Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ Proud Legion ❯ Frontier ( Chapter 3 )

Proud Legion

By: bsmart

 

Disclaimer: Rated R for the good stuff, you've been warned. I don't own Trek, but the people who do probably shouldn't either.

 

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Chapter 3: Frontier

 

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"More wine?" Peili asked.

 

Bella smiled and offered her glass, "Please." Peili filled it again with the deep red liquid and set the bottle down. Bella took a sip and shivered as the liquid slid down her throat. It wasn't the familiar burn of alcohol but more of a tickle as the wine set off every nerve ending in her body. She shivered and Peili laughed.

 

"It's Orion," she said.

 

Bella's heart skipped a beat.

 

"Don't worry, it's perfectly safe. Nothing funny in it aside from real alcohol."

 

"Oh," Bella said, unsure if that was comforting or a bit disappointing.

 

"My people have a bad reputation," Peili replied as she took a bite of the pasta dish she'd made.

 

"Well with the... umm...," Bella stuttered.

 

"Slavery, narcotics, organized crime, and piracy as a way of life?"

 

"Yes, that," Bella said. She wasn't used to being tongue tied, but then again she wasn't usually concerned with not offending people. Offending them was usually her goal.

 

Peili licked some of the blue sauce from her lips. "You can be blunt with me," she said. "Not like it isn't true."

 

Bella took a bite of vegetables, remaining silent as she chewed, using it as a cover while she regained her composure. She was off balance and the feeling bugged her. Yes, the Orion woman was attractive, very attractive, and her insistence on wearing what she called traditional clothes only reinforced that. While leaving nothing truly exposed the layers of gauzy red fabric had a habit of catching her eye and making her wonder if at any moment some new bit of Peili's anatomy would be exposed. Being distracted like she always endeavored to distract other's was disconcerting to say the least. Next to Peili even her rather daring low cut dress seemed downright prudish. The green woman's dress covered everything necessary and nothing else. The layers of thin silk billowed around her body, giving the appearance of a traditional dress but covering little.

 

"I've been meaning to ask you, how did you wind up here?"

 

"Here?" Peili asked in reply. "The Tyhpoon?"

 

"No, well yes, sort of. In Starfleet, how did you get here."

 

The barest grin tugged at the corner of Peili's mouth as she replied, "I applied of course. I even graduated in the top twenty percent of my class."

 

Bella huffed, something she hadn't done in ages. She could see the sly grin that was starting to take over Peili's mouth. The way it formed her full black lips was intoxicating but the meaning behind it, that she was being toyed with, infuriated Bella. "Blunt?"

 

"Always."

 

"How does an Orion animal woman wind up in Starfleet. Shouldn't you be in some mouth-breather's harem, dancing and screwing all day long?"

 

Peili's unwomanly guffaw only made Bella's scowl deepen. She'd intentionally tried to make it as offensive as she could and the alien woman just laughed it off. She smiled broadly at Bella, pushing some of her ebon curls behind her ear so they didn't obscure her face. "Humans are adorable. I'm sure that might have offended someone from Earth but if you want to shock me you're going to have to try a lot harder than that darling." She took a sip of her own wine. "You tried though, so I'll tell you."

 

"I was raised on a colony in the Idfu system. Like all females I was property from the day I was born. My father sent me to school as was normal. Boys went to learn the basics, reading, writing, math. My brothers did well, their aptitude scores meant they got to go on in schooling. They might even be engineers now. Does that surprise you?"

 

"A little, yes," Bella said. "I wouldn't expect much schooling."

 

Bella chuckled. "A little prejudiced but I guess it makes sense. The Federation does sort of assume that educated civilized people wouldn't approve of slavery, even though historically those most educated are those that help to push the system. No, our people might be criminals and pirates dear but a warp engine still needs a competent engineer, even on a pirate ship."

 

"That's not the kind of image most of you... most Orions give off."

 

Peili kept smiling. "Yes, we don't do we. After all I'm sitting her having dinner with you and showing more skin than you probably do in your underwear," she took another bite of her pasta. "Think about it dear, do the best and the brightest conduct the scut work of a company? No, they let the underlings handle things. Well in Orion society we don't train people in excess of what their use is. If a man's only job is to tend a slave pen what does he need higher education for?"

 

Bella swallowed some of her pasta. Aside from the odd color it had a delightfully spicy sauce. "That's... pragmatic."

 

"Oh stop it, it's barbaric, savage, unenlightened. You're a reporter and I'm sure the idea offends your delicate sensibilities, use that wonderful vocabulary you have."

 

"Fine, yes it is barbaric. To intentionally school someone only enough to do the job you decide their good for. Seems like a self fulfilling prophesy to me."

 

"It probably is," Peili said as she used one of her vegetables to soak up the last bits of pasta sauce on her plate. "Then again how much time and energy would be wasted fully educating a hundred slave handlers if only one of them might have the drive to do something more with his life? My people are pirates and crooks by trade, but that doesn't mean we're living in the lap of luxury. The school my brothers went to had a dirt floor and they shared one textbook. We didn't have the resources to indulge more civilized ideals."

 

Bella kept her own council on that. It might make for an interesting discussion on down the line but it wasn't what she was really interested in.

 

"Anyways, while my brothers went to their school I went to another with my sisters where they taught us how to be good little slave girls."

 

"What did that entail? Dancing and how to serve drinks?"

 

Peili looked Bella right in the eyes. "Yes, and cooking, sewing, how to dress and most importantly how to please both men and women," she grinned as the reporter squirmed. "Sexually."

 

"How old were you?" Bella managed to ask.

 

"I started school at five with the housekeeping things. They started teaching us the rest when we turned ten."

 

Peili fought the urge to laugh as Bella blanched. Humans were such a nice race. They'd managed to come so far in such a short amount of time. They'd made huge strides in ridding their race of many of its darker traits. They were a far cry from her own. Amusingly it had made it so that most of them had difficulty letting themselves go to say what they thought. They'd repressed so many of their darker urges that it left them flustered trying to deal with them. Their innocence, and the culture of the Federation that let such innocence exist, was admirable. She doubted that Bella could ever really grasp how she'd been raised and she knew the reporter would never be able to comprehend that while Peili loved where she was, the idea of where she could have wound up wasn't really that repugnant to her.

 

"That's..."

 

"The way it is darling. Some buyers prefer their girls as young as possible, so they want us well trained as early as we can be. After all, wouldn't want someone to be disappointed in an Orion woman, it could hurt sales."

 

Bella's mind was reeling. Lightheaded like the time she'd sucked down too much helium to amuse her young nephews with her squeaky voice. What Peili was describing was some of the most vile conduct she could imagine, and the Orion woman was telling her story matter of factly, even laughing about it. When Peili pushed her plate back and offered to go somewhere more comfortable she could only nod as she tried to process it all. Peili led her to a small sitting area and guided her to a loveseat. She sat the bottle of wine and their glasses on the coffee table in front of them before gracefully sitting beside the stunned reporter. Peili easily folded her legs up under her body, letting her sit facing her guest.

 

"So how did you make it to Starfleet?"

 

"Well," Peili said as she refreshed their glasses. "I finished my schooling, top of my class I might add, and a trader bought me. I fetched almost fifty bars of gold pressed latinum," she said with pride.

 

"You're proud of that?"

 

Peili sat up a little straighter. "Of course I am. Most girls only get thirty or so when bought from their families." She puffed out her chest a bit, how many other women could claim to be worth that much. "And that's just from my family, to a real buyer I would probably be worth three times that, maybe even two hundred."

 

Bella shifted nervously in her seat, how was that something to be proud of? She took another drink but as she leaned over to set the glass down she had to catch herself on the edge of the love seat, her balance seemed to be off. "What happened after you were... bought?"

 

And humans couldn't hold their liquor either, Peili thought as Bella slumped back into the overstuffed cushions, leaning closer to Peili to keep herself steady. "The trader took me off world with the other girls he'd purchased. He was going to stop by a few of his better customers to show us off before taking us to the slave market on Surab'Nok. Fortunately for me the first customer was only interested in younger girls and I was fifteen..."

 

"...younger?"

 

"...not fortunate for the trader though. His next customer was going to meet him on Qa'en three. Well, it was his bad luck that a Federation cutter was coming through the area and decided he looked fishy. After a very short chase he was caught, the girls were found, and he went to jail. The Federation takes a very dim view of slavery."

 

Bella simply nodded her assent, slipping further over towards Peili.

 

"Well most of the girls requested to return to Idfu, after all they could be sold again, netting their families even more money. Since I'd been worth such a high price though I decided to stay with these new people."

 

"They let you stay?"

 

"Of course they did, they didn't have a choice."

 

Bella twisted to look up at Peili. "No choice? Did you request asylum?"

 

Peili chuckled, "Nothing that intelligent. I didn't even know the concept much less the word. No, humans are very easy for an Orion woman to manipulate."

 

"I thought Starfleet personnel were supposed to be disciplined and self controlled?"

 

"Oh they were, but not for lack of trying on my part. Their discipline was probably the only reason I didn't get taken right there in the shuttle bay by all of them... not that that wouldn't have been entirely unpleasant. No darling, an Orion's woman's pheromones are very powerful to a human. We can even tweak them at will to make them have the effect we want, like repelling one sex and attracting the other."

 

"I haven't found you very repellant."

 

"No, you wouldn't have."

 

For a moment Bella was silent, then she quickly looked at Peili, "So that's why...?!"

 

"No, one thing I learned a long time ago was how to control them. Right now I'm not doing anything one way or the other. If I did I'd have every male or female on this ship banging down my door or trying to kill me every day."

 

"I doubt that," Bella said.

 

"Oh? Just a moment ago you seemed convinced I was using them to attract you."

 

"Well, maybe giving me a little extra push, you couldn't have attracted me if I wasn't already... I mean...!"

 

Peili just smiled as Bella tried to catch herself. "First of all thank you, and second of all its not a surprise. I didn't think you just accepted my invitation, and then wore that dress, just because you had a platonic interest in me." She took another drink of her wine and watched the reporter do the same. Her thick blond curls obscuring her face as she bent low to take a sip. She'd be visiting sickbay tomorrow for sure. "Now where was I?"

 

"You were about to start an orgy in the shuttlebay."

 

"Oh, right. No, I just asked the Captain to stay, as forcefully as I could. He accepted."

 

"Did you...?"

 

"Sleep with him? Again, not for lack of trying. He was a handsome man but he was also a married one, and as devoted to his wife as any man I've ever seen. No, he kept me at arm's length in that department. He spent months in close proximity to a Orion woman doing her best to attract him and he resisted. He did take an interest in me, though more so as a daughter. He saw too it that I learned to read, write, and do some basic math and science. In return I helped out in the galley, or repairing uniforms. It's odd now, thinking about the way I'd sit in a pile of uniforms, mending them all. They could have just replicated new ones, but I was intent on being useful. I was so confused at first, doing all I could to make it obvious to the captain that I was useful, and interested, and his for the taking if he chose. I spent all that time studying and learning thinking it would please him so he'd lay claim to me. It never happened though, and at some point in that cruise I started to pick up on things, to understand the Federation and humans."

