Back in the Alpha Quadrant

[Cptn Corizon 0]

The fleet of Federation, Romulan and Klingon vessels that circled Deep Space Nine harkened to days of Dominion War. No one was quite sure if that were a positive or a negative, but Quark knew one thing—it was good for business.

 

Indeed, business had been booming, even if the wormhole was unusable. And frankly, he couldn’t care less. Latt was flowing like a fountain from the sequestered troops of all three of the major powers, and the dabo wheels were turning.

 

Despite that though, he still had a gnawing feeling about the whole matter. He had a tingle in his lobes, but it wasn’t the same tingle he got when he sensed an opportunity to make profit, it was the sense that something was about to go terribly wrong.

 

Still with Odo off to the Gamma Quadrant, he’d been free to scheme and plot to his hearts desire and had started putting away a healthy sum of latnium for a rainy day.

 

~

 

In the ready room of the USS Saladin Vice-Admiral Daniel Boston sighed to himself. As leader of the Allied Task Force he had many duties, and with those duties came paper work. Lot’s of paper work. Of course his staff did most of that paper work, but he still had to read over it.

 

There were also meetings. Meetings about meetings, even. Today he’d met with no less than 20 people: the command of the Klingon Forces, Councilman Konath, the Romulan command Admiral t’Lae, and a slew of lower ranking officers, diplomats and bureaucrats.

 

And at each of them, the same questions kept coming up, “When will we have use of the wormhole again?” and “What exactly is obstructing the wormhole terminus?”

 

All very good questions, true, but there weren’t any answers that Boston could give them. Every probe they’d sent through to the other side had faced the same fate as the USS Charger¬—destruction. From what they’d pieced together, someone had constructed a ring of sorts around the terminus aperture of the wormhole and it was heavily armed.

 

Who had done this? Now that was the million dollar question. First instinct of course was the Dominion. But reports from Camelot Station before what appeared to be a complete communications black out with them, seemed to indicate that a new force had risen in the Gamma Quadrant to challenge the Dominion and that they weren’t exactly in the best of shape at the moment.

 

So, who was this new enemy? And what interest in the wormhole did they have?

 

Boston sighed again. Every time he thought he had an answer, more questions arose than he actually answered. It was like one of those rubric cubes he’d played with as a child, only twice as impossible.

Chimes at the door broke his train of thought. After a few moments of gathering himself he said softly, “Come.”

 

The familiar face of his chief aide, Lt. Aurora Foster appeared through the doorway. “Sir,” her voice was soft and gentle. “Captain Picard and the Enterprise have arrived. You’re scheduled to meet with the Captain in less than an hour.”

 

Boston nodded. “Of course…his ship or mine?”

 

She smirked widely. “His of course.”

 

“Oh…right…”