more intent, less flirty look on his face. Work, work, work. 8-ball sighed.

"Anyway, take a look at this.", Saul gestured at the PADD he has been messing with. "I'm terrible at physics, but still this trajectory doesn't seem right even to me."

8-Ball took a glimpse at the PADD. The small screen presented the hypothetic course the Challenger took from the battlefield to Cheron's surface. There were two dotted lines, red and green; One of them was marked 'theoretic', the other 'actual'.

"Trelar gave me the idea to check it.", Saul continued. "He believes that the Challenger's bridge wasn't torn open until after the crash. And indeed, given the angle and supposed speed of the crash, the bridge should've remained intact like the rest of the upper hull; Also, the 'window' doesn't seem like it was done by a weapon."

8-ball raised an eyebrow. "You got any theories on what did tear this place up?"

Saul rolled his eyes. "You're the one who's paid to invent theories; I'm the one who is paid to make holes in other starships."

"You're right," 8-ball said. "I should transfer to Tactical. I want to get paid to blow shit up." 8-ball took a closer look at the PADD.

"Want to exchange jobs?", Saul grinned. "Anyway, watch the crash course. If the ship was caught in the gravity well, then according to this little simulation I ran, it should've hit in a different angle. So assuming the computer is better at physics than I am, then there's a factor or a force I didn't take into account."

"I think that's a safe assumption," 8-ball said dryly. "Here's an idea that's less safe and possibly ridiculous for all I know: earlier, Aristi said that the Challenger batter rammed its way into the Devoras, they crashed and then radiation was leaked from the atomic weapons', right?"

"Something along those lines.", Saul tried to recall the exact version of Aristi's story.

"Okay," 8-ball said, "and again, I know nothing about this point in history, and my understanding of physics is also alarmingly low for a Science Chief, but is it possible that the crash wasn't due to the captain losing the stupidest game of Chicken ever played? Is it possible that maybe these atomic weapons that accidentally leaked were used a little less accidentally?"

"It could be. We'll need to check the weapon ports for clues. But even if those weapons were activated, would it influence the crash course?"

"Hey, I'm a butterfly causing hurricane causing raunchy clowns kind of person," 8-ball said. "I think pretty much everything affects everything, only we can't see it, and if we could, probably wouldn't give a damn. But you're right, it might not affect the crash course. What could affect the trajectory is an elevated mass. . .see here, where the theoretic line ends? If the Challenger weighed what a normal starship shoulda weighed, then the theoretic and the actual crash point would probably overlap, or at least be a helluva lot closer. But they don't, so maybe this ship was carrying something it wasn't supposed to. . .something very, very big, or at the least, very, very heavy."

Saul pressed on the PADD, adding theoretical weight to the ship in the simulation. The simulated curve began to shift toward the theoretical curve.

"8, you're a source of infinite wisdom, you know that?"

8-Ball's reply wasn't quotable, but it had little to do with wisdom or infinity.

"Island of the Misfit Toys!"

The Navagation Departmental Meeting Part 2 - The Shuttle Jockeys

Featuring Lt. Raven Darkstar, Chief of the Navigation Department

And the Shuttle Pilots: (NPC's since I am the department at this time)

Consisting of old standbys:
Lt. Jg. Jolsa Matous (Trill)

Rounded out with the new guys:
Ens. Artimus Wright (Human)
Lt. Jg. John Burton (Human)
T'Runtar (Jem Hidar Refugee)
Chief Dakota Willis (Human Mechanic)

Recommended Sountrack: "Pussy Cat Dolls: Buttons (Use Your Tounge Remix)!" only because after the Joe Ammo Birthday Bash, this song is firmly etched into my brain!!!

Location: The Main Shuttle Bay

"Now there's some shit that you don't see every day" Lt. Burton said, readjusting the ball cap he seemed to wear all the time. He buried his hands in his red flight jacket, rocked back on his well worn heels and whistled.

"What do ya think, Art?" he said elbowing the tiny man next to him whose mouth hung open speachlessly.

The Trill lieutennent on the other side of the little human laughed aloud.

"I think his glasses are fogging up." he said.

"This coming from the man who's spots are blushing. You look like your in love." Burton said taking in the view.

"You have all just been killed." Lt. Raven Darkstar growled. The new Navigation Chief had slipped into the shuttle bay unnoticed and walked up directly behind the three men without making a sound.

"Hey Chief. If we're dead, we must be in heaven." Burton said, offering a crooked smile and nodding towards the shuttle that was across from them.

It wasn't the sight of the shuttle that made Darkstar drop his padd on the floor with a loud clatter. Nor was it the image of the shuttle access panels lying strewn all over the bay.

Rather it was the sight of the mechanic, Dakota Willis who was smeared in grease, her long blond hair dreadlocked and pulled back in a loose pony tail, working on the inards of the shuttle, completely oblivious to the gathering of officers.

Raven could see the grease stains clearly since Dakota was stripped to the waist and her bare breasts on display for all to see.

"AHEM!!!!!" Darkstar roared loudly.

"Real subtle, boss." the Trill said.

The indian loomed over Lt. Jolsa like a giant thundercloud.

"There is a naked woman working on one of my shuttles. I think we have passed the point of subilty."

"Actually it's my shuttle. See the decal? The Flaming Eggroll?" Burton said.

"The.... flaming Egg Roll?" Darkstar spat incredulously.

"Well, it was snappier then naming them after rivers, generals or something else lame and unorigional."

"You boys lost?" Dakota Willis asked, hefting her oversized...turbowrenches and resting them on her bare shoulders.

"What the seven hells do you think you are doing, Chief Willis?" Darkstar asked, trying to keep his eyes on the woman's face.

"Fixing a bloody transipital axiator, at least I was before you decided to turn this into some sort of chin waggle." she said with a slight English accent wrapped in an obnoxious attitude.

"Chief Willis," Raven began, "you have no shirt on."

"I can see now why you were in the Security department. You sure Corgan can spare you? No offense but powers of observation like that should make you a pretty valuable bloke to have around." Willis said.

"LIEUT..." Darkstar started, then caught himself. Now that he was a department head again, he needed to exercise restraint. "Willis, why are you out of uniform?"

"Look, as an exibitionist, I have a cultural discompensation from the Fleet. Besides that, have you ever tried to work on a grovial motivator in long sleeves? You get horribly sweaty." she said as a thin line of sweat dripped achingly slow down her neck and flat stomach.

"I see that" the Trill nearly moaned.

"Oh please, they are just nipples. Everybody has a couple." Willis said.

"Not me." Burton said, "I had one bitten off."

"Too bad she didnt nibble a little lower, eh?" the fiesty mechanic said.

As the Trill stiffled a laugh, Darkstar folded his arms. The frown lines deepened on his weathered face.

"I am here to hold a quick department briefing. I would like to see you just replace your tunic and take a seat so I can say a few words."

"I know you would, but thats not going to happen. Remember, its an official thing. Now loosen up your buttons mate. You'll be fine."

Darkstar growled, resigned himself to a battle that he couldnt win and spoke to the remaining officers.

"Quickly, before any more clothing begins to fall from bodies, I am Chief Darkstar. The first person who turns that into a joke will be thrown out of an airlock." he threatened, letting a few moments die before continuing.

"You people are the shuttle crew. You're job is more important then any other on an away team because without you, there are no assurances that your team will return to safety. Also, you are the biggest target on an away team. If the enemy deduces that you are a pilot, you run the risk of being killed simply to strand the landing party. Therefore, you all will be trained in the same manner as members of the Hazard Team."

"You must protect yourselves at all times. You must protect your away team at all times. I will personally teach you how to do that effectively."

Ensign Wright put his hand in the air.

"I..ah...I don't think I can...ah fight. I can barely...fly a shuttle." he stuttered.

"Artimus Wright, you are the ancestor of the brothers who invented flight. Navigation is in your blood. By the time I am done with you, you will be able to tell me what is in the blood of anyone who is trying to do you harm as you will be able to draw thier blood with your bare hands." Darkstar said coldly.

The little man grew pale, then fainted.

"Little intense there, Chief." Burton said holding his fingers up. "Just a little."

"One last thing." Darkstar uttered." I would like to introduce you to the newest member of the shuttle craft crew. T'Runtar. "

Merely 3 feet away from the group, a Jem Hidar warrior unshrouded as the group's mouths fell open.

"A lot intense there, Chief. Mucho Intenso." Burton said staring at T'Runtar.

"Solace"

By Writer X

I... who am I?

My mind... is an empty slate. No, not quite. My thoughts form into something articulate, though I don't recall what they are.

Words! They are words.

What do I do with these... words? I see them in my head. They tumble around; I try to grasp their meanings, but they slip away from me like water through my fingers.

I see... faces... is that mine? It drifts away, breaking apart like wisps of smoke as my... hands? Yes, hands... and fingers! Pass through the image.

Something large and monstrous flies out of the mists of the images, lunging at me with immense talons, and I scream.

Suddenly it is gone, replaced by stark grey flat things, but my scream remains, though it whittles away into the recesses of where it came from, and I am shocked to discover it came from me.

I can make sounds... My... hand? reaches to the place where the sounds came from, and it shocks me when they touch something spongy and wet. Another sound comes out as I react, and that surprises me. As I realize ventilation moves in and out of me through the place where sounds come from, I try to stop it. My sight becomes faded, and something pounds in my head.

I draw in... air? Is that what it's called? So many words float past me, more than I can understand, but some I recognize. Air. Yes, air. And breathing.

I touch the spongy place again, feeling along the sound-maker, and notice the place I'm in.

It's big, and I don't know what it is. Where am I?

My chest flutters in fear. I feel so lost.

Yet... for all that fear, I'm surprised of one thing that offers me an odd comfort.

I take solace in the anger and darkness that is spreading its oily coat through me from within.

My eyes close, and I see the beast again, and I know it's me.

"She Who Risks It All"

Featuring:

Lieutenant Commander Audris Schneider, Intelligence liaison, USS Challenger

Lt. Giana Crestine, Chief Science Officer, USS Challenger

***** 11 hours prior to the crash of the USS Challenger*****

Gianna sat in the chair holding the PADD, thinking to herself how she wanted to scream that this project was killing a marriage to a man she madly loved. She wanted to tell Rob, to put his mind to ease. She somehow doubted that permission would be granted, but she would ask.

Just outside her door, opportunity for doing just that will soon rise.

Audris Schnider was standing by the threshold, much uncertainty hidden behind her icy facial expression. Giana's staff bypassed the German back and forth, afraid that if they'll step too near she'll come alive and chew them. They had no way of knowing what was raging in her mind.

What she was about to do was punishable, she had no doubt. She is going to deceivingly get access to classified information, and if this fact will leak there will be no excuse, not even 'It was vital to the survival of the ship', that will erase her guilt.

However, her life was more important to her than a black spot on her service record, and if she won't be able to solve the feud between the Captain and the XO, the Challenger will not come out of the battlefield. Audris was strict and straight as a ruler, but her survival instincts simply took over.

She thought this over seven times now, and it was the least risky way.

She knocked on Crestine's door.

Giana continued looking at the PADD, as if the information would change. She kept hoping it would. Without looking up, she called out, "Come in."

Audris came in, ordered the door closed and sealed with two taps on its embedded console, and occupied the seat across Gianna's table without invitation.

"Commander Schneider, intelligence.", Audris introduced herself quickly, not giving the other person a chance to react. "Anything said in this room will be confidential, and will not be revealed to any crewmember other than us, CO included. To whom did you tell about the project?"

Giana had looked up at the introduction and waited until she had a chance to speak, not withholding the bitterness. "No one."