 

"What happened after that?" Bella asked. She sat down her empty glass and sank back deeper into the couch, relaxing as Peili slipped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. Bella took a deep contented breath and closed her eyes.

 

"The captain adopted me. I was still seventeen by the time the cutter returned to starbase. I went home with him to Tau Ceti. His wife was happy to see me, he'd apparently been telling her everything about me from day one."

 

Bella took another deep breath through her nose. She didn't know why but there was something in the air that she needed more of. "Weren't your parents still alive?"

 

"Oh yes, but I was sold off, they no longer owned me."

 

"You don't want to go back?"

 

"Not really," Peili said. "I don't see the point."

 

"But they're your parents," Bella said, snuggling closer to Peili. Whatever the smell was, if there even was one, seemed to be coming from the Orion woman. She wanted to get more of it and Peili didn't seem to object.

 

"I'm an Orion woman, that doesn't mean much beside them being my first owners."

 

Bella cracked her eyes to look at the green skin of Peili's stomach. The smooth jade skin pulled smooth and flawless over her muscles. Her cute little belly button sitting just above the gauzy red material of her dress. "Mhmm," she said wordlessly.

 

"So anyways, captain DeVays and his wife took me in and saw to my schooling as best they could. They taught me all about the Federation and how humans see things. It's still a bit odd, but I admired it. By the time I turned twenty I had caught up my education. Mrs. DeVays," Peili giggled, "Mom, used to say that was proof I was good for more than cooking and screwing. She encouraged me to keep going, to try and go to college. I didn't, I still wanted to impress Dad. So I did the next best thing, I joined Starfleet."

 

Bella's face was only inches from Peili's stomach. She was trying to look like she was just resting but the urge to lick Peili's skin to see if it tasted as good as it smelled. She surreptitiously turned her head, following the skin up to where it disappeared into the hazy bits of her top. She swore she could see the green undersides of Peili's breasts before the cloth got to dense and just above those beautiful orbs was Peili's face, smiling down at her so sultrily. On impulse Bella pushed herself up, bringing her bright red lips towards Peili's black ones. She could feel the Orion woman's sweet breath on her face and she closed her eyes as she went in to close the distance.

 

"...still don't believe me about the pheromones?"

 

It took Bella a moment to comprehend that she wasn't kissing Peili, and that Peili had instead said something. Her eyes opened to look at the Orion's face but the sultry stare was gone for a quizzical glance. It was as if her brain was trying to run in molasses. Something was wrong here, they should have been kissing each other but weren't because...

 

And in a rush it hit her. "WHAT!?" she squealed as she shot back to her corner of the loveseat.

 

Peili shook her head. "Don't let me stop you, we can finish that kiss if you'd like."

 

"You mean?!"

 

"It was nice to not have to hold them in for a while."

 

"You mean... you drugged me!?"

 

"I'd hardly call it that. Still, see what I mean?"

 

Bella hopped up off the couch as quickly as she could and backed away.

 

"Oh come on now, I'll stop if you want." Bella paused for a moment. "Or I can keep them going so you can blame whatever happens next on them if you'd like."

 

And Bella unpaused, storming towards the door and out it.

 

Peili sighed, "I should have told her afterwards."

 

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"And Commander Lufkin of the Cavalier is requesting authorization to conduct anti-starbase training with outpost three ninety one."

 

Timothy frowned, "Three ninety one? That's not even a light year from the neutral zone."

 

"Point four two eight light years."

 

"Thank you Kaitlyn," Timothy said as the hologram provided the exact number.

 

"You're welcome sir," she said back with the barest of grins.

 

Timothy looked at her quizzically but dismissed the nagging uncertainty. Her attitude was probably an artifact of Johan's hand, much like her insistence on wearing a dress uniform skirt instead of pants. He couldn't fathom how the narrow scrap of cloth was remotely in regs. "That's bound to get the Romulan's attention. Tell him he's got authorization, but keep it low key. We're here to show the flag and rattle a saber, not start swinging them."

 

"Aye sir."

 

"Anything else Kaitlyn?"

 

The holographic aide-de-camp checked her large data slate. "No sir, nothing requiring your attention," she said as she moved the PADD around behind her back and clasped her hands there. She bounced gently on the balls of her feet giving her the air of an over-eager cadet with too much energy.

 

Was it his imagination or was her chest bigger than when he'd first seen her in his cabin? Again Timothy dismissed the thoughts. He checked his watch and smiled. "Well I'll be damned, it's not even time yet for my second cup of coffee." Across his desk Kaitlyn positively beamed. Timothy had to admit, Johan had been right. Even though she was just an extension of the ship's computer Kaitlyn had already helped him to cut down on the time he spent on paperwork a great deal. An average morning's housekeeping could last till lunch. Now with Kaitlyn that time had been cut in half. If there was anything bad to say about the holographic aide he didn't know what it was. He was still comparing his raw work load versus what she pared it down to but he was pleasantly surprised so far that she'd been fairly on top of what really required his attention and what didn't. He'd brought a few items to her attention and she was getting better every day. Even with the hour he would spend double checking her he was till finished well ahead of his usual schedule. Soon he suspected he wouldn't even need to check up on her but once in a while. He wasn't sure what he would do with the extra hours.

 

"What about appointments, anything I've got today?"

 

"Nothing official sir. The reporter woman is getting pretty insistent about getting an interview though. Commander Luhrner has been putting her off so far but I don't know how much long she's going to keep going through proper channels."

 

"Oh really?" Timothy said with a smirk. "And exactly how would Daddy feel about his little girl squealing on him?"

 

"The commander programmed me to be an aide. If he didn't want me tattling he should have written that in, sir."

 

"HA!" Timothy's exclamation made Kaitlyn grin. "Good one. I think he might have given you a bit more personality than he meant to." Timothy kept smiling as he took a sip of coffee. "Talk to Johan, let him know I want to give her that interview ASAP. We've been out of spacedock for well over a week, lets give her her interview before we burn up any good will she might have left. Johan will just have to find another way to annoy her."

 

"Aye sir," Kaitlyn replied. "You've also got a meeting with lieutenant commander Bul'ra this afternoon at the end of alpha shift. Nothing official or anything, I made sure she understood that."

 

"Excellent, always good to meet the junior officers."

 

"Anything else sir?"

 

"Not now Kaitlyn, thank you."

 

"Anytime sir," she said cheerfully before dematerializing.

 

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"Wow, who buggered this up?"

 

"Banshee, she firewalled it cold," Marcos said while thinking of the white maned Efrosian woman.

 

Terzi easily slid out from under the starfighter's belly. "I meant the design," she said. "but yeah, that's kinda stupid too though. Don't do that."

 

"Some desk jockey at Starfleet Engineering," Rilo said letting Terzi's comments slide off. He still wasn't used to the rather informal way the former Atlas crew operated. Marcos said he needed to loosen up but slackening decorum, especially in the face of combat, seemed to be a recipe for disaster.

 

Terzi frowned. The mechanical frame that held her whined as she stood. It's servo motors working to help her weak muscles move her. The anti-grav suit she wore under her uniform kept her body floating and comfortable in the near zero gee of her crystalline homeworld. Standing still required a certain amount of force though, an amount her muscles just couldn't generate. She prided herself on keeping the anti-grav field not quite at full power though. The extra weight it placed on her muscles made them work hard and strengthened them. "Hey now, I know some desk jockeys at SE, some of them are pretty cute."

 

"Well it's still a poor design," Rilo said a bit more diplomatically. He should have figured the wrench heads would stick together.

 

"No," Terzi said, wiping her hands on a rag. "It's an incredibly stupid design. I said they were cute, not smart."

 

"Can you fix it?" Marcos asked. "We can't have this happening again. Stupid or not sometimes you need the power now."

 

"Oh sure, it's not complicated," she said as she tucked the rag into one of the back pockets of her pants. "Gonna take a while though."

 

"How long?" Marcos asked.

 

Terzi frowned. "Figure four people working on them as a team, about four hours an engine, four engines per fighter. Figure about forty eight shifts."

 

"Forty eight?! Are you kidding me?" Marcos exclaimed.

 

Rilo was far calmer than his companion. "That does seem excessive."

 

Terzi crossed her arms in front of her. "Well it's not. You've gotta strip the old parts. You've gotta splice in a new section of conduit to replace the one that's tapped for the safety. You've gotta build a new dump conduit for the safety. You've gotta mod the safety to mate with the new conduit. Then you have to reattach the safety, route the dump conduit to a new dump valve on the exterior of the hull, which you've got to mod and install as well, then button it up and move onto the next one. Four hours is how long it'll take them after they get used to doing it."

 

"No way to reduce that?" Marcos asked with a bit more composure. "Like say a starfleet engineer overestimating how much time she needs so that when she's done early she looks like a miracle worker."

 

"First, we only do that to impress captains, you two don't have enough swing to be worth it. Second, no not really, not unless we cut some major corners like just capping the old conduit and letting the safety dump raw. We might drop that to two and a half or three hours per job but that's a piss poor way to do it. If we do that I'll be back here in a few months redoing the whole job, properly this time."

 

"What's your plan to deal with it?" Rilo asked as he leaned against the hull of the fighter.

 

"I can chop about eight people to this and I hope I can get just as many of yours. That way we can get together four teams and knock this out in about two weeks with your guys providing the flight deck know how and mine the muscle with a cutting torch."

 

Rilo and Marcos looked at one another and the human said what they were both thinking. "We'll be to the Neutral Zone before we're all finished, by a couple days at least."

 

"That's the best I can do guys. I've only got so many people here who are competent to do these kind or repairs and mods and I still need some to work on the rest of the ship. When we get close we can have two teams working a fighter port and starboard at once to reduce the number of birds down with their engines ripped up."

 

Rilo frowned. "I guess we don't have a choice."

 

"Not really, not unless you wanna risk slagging more engines," Terzi said.

 

"I'd rather slag engines than pilots," Marcos said.

 

"Hey, I'm just the engineer, I worry about the machines."

 

Marcos nodded, "Alright, I'll check the roster and see who we can assign to this."

 

"Gimme a day to draw up the plans for this and get some people shifted around. I figure we can get this started Monday morning, oh eight hundred?"

 

"Oh eight hundred," Rilo said.

