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Cptn Corizon

Dangers and Intrigue

Tiny rocks that had once made up the system called Salin parted in the wake of the two white-hulled vessels baring the Federation flag -- the Saladin and the Cavendish. Where a brilliant and thriving system had once existed, the small marbles of volcanic rock remained as the only evidence.

 

Aboard the Saladin the masters of the two vessels sat combing through reports from their combined science staffs and the efforts of several dozen scientists at Camelot and in the Alpha quadrant. None of them seemed pleasing.

 

“The whole damned situation is vexing,” Captain Jai Harom-Kell of the Saladin said.

 

“Yes,” Captain Renee Yvves-Maunier said as she placed another PADD down and began on another. “In all my years I’ve not seen something quite like this.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“Usually, you expect to see some sort of sign as to why a star breaks up, not to mention that the wave pattern is so ungodly unlike anything I’ve ever ran across… even the subspace theorists will be raising their brows over this…”

 

“If they ever hear about it,” Harom-Kell said disparagingly.

 

Yvves-Maunier nodded, her unspoken agreement obvious. “I wish I knew what had done this,” she said furrowing her brows. “If we had some sort of frame of reference, something to go from…”

 

--

 

Commander Gragogin 147 sat quietly sipping hish tea as the shuttle Thomas Aquinas headed into orbit of the planet Avalon and headed towards the a research base on the planet.

 

Above him, Columbia drifted quietly in the docking berths of the dry-dock of Camelot Station, approximately 120 light-years from the Gamma Quadrant terminus of the wormhole.

 

A sudden, fleeting moment of disembodiment came over hir and an eerie sense of deja vu kicked in, as if someone had just walked on hish grave. S/he blinked for a moment assessing that s/he was indeed aboard a shuttle headed to inspect some findings of an archeological dig in the southern regions.

 

The assurance that s/he was came as welcome news to hir sanity; the past several weeks had been busy to say the least. Columbia had gotten orders to report to into base for refurbishment and major upgrades to bring them in-line with the Iowa-subclass of Sovereign-class vessels. That, as the Admiral had dryly put it hadn't came as such a surprise, the location for the refit, on the other hand, was 'interesting.'

 

Here they were, deep in the heart of Dominion space and there was a major Federation (along with Romulan and Klingon) space station orbiting a rapidly colonizing planet with one of the largest communications arrays ever built. All of this happening while the Dominion attempted to recover from a year-long war with an ancient, powerful and downright scary Empire that, like the Dominion, found itself fractured and enveloped in its twilight.

 

The shuttle dipped into Avalon's misty atmosphere and began its descent towards the primary base. The Hermat sighed happily, shrugging off the nagging feelings that some part of hir had just been violently, surgically ripped away.

 

--

 

It was a quite morning on the bridge of the Cape Horn. The Steamrunner-class starship had just made its first mapping pass of the Gobiean Cluster and had begun circling for a second, more detailed scan. She’d been dispatched originally for a much shorter mission of surveying a handful of systems, however, at the insistence of its captain, Starfleet had approved a six-month in-depth survey of those systems, with the option of extending the stay another six-months.

 

The aforementioned captain, Commander Arturias Rex, sat looking over the initial scans a bemused smirk on his face. It felt good to actually be out exploring, not just running supplies and smacking local thugs around.

 

So far the Gobiean Cluster has proved to be exactly what they bargained for, and the science team had already excitedly began sending findings back to Camelot and beyond , and the second, more detailed, scan would hopefully be even more revealing.

 

The sudden, violent shaking of the Cape Horn that made the captain feel as if his vessel were passing through its namesake derailed the thought completely. As the bucking finally stopped, and the emergency lighting on the bridge clicked on, he crawled his was back into his seat.

 

“Someone get the number on that truck?”

 

A few moments later Ensign Gail Hajon responded. “Unsure Captain, it appears to have been some sort of energy wave.”

“Helm,” Rex responded. “Level us out…”

 

“Already doing so Captain, damage appears to be localized to primary transfer network, engines responding.”

 

“That’s good news, now what the hell was that?”

 

--

 

Commander Corris Sprint sat uncomfortably in the his chair aboard the command center of Camelot Station, looking with furrowed brow at the communications streams from the various vessels of the allied forces scattered throughout the quadrant.

 

“Something wrong, Commander?” The voice was that of Sogh’a (Senior Lieutenant) BroHngh, the stations chief tactical officer. “You look, concerned.”

 

Sprint nodded and relayed the feed onto the Klingon’s screen. “Yes,” he said lowly. “Recognize anything familiar.”

 

The Klingon soon furrowed his brow as well. “Interesting.”

 

The seasoned Chief Operations officer nodded. “Ensign Degal,” he said without looking towards the blue-purple skinned alien at an auxiliary console. “Go rouse Commander Blair, and find Doctor Yavin.”

 

“Should I put the station on alert?” BroHngh asked.

 

Pursing his lips, Sprint considered for a moment before answering. “Yes, but very quietly, no need to spark a panic. Have El’Arrain [senior Centurion] tr’Lokan very discretely tell cargo runners that they need to stick to patrolled routes, and not to deviate from their flight paths.”