"Is that so?"

"I understand the need to keep this quiet."

"Are you certain.". The words didn't sound like a question. Audris stood up, and began to wander around the room. "Let me ask you another question, then. What do you think of the project?"

"I wonder if it really necessary, truth be told. It's already starting to have casualties." Giana knew already what the answer would be if she asked anything about telling Rob. The cards were layed out clearly.

"Causalities?", Audris seemed skeptic. No one died on the Challenger – no one that she knew of - but perhaps Gianna didn't mean causalities ON the Challenger "Please explain."

Giana stood, too upset to sit any longer, "My marriage is suffering. Rob thinks I'm cheating on him. He feels neglected, and he is being neglected for this damn project..." She lowered her rising voice before continuing, "This thing better work. This thing better be damned worth it." She looked at Audris, "And how the hell do you know about it?"

Audris folded her arms. "I'm the Intelligence liaison.", She said soothingly, as if that would explain anything. She didn't say anything incriminating yet. "Calm down, Lieutenant. I'm familiar with Rob, in fact I spoke with him earlier today. He told me that me and his mother are the only people in the universe who call him Roberto. He also told me that you had a fight with him. That's part of the reason why I am here."

Giana narrowed her eyes, "Oh?"

"Listen, Giana, obviously only a few people have knowledge of the project, but this is a starship, a close environment. Things leak. I don't look for people to blame or for careers to ruin, I just want to understand the situation and make sure that no real damage occurs."

"Same here." Giana looked at the PADD again, tapping a few buttons. "I don't think a security lock down was necessary to discuss my marital problems, Commander."

"The project is a sensitive issue. I'm sorry if the lock offended you, but I wouldn't want one of your staff to overhear us. Back to the issue at hand. What are your thoughts on the project? Why don't you think it's necessary?"

Not looking up, she continued to be evasive. "Why do you care?"

"I have concerns. As I said, nothing you say here will come out, nor will it damage you in any sort of way."

"I have concerns as well. To protect this project is one. Unfortunately, it's my top priority. Any ranting and raving you can break out is far less than the trouble caused by telling some curious intelligence officer." She looked up then, "All due respect, Commander. I cannot tell you anything."

"Like you 'protected' it from your husband? You're not too good at keeping secrets, are you Lieutenant? I wouldn't be here if you were, I'm afraid."

Giana looked up with a clenched jaw, "I'm really tired of people asking me about this."

"Who else asked you? Other than Rob?"

Silence.

Audris was expecting this. It was one of the possible scenarios the calculated German considered. Like in a 3D-chess match that was going nowhere, it was time to unravel the heavy guns and charge the upper platform.

"I asked you what your concerns about the projects are. Let me tell you what are mine. I think it's the center of disagreement between our Captain and the XO. And I intend to disarm the situation, because neither you, Raj or Shabazi seem to do anything about it."

Audris hoped that mentioning the names of others who accessed the 'Delilah' database would convince the science chief that she was 'in the know'.

"If their fight will drag into tomorrow, it might mean your death. Don't make my job harder. I wouldn't count getting the ship destroyed part of 'preserving the project'."

Giana didn't soften her glare, "And what will telling you help?"

"Might give me perspective, or help me find a way to resolve this situation. Don't play games with me, Lieutenant; I'm as tired from games as you're tired from questions. Obviously, you have a lot on your mind about the project, so let's get this over with and proceed to do more productive things."

Giana sighed and looked down at her PADD as she answered, "You're in intelligence. I'm sure you can find easier ways than interrogating me."

Audris bent forward, over Gianna's desk, and placed both her hands on it. "I'm not your enemy, Lieutenant. And neither is your husband. The Romulans are. And only time will tell if your lack of cooperation will be to their benefit. If you change your mind, and do want to share your concerns about the project, my door is open; Otherwise, for your career's sake, I'll pretend this conversation never took place."

And at that exact moment, Audris got what she wanted. What Gianna had to say after that, only meant a marginal victory for her.

Giana looked at her then, unaware that the damage was done. "This may be something you already know, but things are about to rear an ugly head. I do think we have something as a last resort. I hope we never have to use it, but it's something we need. For my sanity's sake, this conversation never happened. I wish you and Rob would understand I have enough weight on my shoulders without feeling like I'm betraying people by not providing information."

Audris stopped pacing. "I'll tell him, Giana, and you should too. And again, if there's anything else you want to say about the project, your opinion matters and you know where to find me. Until then.", She clicked several times on the office's door.

Giana stood, "Tell him what?" She stepped closer to make sure she didn't leave yet, "That is a personal matter and with all due respect, Commander, you are to stay out of it."

"As you wish.", The intelligence officer shrugged. "It's your husband who is eating up the pancake reserves in the officers' mess, not mine. My top

priority is the welfare of this crew, and that is NOT a personal matter."

Giana sighed in frustration, "Then just reassure him it's work, not another woman or man, stealing my time from him. Tell him..." Her expression softened and she gulped as her eyes gave way to the exhaustion, "Tell him I miss him and if this wasn't dire..." She took a deep breath and stepped back, "Just that."

Audris couldn't resist herself. "He's just several decks away. If it's important to you, tell him yourself. I find that I work better without such burdens."

"Your kind would consider it a burden. But for us with hearts, it's not a burden." Wanting to strangle the other woman made the words no less true. She stepped out, waiting till the other woman was out so she could lock the door.

Audris brushed past her, not bothering to say goodbye. The German intelligence officer didn't care that the Science chief misinterpreted her words, or that she joined the Anti-Audris club. She got what she wanted. A glimpse at Crestine's desk was more fruitful that anything she could extract from the woman by talking to her.

One of the electronic notepads on Crestine's desk showed a schematic display of the Challenger. Crestine probably didn't consider it classified or she would hide it before talking to Audris. But Audris had a keen eye for details, and it didn't fail her this time.

'Delilah' started to make sense.

"Murder in the Sands"

Ensign Robert Mathieson, Phd.

Crime Scene, Romulan Construction Site, Planet Cheron

=========================================

~Bloody hell, I hate this goddamn frikkin' place!~

Cheron's orange-red sun beat down hard on Mathieson's bald pate which, despite the canvas field hat he habitually wore when working in the field, was beginning to peel rather badly. The work on the Romulan Memorial site had been brought to a halt so the Medical Officer could take scans of where the last worker died. Leto, the Romulan administrator had specifically used the word "murder", and the short Englishman had problems disagreeing with him. The suspicious glares of steel workers, welders, foremen, artists, engineers and general laborers added to his discomfort, as the tension seemed to magnify the heat of the day.

The worst part, was that there was nothing to be found.

Mathieson's tricorder thoroughly scanned the accident site, left somewhat untouched by the Romulan and Reman workers. Aside from the ambient atmospheric radiation, there was nothing unusual about the area. No signs of recent phaser or disruptor fire, no sign of atmospheric or surface born parasites, no sign of biological hazards like tissue-aggressive bacteria or fungi. The doctor even went so far as to perform a detailed scan on the scavenging roaches that crawled on the ochre sands. There was nothing to indicate any foul play, or any explanation as to why a perfectly fit Romulan male suddenly collapsed - without a cerebellum.

There were several witnesses, all of whom gave the same useless story. The victim, a construction foreman, was surveying the job site when he fell down in mid-stride. The project's first aid attendant gave treatment immediately, but Mathieson speculated that the Romulan was dead before he hit the ground. Falling on the soft sands, the body had absolutely no outward marks of trauma or injury other than the calluses earned from years of hard work.

His brain just... disappeared.

The doctor, after some initial hesitation from the Romulan Authority, received and compared the autopsy reports from earlier victims of the mysterious attacks. Performed by field medics on an unimportant colony world of the Romulan Star Empire, the work was crude and completely lacking in any form of proper medical detail, but they confirmed that the Romulans already knew what he was about to tell them - each was killed with absolutely no form of outward injury. Each death was unique: brain, heart, spinal column, and circulatory system. The last one was truly amazing - every and every blood cell in the victim's body had ruptured... instantly.

Each death was a murder, pure and simple. But how any why eluded all inquiries.

Finishing his scans and downloading the data to a padd, Mathieson nodded his thanks to the new site Foreman who began to goad his people once more to work. Slowly, the silence of the barren hills was replaced by the sounds of clanging metal, the droning hiss of welding torches, and the shouts and yells of hard work with steel.

Looking back at the construction project, the Englishman looked at the emerging form of the Memorial and wondered if these victims would be remembered for their efforts. He also prayed that there would be no more, but knew that prayer would likely go unanswered. Gazing up at the merciless sun, he slowly made his way back to the Medical compound, muttering his new mantra.

"Bloody 'ell, I hate this goddamn frikkin' place!"

"Ground Zero"

Chapter 3: "Touch and Go"

By:

Kylar Curran,
Chief Liaison Officer

Lieutenant Kimberly Burton
Chief Medical Officer

Commander Karyn Dallas, RN
Chief Counselor/Second Officer

Ensign Kiel
Apprentice Counselor

******

Karyn jumped slightly at the sound of another voice just over her shoulder. She wracked her brain for a moment, trying to place the familiar sound and then she remembered. "Kiel," she answered hoarsely, but with a smile and a touch of her usual sarcasm. "You look as horrible as I feel."

"Sorry, the shouting for help kinda interrupted my beauty nap," the child-counselor remarked flippantly, the humor an easy way with which to ignore the greater gravity of their situation as the adolescent seemed to size up the hoverchair. On a good day, on even ground, it probably wouldn't have seemed as daunting of a challenge as it did now. But the ground wasn't even. And today certainly wasn't a good day. If nothing else, he supposed that he could manage to get it up maybe an inch or two and then just push it over. Feeling along the contours of the chair, Kiel felt out the best spots he could for a handhold. "Up for a little crawling, I hope," the boy asked, flexing his knees as he took a breath and readied himself to lift hoverchair off of the commander.

"Careful," came a voice from nearby, "let me check for injuries first," Kimberly said sharply as she walked carefully through the wreckage, ~ Someone needs an EMT refresher! ~ she decided, "Have you seen an emergency locker around, preferably an intact one?" she asked as she pulled the generic tricorder from her belt.

Turning to glare in the direction of the voice, the young El Aurian's smile dropped as someone appeared from out of the smoke and dust. She looked familiar. A doctor most likely, but Galaxy had more than a handful of doctors going for it and the boy didn't really go out of his way to get to know any of them. "Sorry, I haven't done all that much sightseeing since I pulled myself out of a tree and saw the commander underneath her chair," the youth stated dryly in reply, throwing up his hands in a kind of 'I give up' gesture as he stepped back to allow the woman room with which to move close check Dallas for injuries. It seemed to him that the hoverchair was probably the worst of the commander's problems, at least until they pulled it off of her. But then, he wasn't a medic.

Kneeling beside Dallas she looked up briefly at Kiel, "How do you both feel?" she asked simply as she ran the device over both of them.

"I'm fine," the boy mumbled. It was his standard answer to the question. He was bruised from head to toe, with scratches and a slew of superficial cuts to match, but beyond that and the headache he was nursing there wasn't anything he could really complain about. Or would for that matter. Waving off the doctor's tricorder, the boy turned his head away as he took a look around the strewn out wreckage around them. If the doctor thought that they were going to find an intact -anything- in this mess... then she obviously believed in miracles.

Karyn pushed herself up on her arms, fighting a wave of dizziness, and feeling like a turtle coming out of its shell. "Inadequate," Dallas answered wryly. Then more seriously she added, "Other than bumps and bruises, I might have a concussion. I must of hit my head pretty hard. I don't remember the cra--Curran! Where's Legate Curran??" Dallas asked frantically.