 

After a few more checks and a few holo pics Terzi had what she needed and left. As she walked off the flight deck she consulted her PADD, checking to make sure she had the right schematics and P&ID's flagged so she could get to work when she got back to her office. She was thankful the flyboys had something interesting for her to do, she just wished it had been more interesting. It was a simple fix and design so it wouldn't take her more than a few hours to have some good looking prints. The report to Starfleet Engineering would be interesting. She'd probably have the modified design sent into them before they'd even puzzled out who would be in charge of designing the fix. She even pondered sending in an article to Starship Engineering Monthly but dismissed it just as quickly. This wasn't really that interesting a problem. The original design might be worth sending into their humor column though.

 

When she got back to her office she flopped back into her desk chair and rubbed her sore thighs. She'd reduced her grav suit's setting by another tenth of a meter per second squared and she was paying for it. Not that she would let anyone see it though, she had her pride as a command officer. She opened up a drawer on her desk and pulled out the hypospray the Doctor had given her. The serene pink liquid inside the hypospray swirled as she handled the instrument. He'd assured her that the medication would not only increase her bone density but make her muscles more receptive to growth. The mixture was more for her bones than muscles though, he'd been nervous about her muscles getting too strong too fast and snapping one of her delicate bones from the sheer force.

 

The idea of one of her muscles being able to break anyone's bones was comical all by itself. She couldn't even support her own weight in the Typhoon's gravity field. The standard nine point eight meter per second squared gravity would crush her to the deck plates, a body designed for two tenths of a meter per second gravitational field just couldn't handle it. She relied upon her anti-grav suit and her frame to allow her to even leave her near zero-gee cabin. She had it easier than other's of her kind. The first Elaysians in Starfleet had only had the frames. She remembered her early days as well. Even though she'd been able to move the crushing gravity was omnipresent, making every breath a gasp, every movement agony, every moment outside her quarters a pure contest of wills. She had Commander Xin Ra-Havreii on the Luna class Titan to thank for her anti-grav suit that kept her body in near weightlessness while her frame fought the gravitational load. She couldn't fathom what bureaucratic screw up had allowed the whole Titan class to have it's class name co-opted by a Luna class ship. She was sure someone had been demoted for that little malf-up.

 

As she brought the hypospray to her neck she her fingers ran across the deep gouge that was still in the collar piece of her frame. The plate covered the top of her shoulders and lower part of her neck and was the piece that her anti-grav suit hung from now. The gouge was an old one, from the Dominion war.

 

Even though she didn't want to Terzi remembered how she got it every time she felt the deep rend in her frame. She could remember every sight and smell that day. Her engine room going to hell. The heat from the fires breaking out all over singing her uniform. The acrid stench of her own burned off hair. The choking fumes of plasma coolant leak. That had been the day the Atlas had come closer to destruction than any other. Her engineering crew had been struggling to restore main power, to get the ship back into the fight instead of drifting powerlessly off into the void. They'd been so busy no one had even noticed the warnings as ten Jem'Hadar started to beam in. They hadn't missed it when her crew started dying though.

 

She remembered the blue shimmer as the warriors had started to materialize. The small part of her mind she could spare to consider the observation wondering why someone was using the transporters instead of the turbolifts. Her chief assistant had been the first to die, his eyes bulging as the Jem'Hadar's weapon ravaged his chest. Another of her engineers had sprung for the intercom, smashing the activation stud and howling an intruder alarm before another Jem'Hadar's beam had crushed her skull, spraying the wall with the remains of the woman's head. Terzi had dove behind the console she'd been working at, fumbling at her side for a phaser she'd never fired in anger and rarely in practice. She saw one of the invaders fall clutching at his ruined face as one of her crewman fought back but the grown soldiers converged on his position, multiple polaron beams flaying his body into ruin. Other's soon joined in, golden phaser beams passing silvery polaron ones as her engine room was turned into a battlefield.

 

Terzi was not a trained fighter but even to her their pattern was quickly obvious. Two of them were crouched near the matter/anti-matter reactor fiddling with some kind of package while the remaining warriors tried to screen them. Leaning out from behind her console she'd taken aim but found herself unable to fire, her own nature making the idea of pressing the trigger abhorrent. It had only been when another of her people died that she'd pushed the trigger, mostly on pure reflex.

 

Her first shot in anger was a clean miss, passing over the Jem'Hadar and their package to smack into the railing behind them. Instantly both of the ones working at the item looked her way as did one of their protectors. Her second shot wasn't aimed at all, her eyes too fixed on the Jem'Hadar warrior now stalking towards her, his polaron rifle tracking towards her head. Her second shot was better though, pure instinct moving the weapon on target and hammering the Jem'Hadar between his shoulder blades, destroying every nerve leaving his neck and killing the warrior instantly. His limp body collapsed and fell between the edge of the deck and the reactor.

 

The fear gripping her as the other Jem'Hadar stalked towards her faded as she finally processed what they were doing. Whatever the item it was it was intended to destroy the reactor and the ship. They'd killed many of her crew and now they wanted the whole ship. She ignored the tall warrior that surged forward as the cowering woman suddenly became a threat and she snapped off two quick shots. The first smashed the devices control pad, showering the Jem'Hadar who'd been working on it in slivers of metal and plastic. He grunted and pulled back, right into Terzi's second shot, the beam slicing across his head and frying his brain.

 

Her victory was short lived as the advancing Jem'Hadar seemed to know what had just happened. His calm demeanor shattered as he leapt towards her with a snarl of rage. Terzi's phaser shot wasn't fast enough, the beam was wide and in a shower of sparks ruined his rifle but the warrior cast it aside without slowing down and pulled a knife out. Terzi tried to roll away but she wasn't fast enough, her frame and body unused to working with this much excitement and in this acrobatic a way. Walking was a chore, never mind hand to hand combat. The Jem'Hadar's boot caught her hand and crushed it, casting the phaser out of reach. He'd stopped her roll with a hand on her shoulder and as he crouched over her he brought his knife towards her neck. With ease it parted her uniform, slashing the neck of it open but halting when it found metal underneath. Her frame had stopped the Jem'Hadar's knife and his surprise gave her the moment she'd needed.

 

Her grasping hand found the toolbox she'd always kept stashed under the console and quickly found what she was looking for. Subconsciously boosting her frame's power to the maximum she'd swung the half meter long torque wrench for the only target available, the Jem'Hadar's head. Three kilo's of wrench swung with more force than a Klingon could have mustered met his skull just below his temple. Terzi remembered the sudden puff of stinking breath as the pain of the impact drove the air from the soldier's lungs. Whatever pain he'd felt was short lived though as the wrench continued on, crushing skin, bone, and then gray matter. She could still see the life slip from the alien's eyes as she'd killed him, still feel his white blood on her face as capillaries exploded from the violence just done to his head. When he fell it was right next to the lifeless body of her chief assistant, a man whom she'd worked with for years.

 

At that moment Terzi had felt a new emotion, one Elaysians rarely felt and never acknowledged, rage. Drawing the wrench back from the crushed mess that was the side of the Jem'Hadar's head she'd driven it into his face over and over, stopping only when the servo's in her frame's arm gave out from the stress of running so long in overload. By the time she'd stood back up all that was left of the Jem'Hadar's head was a mess of shattered bone chips, gore, and white blood on the deck plates. She remembered the security officer who'd arrived asking if she was ok, if her arm was hurt. She'd looked at her limb, the appendage dangling useless in the gravity field now that the frame's arm was out of commission. Dismissing his question She'd asked about her crew and found that the security detail had quickly eliminated them. They'd gotten main power restored minutes later and the Atlas had finished the fight.

 

It had taken weeks of work to right the ship. It could have gone quicker but starbase space had been limited to the truly damaged ships. A definition that had changed greatly since the start of the war. She could remember when the damaged they'd received would have been characterized as catastrophic in peace time. During the Dominion war it had been merely, "Moderate."

 

After the battle Terzi had shaved off her charred hair, cutting it down to just stubble over her pate. She'd kept it that way until the War's end, when she'd gone home for the first time in years. When she'd first arrived it had felt incredible to be rid of her frame and just float free in the microgravity. The freedom hadn't lasted long. Her biological mother had spotted the damage to her frame before Terzi had been able to remove it and stow it away. She'd asked about it the next day.

 

In retrospect Terzi knew it had been a horrible mistake. During the war the others she'd been with had told war stories to reminisce and share the burden. At first she'd hesitated but eventually she'd joined in at Deekan's encouraging. It had been strangely liberating to find out that she wasn't alone. That others had similar beliefs about violence but had also had to lose those preconceptions or die or even worse, watch others die. Their discussions had been frank with little pretense. It had been so wonderful to know that others felt the same way. It never occurred to her that her mother wouldn't be prepared to hear it as frankly as she'd become accustomed to telling it.

 

The look of concern in her mother's face as she described the beginning of the war had been bad and spoken volumes. The look of abject horror in her mother's eyes as she'd described killing the first two Jem'Hadar and then beat the third to death with a torque wrench had been worse. She'd stopped talking after that story, but her mother had goaded her on, wanting to know everything. She'd eventually discovered that Terzi had been forced to kill twice more in self defense. When her story had been finished Terzi had felt ashamed of herself for the first time in nearly two years and fearful of what her mother thought. The elder Elaysian had left her room and Terzi had not seen her again the rest of the day.

 

She should have known better. Elaysians were non-violent. They just had no use for it. What disagreements Elaysians had were settled with words and mediators. Only a few times in their history had violence been the final solution to a problem and those old wars were rarely spoken of. Violent Elaysians were considered sick and disturbed. Most were committed to healing institutions and a rare few even banished. She'd just admitted to killing six Jem'Hadar, not simply fighting, but killing.

 

The Elaysians weren't fools. They knew that few outside their world shared their views on violence. It was one of the reasons so few Elaysians left the homeworld voluntarily. They knew that the Dominion would show them no mercy when they came so they'd helped the Federation anyway they could, usually as nurses and Doctors in the zero gee wards, or with supplies like dilithium. For an Elaysian to have actually participated in combat though, directly, was unthinkable.

 

She still hadn't expected the looks she'd gotten from her siblings or creche-mothers at the dinner the following night. Even her father had been distant. Looks of pity, disdain, and even disgust in some had been like an icy knife buried in her gut. She'd sat in the nest, surrounded by family, but she could never remember being so alone. Her mother's speech that evening had sealed it, her meaning as clear as a bell when she had said, "And we pray for the safety of our daughter and sister Terzi as she continues her wanderings with Starfleet, off world."

 

She hadn't even waited for the personnel transport to make its return leg trip two weeks later. Less than fifty hours after setting foot on her home planet she'd boarded her shuttle and with nary a good-bye she'd left. It would take almost a week for her to reach the nearest starbase in a shuttle only capable of only a bit beyond warp three. She hadn't cared though, she'd only wanted off of her planet. After six years she still hadn't returned to her crystalline home, neither had she heard from a single person in her family.

 

She chuckled grimly as she recalled the words she's heard some ensign once utter. Damaged goods. Somehow that described perfectly how her family had seen her, as damaged goods.

