Background Logs, pt 2

[MajorZStarDust 0]

Subj: Captain's Log, Stardate 10009.19

Date: 9/19/00 10:43:28 PM Eastern Daylight Time

From: HOST OGF Moose

 

 

The Arcadia drifted past the viewport every sixty minutes. Each time Moose had been about to quit, but the sight of the grand vessel with work docks attached to its underside spurned him on. How many times had it nagged at his conscience? Ten? Twenty? He had lost count. He was not about to loose count of the deaths, however, that had occurred since their encounter with the Sea Tiger and their discovery of the Coalition.

 

Carl Wills was the most recent. The official report listed his death as accidental. Carl was caught in an explosion while trying to reconnect a loose plasma conduit. But so many things about his death made no sense. First of all, you had to suspend disbelief enough to agree that the conduit was loose due to routine wear as opposed to sabotage. Next, you had to accept the fact that a man who was raised on Utopia Planetia and had the plasma flow diagrams from every ship in the fleet memorized, would be careless enough to effect a repair of that magnitute live instead of sutting down warp core down for thirty minutes. That just wasn't like Carl. At least, not the Carl he knew.

 

The library terminal in front of Moose blurred as his eyes rebelled from exhaustion. He closed them momentarily, but the action brought him no rest. Instead, his mind raced through the disaster again, looking for the logical loophole that would help him make sense of it all.

 

It was fortunate that Pratt and Hudson had been able to eject the warp core. None of them would be here now if they hadn't. Although he would never admit it, Moose was impressed with Pratt's tenacity. He was rising to the challenge of rebuilding his life and career. Even though physically Pratt wasn't a darksider, mentally he was, and that was difficult conditioning to overcome.

 

As his thoughts lingered on Tracy, Moose was again reminded of Carl's uncharacteristic rashness. Maybe that person wasn't Carl Wills? They had abandoned their search for darkside infiltrators when Tracy's true circumstances were discovered. Perhaps this was very in-character for the Wills from that dimension. The darkside Wills was believed to be dead. But the darkside Wills was the twisted genius that had taken Carl's psionic amplifier and evolved it into the cursed psionic enhancer, a device which had almost permanently turned Moose into a telepath. Returning from supposed death was not something to put past him. The body was vaporized in the accident, a cover masking the return trip home perhaps? Recent transporter logs may hold a biological clue.

 

Moose wondered why it was only evil people who seemed to return from the dead, but immediately felt guilty for the thought. In another timeline, Khiaara had done just that. But even then, she had been a shadow of her former self. Raishel claimed that this was why she altered the timeline to prevent Khiaara's passing. So in effect, Khiaara had come back from the dead twice. Yet in neither scenario had Moose done anything to change the nature of their relationship. He seemed destined to waste it no matter how many chances he was given.

 

As much as Moose wanted to blame the darkside, they were still the secondary suspects. If the darkside had sabotaged the Arc, then they never would have bothered with the shuttle Buutebyte. This implied that the deaths of Umberti and Stardust were truly accidental. No, there had been too much death for someone not to be to blame.

 

This left the woman in the cave as the prime suspect. She claimed to be of the Benai, and destroyed the Epsilon Wave Generator after the most basic scans had been taken. Moose was here in the library painstakingly checking the databanks for the slightest mention of this race. Raishel tried to talk with her telepathically, but the woman answered vocally. This implied that she was not a full telepath. Instead, her abilities seemed to be extramly focused on a single telepathic ability, the power to control the actions of others. But was this a natural gift or an artificial ability? Could she control people silently or did you have to hear her words to be affected? How many Benai were there and what was their connection to the Coalition? The answers were not coming out of the Federation databanks.

 

Moose closed his eyes in exhaustion. When he opened them, he was grateful that the station had rotated away from the Arcadia. He took this as an omen. His research was pointless for the moment. It was time to abandon the books and tend to the needs of the crew. They had suffered much these past few weeks. Moose knew that if they could not solve the mystery of the Coalition, that it would just be the beginning.

 

Cptn Moose

USS Arcadia, NCC-1742-D

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