"Who," Kiel asked plaintively, looking back over his shoulder from where he had started to wander off in search of the doctor's miracle intact locker.

"He was still aboard?" Kimberly asked in concern, not overly concerned with the state of the two before her, nothing she couldn't treat with a standard medkit, assuming she could find an intact one that is, she switched her tricorder over to a wider scan, "have a look around for the legate," she instructed Kiel, nodding to the aft section of the shuttle, "I'll see if a locker has survived in there," looking down at Karyn, "and you stay put for a moment, I'll see if I can scrounge up a kit to sort out your concussion, so no driving until I've done that, okay!"

Karyn, lying flat on her stomach with the weight of her chair's harness pressing down on her was too concerned about Kylar to register the humor in the remark. *No worries, Doc. With my nose planted in the dirt and all, driving now would make me a safety hazard.*

Not waiting for an answer she picked her way through the wreckage and over to the aft section. Picking up a faint life sign aboard she paused to recalibrate, "Ensign, I may need you!" she called as she registered a faint life reading aboard, stepping slowly through the wreckage she looked for not only the source of the life signs, but for an elusive e-locker as well.

Glancing up from where he was sorting through various bits of assorted chucks of warped and twisted metal, the young El Aurian's head came around wearily to glance over in the doctor's general direction. "Lady, you need -more- than a counselor," the boy muttered under his breath. First it was look around for an intact locker. Then it was look for some legate. Now she needed him over there. Good grief. Hitchhiking on a Ferengi trader hadn't been this much of a hassle. Certainly more fun, and without the crash landing. Some running from law enforcement. But hey, exercise was good for you. With that in mind, the young ensign began making his way over toward Burton.

"Anyone here!" she called.

His eyes groggy, he couldn't tell if what he heard was real or a figment of his imagination. He didn't dare call out if it were something unfriendly, but his lungs had something to say about that decision, for he doubled over in another fit of coughing. This time, he tasted the blood spittle on his lips and teeth as he swirled his tongue between them.

Knowing his position was given away with the respiratory eruption, he made an attempt to call out, but his voice was too hoarse from thirst and the evacuation of his fluids through nausea. It only released another round of hacking.

Having heard the cough, Kiel's trek toward the doctor took a slight detour through the shuttle's wreckage, coming around from the other side as the doctor. "Hey, doc... there's someone over here," the boy called aloud, squinting through the smoke and paltry lightning provided by the night sky. He would have liked a light of some kind. And some ice cream, but then ice cream was good for any occasion and flashlights, among other things, didn't seem like they were going to be materializing out of the thin air. So he was out of luck either way. Pity, that.

Heading over to join the short Ensign, Kimberly noted the increasing life signs that her tricorder was registering. Kneeling down she lifted away a few pieces of wreckage to uncover the bloodied form of Kylar Curran, "Ensign, I need that emergency medical kit, now!" she ordered sharply, scanning the Legate she started a mental triage list of his injuries, "Legate, can you hear me?" she asked, her mind focusing mostly on her patients she found herself idly wishing for a few things, her staff, her sickbay.

A working shuttle would do right about now, or an SCE tech who'd rebuild the downed shuttle in a few moments with nothing more than spare parts and gaffa tape. Checking the meager medical supplies she had she compared what she had to what she needed and frowned, ~ Let's hope your Kelvan physiology is as tough as I've read about! ~ she thought.

OOC: Everyone is unauthorized in this one.

"Interdiction"

Starring:
Captain Cass Henderson,
CO

Vice-Admiral Sindar,
Operations and Logistics Handler, SFI

Guest Starring:
Commander Brianna O'Shea,
Chief Engineer

Lieutenant Ella Grey,
Assistant Chief Engineer

Radek,
Chief Aide to Admiral Sindar

After having performed his part in the aftershock of M'Kantu's indisputably popular competency hearing, where Vice-Admiral Sindar had calmly announced 'No Comment' and directed the army of photographers and journalists towards Admiral Murdock, the Vulcan had departed the ensuing press conference with all due haste for his offices. Intelligence waiting for no being, especially in these tense and turbulent times.

As Sindar extricated himself from the media circus and departed the Judicial buildings on the Starfleet Command campus, he was met almost immediately by his chief aide, who had been waiting just beyond the security perimeter due to security clearances and raised alerts.

"Admiral, here are the Intelligence reports that you requested." Sindar laid out his left hand, tinged green from raised veins. The Vulcan was well past the century marker, but though his hair was streaked with a smattering of grey, it would be difficult for one to determine his exact age.

He nodded to the Rigellan, taking ownership of the PADD as the exited the building and walked the steps down to the waiting hovercar.

It was the middle of summer on Earth, but Sindar still found the air chill even though he has not been on Vulcan for any extended period of time in forty years. Not since he'd been part of the panel at the Vulcan Science Academy that rejected Ambassador Spock's study on re-unification with the Romulans in 2342.

In fact, it was that instance that awakened his directive towards today's political stance and influenced his career in Starfleet Intelligence. It was this objective that attained him his position as Intelligence Operations and Logistics Handler of the Beta Quadrant. It gave him flexibility in keeping an ever=present eye on the Romulans.

Rihannsu... Romulans... it did not matter. They were an anathema. A detriment to Vulcan society. An embarrassment. Their very nature was a blemish on Vulcanoids, and if the humanoid - mostly Terran - complement of the Federation did not see their nature, it would be up to the Vulcans to lead them on their path once again, as they had when Starfleet was established. Now was the best opportunity to take advantage of their weakened state, to dictate terms and conditions, and to stop the Federation from being complacent. Lives had been paid many times over for such leniency in attending to the other powers bordering and within the Federation.

The Klingons, had they been subjugated instead of given their infrastructure back in 2290, would not have been as untrustworthy at the onset of the Dominion War. The Breen would not have been able to develop their fleet, the Founders would have been quarantined, the Hydrans not been disillusioned... the proverbial list went on and on. The defeat of the Andromedans and controlled planetoid the Kelvans had settled on was the ideal method. One planet, virtually no forces to speak of, and under the Federation thumb. They were not a threat.

Sindar stepped into the hovercar, ignorant of the protests and demonstrations that had been increasing of late around them. The farce that was Havras from the year previous had still not waned, and this year's Federation Day events had not contributed anything to the public relations nightmare that had begun to unfold.

Still, it was only a boon to his party's views. The Council was already at odds with one another, and many members had declared neutral status or withdrawn altogether. It was only a matter of time before a Security Council member would do the same, and that day would begin the landslide towards restructuring the Federation and its views on expansionism.

The hovercar lifted up off its parking slot, dipped to the west, and carefully flew over the crowds that had assembled close. Sounds of something solid hitting the undercarriage of the vehicle went without a second thought from the Admiral. Rocks and objects being hurled at Starfleet and local political representation were not uncommon.

Without expression, and while his aide contacted the local travel office to book transport off Earth, Sindar scrolled through the hourlies he'd been unable to peruse due to being subjected to Admiral Proctor and her grievances.

Deep Space 5 had brought its long-range sensor arrays online, the first of recorded scans from Hydran space already being transmitted through the vast Federation network already. Nothing substantial reported as yet, but mapping of the Kingdom's outer periphery star systems was underway.

The subspace array the USS Miranda had established was at 80% operational. It had detected a fleet of Klingon light cruisers and Birds of Prey encircling Cheron, sharing orbit with an older class Warbird. The USS Galaxy was still at Romulus, according to its last check-in. The array itself was unable to resolve images at that distance as yet. Starfleet Command had established a dialogue with Romulus on the extent of the sensor ranges to not include Romulus, but Intelligence pushed that directive as far as possible without breaking it. Hence, low resolution scans.

What caught his eye, though, was a report that the Galaxy had recovered Lt. Commander Brianna O'Shea. She'd been recently discovered as a Hydran clone inserted into the ship to obtain Intelligence, and had escaped during the retreat from Tru'Haran. What had caught given this item extra attention was that Captain Henderson had not only allowed her back on duty, but that she was leading the damage control team that had been assigned to locate and deactivate the tampering her clone had integrated into the ship's systems.

While he could see the merit of placing an individual that was closest to the thought processes of the clone, the ship's medical department, in conjunction with the local Intelligence emplacements, had determined that she was in not another clone. The fact that they do not have the expertise or equipment to actually determine that conclusion, coupled with a medical department that for all intents and purposes should be reprimanded for allowing a person that had obvious emotional and mental faculty degradation back on duty - even in limited capacity - raised several alarms.

"Radek," The Rigelian hushed and muted the person on the opposite end of his communication and turned his attention to the dark-skinned Vulcan. "I require Alpha clearance on a priority one channel to the Commanding Officer of the USS Galaxy. Make it happen."

"Aye, sir." He turned his eyes to the PADD he was carrying and immediately began inputting command requirements to the appropriate parties. "Will you be requiring transport to the Galaxy as well?"

"No. I'm scheduled to depart with the USS Xerxes at 0900. The Tactical requirements of Admirals deMercereau and Murdock cannot be altered without clearance from the Chief of Staff." Sindar lay the PADD alongside him, then steepled his fingers in meditative thought. "This cannot be brought to the attention of Admiral Murdock as yet, understood?"

Radek nodded tersely.

"A direct line to Captain Henderson will be established in three minutes, sir. You can take it here. There will be a slight video delay, but we've reduced the frame rates to enhance audio and security on the feed."

*****

USS Galaxy
Captain's Ready Room

"Vice-Admiral Sindar. What can I do for you, sir?"

Cassius Henderson had been under an immense amount of pressure from the Rihannsu government in the last two days. After having sent most of the senior staff and whatever resources were required to Cheron to assist on the investigation of sabotage and mysterious assaults on the research center, the acting Captain was left to contend with the delicate situation of integrating Rihannsu engineers and other personnel into his crew.

Already there had been several incidents of minor altercations, of which he felt little he could do to placate the parties, since there were still a pair of Warbirds hanging off his bow.

He'd come clean with the Romulan Senate about the Jem`Hadar on-board, and after over two hours of intense debate and argument back and forth on both sides, it had been decreed by the Praetor to barricade the former Dominion soldiers into a section that could easily be ejected or destroyed without cost to the others on board. Cass thought it was more likely there wasn't anything in the section that the Rihannsu Tal Shiar were interested in.

Even so, all medical records and sensor logs taken of Tru`Haran and their inhabitants were transferred to the Rihannsu archives.

All in the interests of diplomacy, so they said. Cass had scoffed at that excuse. If diplomacy meant hanging a pair of full-armed cruisers over heads, then he wanted none of it. Not even the Empress could help in this situation, regardless of his connections.

And now Sindar was calling. He couldn't even find the four officers still missing on the planet's surface after the planetary defense grid had been activated. What kind of Intelligence was he going to be able to accomplish with all eyes on him?

[Brianna O'Shea is to be taken off duty, her security clearances revoked, and placed under house arrest. Immediately.]

He couldn't say this came to be a surprise at all, but damn, news traveled fast to the Vulcan.

"I'm not sure if that's a good idea, sir. She's the only one who has any insight into where her clone would have planted the tampering devices. She'd just reported in before your call, having identified at least one bomb on a countdown somewhere on-board."

[So noted, Captain. Follow your orders. There will be a transport arriving in two days to take her into custody. The official record has already been placed in her file that she is to be re-assigned to indefinite medical leave on Earth. That is what you are to tell her as well.]

"The 'official' record, sir? I take it that there is more to her re-assignment, then? Is there anything I should know about?"

[Yes, Captain. You are being re-assigned.]

