Chapter Text
Captain’s Warlog 11874
It has been almost four days since our victory against enemy ships near the Gileus system. My chief engineer tells me the damage to our port nacelle is much more extensive than he had anticipated. Our drive coupling cannot get us safely past warp 1.8 and we cannot salvage anything to repair or replace it. Were he not otherwise an exceptionally gifted at his trade, I would have him demoted for such an oversight. Four days later is unacceptable. There will be a suitable penalty exacted for the delay. For now, I have the repair teams working every available shift. Morale remains high but I am uncertain it will if we cannot find assistance soon.
In the ready room of the Warbird
Tagor
, Commander Mindar punctuated his file with an abrupt strike of the keypad and sat back in his chair allowing his gaze to settle on the picture he had by the side of his console of a tall woman in uniform standing to the left of him with a boy and girl in the fore. Mindar reached forward, the frame scraping the light blue-tinted glass of his desk lightly as he picked it up and handled it, drawing a finger down one side. The woman’s almost-smile stared back at him with two eyes hiding their playfulness beneath a veneer of calm collection in contrast to her husband’s stony composure. “Vessaria, you always had a smile for everything.” His smooth, deep voice noted with a tensing at the end. It was almost two months to the day since the ChR
Meikh
had been ambushed by the Earth ship
Challenger
. A sharp dual tone cut through his thoughts, the rare smile disappearing from his lips at the alert for an incoming communication from the bridge.
“What is it?”
“Sir.” It was his tactical officer, T’Met. “Long range sensors are picking up an intermittent object on sensors.”
“Intermittent?”
“...You may wish to come see this for yourself sir.”
What in the name of Vorta Vor could be going on now? “And why is it exactly that my tactical officer cannot offer for me a compendious synopsis? It’s what I promoted you to do.”
“Pardon the error, sir. Sensors confirm an unidentified object bearing one of our cloaking signatures.”
Mindar sat up straight in his seat, his voice gaining a tenuous edge. “You are certain it not Romulan?”
“Yes, captain.”
In the span of a few seconds, Mindar considered a bevy of questions, then sharply drew them to a close. “I will be on the bridge momentarily.” With the stab of the communications button, he launched himself out of his seat, tugging on the hem of his jacket.
. . .
As the Tagor hurtled out of warp into a system two parsecs from the Romulan border, Commander Mindar stepped out of his office and onto the bridge, ignoring the routine shout of “Rekkhai!” from the senior-most Junior officer on deck and his first officer, Tal’Aura, immediately rising from the command chair in the center of the room on its raised dais to resume her usual post at the science station.
“What is the object’s bearing?”
“One-six-zero mark one-two mark five.” T’Met informed punctiliously.
“What.” Mindar swiveled and crossed over to the tactical station. His voice rose, clouding with anger. “In the middle of neutral space?” Stopping directly in front of the console, he placed a hand heavily on T’Met’s shoulder, signaling the officer to step aside. Mindar stared down at the figures on the screen, confirming for himself as T’Met had spoken, the latter straightened and standing by to resume his post at any moment. That was a Romulan cloaking signature, from the data on the charts, and a closer look afforded him an answer to the cause for the intermittent signal. The regulation of the projection field periodically entered phases where it extended only thinly around the periphery of the station to allow for a partial, faint detection from a distance. “Is it a Terran ship?” Stepping aside to let his tactical officer do his job, Commander Mindar paced impatiently while T’Met ran a full cross-reference.
T’Met reached over and keyed in a few commands. “Scanning… No, sir. It is much too big to be a ship of any known class. I believe it is a space station.” Brows across the bridge knitted after the fashion of the tactical officer’s, including the Commander’s.
“Whose facility is it? Can you tell me that!” Mindar snapped as he re-entered T’Met’s personal space.
The officer gave a short shake of his head in the negative. “No, sir. Unknown construction.”
Mindar exhaled through his nose, regaining some placid severity. “Can you tell me anything else?”