 

The hiss of the hypospray against her neck brought Terzi's thoughts back to the present. She swayed as the drug momentarily upset her delicate sense of balance. Unlike many humanoids Elaysians didn't rely at all on their sight for help with their sense of balance, you couldn't when up and down are relative concepts on a microgravity world. The delicate spatial balance organ in her mid-brain did not care at all for some part of the Doctor's medication though. Damaged goods or not she was not going to let history repeat itself. As she tossed the hypospray back into its drawer she saw her service phasor sitting in it with its leg holster. Replacing the previous hand vacuum shaped weapons with an old style pistol had been a good decision by Starfleet in her opinion. She'd found it much easier to hit on the first shot with it during her practices.

 

Sighing in frustration at the way she still dwelt on the past every time she felt that damn ding in her frame Terzi refocused on the problem at hand, redesigning the safety for the starfighters. She promised herself that this time she was going to go down to the metal shop and get the stupid thing worked out of her frame.

 

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Johan walked into the officer's lounge with his lips pulled tight. He'd known he would have to eventually give in to the reporter's demands and let her speak to the captain but he hadn't wanted to give in to her. For reasons both obvious and not, something about her grated on his nerves. He was mildly surprised he'd managed to hold her off for this long, they were more than halfway to Deep Space Three and if anything her requests for an audience with the captain were become more sporadic. She'd originally bothered him three to four times per day but in the last few she'd only contacted him once, and it was more perfunctory than pushy.

 

The Captain's message, to give her the meeting, had been a bit overdue. Which only convinced him that he should have given Kaitlyn to him the second he showed up. The little holo-aide seemed to be doing a much better job of keeping Timothy on top of things. Johan's grimace turned into a grin. He wondered just how on top of things his friend might get. He had programmed the little minx to be fully functional and then some.

 

He let the smile stay as he suppressed a chuckle and headed for the mop of curly blonde hair out in the middle of the mess. He'd allowed her access to the officer's mess largely because she'd complained long and loud about how she was being confined to her quarters and only let out for supervised field trips. Letting her eat in the mess gave her more autonomy than Johan would have liked but it let her mingle with the ship's officers directly. He'd hoped he could delay her speaking with the captain by giving her this but she'd complained even louder afterwards. 'If you give a mouse a cookie...'

 

What was odd was how she'd tapered off recently, starting a week ago. If his sensor tracking of her was any indication she'd started to spend quite a bit of time observing Peili's people. No real surprise there in his opinion. Peili's marines were the only ones doing much of anything interesting on the ship at the moment. At least the only ones that would make a good story. He made a mental note to see about hooking Bella up with Danor. Maybe he could get the Yvethan to let her take a holo hop with some of his flyboys soon.

 

"Mind if I sit down?" he asked as he came to her table.

 

Bella started as if he'd caught her by surprise. "Commander Luhrner, of course not, please have a seat." She smiled and took another bite of the food on her tray. "You really should try the Andorian stir-fry, they have some interesting spices."

 

"I... think I will," he said. Not only had she used his proper name and title but she was being down right pleasant. A far cry from the combative and pushy woman who'd shown up two weeks ago. "I don't have time for it right now though, I wanted to let you know that we've found time for you to meet with the captain."

 

Bella put down her fork. "Oh, of course. When can I expect it?"

 

"Would tomorrow morning at ten hundred hours work for you?"

 

"Yes, of course. I won't see Peili's marines again until tomorrow afternoon."

 

Johan detected just a hint of a glow in Bella's face when she said the Orion woman's name. "I'm also going to speak to lieutenant commander Danor and see if we can arrange for you to take a ride with some of his fighter jocks, see what that's like."

 

"That would be wonderful," she said amiably.

 

"Excellent. Tomorrow at ten hundred the captain will meet with you and I'll let you know when the lieutenant commander can give you a ride."

 

"Thank you Commander," she said.

 

Johan nodded, "Enjoy the stir fry." As he left the mess he did it with a grin on his face. "Peili you little randy dog you."

 

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The scientist added the latest sensor data into his models and confirmed his suspicions. The anomaly was growing rapidly, and with greater intensity than expected. It was on the extreme end of all of his models in terms of its growth. Distortion at the heart of the anomaly had already exceeded three millicochranes, far stronger than either of his manipulated models ever expected.

 

Nervously he looked up from his console, the late night shift was only a few people dedicated to monitoring the probe and the data coming in. He'd stayed late under the excuse of taking care of some additional paperwork but he'd really just been waiting for the latest download from the probe. With it in hand he realized the time had come to act.

 

Opening up an innocuous program on his desktop he imputed a code he'd committed to memory months ago. In less than a second the signal was sent to the probe and then any trace the signal and the program that had sent it had ever existed was wiped from the computers. It was only a matter of time now. It really was a pity, he'd spent months petitioning the mental midgets at the science directorate to launch such an elaborate and expensive probe.

 

One of the young controler's head snapped up. Her near slumber suddenly interrupted. "What?! Anomaly!"

 

"What about it?" The young man next to her asked.

 

"Not the anomaly, something's happened to the probe! Data feed's erratic, none of the sensors are making sense!"

 

The young man was stirred form his complacency and started to work his own panel. "We've lost control, the vehicle is spinning out of control!"

 

"Well lock it down!" Bellowed the flight controller behind them.

 

"Thrusters are firing, rotation is accelerating."

 

Mentally preparing himself the scientist stood up, he had a part to play. "What's going on!?"

 

"Unknown sir," the flight controller said.

 

"I can't get it under control, the thrusters aren't responding!"

 

"Structural integrity field is losing power," the next controler, the flight engineer, reported. "Inertial dampers are offline!"

 

"Damn it, get it under control!" The flight director demanded.

 

"What is going on!" the scientist yelled but was ignored. If he'd really been an angry their ignoring him would have enraged him but at this point he actually smiled. He was glad to see the people he'd chosen responding professionally and ignoring the blustering blowhard who could do nothing to help the situation.

 

"Thrusters still non-responsive, rotation is continuing to accelerate."

 

"Shunt power from the sensors to the SIF!" the flight director ordered.

 

"Working on it... SIF still deteriorating! Estimate ten seconds to loss of SIF!"

 

"Sir, the thrusters have at least five minutes of reaction mass at this thrust level."

 

The expression on the flight director's face said it all. No inertial dampers, no structural integrity field, and thrusters capable of 100 g's of acceleration stuck on for at least another five minutes. The probe was going to rip itself apart.

 

"Alright, dump the data, everything in the buffers. Now!" He bellowed.

 

"Dump initiated, thirty percent complete."

 

"Five seconds to SIF collapse."

 

"Fifty percent complete."

 

"Three seconds."

 

"Eighty percent..."

 

"SIF down."

 

"Data connection lost."

 

The flight controller's fist thumped the table at his work station. "How much did we get?"

 

"Eighty six percent sir."

 

"What happened?" the scientist asked.

 

"We don't know sir. It appears that the probe was struck by a micro-meteorite moving fast enough to punch through the probe's deflector. The probe started to spin but something was damaged, the thrusters wouldn't shut down and the probe's power generator was destroyed. The probe ripped itself apart when the structural integrity field failed."

 

The scientist shook his head, putting on a show for his people. "This is not good. If I try to get another probe they'll force me to divulge everything we've discovered. Even if they do untie the purse strings it'll be days or weeks before a new probe is in place and by then this will be over."

 

"I'm sorry sir," the flight director said. "We tried."

 

"I know you did," the scientist said. He turned and walked to his office and closed the door. Pulling a small communicator from its drawer he mentally reviewed the last download he'd received then activated the communicator.

 

On the far side of the city the spymaster smiled. After two weeks of waiting it was time. He double checked the scientist's timeline and then called in his subordinates. "It's time," he told them. "Mobilize and prepare for the go order. Expect it before the day is through." There were other calls to make of course, but none of the other conspirators were really that vital to the plan's succeeding, not now.

 

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

 

Timothy was busy reading in his ready room as his shift ended. He'd been over the encounter logs of the Enterprise D/E and Voyager a dozen times before. All three ships had more time in direct contact with the Borg than every other ship in the Federation combined. None of them offered any tactical insights into the Borg. Both Enterprises' and Voyager's encounters with the Borg tended to end with some set of circumstances and events that were impossible to recreate at will nor were the Borg ever likely to fall for the same stunts. They'd solved the problems temporarily but never permanently or repeatably. There was plenty of psychological insight into them but precious little real hard data on how to fight them.

 

The latest Borg incursion into sector 001 had provided a good deal of technical and tactical data due to the long running battle between Starfleet and the Borg cube, but it had been a battle of attrition that had left nearly fifty vessels damaged or destroyed in the cube's wake. There was also strong evidence the Borg cube had self destructed in an attempt to hide the launch of the sphere.

 

The Dominion war was little better. The Federation had fought the Dominion to a stand still, but they'd only fought the fragment that was cut off and isolated in their part of the galaxy. The Dominion itself was twenty times larger than all the civilizations that had fought them and allied with them put together. They'd only been saved from destruction by the quick thinking of DS9's engineering team which bottled up wormhole reinforcements for so long, and then the fickle tempers of the wormhole dwelling entities. If either failed the Federation would have been drowned in a flood of Dominion warships. Even with the Dominion forces cut off from the Gamma quadrant it had still taken several years to beat them and at tremendous cost.

 

Too many times the Federation had been on the verge of destruction only to be saved by the greatest of luck or happenstance. It never ceased to amaze him how most of the Federation seemed to believe that lucky streak would never break, that they'd always be saved at the last second. Timothy was convinced that one day it wouldn't and something like the FDF would be needed.

 

His musings were cut short though when his ready room door chimed. "Come in," he said forcefully.

 

"Lieutenant commander Bul'ra reporting as ordered sir."

 

"Oh sit down Cesina," Timothy said with a smile. "It wasn't an order this time, it was a request."

 

The captain's smile and lighthearted manner were off putting to Cesina, but she wouldn't make the mistake of addressing her captain as informally as he addressed her though. "Sorry captain, I'm not used to my senior officers making requests that aren't thinly veiled orders."

 

"Well don't get too used to it," he said with a grin. "Don't worry lieutenant commander, I know its getting late in your day, you like to sleep beta shift away and wake up for gamma, I won't keep you long. I just like to get to know the people I'm working with a little better. Especially someone I let con my ship eight hours a day."

 

"Of course sir," she said.

 

The captain stood up and went to his replicator. "Can I get you anything? Something to drink?"

 

"No thank you sir."

 

"Oh, right, of course. You're about to hit the rack," he said. "Red apple, whole." A bright red apple materialized in the replicator on top of a small plate and he took it and resumed his set. "Hope you don't mind if I have something, dinner's not for a few more hours and I'm starving."

 

Cesina knew a rhetorical question when she heard one and kept her mouth shut as her captain pulled out a small knife and flipped it open. He quickly began to section the apple.