That came as an utter shock to him. He'd half-expected - or maybe it was desired - to remain on the Galaxy, if not as Captain, then another tour as Executive Officer, though the latter had less appeal for him now since he'd been in command for several months when Captain M'Kantu was re-assigned to attend a competency hearing initiated by Admiral Proctor. The fact that Sindar changed topics so succinctly meant the O'Shea order was not to be questioned.

[Your replacement will arrive shortly. That is all I am authorized to inform you of. Being that you are in unstable space, I'm sure you can understand.]

"Aye, sir. I'll issue the order immediately."

Sindar nodded, choppy as it was on the feed. [Sindar out.]

When the Vulcan's face was replaced by the Federation log on the terminal, Cass leaned back in his chair, turning it to the side to gaze out the window upon ch'Rihan.

Not allowing himself to ponder the reasons why the sudden change and secrecy of Sindar's orders, his fingers found the intercom switch, but not before his terminal chimed off again, signaling an external communiqué.

Turning back to the monitor screen, curious as to who or what was contacting him this far out, as the only ones who had a direct line were Starfleet forces, he tapped the acknowledgement key on the bank under the terminal.

The purely textual message surprised him as to its contents, but the signature and accompanying codes were valid.

[Cassius, there will be an individual by the name of Andrus that will be requesting permission to board the Galaxy. You are to extend to him the privileges and hospitality of the ship's services with all due course. It is of the utmost importance you authorize this request. Thank you in advance.]

*****

Jeffries Tube 12A
Strut/Secondary Hull Junction
1032 hours, Local Time

[Henderson to O'Shea.]

"O'Shea here, Captain." Anna had the unfortunate timing of being stuck in a Jeffries tube no larger than a can of Batchelors Marrowfat Peas when Henderson called. She scrunched herself into something resembling a sitting position and pried a panel off with a spanner at the same time.

[Report to my Ready Room, Commander.] The tone in Cass' voice gave Anna pause.

"Is it important, Captain? I'm in a spot of a jam trying to disarm a bomb, you know."

[I know you are, Anna. Please don't make this harder than it already is.]

Maybe it was his tone, maybe because he used her first name, she didn't know, but whatever it was, it deflated her desire to argue the point."

"Aye, sir. On m' way. O'Shea out."

It didn't take a genius to figure out why Cass was calling. She would never allow or admit in public, but she wiped away a single tear that had emerged from her left eye before packing up her equipment. No one was willing to give her the chance to prove herself, and it was pissing her off.

*****

Phaser Cannon Power Taps
Deck 16
1044 hours, Local Time

[Henderson to Lieutenant Grey]

"Grey here, Captain." Ella's voice, toneless from the mechanical supplement grated out over the comm.-system while she had her head buried in a mass of circuitry and fiber optics that connected to one of the main power relays to the phaser cannon.

[Lieutenant, as of 1045 hours local time, you are now Acting Chief Engineer of the Galaxy. Brianna has been ordered to undergo medical recuperation on Earth for the foreseeable future. She is no longer to be contacted about any aspect of the damage control operations, understood?]

She'd almost dropped the fuser she was using on her head in surprise. After a moment's recovery, where Cass thankfully did not press the issue, she responded with a simple, "Understood, sir." There were more important things to be done than deal with a title change. But the job had become infinitely harder with O'Shea now no longer a resource. She just hoped his conscience would handle the burden of losing the ship over an already unstable planet.

If there was a reaction from the newly minted Chief Engineer, Henderson didn't hear it, only that he felt it.

[Is there something you'd like to tell me, Lieutenant?]

"Only that I have a bomb to disarm and no time to chat." As if an afterthought, she tacked on after a pause, "Sir."

[Understood, Lieutenant. Keep me apprised. Henderson out.]

(ooc: slight backpost. Right after Baile returns. Guess it belongs to Catalyst.)

"Hell has no wrath like a scorned Chief Councelor."

Commander Karyn Dallas, Chief Councelor, Second Officer
1st LT Jebidiah Baile, SFMC
Ensign Zev Raynor, Intel

Brig
USS Galaxy

-----------------------------

Raynor walked up to the brig, to do this next "screening". Unfortunately the prisoner had been considered too dangerous to even be moved. In fact he had managed to break another marines arm or something like that earlier... that would worry the top brass, but Raynor not so much...

Even so Security had sent another escort with him just to make his job more difficult. He would accomodate them to the door, but then instructed that they wait outside. With clear vantage points of the door ready to open fire on anyone who came out, just to give them a slightly better chance incase anything went down... though Raynor was confident in his ability to deal with Baile if it came to it.

Baile was a Marine and a Crow... but Raynor was a Ronin. He flipped through his file one last time before entering. Aside from the Padd, he had a couple of weapons, a recorder, and oh yes some cake. Not that he expected the last item to help in anyway, but it was there anyways. Three layers of fudgy goodness... maybe it would help crack Baile alittle. Probably not but it wasn't a standard interroigation method he would be using anyways.

As he walked in he observed the figure behind the forcefield for the second time with his own eyes. There were flashes of the crew he killed and the panic they suffered before he finished them, but this was the second time, he as in Raynor had even seen the man. Part of him wondered with all those tattoos how the man could of been considered for special forces. Usually for that many identifying marks, you were skipped over. But then again the Crows weren't just any special forces unit. Apparently he was either so skilled, or so driven that he was accepted into that unit inspite of the easy ID.

"Good morning sunshine... how you been holding up?" Raynor decided to start off cute, even though it was the middle of the afternoon.

Sitting on the floor the marine heard the newcomers just as the door to the brig opened. He heard orders being spoken but couldn't care less and stopped listening. The air was filled with noise and it was not improving his disposition in the slighest.

A voice interrupted his thoughts. A voice that spoke to him. "Top of the world, Sparky..."

"Top of the world, yet by looking around in quite the jam... should I ask exactly what you did to get yourself landed in here?" Raynor asked pointlessly. This approach was only getting him pissed in all probablity. But then the recorder was monitoiring brain wave responses as well so psychological responses to certain methods of behaviour on Raynor's part would only help to confirm or deny this man's identity.

"Got bored... went on vacation..." Baile replied and slowly lifted his head. He looked at the man from top to bottom, eyes hidden behind the dark goggles he so often wore to shut out the light. Great. More games courtesy of Intel.

He tilted his head slightly to the side and listened. Baile had no idea how it worked, but soon the noise around him faded and he could hear the man's heartbeats. He doubted he would ever get used to it.

Raynor watched as the Baile gave him a good look over. Raynor turned to the Brig guard, "Your dimissed." The guard looked at him for a moment as if he were crazy. Technically he was right but not at this moment. "It's classifed you don't have clearance." And with that the guard left.

"If you haven't guessed yet I'm essentially here to ask you a few questions about what the hell happened on your mission and why you failed to come back with the rest of the team," Raynor laid it out flat before him, with a sort of bluntness you wouldn't expect from an Intel Officer. "Depending on your Co-operation, and answers the Top Brass might be inclined to let you out of here, yet given all the shit the Crows were supposedly involved in, they might just let you rot anyways. To cover their own ass. I hate it, I disagree with it, but its ultimately their call. So shall we get started today or would you prefer I come back later when you've thought up a good lie?"

The marine looked at the visitor again. Unimpressed. The amount of shit that flew out from Intel-clowns was staggering. Baile knew exactly how much Intel knew about the Crows and their missions. Intel wished they knew, but since they didn't most of it was made up. There was only one man who knew the whole truth and that was Caileb Smith, an untouchable man. "I'm shaking with fear, Dorothy.. But hey - knock yourself out."

Raynor smiled... "Alright..." he said flicking a light on the recorder. "Let's start from the top... What happened to you after leaving the USS Galaxy on your mission for Vaden?"

Baile relaxed, looking like he was about to go to sleep again. "Tell me something..." Baile said after a few seconds of silence. "Did you attend the Intel stupidity academy or did you manage to go dumb all by yourself?"

"A bit of a natural talent actually..." Raynor lied. He only played dumb. "But the fact is you haven't filled in your report on what happened to you during the mission so killing two birds with one stone might save you a little time... then again me being but a fool didn't think you needed something that seemed so obvious to me, explained to you..." Dumbass.

Baile snickered at the reply and shook his head, smiling to himself. "Would you prefer to come back later when you've thought up a better lie than that?"

"What makes you think I'm lying?" Raynor inquired. Baile looked up and lifted the goggles from his eyes. The light touched his eye with the same finesse as hot iron. "I know the rules of this game and you know that. Pain or threat won't work on me, you know that too. Telepathy? Be my guest.. see what's behind door number two, Dorothy.. " Baile smiled, the same smile he had worn when hunting the Dithparu. The same smile he had worn when standing in the office of the Chief of Security on Vaden, seconds before killing him.

"I'd wager you're a lot brighter than you want to appear.. You know I'm Crow.. and that's not public knowledge.. and no average Intel monkey would ever be informed of it either." Baile was still smiling, wondering silently to himself how long this charade would go on. "I can track a gust of wind trough a storm. Spotting a liar is childsplay, Bub."

"Well you might not know this about me, but I generally don't lie... I deal with truths. And it is true that you haven't filed in a report and we need that from you in order to determine somethings. As for your whole knowing your a Crow... it was in this file I was handed by Starfleet Command so... I wouldn't read too much into that..." Raynor said with a dismissive air, truthfully... He used truths to decieve and mislead rather than lies wherever possible.

"Color it anyway you want, Sparky. It's still just a bunch of shit flying out of your mouth." He closed his eyes again. "You had your chance, Polly." Leaning his head against the wall he shrugged slightly. "I don't believe I got anything more to say. So goodnight Martha."

The sound of the doors sliding open must have come as a surprise to both of them. Karyn Dallas knew it had shocked the ensign at the door. "Thought I'd join the party and see how things were going."

Anyone who knew Karyn knew by her look and tone that she was beyond peeved about something.

The marine looked up at the newcomer and cocked an eyebrow. He snapped into a perfect marine attention in the presence of a superior officer. Old habits died hard, especially marine ones. "Officer on deck!"

Any chance there had been to question Baile had gone out the window. The marine doubted Raynor would continue the questioning and although Baile didn't really know the Chief Councellor well, or rather - at all, he could clearly see that trying to get rid of the Commander would be a very bad idea. Possibly a brig-time bad idea.

"Hey Karyn... how's it going? Come to see the man of the hour too huh?" Raynor greeted the commander with informal tone, almost in complete opposite to Baile. Raynor would come back later, and just keep an eye out in the meantime.

He turned to Baile. "You ever read Starship Troopers?" he asked.

The marine looked at Raynor. He was getting fed up with the little shit. "I'm sorry, Dorothy.. you'll have to say that again 'cause all I keep hearing from you is 'waah waah waah waah'... Go put your head in front of a shotgun and remember to pull the trigger." With that Baile turned to Karyn, still standing in perfection attention. The conversation with Raynor was clearly over.

"Watch it, Lieutenant," Karyn replied, looking toward Baile. "You're on thin ice as it is."

"So what brings you to this happy happy home, Commander?" Raynor asked.

Karyn, having felt no love lost for Raynor, answered firmly, but evenly. "I came to see if the Lieutenant needed medical attention and to speak to him about another matter. I have a feeling I came just in time."

It didn't seem like the good Commander Dallas would be walking.. hovering.. err.. leaving anytime soon. It was essentially a standoff. No reason to butt heads at the moment, especially when there was still cake to be had.

Dallas and Baile watched Raynor leave. Maybe having the Intel Monkey around had been better than having Dallas take over. He could hear on her heart that she was not in a happy mood. It pounded in his head like a drum circle gone haywire. Oh yeah. This was a great day.

