"Outwitting Nature."

[FredM 0]

"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future

for man if he spent less time proving that he can

outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness

and respecting her seniority."

- E.B. White

 

It had taken longer than expected...much longer. A trip which was initially supposed to take twenty-seven hours to complete had instead taken over fourteen days and spanned two years. As sad as it was, it made perfect since. One might even argue it was logical the delay had occurred. Still, for the person in charge of Starfleet activity within the Cardassian sector, it was a hard pill to swallow.

 

When the U.S.S. Lewis had seen telemetry showing the massive ion storm's aft quarter was collapsing, the smaller Centaur Class vessel had set course immediately to try to come in behind the storm and approach Aegis from the opposite direction. Such was not exactly an easy task. The course required the vessel to essentially go around half of Cardassian space, then approach from the unclaimed territory side of the Badlands. If they'd been on a sight seeing tour, the course might have been appropriate. This fact had not escaped Meve, who had one point had told Commander Gromvik that if their stint in Starfleet ever came to an end, they had an outstanding future in the tourism industry. Some affiliation with a good marketing person, perhaps Lieutenant Commander Quark or Ambassador Drankum, and it really wasn't too hard to imagine the Andorian sitting in front of a bunch of people speaking into a microphone saying "And to our left you can see the sight of the famous J'vok Attack, where a massive fleet of Klingon ships fought to the last against numerous wings of Dominion fighters."

 

Okay, maybe it was a little difficult to see, but the Saurian brandy had helped clear things up.

 

When the Lewis had actually completed it's quarter circle around Cardassian space and entered the area proper, the ship's computers had received a telemetry updated from Aegis. This was nothing astonishing and was actually an automatic feature performed by every Starfleet computer system. Yet, it had been the first sign of life from the station in over three days. Shortly thereafter, communications itself had been established but the news had not exactly been what Meve had wanted to hear.

 

Sky Harbor Aegis itself was an engineer's nightmare, or dream depending on one's mindset. After an apparent power surge of some sort had essentially shutdown the entire facility, most of the station's primary systems were barely operational. Still, now two weeks later, the situation hadn't improved all that much. Aegis was only capable of actually docking a quarter of her regular limit, somewhere near ten vessels. Subspace communications arrays had essentially been fried, with operations being forced to ration the use of the one array which had been found to work. Sadly, that was only the beginning.

 

As Meve would discover in the week following, of the five hundred sensor buoys deployed within the Cardassian sector, only fifty were still operational. At least six Federation Subspace Communications Relay Posts had been obliterated by the storm, causing ten percent of the frontier region of the Alpha Quadrant to experience massive delays in transmission reception and transmission. It was actually starting to get a little ridiculous, with lag times for many areas reaching at least seven to ten days. While normally an inconvenience, it was a catastrophic problem when one was attempting to now organize the redeployment of forces into a region recovering from a natural disaster.

 

The problem was slowly improving, with a series of Starfleet vessels moving into position and essentially becoming mobile communication relays. One vessel, the U.S.S. Folsom, had been sitting stationary for over ten days now. Their entire mission in life was to act as a galactic switchboard operator. For some reason, Frederic was certain this crew of mostly scientists wasn't exactly enjoying the task.

 

The status of Aegis was to the point that it had been decided Meve would remain aboard the Lewis until matters improved, or at least communications were more reliable. Even with lag delays, the ship under the command of Commander Gromvik could easily traverse most areas and messages could be delivered in person if necessary. The older Centaur Class design wasn't designed for war, but they were designed for speed. Even now, most modern Starfleet ships had a difficult time matching the maneuverability and speed performance levels of this elder ship. For more than two weeks straight, that advantage had been exploited.

 

By the end of 2380, most civilian populations evacuated from their homes had returned. In almost every case, they had come back to areas without much physical damage but planets with every orbital satellite offline. This had caused major delays in the return of refugees, as ships were now having to serve as repair services in addition to transports. One could simply not leave thirty-thousand people on a planet when their orbital solar power generation system was offline. Such wasn't exactly good for moral, public relations and in Meve's eye was simply wrong.

 

New Year's Day had been spent working for the Andorian, almost the entire day sitting in the command center built into the Lewis. The small room wasn't anything to write home about, but the size of a good Sickbay it employed a staff of no less than fifteen who managed communiques, transmitted orders, updated status reports and telemetry from the surrounding area. While no where near finished, by the end of the first day of the 2381, the 10th Division of the 8th Fleet had arrived in Cardassian space. This group of twenty-five ships, mostly support vessels, had departed Alpha Centuri a week earlier. Their mission was a simple one...to help.

 

Sadly, and much to the annoyance of almost every high ranking individual within Starfleet, the lack of assistance from another governments was strikingly absent. Oddly enough, under the continued leadership of Grand Nagus Rom, the Ferengi Alliance had authorized the immediate sale of relief supplies such as generators and even short-term sensor probes for practically nothing. Meanwhile, the Romulan and Klingon governments had insisted they would "monitor the situation." Now three weeks since the crisis had really started, they were still monitoring.

 

The shocking thing was the apparent lack of organized relief from the Cardassian Provisional Government. While it was indeed true the Cardassian system itself had suffered almost a complete breakdown in communication ability, and while it was also indeed true it had taken a shuttle from the newly transferred Empok Nor three days to reach the Cardassian fleet to give them orders, practically nothing else had taken place. There had been no announcement from the Office of the Prime Minister. There hadn't even been a peer from Legate Wiop Eerio, the Chief of Military Operations. One would have assumed with the terrorist attack on the Illopera in May of last year, some relief efforts would still be mobilized and available.

 

The implications of this lack of assistance were too numerous to contemplate. The Cardassian elections were indeed going to occur in 2381, almost exactly five years to the day since the end of the Dominion War. This lack of help to the people of Cardassia weren't exactly going to boost the Prime Minister's polling numbers. Perhaps more alarming, such actions might only help to boost fringe organizations such as Free Cardassia...who had been shockingly silent during the recent situation. Was that just a coincidence or something more?

 

That was something Meve would have to think about in the weeks ahead. For now, his goal in life was getting back to his own bed. With the U.S.S. Omaha and U.S.S. Dublin parked outside, Aegis itself was at least capable of powering most of it's primary systems. Never mind less than a quarter of the station's population, over five hundred, were actually back aboard yet. One was also to ignore the fact most primary systems were having to be funneled thru the second pylon, as continuing computer glitches kept causing cascading failures on the first. Indeed, it was also true that only two docking ports on the docking pylons themselves were operational. True also was the fact the U.S.S. Pandora's Box was going to have to be towed to a dry-dock for a complete power grid refit and might be out of pocket for at least a month...something that might not have been necessary had Aegis personnel been able to organize the reconstruction of their own dry-dock facility.

 

It shouldn't also be ignored the fact runabouts were having to sit parked at the edge of the Cardassian system to help feed sensor data to the station, who's long range array displayed an image that more closely resembled a winter day in Alaska than anything else. Yet, perhaps for more symbolic reasons than anything else...or maybe the fact he was growing impatient, Meve had ordered himself back to Aegis. Now less than an hour away, he leaned back and sipped the mug of tea before him. Oh what joys the new year was bringing....