 

"So, what brings you to the FDF?" he asked.

 

"I want to serve sir," she replied a touch nervously.

 

"According to your service record you graduated during the last months of the war and were assigned to the Galaxy. You spent most of the war in dry dock with the Galaxy during a repair and refit cycle after the battle of Chin'toka. The only battle you saw personally was Cardassia."

 

Cesina bristled a bit at Timothy's suggestion and he covered his grin by eating a slice of apple while he cleaned his knife off and slid it back into his pocket. "I did what I could sir. I was where they assigned me."

 

Timothy nodded. "The Galaxy did alright there. What was your station during the battle."

 

"Sensors, sir." Cesina was sitting up straighter now, her antenna leaning forward aggressively.

 

Timothy wasn't well versed in reading Andorian body language but he didn't have to be an exobiologist to see that someone was pissed off. Johan had given him grief from time to time about how combative he could be with the nuggets but he liked to get an idea of how people dealt with stress. Someone who backed down and tried to mollify him wasn't going to impress him much. "Must have been rather boring, not much to do but watch the pretty light show."

 

Cesina was starting to lose her temper. She'd run into a few people like her captain before. People who thought that people like her, who hadn't spent months on the line fighting weren't real veterans, weren't real officers. She'd joined Starfleet the moment she'd reached the age of majority, she'd joined up in the middle of the war during some of it's darkest days. She'd gone through Starfleet's crash course program and excelled. Yes she'd spent most of her time during the war on board the Galaxy while it was repair and refitted to get back in the fray but she'd spent all that time working fourteen or sixteen hour shifts to get the ship back into the fight. The Galaxy shouldn't have even made it into the final battle but the crew had worked non-stop for two months to get the ship back in fighting trim. She didn't think herself vain but her work at the sensors of the Galaxy had been instrumental in keeping the entire fleet appraised of what was going on. No ship in the Federation arsenal had as good a sensors as a Galaxy class ship at the time of the battle. "With all due respect, sir," she said with a growl, "The Galaxy was responsible for supplying sensor data to over eighty other ships and keeping them updated on the battle. You might have had time to admire the pretty lights but I was a little busy."

 

Timothy met her stare with one of his own, slowly eating another slice of apple while glaring back at his Andorian officer.

 

Cesina tried not to show it but the longer Captain Hayes stared at her the more her gut hollowed out. Defending herself and her contribution was probably not a bad idea. Accusing her superior, a decorated war veteran, of contributing nothing during the most important battle of the war was probably going just a little bit too far. His eyes never left hers as he finished chewing his snack and swallowing it. The slight flare of his nostrils as he exhaled left her desperately trying to remember if spacing was still a punishment on the books.

 

Slowly her Captain's hateful glare melted into a lopsided grin. "Well, captain Tapping said you could have a bit of a temper. He didn't say you'd tell me to get bent right to my face though." He chuckled lightly as the color drained from Cesina's face leaving her a pale gray.

 

"Sir, I apologize if it was taken that way but..."

 

Timothy held up his hand. "Don't finish that sentence commander, I dislike dishonest politeness. That's exactly how you meant it. Frankly you've got nothing to apologize for, anyone who spoke to you like that would have it coming."

 

A little bit of color returned to Cesina's face.

 

"Not that I'm encouraging you to tell me where to get off when you're pissed but I do understand."

 

"I'll try to bite my tongue in the future sir."

 

"Not too hard, you're on the command track. Starfleet expects its command officers to have a mind of their own and to share it, when appropriate."

 

"Aye sir," Cesina said. Some of the tension leaving her body. "I could use that glass of water now though sir."

 

Timothy smiled and fetched a glass from his replicator. "So tell me, what really brings you to the FDF?"

 

"Sir..."

 

Timothy held up his hand. "'To serve,' might have worked on the recruiters. Tell me why you're really here, and be honest. You excelled in the sciences, captain Tapping couldn't have written a more glowing recommendation of your performance at both sensors and as a science officer. The FDF isn't exactly a place where an aspiring science officer can grow."

 

Cesina bit her bottom lip, the truth just sounded so selfish. Lying though, that could end it here in this office. "I want a ship sir."

 

"Oh?"

 

"I liked the sensors and science stations sir, they were interesting and challenging but... they don't go anywhere. Science officers don't get to command ships sir, not real ones. If I kept going I might have a ship of my own one day but not for a long time, and not a real ship sir. Not one of importance. I'll get an old Excelsior or maybe a Nova if I'm lucky. I'll spend all my time puttering around known space scanning every nebula, each rogue planetoid, every slightly out of place hydrogen atom. That's if I even get a ship."

 

Timothy raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

 

"Science officers don't go anywhere sir. It's a dead end in the Explorer Corps. The average science officer doesn't start their first officer tour until nearly eight years after the average for any first officer. They don't make captain until five years after everyone else." The way he looked at her Cesina was sure captain Hayes was about to dress her down for being so impudent but it felt good to let it out and stopping now would only make things worse.

 

"That's not what I want to do sir and that's what I was locked into. If I'd tried to transfer to another specialty Starfleet would have rolled me back to the Academy. The old boy's club in Starfleet command doesn't take it well when young officers tell them we don't like our postings and want another. If I'd tried to switch I'd be so far down the seniority ladder I'd be doing good to ever work my way up any quicker than as a science officer."

 

"And the FDF enters this how?"

 

"There aren't any dead end tracks yet sir, and no old boy's club in place yet. Everyone just seems happy to have warm bodies to fill stations on ships and not too picky about where they came from. I figured I could get my fresh start here."

 

"You don't want to spend your time surveying nebulas, so you join the FDF? Ms. Bul'ra you do realize that we're going to spend a year doing nothing but patrolling the border, burning holes in subspace, and scanning the same stretch of space that's been scanned a hundred thousand times before?"

 

"Yes sir, but it actually matters. If a science ship is lucky they might make one, maybe two great discoveries in their service lives. Maybe. Most of the time what they do is of no consequence. Defending the Federation actually matters. The people I'll command will be the best of the best, the ships will be the best, and what we're doing will make a difference in the long run. I'm not that eager to have some obscure scientific constant named after me."

 

Timothy waited after she finished, picking up his last apple slice and eating it. She'd been honest, which he liked, though he wasn't wild about her primary motivation being getting command of a ship. She was also annoyingly correct. The FDF did need warm bodies, well living ones. An Andorian's body temperature was in the low eighties. She'd also come highly recommended and showed every trait of being an exemplary officer, though with a touch too much ambition. However, what was a second officer slot but a chance to put someone through the wringer who really needed it?

 

"Well, at least you're honest," he said. "Captain Tapping had a few other things to say as well. Specifically that while you're great under pressure you tend to not be as focused when you aren't, and are prone to flights of fancy. Like say... redecorating my bridge."

 

Cesina kept her mouth shut, accepting the chastisement.

 

"Not that I don't like the embellishments, but obviously there's not enough going on during gamma shift to keep you busy."

 

Inwardly Cesina was cringing, she didn't know what kind of scut work was incoming but it wasn't going to be pleasant.

 

"That's why I've decided to put you in charge of the Typhoon's readiness training. Additionally all scheduling of duty shifts during gamma shift is now your problem. Also, work with commander Seven of Nine to ensure the sensors are up to snuff and stay that way. Finally, I want you to coordinate with Lieutenant Fealst'rak and ensure that his department has everything it needs." Timothy smiled as Cesina's tense face went from anticipation of agony to astonishment in seconds. "You were expecting me to assign you to clean the warp coils?"

 

"No sir, I just... I didn't know what to expect sir."

 

"Don't be too happy. I take your position as second officer seriously. If you want command of a ship you're going to have to prove it and prove it quickly. You'll need to work with Commander Luhrner to coordinate both his schedule for training for the entire taskforce and his schedule for the other two duty shifts."

 

All too rapidly the magnitude of her responsibilities hit Cesina.

 

"That's right commander, you're in charge of ensuring the Typhoon is prepared for battle. Do not let me down. Any questions?"

 

Cesina's mind raced, she had plenty of questions, but none suitable to ask her commanding officer.

 

"Good, and commander, I expect our first simulation tomorrow at sixteen hundred hours. Something short and sweet, to get the crew warmed up."

 

"Yes sir, right away sir," Cesina said with her mind barely on the hear and now.

 

"Commander," Timothy said sharply, causing her to snap around and face him. "Relax. According to your former captain you are more than capable of handling all the tasks I gave you. I wouldn't give them to you unless I was confident they could be carried out. Consider these a warm up before I give you some real responsibility."

 

"Yes sir, of course sir," she said. Her mind was reeling with the implications of her new responsibilities but she was already prioritizing things, beginning to work on schedules and preparations.

 

"Alright Cesina, get out of here and get some sleep. I think you'll be very busy tonight."

 

"Thank you sir," she said before standing up and slipping out of the room, squeezing by commander Luhrner as she went. "Commander..."

 

"Tomorrow morning, oh eight hundred right after gamma shift. We'll talk."

 

"Yes sir."

 

Johan walked into his friend's office and flopped into the chair the Andorian woman had just occupied. The two couldn't have been further from each other, Cesina nervous and stiff, Johan relaxed to the point of insubordination. "We need to work on your interpersonal skills. You like jumping the junior officers a little too much."

 

"Oh come off it Johan," Timothy shot back. "A good dose of adrenaline focuses the mind."

 

"But do you have to bushwhack them every time they talk to you?"

 

Timothy shook his head, they'd been having the same conversation for more than half a decade. "You know why she joined the FDF?"

 

"The spiffy uniforms?"

 

"She wants a ship."

 

Johan went rigid, both his boots connecting with the deck with a loud stomp. His hands gripped the edges of his chair and he leaned forward. "My god man... who doesn't?"

 

Timothy glared at his insubordinate friend as Johan went limp in the chair again, slouching far enough to make Timothy wonder how he stayed in it. "She transferred from the Explorer Corps because she thinks being a science officer is a dead end with the possibility of commanding a little Nova or Miranda at best."

 

"It's not like she's wrong," he said. "Besides, it'd be good to have some people in the FDF who aren't purely gun deck or engine room types."

 

"It still doesn't sit right with me, the FDF isn't about career advancement."

 

"Bullshit Tim. The FDF is just another branch of Starfleet and you'd better get used to the idea that not everyone is going to be as altruistic as you are. Yeah, the first generation might all be Dominion War vets but expect a lot more people like her. Doing it for their career, the thrill, or just having a bad attitude. They'll come."

 

"Doesn't mean I have to like it."

 

"When did you become a grumpy old man?" Johan asked with a smile.

 

"Damn kids," he replied and pointed at Johan, "and that includes you."

 

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

 

Yumiko grimaced as she called up another set of messages. Whatever had made outpost three ninety three's transmission so awful to listen to was apparently spreading. They'd replied a few days ago indicating that it wasn't them, something else was causing the interference. Today outpost two oh six and deep space three had joined the ranks of the annoying to listen to. If anything three ninety three was even worse.