~In which she stops to ponder...~

Lt. (Brevet) Teyri Jen, XO Vanguards

*****

Jen stood on the flight deck, watching the flight crews hustling around and doing the multitudes of little tasks that consumed their days. Keeping this many birds in top-notch condition was a job and a half, and even the fighters that were serviced by their pilots still had some routine cleaning and maintenance being done on them. The flight deck was a bustling hive of activity, barely controlled chaos, which made it the perfect place for her to stand and think.

It was becoming a familiar site to those who worked the deck during the day: their new "boss", standing in the corner of the deck out of the way, wearing a comfortably worn flight jacket and uniform pants, hair casually pulled back on the bottom of her neck, keeping it out of her way. There were times that she was asked to lend a hand on repairs, something that required more hands then were immediately available, so she was ready for it. Techs would see her standing there, at times leaning against the wall, arms crossed loosely in front of her, at times simply standing, hands clasped behind her back, staring off into space. She was deep in thought most of the time, but if anyone approached her, she would greet them friendly enough. She always had a ready grin for anyone.

At the same time, the techs knew not to get on her bad side. She was developing a hair trigger temper, something that would flare up, burn brightly, and then drop to nothing. It surprised her whenever she felt it taking over. It wasn't something she had grown up with, and her parents would have been shocked by the coarser side of the daughter that had appeared. Jen had kept her ears open long enough to acquire a fairly respectable repertoire of curses. She used them rarely, but when she did, she was getting to the point that she could blister the paint from a bulkhead at twenty paces. Few things managed to raise her ire, but when they did...

Right now, she was simply staring off into space, leaning against the wall, thinking. Thinking about her changed circumstances as Acting CO of the Vanguards while Corran was... elsewhere, and thinking about how she was going to interact with him when he came back.

Things had been strained between the two of them ever since she had seen him on the planet, and then heard the horrible recitation of things that his past hosts had done. She tried to avoid being in the same room with him when it was just the two of them. That was kind of difficult since they were supposed to work closely together to ensure the smooth running of the flight. It was... awkward, to say the least. She was uncomfortable around him, and she was horribly afraid that it was beginning to show. There had been times before he left that she would catch him giving her an inscrutable sort of look. Whenever she saw him doing that out of the corner of her eye, she would mumble some sort of an excuse and flee.

The worst part of it was that she didn't know why it was bothering her so much. Her commanding officer had been revealed to her as some sort of natural born killer, someone that killed others as easily as she herself breathed. There was no thought being it, no hesitation... And no remorse afterwards. She knew that, at least in the situation they had been in, it was an "us or them" type of thing. If Corran hadn't done what he had, then there was no guarantee that they would have been able to fend off the Jem'Hadar in time. She herself had shot one or two, at least wounding them, if not killing them outright. But she had felt guilt afterwards, guilt at extinguishing a life. Being able to look in the eyes of those that she killed made it feel like murder, and it weighed heavily on her.

There were times when she wondered if she had chosen the right path for her life. She loved flying; there was nothing that equaled the rush she felt, and few things could even close. When she was out in space, flying or fighting, she didn't have a problem with the killing. If she shot someone's ship, it blew up, and that was it. She wasn't able to look into their eyes and see the realization that they had been shot come into their eyes, fading as death claimed them. It wasn't personal. It was clean.

That didn't mean that she enjoyed it, of course. Only a sociopath - or a Klingon - would actually enjoy the killing. It was part of the job, though.

That was what made her pause about her chosen profession. There was no way of glossing over it, and pretending that she had joined the SFFC to explore space and make scientific discoveries. SFFC was the weapon of Starfleet, just as the Marines were. They helped preserve the safety of the more pacifistic branches of Starfleet, giving them the chance to claim the higher ideals of Starfleet - going where no man had gone before, all that good stuff.

Having doubts in herself, even if they weren't doubts in her abilities, was a dangerous thing. It made her reactions slower, made her second-guess in the heat of the moment. That was the kind of responses that created vacant spots in the flight, either through death or transfer. Jen didn't want either one.

It was something that she was going to have to work through. She would have to find the reason for why it bothered her so much, pin it down and look closely at it, much as an entomologist with do with an interesting beetle they wished to study. Once she could dissect it, then she would be able to get rid of the problem, either by confronting and banishing it, or by requesting a transfer.

And all she could hope was that once he returned, her deficiency wouldn't get someone killed.

"The Hearing" part II
Fleet Admiral Victor Murdock, C-in-C, Starfleet (Pat)
Fleet Admiral Jenee Teleel, CO, SF Foreign Affairs Office (Kate)
Vice-Admiral Sindar, Operations and Logistics Handler, B.Q., SFI (Ian)
Admiral Olivia Proctor (Ian)
Captain Daren M'Kantu (Robert)

W/

Fleet Admiral Irene deMercereau, CO 12th Fleet
Fleet Admiral William Valerian, CO 10th Fleet

---------------------------------
Starfleet Command
San Francisco, Earth
---------------------------------

"It is so noted, Captain." Murdock replied, looking over to the court reporter. "We will now move into opening statements. Admiral Proctor, if you please?"

The diminutive woman gathered up the first PADD in a layer of several her aides had already delivered to the hearing room, and swept up to a standing position. Without a glance at the Captain whose career would be determined by her actions today, she greeted the Tribunal first with the usual pleasantries.

"Honored members of the tribunal," Proctor gave a terse nod to each member as she addressed them individually. "Thank for convening this hearing with all due haste, and recognizing the urgency of assessing the capabilities of any commanding officer in the field that has been charged with the defense of the Federation and its protectorates.

"It is with the utmost respect to your offices that I deliver my reports of a potential risk in security to the peoples of both the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, so that I may be able to effect the defense of the border with all the due haste and efficiency you have assigned to me in taking command of Deep Space Five. I have the utmost confidence you will render a judgment without conflict of interest or prejudice in recognition of the charters and articles of the Federation and Starfleet."

Sindar recognized the underlying currents of silver-tonguing in the woman's tone, her words snaking out to grasp the ears of those listening in a paltry attempt at gaining their attention. The woman was not aesthetically pleasing enough to garner such attention.

"...the first charge of Dereliction of Duty stems from Captain M'Kantu's lack of action in dealing with the Hydran threat over Mirusa VI. We had an unequalled opportunity to obtain Hydran technology and intelligence, but he instead ignored his duty to Starfleet and allowed the enemy to continue to capture and imprison Starfleet Officers and Federation personnel on the planet's surface. He allowed the Hydrans a tactical advantage and put the ship at risk."

That was, Daren supposed, one way of viewing what had happened. The fact that the Federation was not at war with the Hydrans and that such a preemptive strike would have done nothing but trigger it was, of course, meaningless to Olivia Proctor. The concurrent fact that it was not his *job* to obtain such intelligence and material was equally lost on her - as were the unknown factors represented by the entities/computers/whatever that obviously controlled the 'testing grounds' on the planet. Blindly assuming that they would have allowed such an attack was an idiot's gamble. One had only to look at the extermination of the Husnock race by a single Douwd to see the potential results of such a course of action. Olivia Proctor and her childish need to feed her ego and to be seen as a military hero couldn't - or wouldn't - see that, however. He kept his peace and waited for his chance to respond once Olivia had wound down.

Admiral Murdock interrupted Proctor then. "Clarify, then, Admiral, if you will: How exactly did Captain M'Kantu do so?" the C-in-C said sternly. After all, such was likely the most serious of the charges Proctor had leveled against his former officer. But he would give a woman a fair hearing, no matter how privately he was considering this a review of her own fitness for command.

"He elected to allow the Hydrans to freely scan the Galaxy, take note of the flag officer present, gave them the tactical advantage of higher orbit with an uninterrupted line of sight to the main bridge and nacelles, all without ever having raised the shields, kept his offenses at yellow alert, or even active scanning the Hydran battlecruiser. He allowed them to beam on-board with their sidearms, as well. When they threatened to kill me, he still refused to take control of the situation, instead siding with them and threatening *me*. When I had found myself beamed onto the Hydran ship, he did not beam me out, either. Ironically it was then that he suddenly took an offensive posture and activated his weapons. He almost launched a war. That in itself should say enough."

If Sindar wasn't Vulcan, he would have rolled his eyes in horror. Instead, he coughed mildly, expunging his almost-emotion in an exhalation of air from his lungs.

Proctor either had an exceedingly minute grasp of the facts, or she was in belief of her over-inflated ego so much that she manipulated facts to her own ends. Either way, the farce had begun, and Sindar questioned why he had had not continued to pressure the Powers That Be that her appointment to DS5 was a gross error in judgment. Then he realized the logic of why she was out there, and why he had committed himself to the action. There were plans upon plans, and her assignment was merely a chess piece in the grand game.

Though, he still pondered how they would be able to quiet her hunger for fame and notoriety until her part of the grand strategy was activated. Some of the circle felt that her boisterousness was a gain, albeit a misdirection, but he felt it only attracted the wrong kind of attention. None of his faction wanted their assignments questioned.

"In Disobeying the orders of a Superior Officer, this happened on more than one count. First instance was as defined under the Dereliction of Duty in the presence of the Hydrans. He refused to take the Hydran senior staff into custody. I gave him a direct order, and it was disobeyed. He ordered me forcibly removed from the conference even after I belayed it.

"There were several instances in disobedience during the survey of Deep Space 5, as well, from denying me simple requests, to surveying an inactive station instead of pursuing the perpetrators of the destruction."

"With regards to Conduct Unbecoming an Officer, his behavior towards me in the presence of the Hydran command staff gave them the impression that there is no respect to be had with authority or command positions. His downgrading my priorities while investigating Deep Space 5 instead of pursuing any escapees shows he's in only acting in his own self-interests and not those of the Federation.

"All these and the notations I have filed in my official logs should quite plainly identify the need to address these concerns, as they mark him as Unfit for Command of a Starfleet vessel. He is unable to make the necessary decisions to protect the Federation and its citizens..."

Admiral Murdock's face grew sterner and sterner as the Commander of Deep Space Five railed on and on against her junior, and the truth became more and more clear to the Scotsman.

Daren frowned as Murdock's face changed color alarmingly. He'd only seen the Scotsman assume that expression three times while serving with him, and no one on the receiving end of Murdock's unleashed temper after the change took place had liked it.

Finally, he banged his gavel on the bench in front of him, interrupting Proctor's tirade. "Admiral Proctor, that is enough! Ye'll sit down right now, and be quiet!"

Olivia stopped with a start in mid-sentence, her eyebrows raised in surprise at the interruption. The stocky woman pointed her eyebrows downward, about to retort, but one look from Murdock, and she shut up.

"I am exercisin' my authority as Commander-In-Chief of Starfleet. It's clear that this entire proceeding is nothing more than some kind of ridiculous farce, and I'm not going to waste any more of Starfleet Command's time on it. All charges against Captain M'Kantu are summarily dismissed, and he is to be returned to command of the USS Galaxy with all possible haste." the Admiral thundered across the large, open-air room.

"NO!" As short as she was, the dwarfish female could still slam a fist down on the desk at her part of the judicial court with authority. "You can't do this! Are you mad?"

Murdock spoke loudly again, immediately cutting off Proctor as she began her protestations. "Admiral Proctor, ye're in no position tae be tellin' me what I can and cannot do. But, if ye dinna like my ruling, then frankly, feel free to go an' complain to the President about it. She might even give ye five minutes o' her time. But I promise ye this - waste my time on some sort of crap as frivolous as all of this again, and ye WILL pullin' waste disposal duty on the most crowded Starbase I can find for the rest o' yuir career. This hearing is adjourned." he said, and banged the gavel once more.