“The outer hull is comprised of a dense isotope of neutronium. Internal systems are impervious to our scanners. This ‘station’ is four hundred eighty-three meters by two hundred fifty-nine meters by seventy-eight meters weighing in at six hundred seventy-two thousand metric tons.”
Commander Mindar raised his upswept eyebrows. “Hra’vae…” However, it was not unheard of for a space station and the real question remained ingrained in Mindar's darkened brow: 'What is it doing in the middle of neutral space?' “Anything else.”
“Not from this distance, sir.”
“Mmm…” Their long range scanners were still experiencing a few technical glitches since the battle. “Set a course to intercept.” He suddenly barked, galvanising the helmsman into fluidly punching the coordinates into the computer.
“Course laid in, sir.”
“ We will not tolerate any unprecedented presence so close to our borders.” The gall , no less the stupidity, of whoever attempted to build a station so close to Romulan space thinking they could fool their sensors with their own technology! Mindar thought to himself. “I will be in my ready room. Summon Chief Vrell to the bridge.”
“Yes, sir.”
. . .
Arriving at the supposed space station, the eyes of the entire bridge were zoned in like hawks on the dual-node design. What looked like two cylindrical docking berths could easily fit two T’Liss -class warbirds, top and bottom, flanked either side of an otherwise uninterestingly-shaped oblate cylinder that comprised the station’s core.
A set of doors at the back of the bridge hissed open, revealing a commander in purposeful stride. “Report.”
“Sir,” the polished capital-born accent of his first officer answered fluidly. “We have hailed the alien station twice but with no response yet.”
“Armaments?”
“None, sir.”
“How interesting…” There came a soft audible intake of breath as he began next. “Can our scanners penetrate the hull?”
“No, sir.” T’Met answered. “But we are--”
“Captain!” A hint of decorum fell from First Officer Tal’Aura’s address as she exclaimed. “We are being scanned!” Before she was halfway done with that warning, the bridge was subjected to a flood of bright white light causing everyone to shut their eyes tightly and draw up their forearms for added protection. When the scan had passed, the room blinked a few times as their commander barked. “What was that!”
“A biomolecular probe.” Tal’Aura informed, her voice raising again in some surprised. “I can now scan inside the station. There are no life signs present. The interior is currently with little atmosphere and two hundred eighty-six degrees below freez-- I am now detecting it being filled…” She looked up and met his eyes. “With a warmer nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere.”
“Look!” T’Met interjected, his eyes fixed on the main viewer. Everyone glanced up and watched as one of the two docking bays began to retract. “It’s reconfiguring to fit our ship’s dimensions.” T’Met, although an experienced officer, could not keep a measure of awe out of his voice.
“There is still no response to our hails.” Communications officer Larek responded in a high tenor. “But it appears that an invitation has been extended.”
“Yes. Appears.” Commander Mindar gave the young officer a sharp, cautionary glance, although the tone of his voice said it all. Friendly intentions had yet to be established and Mindar had half a mind to remain at this distance but reason dictated that was overcautious… threat or not, Command and the Senate both would expect no less than a full investigation from the field. “We do not know who built this or what their intentions are. Nonetheless,” he addressed the entire bridge. “Our rendezvous for repairs will wait until we ascertain the nature of this facility. First Officer, prepare a level six boarding party.” She nodded and set about the task. “Helmsman, take us in.”
. . .
Captain’s Warlog, secondary supplement.
It is now five days out of the Gileus system. Myself, my First Officer, my Chief of Engineering, and a security team have boarded and secured what we have discovered to be a repair facility. Its origins are still undetermined at this hour, as are how it has obtained our cloaking technology and how it has entered the neutral zone undetected. What we have been able to determine is that it has minimal thruster capabilities and defenses and no heavy weaponry. Almost from the moment the docking clamps made contact, the station’s computer bypassed all of our access codes and has tapped into our main computer in an umbilical effect.