 

The itch in her back forgotten she began trying to filter the static out, hoping it was isolated but no matter what she tried it was still there. Flipping to alternate channels she played back several other recordings. She heard similar distortions in reports from Mardan and Galilar though very faint. Flipping over to the latest from Kimbesh she heard the same distortion only nearly as bad as deep space three's.

 

"Something the matter lieutenant?"

 

Yumiko's head popped up to see Commander Kim leaning over her console, inspecting the wave form patterns on it. "Nothing!" she said on reflex.

 

"Must have been a pretty awful nothing to listen to, you're ah...tentacles," he motioned behind his ear.

 

"Tendrils, sir," she supplied for him. Tentacles might have been more correct for her prehensile appendages but people seemed more at ease with Tendrils.

 

"Well they were scrunched up and you were grimacing," he said with a boyish smile.

 

"Well uh, actually sir," she pulled out her ear piece and activated the console speakers. "There's something wrong with these transmissions."

 

Harry looked puzzled as she played the Mardan and Galilar transmissions but as she progressed to Kimbesh, then deep space three and finally outpost three ninety three he started to grimace himself at the discordant hash of static that was starting to overlay the signal. "That can't be right."

 

"No sir it's not. It started a few days ago and it just keeps getting worse. It's also spreading."

 

"Spreading?" Harry asked.

 

"Yes sir," she said, calling up a map. "It started with three ninety three, but since then its started to affect all these systems as well. I thought someone just hadn't kept up maintenance at three ninety three but now I'm not so sure."

 

Harry only had to study the map for a moment to reach a decision. "Seven, can you come over here?"

 

Across the bridge the blonde woman moved away from her console and came their way with a mechanical precision that make Yumiko's skin crawl. Former or not the fact that the word Borg was used to describe the woman unnerved her. "Yes Commander?"

 

He pointed to the star chart. "Take a look at this. Yumiko is detecting subspace comm interference from this area, and its getting worse over the past several days."

 

Seven considered the map. "Have the subspace radios been confirmed to be in working order?"

 

"I haven't checked yet Ma'am," Yumiko said. "I thought it was just outpost three ninety three's transmitter until I started to pick up on the interference from other locations."

 

"What about other worlds or starbases anti-spinward?" Harry asked.

 

"Nothing sir, they still come in clear as a bell."

 

Harry tapped his comm badge. "Commander Del?"

 

"What is it Harry?" came back the chief engineer's voice.

 

"We're picking up some severe subspace interference on the comms from a few locations near the neutral zone, can you run a level three diagnostic on the subspace comms?"

 

"Sure thing Harry. Need this ASAP?"

 

Harry nodded, "Please."

 

"Consider it done."

 

Harry nodded to himself. "Alright, Seven, can you scan this area around three ninety three? See if you pick up anything out of the ordinary?"

 

"Of course," she said, heading back to her station.

 

"Thanks."

 

Yumiko had been sitting quietly, trying not to draw attention to herself. She should have reported the interference days ago. How stupid was she to have not immediately reported it.

 

"Lieutenant Boritsolav, work with Commander Seven to coordinate our scans with the outposts' and the station's." Harry reached over to pat her on the shoulder. "Good work catching this, now I just have to go tell the captain."

 

"Thank, thank you sir," she managed to stammer. "You can call me Yumiko."

 

"Good work Yumiko," Harry said with his characteristic boyish grin.

 

Yumiko bit her tongue before she could ask if he'd like to put some lotion on her back and maybe everywhere else.

 

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

 

Bella Mavil was just getting settled into the seat in front of the captain's desk when the young Asian ops commander walked in. "Sorry to bother you captain. I need to speak with you."

 

"Go ahead Commander Kim," Captain Hayes said.

 

'Harry, that was his name,' Bella thought as he looked at her.

 

"Unless its sensitive just give it to me commander."

 

"Yes sir. We believe we've identified some sort of... anomaly near the neutral zone. So far its disrupting communications with several outposts and DS three. Nothing serious but the problem is worsening. We don't know anything else but we're starting to work it."

 

"Have you verified the working of the subspace radios?" the captain asked.

 

"Yes sir, Commander Del is starting a level three diagnostic."

 

"Scanned the area?"

 

"Commander Seven of Nine is starting long range scans."

 

"Contacted the affected outposts and station?"

 

"Yes sir, I've informed them of it and they are aware of the situation. We're coordinating our scans with theirs to try and get a better picture of what's going on."

 

Captain Hayes shrugged. "Well then it seems like you've got it well in hand, if it's all the same to you I'll just take a nap." Harry fishmouthed for a moment, unsure of how to respond to the jest. "You've got it under control Harry, just keep me informed if anything changes."

 

"Aye sir," Harry said before spinning about and exiting the captain's ready room.

 

"There are days when I wonder exactly what it is they keep me on this ship for," Timothy said after the doors had slid closed.

 

"Is that normal?" Bella asked. "For him to have done all that without your approval?"

 

"It should be," Timothy replied. "I want to seem my junior officers taking some initiative instead of wanting me to hold their hands. Harry is a good officer with a lot of experience. If he hadn't already taken steps, then I'd be worried."

 

"So what about this anomaly?" Bella said, sliding easily into the interview.

 

Timothy shrugged. "Space is an odd place. The more we explore the more we grasp just how odd it can get."

 

"So you don't see anything out of the ordinary about this?"

 

"Oh no, something is very out of the ordinary. Something disrupting our communications along the neutral zone? No, that's out of the ordinary and something we will investigate fully."

 

"You don't seem that upset about it," Bella said, turning on her tablet and starting to scrawl a few notes. Her holorecorder would get every detail and nuance of the conversations but she could put her own notes down on the tablet. It also soothed her nostalgic desires.

 

"At the moment all we know is that something odd is happening and my crew is responding appropriately. I could run around like a chicken with my head cut off but that just seems counter productive."

 

Bella tapped out a few notes on her tablet, more to give her time to think that actually need to write something down. It only took her a few seconds to decide that line of questioning had run out. She'd grill him on it more later, once the situation progressed but until then it was fruitless. Better to get back on track with her interview. "So Captain, can you tell me something about yourself?"

 

It was a simple question, almost an inane one. Timothy wouldn't have expected someone with Bella's reputation to have asked such a grade school question. "Like what Ms. Mavil?" he asked cautiously. Much like his previous encounters with her the reporter's clothes were revealing but could still be considered professional, barely.

 

Only Bella's hundreds of interviews worth of practice allowed her to suppress her smile. It was such a simple thing really. Get them off guard with a simple, even stupid question then as they recover let them lead you to the story. Coming into an interview with an agenda was the fastest way to fail to fulfill it. "Well where were you born, what brought you to Starfleet?"

 

"Well, I was born on Varlt two. My parents were third generation colonists and Varlt was growing quickly. We were still a bit of a frontier colony but after fifty year the colony was well established. Established enough to have some good schools. I did pretty well and when I turned eighteen I decided to join Starfleet."

 

"Why was that?"

 

"Guess you've never been to Varlt two have you?" Timothy asked. "The planet's pretty wild, dense jungles and forests. Massive mountain peaks and tropical oceans. Our colony had been built on an island chain off the coast of one of the major southern continents. The world itself is a gorgeous place and growing up it kept me constantly exploring. As I grew older I wondered what other kinds of amazing places there might be in the galaxy. I was fifteen when a Starfleet ship stopped by to check up on us. The school arranged to take up some of older students to tour the ship. Thirty years later I can still remember her, the McCaffrey, just a little Miranda class cutter. That was when I knew what I wanted to do. Three years later I headed off to take the placement test."

 

"You're parents were proud?" Bella asked, keeping things moving.

 

"Mostly furious. My great grand parents had been some of the original colonists and I was the first person in our family to decide to leave Varlt two permanently. They had hoped I'd go to one of the major universities. I had the grades to do it. They wanted me to get a useful degree and return to help colonize the planet. I didn't. Neither of my parents had much at all to say to me the whole time I was in the Academy. I mostly talked to my grandfather during that time. He encouraged me and passed messages back and forth amongst the family. He told me everyone would come around."

 

"Did they?"

 

"When I graduated from the academy I saw them, in one of the first rows. They'd brought my whole damn family. My father said he'd never been prouder than when I graduated. I asked my grandfather about it later. Apparently in the months before my graduation my father hadn't been able to stop talking about his boy, the Starfleet cadet. His enthusiasm had been infectious enough to get my mother excited as well. Some members of my family like my brothers had to be dragged onto the shuttle against their will but they saw to it that everyone would be there."

 

"That must have been special."

 

Timothy snorted. "After four years absolutely convinced they were going to disown me I didn't even know how to respond." He smiled. "Since then he's always asked me what new worlds I've explored whenever we see each other. I think he took me joining the FDF almost as hard as I did."

 

That made Bella perk up. She knew in a story she'd just condense his history into two, maybe three lines if she was generous. This though, this was insight. "You both took it hard?"

 

"Ms. Mavil, I never wanted this," he said, sweeping his hand around his ready room. "I wanted to be an explorer, that was my first love, my only love. I wanted... want, to be out on the edges of known space, pushing the boundaries out farther. Exploring strange new worlds, finding new life, and contacting new civilizations. Introducing them to the Federation, showing them that there is a group of people out here who's only desire is to explore and cooperate and learn all we can about each other and the universe."

 

"You sound like a true believer captain."

 

"I doubt you'll find anyone on this ship who isn't."

 

"So why are you, why are they, here?"

 

"Because we believe in the Federation, that it stands for something good, something better. It's not in our nature you know. All the fine talk about the innate goodness of sentient life, it's bullshit. It's a bunch of people trying to make one another feel better about their natures. The truth is that sentient life doesn't become sentient by being good natured, by being kind and compassionate. Only the strong survive, the true bastards. The guy who'll stab his best friend in the back if he has to in order to survive. The people who shot first and ask questions later. Who can leave an injured or sick comrade to die if he's slowing them down. That's who nature chooses to survive and prosper. Look around us, the Romulans, the Klingons, the Cardassians. That's who our nature wants us to be. Pick off the weak, chew them up for all their worth, and spit them out again. Look out for number one and number one alone. The Federation is different. It's contraire to everything in our nature. It's proof that we've moved past the need to be cast iron bastards and can grow beyond our nature and be the better for it. It's worth fighting for, its worth sacrificing for. That's what the FDF is about."

 

"Is that why you're here?"

 

"Yes, it is. After the war I just couldn't get back to exploring. I knew something had to change. The FDF was what I knew we needed. The Federation is worth protecting, worth standing up for. I knew that I had to take responsibility for it, even if no one else did. Much of my crew from the Atlas felt the same way, and so do most of the people on this ship."

 

"You seem to inspire a lot of loyalty in your crew."