As he stalked into the adjoining corridor behind the hearing room, his Chief-of-Staff, Captain Matthew Albrecht, formerly of the Tellarite Embassy, commented quietly as he sidled up next to him. "The Hawks aren't going to like that, Admiral. Not one bit."

"Politics be damned." the C-in-C muttered. "We've got jobs to do. It's past time this Fleet started getting back to 'em."

Olivia Proctor had slumped down into her seat, completely defeated. She wouldn't even look M'Kantu in the eye as he passed.

She may have lost this battle, she mused, but not the war. She'd have her way.

"...The One Eyed Man Is King"

Captain Vergh, Commanding Officer
IKS Darchak

Commander L'Teer, 1st Officer
IKS Darchak

Sub-Commander Durran, 1st Engineer
IKS Darchak

Klingon Compound, Planet Cheron RSE

=============================

The Dahar Master Kor was a warrior of legendary accomplishments - his life and death was a canvass painted with what it meant to be a Klingon - bravery on the battlefield, fearless dedication to the Empire, a knack for cunning and a thirst for life that no hardship or misfortune could quench.

Vergh had never heard of a son or grandson of Kor, but by Kahless, Kol could certainly drink as a Klingon should - despite the effete Starfleet uniform he was forced to wear. A nine hour celebration had degenerated to a binge the likes of which the son of Gorak had not endured in decades, and a hangover he would almost not wish on a Romulan.

Almost...

Vergh scratched at the long scar beneath his ruined left eye and grimmaced as the door to his command chamber loudly rumbled open to admit his chief engineer ~who had better report quietly if the little tech-monkey wants to breathe air this evening~. The Captain's good eye looked down at Durran as he nodded silently for the report to begin.

"Leto's progress on the Monument has come to a halt pending an investigation by some of the Starfleet people", the engineer replied smoothly. "Both parties seem to be treating the accident as a crime. Surveillance on Leto's person has become more difficult, but our listening post reports that he still believes that we're responsible, regardless of what the human leech has told him from the autopsy he performed."

"And the Starfleet people?", Vergh growled softly.

"Are divided basically into two groups - the medical and security staff trerating the colonists, and a small party exploring the derelict Earth vessel from the Battle of Cheron."

The Captain frowned at the last comment. "What do they expect to find on a vessel centuries old?"

Durran shrugged. "I don't know, sir. There's really.."

"Find out. Now", Vergh growled, sneering miserably at the smaller Klingon. "'I don't know' means 'time to find a new Chief Engineer', Durran."

The engineer nodded and quickly left the room, grateful to have caught Vergh in a more restrained mood. He passed the Darchak's First Officer as he was about to leave the compound.

"How is he?"

"Like he's got one foot in Gre'Thor, L'Teer", Durran grinned. "It makes him quite docile."

L'Teer grinned back at the engineer, but made a mental note to start a betting pool as to how long Durran would last. Anyone thinking Vergh was ever in a state that could be called 'docile' would be fool enough to say the wrong thing at the wrong time - it was just a matter of when.

She sauntered gracefully through the corridors to the command chamber and raised an eyebrow when seeing her Captain, head in hands, crouched over the table he was sitting at. Smiling, she tossed the padd noisily onto the table as Vergh sat bolt-upright and glared at her.

"Anyone else would be dead for that!"

"Anyone else couldn't give you what's in that file". She walked to the cabinet and selected a ceramic tankard and filled it halfway with bloodwine. Offering Vergh a silent, haughty salute she drank deep to rid her throat of the day's dust and fatigue.

"The D'Decius?"

L'Teer grinned. "Her full manifest, as well as that of the Starfleet personnel she brought with her. Our Reman friends, while tolerant of the Romulans on Cheron, have no petience with the Romulan military. They knew the D'Decius was in orbit before they even decloaked - and have been quite helpful."

"How so?", Vergh growled, distracted by the scrolling manifest of the Romulan warship.

"Some of their people have remarkable powers of telepathy - far more developed than either a Romulan or a Vulcan, I'd wager. That could be useful in case the Romulans are up to something."

Vergh looked up from the database, his one bloodshot eye glaring at his First Officer. "They're ROMULANS. Of course they're up to something", he said grimacing at the volume of his voice.

"Of course", L'Teer shrugged. "That's why I've asked the Remans to help in monitoring the Romulan military presence. They weren't keen on spying on the construction workers, but with fleet guards on the surface, they've been more than cooperative."

"Have some of the Reman volunteers accompany our patrols - no more than three per group", the Captain commanded. "Keep up with the regular surveillance, and keep tabs on the Starfleet people as well. Durran will be looking into the group going to the crashed Earth wreck - keep an eye on the hospital, and all Federation officers interacting with Leto or the Romulan command."

L'Teer's grin spread. "That's a odd way of treating an ally."

Rising, Vergh scowled at the concept. "They're odd allies - they can't understand the joy of rolling in the tears of an enemy at your mercy. They refuse to taste the sweeness of conquest." The Captain of the Darchak acknowledged that the Federation were useful allies, but their weaknesses appalled him.

Draining her flagon, L'Teer placed brought it down hard on the table's surface. "Myself, I like that the Starfleet people are here. It provides more of what Cheron really needs." She opened the chamber door and made to leave.

Vergh raised the brow of his good eye at the statement. "More allies?"

L'Teer smiled back at her Captain still grinning broadly, and loosened some of the straps on her tunic.

"More prey."

"Relic Hunters"

Lieutenant Saul Bental
Chief Tactical Officer / Expedition Leader

Lieutenant J.G. 8-Ball Hunter
Chief Science Officer

Turan Trelar
Quentite ambassador / apprentice Engineer

After ten minutes of toying with calculations, Saul, who was sitting with Lieutenant Hunter on the edge of the bridge by the wide hole in the hull, slanted his eyes toward Turan. The Quentite seemed to be briskly frisking the bridge's rear consoles.

"Found anything, Turan?"

The Quentite engineer trainee turned around and glanced at the Lieutenant. "Depends on what you expected to find. Dust, bones probably a living scorpion - or what is similar to that here on Cheron." He answered.

There was a pause of what felt to be an eternity until a slight smile rushed over pale skinned face. "Sorry, sir. I was just joking", he broke the silence. "There indeed IS a reading with this ... detector ... something like a passive echo. I think it's behind the panel. Just another two screws and we will see."

Saul exchanged glances with 8-Ball.

8-ball looked back at him. "Whaddya looking at me for? *I* don't know what's behind the panel."

Turan turned back to the gray duranium panel and unscrewed the remaining two screws. Rather carefully he worked the panel out of the rectangular hole surrounded by the panels neighbors. The small compartment formerly hidden behind the panel seemed to not even have been hidden from anybody's eyes for more than two hundred years. The compartment presented itself in a clean, dustless and almost factory new shape. Nevertheless it wasn't much more than small dark hole with nothing else than two bright orange painted boxes in it. Turan lit his wrist torch and illuminated the two boxes.

"Flight Data Recorder - Do not open!" was written on the left one, followed by "Enregistreuer De Vol - Ne Pas Ouvrier!", "Flugdatenschreiber - Nicht oeffnen!" and several other lines of text obviously saying the same as the first line - the only one, Turan was able to translate.

The other box of about the same size as the first was signed with:

"Voice Recorder"

followed by the warning not to open the box as there were no serviceable parts inside.

Again the tall Quentite turned around, shifted his weight from his knees to his botty and sat down on his insteps.

The Tactical Chief slowly stood up. "Show me the money."

"Ladies and Gentlemen ... I proudly present: The challenger's hidden treasure." he declared presenting the hole and its contents like an ancient Terran circus owner.

Saul took the flight data recorder. It fit into his open palm, and was cool to the touch. He stared at the relic in awe, like a thief holding a priceless gem.

A thought crossed his mind - this recorder COULD be worth a lot in the antiques black market. He wondered what Cutter, 8-Ball's predecessor, would say about that. Then, he figured someone else on the bridge might've had the same thoughts, so he glared at Chava. The blue-skinned woman returned an innocent smile.

"Can we make it work without damaging it?", Saul inquired.

"You have no faith in the awesomeness of my abilities," 8-ball said, then paused. "That is, assuming, you were talking to me just then. You were kind of goggling the little recorder, so I'm not sure if you were asking the Science Chief or the engineer to fix your little trinket. I suppose the engineer would make more sense, but you know I have all this pent up arrogance and ego. Anyway, let's make the Quentite do the heavy lifting."

She handed the flight recorder to Turan carefully and said, "So, Turan. Can we make it work without damaging it?"

Turan flipped around the small but massive unit to examine it from all sides. "Looks like a standard diagnostic bus plug. What means there is the equal number of pins in every row, With the number of rows it's the same, too. I could plug in the diagnostic bus cable, plug the other side to a tricorder and we would see what will happen. I don't know if the diagnostic bus wiring scheme change during the last 200 years, so there is a good chance the unit will go up in flame." he explained.

Offering the recorder to Saul he added. "Sorry, sir. I think I'm not old enough to be blamed for having destroyed one of the most valuable sources of Terran first hand historical information. Even if the diagnostic cable works straight out of the toolkit I don't know anything about its transfer protocols and encryption algorithms. Probably we should ask a more qualified engineer. - Or at least one who isn't as gutless as I am. By the way ... don't you think we should keep the story for later in the evening and move over to a cleaner environment first?"

"Cleaner? We still have three hours, and I asked Artim to make double checks before we entered the vessel, and make sure that the anti-radiation treatment matches the actual radiation level."

"When I said cleaner" the tall Quentite wannabe engineer explained "I didn't think about the radiation. I really thought it wouldn't be a good idea to revive the unit here on the bridge with all the sand and the dust. Look at those dust bunnies!"

Turan's wiped a 'S' into the untouched dust layer of a control console, presented his pointing finger with a small lump of dust on it and finally blew away the dust demonstratively. "But right, radiation is an issue, too. I almost forgot. Out of sight - out of mind." he admitted.

"And it's better being safe than sorry. Care to double check, 8?"

"When it comes to radiation, I'm always willing to double check," 8-ball said and flipped out her Tricorder. "Okay, everything's looking. . ."She paused as she held the Tricorder over her head. "Oh fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. There. Towards the ships rear, and not so far away from just directly over our fucking heads."

"What do you mean?", Saul hastily picked up the PADD he was using for trajectory simulations. A few clicks revealed to him the ship's sketch. "There shouldn't be anything there. We're on the top deck of the ship, and the irradiated areas are mostly on the lower decks."

"Well, apparently there are some irradiated areas above us too," 8-ball snapped, still looking at her Tricorder. "Unless you think the Tricorder is somehow mixing up radiation with dust bunnies."

Saul's fingers fluttered over the hand-held computer, instructing the trajectory simulation to reappear. He changed the parameters, adding some weight to the top part of the ship. Then, he pressed on a button, and the PADD began running the simulation again. It took a few seconds, and Saul could almost imagine the isolinear chips complaining about the effort they weren't designed for. But eventually, a result replaced the parameters page.

The trajectory changed, and the two lines - theoretical, and actual - were now so close together that they were hard to differ.

Saul slowly turned around, his gaze fixed on the ceiling. "Bingo. We're not leaving yet. There's something up there."

8-ball sighed. "Can I say that this is a bad idea? I feel that someone should say this is a bad idea. Oh, what the hell am I thinking. We're Galaxy crewmen. All of our ideas are bad ones." She looked at Turan wryly. "Ready to go exploring in the secret compartment of fun and radiation?"