 

“Of course,” the Klingon said tapping the orders, while copying, very discreetly, a memo to Governor K’Vorlag that he might want to check in on Camelot sooner than later.

 

“What about the Admiral,” Degal queried, “should we wake Admiral Day?”

 

“Admiral Day is currently meeting with Rear Admiral T’Pran of the Columbia,” Sprint replied calmly. “I’ll contact them once I have a chance to meet with Commander Blair.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

--

 

The mist was still clearing and the frost had begun burning away as the suns of Avalon rose in the early morning. Dr. Alyssa Yavin placed the silvery mug of coffee to her lips as she stood outside the grey metallic buildings that formed the temporary home of the Avalon Archeology Study Project Base #4. Though not an archeologist by training, it was certainly exciting that her teams were turning up things that even the Dominion had managed to miss.

 

According to the Vorta databanks, this planet had never been inhabited, yet the more Starfleet and their Romulan counter parts looked (the Klingons weren’t exactly into this sort of work) the planet, the more and more they suspected that wasn’t an entirely accurate assessment.

 

This find was particularly interesting. Ruins of a pre-Dominion culture were interesting enough, but ruins of possible Dominion origin were… fantastic.

 

A small shuttle zoomed overhead and made its approach too landing. A small smile crossed her face as she took a last drink of the coffee and headed to landing paddock to greet her invited guest for the day.

 

--

 

After several months with a gregarious Hermat as her first officer, it would be an understatement to say that drinking tea with a fellow Vulcan, if only half, and having an ordered, logical conversation in which sexual innuendo was as absent as air in space. As such, the Mistress (though she wasn’t sure why the humans felt the need to use such a—sexually charged term) of the Columbia sipped lightly, unemotionally at the jaek tea in the quiet surroundings of the Camelot observation lounge looking over fleet reports with Vice-Admiral Wayne Day.

 

She had to admit that the dichotomy of the two Vulcan half-breeds was rather interesting, and stark in comparison. He, or at the least his parents, had chosen an obvious human name and mostly human upbringing; on the other hand she’d been raised in the proper Vulcan tradition and took a Vulcan name. Interesting how much a name could define a person. T’Pran. Wayne Day.

 

There were subtler differences that were manifestations of this. While his logic was solid, from what she could tell, he likely had emotional outbursts. The very thought of such lapses caused a series of synaptic firings that some humans would call fear in T’Pran. That, however, was an emotion. She was above such… frivolities, or at least attempted to be as much as possible.

 

Nevertheless, he was a Vulcan who’d simply chosen a different path to logic and knowledge, and as with all things, diversity bred infinite possibilities.

 

Pausing in her mental assessments, she glanced towards him. “I must say Admiral, your engineering staff has been quiet adequate in the retrofitting of Columbia,” she said. “I read they are ahead of schedule.”

 

“Yes,” he said with a slight smile. “They do very good work.”

 

The emotionalism caused a slight, unnoticeable pause before she reminded herself of her last thought. She opened her mouth the speak, but was cut off by the chirp of a communicator.

 

“Admirals,” Corris Sprint said, “sorry to interrupt you but Commander Blair and I think you need to get up here.”

 

The two Admirals looked at each other, Vulcan eyebrows raised in unison.

 

“Different, yet the same,” T’Pran thought to herself.

 

--

 

“Commander,” Yavin said with a smile, “It’s good to see you… I haven’t seen you in… years.”

 

The Hermat officer smiled with a wide grin. It had been at least seven years since s’he had seen hish former colleague and at least they were meeting on ‘good terms.’ “Indeed,” s/he said. “Thank you for inviting me down…”

 

The two hugged each other and exchanged further pleasantries before heading off to the dig-site, where busy scientists were already ‘playing.’

 

“I do wish you were staying longer, Grago.”

 

“As do I,” s/he said. “You know how it is though, once they complete the refit of Columbia it’s hard to tell where they will send us.”

 

Yavin nodded and continued walking. Such was the life of a ‘fleeter. She’d been lucky in that her assignments had been almost all stationary. She could understand the appeal of gallivanting across the galaxy, discovering something new at every turn, but by the same token she liked the consistency of the sedentary.

She opened her mouth to comment on something when the annoying chirp of communicator interrupted her. “Just a second Grago… I swear I am going to throw this thing in the river one day…”

 

S/he smiled. “I know the feeling.”

 

Smirking, Yavin flipped her brown-red hair to one side and hit the communicator. “Yavin here, go ahead.”

 

“Commander,” the young voice of what she could only assume was an ensign said. “I am sorry to interrupt you, bit Commander Sprint and Blair require your presence aboard Camelot.”

 

Chewing at her lip she acknowledged and let him she’d be up shortly. The comm closed and she looked sidelong over to her Hermat companion would rather interested. “I hate it when they do that…”

 

“Call you away from spending time with little ole’ hish?”

 

“No,” she grinned. “Call me ‘Commander.’”

 

Gragogin 147 feigned hurt, “Oh, right.”

 

“Oh shut up,” she said pretending to smack hir. “Why don’t you just tag-along.”

 

“Sounds exciting.”

 

“I’ve learned that in this quadrant,” she said. “Exciting can sometimes also mean dangerous or deadly.”

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