 

"The Atlas was one of the finest ships in the fleet, because of her crew. They are some of the finest officers and crewman in Starfleet. I was and am honored to serve with them. I suppose they feel the same."

 

"The war was tough on the Atlas," Bella led. She watched the captain's posture change. His relaxed posture changed. The muscles in his neck and face tensing, his arms and legs getting more rigid and his eyes narrowing. It was all Bella could do to stop from smiling.

 

"The war was tough on a lot of ships," he replied.

 

"The Atlas though... your ship suffered proportionally more damage and took more casualties than most ships in the fleet. In fact the Atlas was in the top ten percent in both areas."

 

"We're very good at what we do. When you're that good you find yourself put on the frontlines a lot, being given difficult missions. We did our job and we did it well."

 

Bella paused, acting as if she was scribbling down notes. She was on to something, but the captain was getting tense and defensive. If she pushed him much farther he might lock up completely. Normally that wasn't a problem, she had little contact with most of her interviewees after their first meeting. She'd be stuck on the Captain's ship for quite a while longer though. She backed off and moved to what should be familiar ground for him. "The FDF isn't that popular in many circles."

 

Timothy felt himself relax as she mentioned the FDF's unpopularity. He'd spent several years dealing with just such arguments. He knew his position and Ms. Mavil's backwards and forwards before she ever said any more. "With good reason. The Federation has always put peace and non-violet dispute resolution first."

 

"And how does a fleet of warships figure into that?"

 

"Not everyone is as committed to peace as we are. We may be disliked but I'd venture a guess that being the subjects of someone like the Dominion or turned into Borg drones would be a far more disliked option for most of our critics."

 

"And yet the Federation has survived both those threats without the FDF."

 

"Yes, the Federation survived," he said with emphasis. "There's a great wide gulf between surviving a war and winning one."

 

Bella leaned forward. "Is that the goal? To win?"

 

"If you're in a fight the only logical thing to do is try and win. Fighting not to lose or worse fighting to try and convince the other guy to just quit only guarantees greater destruction and loss of life."

 

"The essence of war is violence. Moderation in war is imbecility."

 

Timothy smiled grimly. "Admiral Fisher had a point." His respect for the reporter went up a notch. Few he'd encountered ever made an attempt to understand any viewpoint but their own.

 

"What about our neighbors, like the Romulans? What about how they perceive the FDF? We claim we want peace but build warships."

 

"The Romulans and our other enemies already see us as threats, FDF or not."

 

"What if the simple presence of the FDF on the border is enough to incite the Romulans to violence?" Bella asked, pushing a little. He was entirely too comfortable with this.

 

"You should give the people running the Romulan Empire a little credit. They're not fools. Yes, we're warships, but a large number of armed ships already patrol the Neutral Zone daily and in the grand scheme of things we'd be a foot note right now if a full scale war broke out."

 

Bella pressed him, "What if they demand that the FDF be removed from their border, or disbanded entirely, due to it being a threat to them? If it came down to choosing between keeping the FDF or starting a war because of it?"

 

"So we're to allow ourselves to be held hostage by every hostile government? If we gave into that demand what's next? All ships must be disarmed? Their phasers are too threatening. All planetary defenses must be removed? Are we to bow to the whims of every petty dictator in the galaxy lest we hurt their feelings?" As soon as he said it Timothy knew it had been a mistake. He'd let his guard slip for a half second. The petty dictator comment was going to be on every front page tomorrow and the way Bella's eyes widened at the phrase confirmed it.

 

The door chimed and Bella frowned.

 

"Come," the Captain said tersely.

 

Commander Kim came in. "Sir, we have some initial reports back from DS three and the outposts. There's some sort of subspace distortion emanating from a point over the neutral zone. Commander Del has confirmed that all our sensors are operating properly."

 

Bella watched as the captain nodded and pondered his next course of action. "Very well Mr. Kim. Set up an O-Group, senior staff only, oh and Lieutenant Fealst'rak, for the end of Alpha shift. Notify Mrs. Tuul and Mr. Bisaan to alter course for the nearest point to the anomaly on our sides of the NZ."

 

"Aye sir," Harry said as he left the ready room.

 

"I apologize Ms. Mavil but that's going to have to be the end of our conversation today," Timothy said as he stood.

 

Bella knew how to take a hint and didn't protest. "Perhaps tomorrow?"

 

"Speak with Commander Luhrner, he'll set something up." Timothy watched her leave and as soon as the door slid shut behind her, "SonofaBITCH!"

 

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

 

"It's not gonna work, the weld's all buggered up. We'll have to cut it free, grind it back down and reweld it." Terzi frowned, her people were better than that, should be better than that. It was a tight space but a simple weld to make. "Get on it."

 

Turning away from the gutted mess that was Bravo two-four's starboard ventral engine bay Terzi looked at Bravo two three sitting in the cubicle directly across from this starfighter. Like it's sister two-three was in the middle of being repaired. Crews were working port and starboard as quickly as they could to get things back in working order. They were getting very close to the Neutral Zone and they were trying to minimize the number of fighters down.

 

Two-three's pilot seemed to be hanging around a lot. Terzi hoped he was taking an interest in the modifications they were making to his ship. After all, he was using it, and using a tool without understanding how it worked was just foolish in her opinion. Leaving her crew to fix their screw up she started across the shuttlebay to see what had his attention.

 

Being born on a low gravity world with a thin atmosphere Terzi's hearing was far better than most humanoid's would normally be. Normal speaking voices for Elaysians wouldn't even be whispers in the thick atmosphere of a Federation starship. She'd long ago gotten used to chewing her air but the constant din of a starship had not damaged her hearing only because of Starfleet medical's work. Few people knew how acute her hearing was and she didn't tell many people either, it was just too much fun to blow her cover. What she heard though made her wish she'd changed that policy.

 

"Look, come on baby. I'm male, you're female, what's the problem?" she heard the pilot say.

 

Crewman Leeds, one of the people she'd assigned to the repair job turned her head and said, "You're an officer and I'm not!" She hesitated then added, "Sir."

 

The tall brown haired pilot leaned over where the Bajoran woman was working, "Different chains of command, not a big deal."

 

"It is a big deal sir, now I'm not interested."

 

"Are you gonna make me order you? Come on, with a hot little body like that why not. Take it out for a spin, take mine out for a spin if you like."

 

"No thank you, sir," the crewman said, looking far more nervous than she had a minute ago.

 

Terzi picked up her pace, seeing how the Ensign working there seemed to be actively shying away from Leeds and the two aircrew maintenance staff were finding something else to do well away from the pilot and crewman.

 

"What's going on over here?" Terzi barked as she got close.

 

"Nothing at all," the pilot said.

 

"Nothing at all, MA'AM," Terzi snapped. Humans, especially human males, tended to not take her seriously either because of her support frame, sex, or fact that she didn't even break a meter and a half high. "I may not be in your chain of command but I outrank you, lieutenant...?"

 

"O'Neal, ma'am," The pilot said, standing up a little straighter. By human standards he might have been handsome but at the moment all Terzi saw was a damned fool.

 

"Off the flight deck," the pilot hesitated, unsure of whether or not the little blonde woman could actually give him orders. "Now lieutenant, and don't let me catch you back on this deck," she said and he hustled off. "The rest of you get back to work," she said and the deck crew and her ensign made themselves very busy. Terzi motioned Leeds over and patted her on the arm. "Come by my office after shift, we'll talk."

 

"Yes ma'am," the crewman said.

 

Terzi sighed, humanoids and hormones. She could deal with mechanical problems. They were easy. They had a problem and a solution. It either worked or it didn't and they didn't have feelings to hurt. Too bad ninety percent of the headaches in her job were entirely related to the people working for her.

 

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

 

Binni slipped her PADD into one of the pockets on the thigh of her pants. She remembered the old style uniforms from the Explorer Corps. 'What maniac designs pants with no pockets?' she wondered. The new FDF fatigues she wore certainly had plenty.

 

She'd been busy supervising the maintenance crew that was running a diagnostic on one of the shield generators when she'd received word of the staff meeting at the end of the shift. She'd stopped by her cabin to freshen up a bit and wipe some of the soot and grease off her face.

 

As she turned to get on the turbolift she saw a familiar black form waiting beside it. Inwardly she groaned as she pulled up beside lieutenant Fealst'rak.

 

"Good afternoon... lieutenant commander... Ulin..."

 

"Lieutenant," she replied nervously. "Do you know what this meeting is about?"

 

"This meeting... I have heard regards a spatial anomaly... Lieutenant Boritsolav... detected."

 

"She did?"

 

Fealst'rak bobbed his head. "Through interference... in subspace radio."

 

Binni thought about it for a few seconds as the turbo lift arrived and they crowded in. "You know a lot more about this than I do. Bridge."

 

"Actually, you... now know all that I... do on the subject." His mouth tendrils writhed.

 

Binni chuckled, "Well you were useful while it lasted."

 

Fealst'rak's mouth parts continued to writhe for a moment longer. "I... will endeavor... to be as useful in the future..." Faelst'rak studied the little biped next to him. Unlike the last time they had been in the turbolift together she seemed much calmer. He'd read that laughter was a stress reliever for humans so perhaps that was what had eased her mood. "Lieutenant commander... I... have noticed that you... and others... are not always at ease around me.... I... can assure you... that I... would never slay and consume you... there would be no nutritional value... in such an act."

 

As the turbolift doors opened onto the bridge Faelst'rak noticed the electrical and thermal patterns in the human woman shift immediately into the most agitated he had ever seen. Without even a word to him she bolted from the turbolift far faster than was dignified and turned the corner down the short corridor that led to the conference room. As he followed he couldn't help but reflect on what odd little creatures these humans were.

 

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

 

"As of twenty minutes ago this is a rough map of the disturbance," Harry said. On the viewscreen a roughly circular orange cloud occluded a swath of the neutral zone, covering various outposts, deep space three, and several Federation worlds. It's shape extended far across the border though, into Romulan space.

 

"What is it?" Captain Hayes asked. His senior crew was all present, as was Senator T'prin. She had insisted on being able to observe the ship and its goings on and he was glad Johan had remembered to invite her. He just hoped she'd observe and not start commenting on his decisions.

 

"We're not sure," Harry said.

 

Seven piped up, "So far we have detected nothing in the affected area out of the ordinary. There's nothing in the local area we can attribute this do."

 

"Detected nothing?" the captain asked. "No radiation, no objects, nothing?"

 

"Nothing," Seven said levelly. "The only thing we have detected is that it appears to be spreading."

 

"Captain... Hayes... with permission," Faelst'rak said looking up from a PADD. The captain simply nodded. "Sensors... detect nothing... because there is nothing... to detect. This disturbance..., degradation in sensors... and communications... is not from an outside... source. From what I... see this disturbance is a property of subspace... itself."

 

"A property of subspace?"

