As the Lakota comes home

[HoD Bch 0]

Vice Admiral Huff leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers as he read his desk monitor. The USS Lakota had been found! What remained of her, anyway.

 

According to initial reports, about twenty percent of her original crew survived and were on their way home, along with some additional Federation crew who were assigned for and disappeared during the Toran'ir incident three years ago.

 

The debriefing of the Lakota crew had been assigned to Huff, and as he gazed at his monitor, he pondered the gravity of this task.

 

Seven years. Their ship had been destroyed except for her computer core and some components hastily ripped out. The surviving crew had spent the last seven years living among and serving with the Klingons of the IKC Qob.

 

Huff flipped through some screens. A Vorcha class cruiser was a strong and rugged beast. Too rugged? God help these people. How had they survived the ongoing cultural dissonance? Could they have carried out Federation structure, or would they have been crushed under the Klingon brute arrogance?

 

Files transmitted during the Toran’ir encounter provided hope, but not enough details. The Federation learned then the basic facts of the Lakota’s demise, but only some sketchy outlines of the following four years. And what happened after the Qob disappeared again, for the last three years, was completely unknown.

 

Nevertheless, seventy-two men and women were now on their way home. Seventy-two men and women with three to eight years of accounts to be taken. And of course there was the indestructible Lakota computer core files. Huff raised his eyebrows and pondered how much more valuable the Qob’s core would be at this point. Ah well, so far the Klingons had been most forthcoming with information and help. Huff doubted they would be any less helpful when the time for more information came. In the meantime, he had plenty to work with.

 

Again he flipped through screens and noted the deluge of messages from families of the crew, all wanting to know when and where they could meet their lost loved ones. Even the notes from Vulcan sounded downright earnest.

 

Indeed, this news had spread across all Federation space (and probably beyond). Huff would need to coordinate plans with many homeworld governments. But… this was Starfleet, and this is what Starfleet did. He leaned back in his chair again, picked his mug off the warmer and wondered ever so briefly if it were too late in the morning to have a second donut before contacting Ferengenar.