Turan tried to make eye contact with the tactical lieutenant. There were several stories about the Vulcan/Terran hybrid gathering in the Galaxy's corridors. On account the fact most of the stories painted the picture of a flipped freak there was something really serious in what she said. - Not the last sentence of course when she tried to encourage him to explore the secret compartment . Two large Quentite eyes begged the tactical chief to make some serious decisions.

"Not yet.", Saul said. "First, I want everyone to get into protective gear. We've toyed enough with anti-rad medication. Second... we need to find a way in. I haven't seen any entrances along the way."

8-ball rolled her eyes. ~I sort of thought the radiation suits were self-explanatory~ she thought to herself, but it had occurred to her after some time that people like Turan seemed to confuse her eccentric way of speaking with stupidity. She decided not to bother educating the Quentite, and instead turned her attention to examining the ceiling.

After a few minutes of everybody searching, 8-ball called out to them. "Saul," she said. "I've found an entrance over here. But it's so small that even I can't get through."

Saul joined her. He was already wearing a stark gray protective suit. It was much less cumbersome than its 20th. century ancestors, but you still couldn't skip with it in the cornfields like t'Heidi the Andorian mountain girl.

8-Ball, he saw, was pointing at a small shaft just outside the bridge. It would require someone to climb on the ship's external hull, and then somehow squeeze into the shaft.

"Let's expand the entrance.", Saul suggested, reaching for one of the phaser rifles resting in an orderly stockpile on the floor.

"No!" Turan stopped him and started searching his toolkit. "If you're really going to cut the hull there's something in here more precise than a phaser rifle" echoed out of the black plastic container.

"Ah ,,, here we are ..."

Turan produced a plasma saw.

"Although I don't want to look like a spoil sport, I would like you to keep in mind that the wreck is lying here for more than two hundred year. Cutting it may have a negative influence on the structural integrity. And whatever we may find inside the compartment seems to be much more radioactive than the rest of the wreck. I is to be feared that whatever is the source of that radiation could react allergic on phaser or plasma beams and spread our molecules allover Cheron." he remarked still offering the plasma saw to the much smaller tactical chief.

First time the tall Quentite tried something, the Terran called 'gallows humor'. When he was fresh on board he wasn't really able to handle this kind of humor right but after a while he found out that many crew members used it to make a dangerous situation become much less alarming.

"I see.", Saul consented. "In that case, I think we have one officer here which would be perfect for the job, whether he likes it or not."

8-ball raised an eyebrow. "Who?"

Saul grinned slyly, knowing that his next order would make a Galaxy crew member hate his guts for all eternities, and tapped his commbadge.

"When Darkness Falls" Part I
(Brevet) Lieutenant Teyri "Rockstar" Jen (PC, Becky W.) Vanguard 5/Sqn. XO
Lieutenant "Fuzzball" Kettch (PCC, Pat W.) Vanguard 9
FOfc Ember "Orphan" Lansky (PC, Serene K.) Vanguard 10
Plt Xiaz "Zee" Padma (PC, Kate) Vanguard 6
Plt Ayden "Tater" O'Connor (PC, Robert B.) Vanguard 7
Plt "Thundercat" K'Rem (NPC, Matt M.) Vanguard 14
Plt Niki "Pebbles" (NPC, Ian D.) Vanguard 12

***
En Route to Romulan/Reman Settlement
Cheron
***

The travel time on board the D'Decius was beyond tolerable. Once the new Rogues had been loaded into the Warbird's hangar bay, it had been an effort of phenomenal proportions to keep the Romulan fingers out of the pie with any method of diplomacy.

Most of the time, the pilots had to deal with insatiably curious enlisteds and recruits who wanted a close look at the mid-range fighters, as they were limited in their own. The only small-form offensive craft they had were of Reman make for the most part, and old prejudices died hard when it came to the relationships between the two peoples. The Rihannsu officers proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt when the Rogues and Reman fighters were mentioned in comparison of specifications. Their arrogance revealed an intimate lack of knowledge other than the fact the Reman fighters simply existed. Even then, many had chosen not to acknowledge their existence, chalking it up to fairy tales meant to scare children at night. 'Get to bed now, Fegruck, or the Remans will come take you away on their demonwings!'.

So, the pilots and deck crew had remained in the Warbird's makeshift flight deck - rather a hastily converted cargo hold that had crammed in the Rogues with supplies to the colony.

When the seven pilots assigned to the mission had an opportunity to take leave of the Romulan ship, they did with all due haste of a peace officer at a doughnut convention upon opening the doors. Some things didn't change no matter what century you were in.

Their first order of business was to report into the main settlement, before being relegated out to whatever needs the Romulans and Remans on-site required of them.

Ayden's Banzai jolted slightly at the sudden rush of wind as he and the rest of the squadron pierced through the planet's atmosphere, leaving behind trailing paths of flame and smoke. Planetary entry was the next best thing to combat, considering you couldn't fly idle and expect to make it down without a scratch. It took skill.

Glancing to the left of his cockpit he saw the rest of the wing ahead of him, picking Ember's fighter out of the formation. She was almost too easy to recognize out of the group, partly because nobody flew with as much attitude as her, even when just staying in formation.

In truth, their relationship hadn't quite steadied out since her return from the mission. Things seem unsettled even before, and she hadn't been open enough to talk to him about it. Everytime he tried to break through her shields, she'd withdraw, and after a while he decided it best to just leave it alone.

~She'll talk about when she wants to; when she's ready to~ He thought, adjusting his stick at another gush against the fighter. He did wish that after they've been seeing each other for so long, nearly eight months now, that she would trust him enough to tell him what was bothering her.

But maybe it wasn't about trust. Maybe it was just something she had to work out on her own... about the two of them possibly. He had to admit, he'd been thinking about the dynamics of their relationship a lot lately.

Now wasn't the time to think about such things though. They were in the middle of a mission, he had to keep his head in the game. "Let's do that again." He commented through the comm system with a grin. There was a reason why the age-old human adage 'Never mix business with pleasure' had survived through the centuries. It was sound advice, especially now hearing Ayden's voice through the comm., Ember couldn't deny how good the laughter in his voice sounded, and how much she had missed it. She fought it off, keeping her focus on the flying; not that she needed to, much - since it was so ingrained into her reflexes and her psyche that it was purely instinctual. The buzz of adrenaline when she was behind the controls, pumped her up and briefly, took her mind off the tension that had settled between Ayden and her.

Granted, the 'tension' and the distance was mostly created by her. Her history on Utrecht III was not something she could bare to Ayden, and it would be kept secret for as long as was necessary, though part of her was wondering if she would soon need to make the hard decision - something she was extremely reluctant to do.

The overpopulated Vanguard Squadron's newest member, "Thundercat" K'Rrr,r'm ("K'Rem" to non-Caitian Standard speakers), lazily rolled his starfighter to port, bringing up the rear of the seven-man formation. Mentally, he checked off each pilot's position: "Rockstar" Jen was up front, flanked by "Tater" O'Conner to her starboard, and "Orphan" Lansky to her port. Thundercat was on the starboard trailing edge, while "Zee" Padma took to the port. Lieutenant "Fuzzball" Kettch and the other Kowe representative - Niki "Pebbles" Reeleese were riding center, forming a perfect full delta triangle formation.

'Rem laughed as he pulled Vanguard 14 (appropriately emblazoned with "10th Life" on her nose) into a tighter formation with the rest of the wing. The large Caitian enjoyed every move of his new Banzai-class starfighter--a vast improvement over the Pelican-class Glamdring, the Furie's skyhopper that he used to pilot. Since passing his Level 8 Starfighter certification three months ago (thus gaining his commission in the SFFC), he was now truly flying.

K'Rem was of the white-furred Anarran Caitian, hailing from the snowy, mountainous arctic region in the northern part of the Kerana continent on Cait. Unlike the gold-furred Kerrans, or even the black-furred Lenarans, K'Rem's race was very rare--most of its population had been eradicated by the slave trade that had proliferated during the mid-23rd century. Only now were the Anarrans rebuilding their numbers, sequestered in the snow-capped Mevarr mountain range, far away from the warmer-climate races that had hunted and sold them, so long ago.

Unlike his smaller genetic cousins, though, K'Rem was massive for a Caitian; he was of about Terran height and build. His bulky, muscular body was covered in thick, snow-white fur, with black leopard spots running from the nape of his neck to the tuft of his thick, powerful tail. Unlike most Caitians, Anarrans didn't develop manes, and, because of this, he had often been mistaken as being much younger than he was.

"Rockstar," K'Rem keyed his mic on the open frequency, "You may want to keep an eye on the two--how is it said...'love birds'?--wouldn't want them to fly into you. Fate's knows, I'm not saving your bumpy ass!" The Caitain laughed again, knowing that Tater was probably flipping him off from the seat of Vanguard 7. Briefly, he looked outhis canopy to port, catching Zee's eye in Vanguard 6.

"You'd love a look at it, wouldn't you?" Pad replied over the comm before Jen could. "Oh, the things I could tell you..."

Jen smiled briefly at the comment, then keyed her mic in return. "Okay, guys, don't get sloppy. Loosen it up a little, but stay sharp." She didn't speak much more than that, but she didn't really feel the need to. She was keeping on eye on her pilots and they all looked like they knew what they were doing. They were flying in perfect formation, comments from the peanut gallery notwithstanding, keeping enough distance between themselves that if anything happened, they could immediately drop into full fighter mode. As they were supposed to.

Lieutenant "Fuzzball" Kettch looked, to most humanoids, like an oversized teddy bear. He was accustomed to the stares a new assignment brought - not to mention the typical way children tended to (as Corran had once put it) "freak the hell out" around him. It faded as people became accustomed to him, and he honestly hadn't thought of it in a long time.

The Romulans, of course, had barely been able to contain their derisive sneers at seeing the diminutive shuttle pilot.

Kettch didn't like that. It made him angry. It made him want to bite ankles. "Ruddy bastards." he grumbled to himself, unaware that he was transmitting over the comms.

"Say again, Fuzzball? I didn't quite catch that," Jen said, automatically looking at the display that showed her his ship. Everything looked okay, there was no one around... At least not that she could see. Had he caught something they hadn't?

"So sorry, dear girl. That wasn't addressed to you, of course." Kettch replied over the comm. "Just muttering aloud to myself."

Jen chuckled. "Then turn off your mic." She hit a series of buttons around her, and nodded her head a little as her computer identified the cluster of camps that was their destination. She began the approach, slowing slightly and aiming for an area to land in the general area of the camps, looking for a spot that was about mid way between all the pickup places for the representatives they were here to carry. The rest of the formation followed suit, staying right behind her as the ground came closer. No one strayed out of formation, and it was as picture perfect as anyone could want.

"Righto."

Pebbles was the polar opposite of Kettch. Having hardly spoken a word since being bumped back to the secondary wave of Vanguards, she held a bitter streak towards Corran and his ass-kisser crew, including Kettch, who was more arrogant than she cared to endure around him.

Having kept to herself during the voyage from the Galaxy to Cheron aboard the D'Decius, she never experienced the taunts and heckling Kettch mewled about. Maybe if had shut up and didn't give the Romulans a reason, he wouldn't be so bitchy. Though, it did please her that he'd had his own arrogance thrown back in his unkempt whiskers.

The seven craft broke through the outer atmosphere of the desolate planet, its cloud cover still tainted rust with sand and radiation from centuries past. Niki switched over her controls and stabilizers to atmospheric mode as Teyri panned the order across the network.

"Captain on Deck!"