 

Faelst'rak's mouth tentacles swirled. "From this data...," he said, tapping the PADD in front of him, "It... seems to be the most logical conclusion."

 

Terzi nodded. "It makes the most sense sir, subspace isn't a featureless realm of existence. It's like our universe, the void of space isn't really empty. In subspace there is sort of a background radiation, very minor fluctuations in the field."

 

Faelst'rak bobbed his head. "This... would be a disturbance... hundreds of times... greater than normal. A tenth of a millicochrane... perhaps more."

 

"A tenth of a millicochrane? Surely that's not enough to matter," Deekan said.

 

"For the engines, no," Terzi said. "Even warp one is a field strength of a thousand millicochranes. Our sensors and comms rely on much finer attenuation of sub space fields though. A disturbance like this could seriously impair long range sensors or communications."

 

"The outposts along the border are already suffering almost a twenty five percent reduction in sensor range and a thirty eight percent reduction in resolution." Seven of Nine said. "Difficulties with the subaspace radios are impairing voice transmissions and severely hampering data transmissions."

 

The room got very quiet very quick. In another part of the Federation this anamoly might have been a scientific curiosity and minor annoyance. On the neutral zone, with a destabilized and belligerent Romulan Empire, it wasn't just a curiosity. "Have we detected any shift in ship or troop movements along the border?" Captain Hayes asked.

 

"None," Seven replied. "However the anomaly is degrading the outposts' range and resolution. If the Romulans were to initiate a military build up on their side of the Neutral Zone it'd be difficult to detect, and soon it would be impossible."

 

"Do we know where it's originating from," Commander Luhrner asked.

 

Seven nodded. "We are refining the position data but it appears to be originating from a trinary system, P3904-G. A blue giant, a pulsar, and a magnestar. No planets." She tapped a few keys on the console at her seat and the Wall display started to highlight the system.

 

"That's right in the middle of that cluster of three worlds," Captain Hayes observed.

 

"Sarab, Jaisalmer, and Yecheng," Johan said.

 

"Any tactical significance?"

 

"None," Johan said. "They're minor and unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Like most everything in this sector."

 

"Not a bad place to start a war," Timothy observed.

 

Johan mulled it over, "Yeah, it's not important at all."

 

"Sir?" Commander Kim asked.

 

"If the Romulans want a limited controllable war what better place to do it than over someplace that doesn't matter. No matter how things go neither side has much to lose or gain making a peace treaty attractive no matter the outcome," Timothy said.

 

Harry caught on quick. "So this could be a prelude to an invasion?"

 

"Blind the early warning sensor, prevent anyone in the area from communicating out, seems like a good way to start to me," Johan said.

 

"Begging your pardon sir but I don't see how the Romulans could be doing this," Terzi said. "There's no way I know of that you can extend a warp field across dozens of light years. Even if you could the power such a field would require is staggering. It'd take half of Starfleet to generate the power to do it. This has to be a natural phenomenon sir."

 

"We can't discount the Romulans out of hand Ms. Del," Timothy said slipping into his formal nature. "Even if it is natural they might still choose to take advantage of it."

 

"What do you want to do then Captain," Johan asked.

 

Timothy allowed himself a few moments to ponder what was happening. Terzi was right, the odds the Romulans were doing this were incredibly low, but it wouldn't be the first time the seemingly impossible had been done. V'gyer, the Dyson sphere, time travel. All things people would have flatly declared impossible at one time but now realties of the universe. It's status as a natural or sentient created phenomenon was immaterial though. It was happening and the Romulans could take advantage of it.

 

"Notify Deep Space Three we'll be delayed, indefinitely. Lay in a course for the neutral zone, take us in to within a light year of the Romulan side. I want to get as close to the anomaly as we can and try to scan it. Notify outpost three ninety three that we'll be joining them shortly. Johan, you're with me, we'll need to redeploy the task force along the border. Commander Seven, Lieutenant Fealst'rak, learn everything you can about this anomaly, this is your top priority right now. Commander Bul'ra, do us all a favor and make sure your scenarios feature Romulans from here on out. Commander Kim work with Deep Space Three and the border posts, see what we can do to coordinate our efforts so we can maintain the integrity of the border." Timothy snapped his orders off quickly and received a chorus of "Aye sir"'s in reply.

 

His people quickly got up and headed out to deal with their tasks. Johan stayed but went to the wall monitor, reconfiguring it to display the rest of Timothy's task force. The senator waited for the commotion to die down and everyone else to leave before taking a seat beside Timothy. "Senator," he said.

 

"You seem convinced that the Romulans will take advantage of this disturbance," she said.

 

Timothy shook his head. "I wouldn't say that. It's a definite possibility, and given the danger that possibility poses to the Federation I have to take steps to mitigate the potential damage."

 

"The phenomenon is most likely natural," she said levelly. "The Romulans might be as perplexed by it as we."

 

"Perhaps," Timothy said, "but maybe not. In twelve seventy four and twelve eighty one the Mongol fleets attempting to invade Japan were broken up and dispersed by powerful Pacific typhoons. The Japanese were then able to take advantage of this and wipe out the survivors. The typhoons were completely natural but that didn't prevent one side in the conflict from using them to their decisive advantage."

 

"Interesting choice of stories captain," she said. "I will be monitoring the situation closely."

 

"I'd expect nothing less Senator."

 

She nodded to him, then stood up and left.

 

"Does she really think we want a war?" Johan asked as the doors closed behind her.

 

"No, but I do think she thinks we're jumping at shadows."

 

"How can she not see the danger?"

 

Timothy shrugged. "Face it Johan, ten years ago we were the same way. The war happened Johan, we see things differently now."

 

Johan leaned over the back of one of the chairs. "You sound a little like you agree with her."

 

"Maybe a little. We could just be jumping at shadows you know. Maybe we need some grounding with people like her that don't assume that everyone with a phaser is just itching to point it at us."

 

"Yeah, but sometimes they are."

 

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

 

Dramatis Personae

 

Crew, U.S.S. Typhoon NCC-79853

 

Timothy Hayes, Fleet Captain, Commander 1st Task Force of the 17th Fleet, Male Human

Commanded the U.S.S. Atlas during the Dominion War, transferred into the Federation Defense Force immediately after its establishment, given command of the Typhoon and the 1st TF soon after.

 

Johan Luhrner, Commander, Male Human

1st Officer of the Atlas during the Dominion War, 1st officer of the Typhoon

 

Cesina Bul'ra, Lt. Commander, Female Andorian

Lieutenant aboard the U.S.S Galaxy, 2nd Officer of the Typhoon

 

Terzi Del, Commander, Female Elaysian

Chief Engineer of the Atlas during the Dominion War, Chief Engineer of the Typhoon

 

Deekan Braal, Commander, Male Capellan

Security Officer then Tactical Officer of the Atlas during the Dominion War, Chief Tactical Officer of the Typhoon

 

Peili, Lt. Commander, Female Orion

Lieutenant in charge of the defense of a border station during the Dominion War, Chief Security Officer of the Typhoon

 

Harry Kim, Commander, Male Human

Operations Officer of the U.S.S. Voyager, Operations Officer of the Typhoon

 

EMH (Joe), Commander, Hologram

Chief Medical Officer of the Voyager, Chief Medical Officer of the Typhoon

 

7 of 9, Lt. Commander, Human/Borg Female

Served on U.S.S. Voyager, Chief Sensors Officer of the Typhoon

 

Riway daughter of Jaheel, Lt. Commander, Female Si'rak

Ensign on the Atlas, 1st Operations Officer of the Typhoon

 

Binni Ulin, Lt. Commander, Female Human

Lieutenant on the U.S.S. Lelander, Defense Officer of the Typhoon

 

Villec Bisaan, Lieutenant, Male Nileen

Starfleet Academy Cadet, Helmsman of the Typhoon

 

Milana Tuul, Lieutenant, Cardassian Female

Starfleet Academy Cadet, Navigator of the Typhoon

 

Saral, Lt. Commander, Female Vulcan

Asst. Chief Engineer of the Typhoon

 

Fealst'rak, Lieutenant, Rurutic Male

Headed a research project using a space telescope to study the galactic core, Chief Science Officer of the Typhoon

 

Marcos Hernandez, Lieutenant, Male Human

Combat shuttle pilot during the Dominion war, Alpha Squadron leader of the Typhoon

 

Rilo Gulia, Lieutenant, Male un-Joined Trill

Combat shuttle pilot during the Dominion war, Beta Squadron leader of the Typhoon

 

Tycho Danor, Lt. Commander, Yvethan Male

Airgroup leader of Akira class U.S.S. Jonestown during the Dominion War, Airgroup commander of the Typhoon

 

Yumiko Boritsolav, Lieutenant, Female Human/Gor'sic

Graduated from Starfleet academy, familiarization deployment on the U.S.S. Carthage, communications officer of the Typhoon

 

Others

 

T'prin, Senator, Vulcan Female

Federation senator and chief opponent of the FDF

 

Solin, Aide, Vulcan Male

Senator T'prin's personal assistant

 

Bella Mavil, Reporter, Human Female

United News reporter on assignment aboard the Typhoon

 

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

 

Author's Notes

 

1) I've been spelling Elaysian wrong for three chapters. Great.

2) Expect a lot of aliens. I'll do my best to detail all the important ones but remember Memory Alpha is your friend. http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Main_Page So is the DITL www.ditl.org

3) Some of you might have noticed I ditched the Enterprise interpretation of the situation of the Orions. Specifically the women are back to being simple slaves. Why? Because the Enterprise interpretation is boring. It appears to me to be a simple chickening out on the part of the producers. After all while women being sold as slaves and the men being enticed might fly in the 1960's we can't have that on TV today. So they created the new backstory, the women are in control and only appear to be slaves in order to covertly infiltrate places. That just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The impression I get is that in Kirk's day it was well known what Orion women were and it was not unheard of for them to be sold as slaves. So unless Orion women are spying on every two bit low life with enough cash for one the Enterprise set up doesn't make a lot of sense. Also, Kirk doesn't show any indication of believing the Orion woman to be anything but exactly what she was portrayed to be. Then again if the Borg are any indication Archer's record keeping habits were horrifically inept for an explorer. That said as far as my story and I are concerned the Enterprise thing was an isolated incident. The bulk of the Orions are exactly as Peili is portraying them.

4) I'm not going all the way with a Titan style anti-grav suit for Terzi. While I love the Titan series of books, I don't want Terzi out of her frame. Anti-grav suit so she's not struggling to breath, ok. It's just the full on Titan style suit seems to remove one of the big differences between her and everyone else. It'd be a case of having a backstory and just ignoring it. Incredibly low grav world but it's ok, I have this spiffy suit that lets the writers completely ignore that and the problems it could cause. Terzi will keep her frame.

5) A lot of Bella this chapter.

6) I can't spell anomaly for crap.