One thing we have learned to its disadvantage, however, is that the cloaking device had a faulty tetryon compositor. Without a properly functioning one, it cannot produce more than a partial cloak, especially for a station of its size. Logically, the AI has sought compensation to amend that. Meanwhile as repairs are rapidly underway, Vrell and his teams are currently on board the station studying what little of it is labeled as unrestricted while the rest of the crew has gone aboard intermittently for shore leave. I must admit the facility is far more remarkable than I previously thought. Even our own molecular synthesiers cannot replicate a dish as complex as Raeteg vineriine. But while my esteem grows so does my suspicion.
“How are the repairs coming along?” Tal’Aura asked, increasing her stride to catch up to Vrell.
“You wouldn’t believe! I--” At the raise of Tal’Aura’s eyebrow, he lightly cleared his throat and toned his enthusiasm back down to an acceptable level. “I was in the station’s diagnostic room. All white, like the rest of this facility. Actually, I find the brightness very annoying, don’t you?”
“Chief.”
“Ah--right. All repairs will take only twenty-six point two hours.” her eyebrows did indeed raise at that, even if it was a wan measure.
“What is the requisite compensation?”
“If you didn’t believe the figure I just gave you, you won’t believe this.”
“Try me.” She replied dryly.
“Our choice of One projection matrix, One tetryon compositor, Four warp coils, Three triphasic emitters, or One hundred liters of biomimetic gel.”
“Biomimetic gel?”
Vrell gave a light shrug of his shoulders. “If I had to guess, it’s used to mimic organisms at the cellular level.”
Tal’Aura fixed him a half-lidded ‘I gathered’ stare, then she was silent for a moment. “If this is another attempt to humour me…”
He gave a small side-ways gesture with his hands. “It’s not.”
Vrell had known Tal’Aura rarely to allow her concern to show, even in her eyes as it did now. “Has the Commander begun to seriously consider allowing this alien station to repair our ship?” She asked quietly. Such an open question bordering on defiance as well. Vrell stared in surprise.
“He... already made the decision.”
An intake of breath hitched audibly as the first officer opened her mouth to say something, then paused briefly before deciding on something else. “I assume he has already chosen a method of compensation, then.” Vrell nodded. “What was it?”
“Our compositor.”
“Our--!” Tal’Aura’s gaze flickered. “Excuse me.” She brushed past a very confused Vrell, who stared after her hastily retreating form until he shrugged. He had a full schedule of repair inspections ahead of him rapidly piling on top of each other even as the two had spoken.
. . .
Later that evening, the doors to the Commander’s ready room swept aside at the presence of the first officer. “We are badly in need of repairs and accepting the automated invitation to repair this vessel will afford us an opportunity to observe the station at its work.” Her superior called out from behind his desk. His chair swiveled to reveal himself holding a crystal decanter containing a light azure liquid.
“I understand that, sir.”
“Do you?” Mindar smirked as he tipped the contents into a clear, crystal glass.
“Yes. I’m just not sure why the emitters. We will need them to be back on our way and rejoin the fight. Once they read our report, Command will not be very--”
“I know very well what Command would say, but we are not giving them a report.”
In rare form, Mindar saw his long-time friend gape. “...Sir!”
“Calm down, Aura, and close your mouth. You look like an Apnex sea bass.”
Her frown thinned below pale blue eyes shining like the glint of ice. “What are you proposing, Gell?”
“I have already proposed it.” Tal’Aura visibly relaxed, reclining demurely in her seat as she gave him her full, undivided attention. “We are to oversee the transport of the station to the Lagrange point of the closest gas giant’s fourth moon.” He showed her on a holographic display. “As you can see, this is a binary system with a main-sequence star and a pulsar orbiting each other.” He then gestured to the rest of the planets laid out in colour code as far out as a seventh orbit, pointing to a few then finally focusing on the last. “Actually, this one isn’t a planet at all. It’s a planetoid soon to be ejected from the system entirely in approximately six point eight decades.”