The Navigation Departmental Meeting: Epilogue - The Shuttle Jockeys

Featuring Lt. Raven Darkstar, Chief of the Navigation Department

And the Shuttle Pilots: (NPC's since I am the department at this time)

Consisting of old standbys:
Lt. Jg. Jolsa Matous (Trill)

Rounded out with the new guys:
Ens. Artimus Wright (Human)
Lt. Jg. John Burton (Human)
T'Runtar (Jem Hidar Refugee)
Chief Dakota Willis (Human Mechanic)

Plus an appearance from....Captain Leo Streely?!?!?!?

Recommended Soundtrack: "Nelly Furtado: Promiscuous (One Summer At Band Camp Remix)!" !!!

Location: The Main Shuttle Bay

Chaos.

Bedlam and Lunacy.

These are the voyages of the Starship Galaxy.

Between it's missions, crewmen seem strange, like from different worlds.

Their bizarre behavior like a new civilization, makes a man boldly ask if they are sane anymore.

Nearly 16 months ago, this slightly revised version of the traditional mantra that starship Captains have at one time or another found themselves uttering, was written on the wall of one of the holding cells in the USS GALAXY's spacious brig.

Lieutenant Raven Darkstar, the current Chief of Navigation, was the acting Brig Supervisor at the time and failed to see the humor or relevance of the comment.

Until now.

On a PADD, it seemed simple. Navigation Chief meeting with his shuttle crew. Nothing that hadn't played itself out before on hundreds of space craft in dozens of different navies from the Romulans to the Paklids.

On the fabled USS Galaxy, there never exists anything simple. Everything is complex, multifaceted and completely out of the ordinary.

And it was here, in the Main Shuttle Bay, twenty yards from a shuttlecraft named "The Flying Egg Roll"; with a Trill and a human in a dirty baseball cap racing for cover; with the ancestor of the famous Wright Brothers themselves lying in a crumpled heap on the floor after fainting; with a topless English woman covered in grease laughing hysterically; all the while a Jem Hadar commando snorts indignantly after unshrouding, that the surly Indian understood the true meaning behind the phrase he had once seen.

He took a moment to center himself within the commotion around him. He glanced up towards the heavens, his eyes dark and deep, and offered a prayer of thanks to his ancestors.

There was only one more element that would have turned the situation into what Commander Corgan would call a "Cluster Fuck". It seemed that he had been spared what is arguably the most combustible element on the ship that could be added to the mix.

At least it seemed that way until the shuttlebay doors opened.

It was at that point that Leo Streely waltzed into the bay dressed in a StarFleet Captain's uniform.

"CAPTAIN ON DECK!!!" he bellowed. "DROP YOUR COCKS AND GRAB YOUR...."

"SHIT!!! FANG FACE!!!!! GET DOWN! GET DOWN!!!!!" the little man suddenly screamed after his eyes fell upon the Jem Hadar. "PARTNER!!!!!!!!! I GOT YOU BUDDY!!!!!!!!!"

Streely surged ahead and crashed headlong into the massive Indian, the whole scene unfolding so rapidly that for one of the first times in memory, Darkstar was caught off guard, and found himself toppling to the floor, with Leo atop him, turned on his back and spread eagle.

"LEO!!!" Raven growled impatiently.

"I GOT YOU BUDDY!! STAY DOWN!!!" Leo cried, slapping his chest but missing his communicator each time. "Security!!! Security, we're being over run!! RED ALERT!!"

"LEO!!!" Raven began again, until Leo's sweaty paw pushed the big man's face into the ground.

"I WON'T LET THEM TAKE YOU!!! I GOT YOUR BACK!!! DON'T WORRY!! WHERE THE SMEGGING HELL IS SECURITY?!?!?!" Leo cried until he looked across the bay and saw Chief Dakota Willis, the shuttle mechanic standing there, topless and laughing hysterically.

"Good luck buddy. Nice knowing you. Catch you in that big teepee in the sky." Leo said, then raced across the room and stood in front of Dakota. Without looking, he shot his hand back and pressed it against her exposed boobs.

"STAY BACK, BABY DOLL!! THE BIG HOSS IS ABOUT TO BUST SOME ASS, DRUNKEN GORN STYLE!!! Leo said, snapping his teeth together, falling on the ground on all fours, lifting one leg in the air, crawling around behind Willis and through her legs where he stopped, gnashed his teeth together and rubbed the top of his head into the woman's crotch.

Darkstar looked dumbfounded.

"Leo, what...what are you doing??"

"That's precisely the mystery that my mind was currently trying to unravel. I have never seen a Gorn urinate on an enemy. I fail to see the offensive application of the tactic." T'Ranatar said.

"You ever smell Gorn piss?" Leo asked.

Behind him, Dakota nodded.

"It's lethal all right."

Everyone froze. Leo turned to looked up at her with mild disgust on his face.

She shrugged.

"Every woman has a past ya know."

Darkstar's face grew dark. Very dark. Dangerously dark.

"Uh oh." Lieutenant Matous said.

"EEEEEEENOUGH!!!!!!!" the Indian roared viscously. "EVERYBODY FREEZE!"

Ensign Wright, who had just managed to regain consciousness slumped back onto the floor again.

"Ya know..." Leo said, only to clam up when Darkstar growled ferociously.

The infuriated Indian pointed at the Jem Hadar.

"T'Rantar is our new shuttle pilot. I recommended the appointment after seeing him in flight simulations on the holodeck. Captain Henderson concurred. He is not an enemy. He is a permanent member of this crew. Does anyone have any issues with my appointment?"

If anyone did have an issue, they chose wisely to keep it to themselves, more out of fear of finding themselves on the out side of the ship looking in.

Literally.

The Indian pointed to Artimus Wright. "Burton, Matous. Do something with him so that I do not trip over him in 3 minutes when I depart this bay."

"You. Do what you do and forget you even saw this man." Raven said to the Chief mechanic while nodding towards Leo.

"I donno. I find him somewhat charming in an odd way." she said.

"You and half the free world, toots." Leo said popping his collar, causing his Captain's pips to shine in the shuttle bay lighting.

"And you, Leo." Raven said. "Why are you prancing around dressed like the Captain Henderson?"

"First off, If I were dressed like Henderson I would be lurking in the shadows and polishing my medals. You know he was like a spook hero, right? Im sure I would have chapped lips too from kissing so much ass to get where ..." Streely started.

"Leo..." Darkstar said impatiently.

"OK! OK! OK! OK! You are looking at THE NEW CAPTAIN of the USS GALAXY!!!" Leo said proudly.

Raven put his head in his hand.

"I hear that Henderson has been reassigned."

"How do you know this?" Dakota asked.

"Every man has a past ya know." Leo said with a wink.

"Now with him reassigned, the Captain's chair then belongs to the next ranking officer on this ship. That's me."

"That's impossible."

"Oh contraire mon fraire!" Leo said wiggling his fingers. "Apparently someone in the Starfleet bureau of records mistakenly entered my brevet status. When Admiral Bhrode named me Ambassador, someone somewhere mistakenly entered me as Captain. You know what that means?"

"Someone is going to find themselves with a one way ticket to the waste recycling vats of the Fleet embassy on Breen?" Raven muttered.

"Probably." Leo said, then puffed out his chest. "It also means that I am the new Captain of the USS GALAXY!!! Everyone, I order you all to carry on."

He turned to Raven with a big smile plastered across his face.

"Mr. Darkstar, please escort me to the bridge."

Raven's mouth hung open.

"To..... the..... what?"

Leo adjusted his ever present medallions. He smoothed his hair with his hands, licked his fingertips and then wiped them on his eye brows.

"To the Bridge, Lieutenant. There is a chair there with my name on it."

"Timestorm - Part 4"

Ensign Keldan, Operations Officer
Michael McDowell, Civilian Engineering Specialist

*** Keldan's Quarters ***

Keldan smiled. McDowell's enthusiasm was infectious; having the right frame of mind for attacking this problem would be critical to success, to say nothing of being determined. But tenacity was something he had in abundance, as apparently did McDowell. Although for some odd reason when describing Talarians that always seemed to translate as "just being stubborn."

"I guess we have our initial plan of attack, then. Now, if the computer would just finish this diagnostic."

Right on cue, the computer interjected a tinny "Diagnostic complete."

How timely, Keldan thought, and the computer continued.

"No mechanical anomalies detected." There was a short pause. "No operational anomalies detected."

Keldan snorted as he turned to McDowell. "Why am I not surprised? I'll start trying to reconstruct the security access log if you want to try to sift through what was accessed."

Michael nodded. "I'll start the Tracer and run it on the background. It find its own way through the data. This way you can do your part without being interrupted."

"Sounds good." Keldan quickly punched up the access log on the panel, staring thoughtfully at the numerous "Not Available" markers indicated in red scattered throughout the file. Why would anyone go to so much work to delete the contents of the log without totally wiping the log in the first place. There was something definitely not right about this situation. He was about to begin the reconstruction subroutine when an idea, half born of experience and half of paranoia, entered his brain. Maybe whoever did this *wanted* it to be found. Perhaps tampering with it would set off the trap. He punched in a command to isolate the log from the surrounding files. Feeling a bit more secure, he started the reconstruction subroutine. Since it could take a while, he began looking through the security connections for some kind of pattern.

While Keldan was busy searching through various logs, Michael was thinking again about what systems had been accessed. "You know, apart from the complete Crew Manifest and Environmental controls, I can imagine that Propulsion, Stellar Cartography, and Historical Archives would all be relevant in a search,...but only if one wanted to know where the ship was at a certain moment in time. Why else access the Historical Archives?"

"The only thing I can think of is that whoever laid this trap wanted to be....thorough." Keldan glanced over at the reconstruction program. It had already managed to reconstruct a good deal of the log. "That's odd," he mumbled. "The computer has already managed to reconstruct a good part of the missing information in the log....although a little of it looks to be unrecoverable." Keldan began scanning through the new data. "It's still not telling me where the access point aboard ship was. But it is revealing some interesting secrets. Look at this. It looks like whoever tried using my access code didn't get it right the first time. Maybe I can cross reference the failed attempt to see what comes up."

Michael nodded his approval of Keldan´s idea. "Yeah, lets do that. Could you try to find the exact time of that failed attempt? It could prove useful when the Tracer-program is done."

"It looks like the failure was just a few seconds before the second, successful connection." Keldan's anticipation at garnering a clue to this mess was squashed as the new data continued to roll in. "What in all the hells?" He looked at McDowell. "The failed access attempt...they tried using my new security code. The one I reprogrammed this morning after I discovered the tampering. Telepaths stealing the code out of my head I could probably deal with. But how could anyone have possibly known a code that I hadn't even thought up myself?"

"That would be highly unlikely. Near to impossible." Michael answered. He frowned and looked at the screen, just to see for himself if it all was really true. Not that he had any reason to suspect Keldan would be lying, but to verify if there could be some other explanation. Michael looked at Keldan again after he dismissed that possibility. "I don't like where this is going. I don't like it at all."

"Nor do I, but..." Keldan stopped abruptly, and McDowell's silence clearly indicated he was waiting for him to continue. But there was something very different in the room. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end, as if the room had suddenly been enveloped in a field of static electricity. He looked around a moment before managing to blurt out an abrupt "What the..?!"

The room started fading into a murky blue, with countless motes of light clouding his vision. He looked over and saw that McDowell, too, seemed to be enveloped in his own shimmering transporter beam.

He tried to speak, but the sound was lost. He felt his body being twisted and pulled and pain shot through his limbs. After several agonizing moments, the murky blue began to fade, the motes of light vanishing into the quiet darkness of oblivion.

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