Tal’Aura’s eyelids dipped as she let out a sigh. “Need I remind you, Gell, that I am the science officer?”
Gell Mindar smiled wryly at her, and gestured to the third planet, a light teal ball waltzing around the two gravity wells. “There we will begin to study in constructing whole shipyards like this station.”
“We...?”
“No, not we, of course. Romulus. We are only going to conduct preliminary research and send our findings to command. That is all for now.”
“How certain are we that the Senate will approve? Senator Vrax is not like to support another failed scientific venture.”
“Tal’Aura.” His pitch signalled an instructive manner. “This an opportunity that has the potential to significantly increase the rate of repairs. Command will send a team to investigate one way or another at this point. Shall it be us or shall we be relegated to patrolling the home system?”
When put that way, Tal’Aura’s glance briefly dipped to the floor. “No, sir.”
“And that is if we’re lucky enough half of Command shows up drunk to their offices tomorrow. It is a risk any officer has sworn an oath to take. And even Senators, like Vrax, when they casually care to remember such things. What is it?” He indicated with a nod of his head to her steepled fingers tapping against one another.
“It’s just that this station has tightly kept secrets.”
“Mmm. The computer core.”
“Yes. The dampening field still remains intact.”
“What could they be hiding, one wonders, hmm? It may take time. I have faith in Vrell. But if he cannot find a way to bypass it, then that is all we can do. The next team can do the rest.”
“Yes, sir. I was wondering if--”
She was cut off by the sound of an incoming communication and the contralto voice of his Chief Medical Officer was heard over the comm. “Doctor tr’Hheinia to Commander Mindar.”
Mindar punched the requisite button and responded with a terse, “Yes!”
“You’re needed in Sickbay immediately.”
The shadows cast by Mindar’s cranial ridge deepened. “What has happened?”
“Chief Vrell has been hit by an isolytic shock.”
“How bad are the injuries?”
There was a pause on the other end that Mindar swore lasted five seconds instead of just the one.
“Sir… he’s dead.”
. . .
“How.” Mindar and Tal’Aura looked down at the supine body of their Chief Engineer. The latter had not spoken a word since they had arrived and had yet to look up from Vrell’s face.
“Sir.” A young man’s voice piped up.
Mindar pushed aside the observation. “Uhlan Ba’el, speak.”
“I was with the Chief when he was working on a panel outside of junction six on the second deck. He asked me for an optronic caliper when I turned away for a moment, walked down the short hall and as soon as I turned the corner, it happened.”
“Can you tell me anything else? Was it only the two of you in that section?”
“Yes sir, it was just us… but just before it happened I… heard something strange.”
Mindar’s eyelids lowered fractionally in exasperation. “Like what? Have it out!” To his credit, Mindar thought, the uhlan had not flinched but Mindar had not meant to become that snappish with him either. The commander relaxed the ire in his gaze faintly.
“I have trouble describing it. But I think it sounded like a soft, high-pitched whine before I heard the Chief yell.”
Mindar blinked, silent for a moment, then turned to Tal’Aura. “Our sensors have been on constant sweep, yes?”
She picked her gaze up slowly. “Yes,” she replied as she met his eyes. He noted a retreating distance in them.
“Isolate the time sequence. Run a diagnostic of all energy bands just to be sure.” Tal’Aura nodded silently and turned to leave.
“Be sure? Sir, he’s--” Doctor tr’Hheinia began to say.
“Excuse me, doctor.” Mindar cut in, moving further away from the doors and spoke in a lowered tone. “I can see that Vrell is dead, yes. That is not what I was referring to. Just be entirely certain that you run a thorough autopsy.”
“Yes, sir.” She acquiesced simply.
“Ba’el, you’re with me.” With a nod to the uhlan, Mindar turned and they exited the Sickbay.