"This can't be good."

[Cmdr JFarrington 0]

“This can’t be good.”

 

It had been . . . how long? . . . since Jami Farrington had worked OPS, and she was getting an entirely new appreciation of Margaux Roget’s talents. Jami was sure the board had changed. Or maybe it just seemed to have changed. What used to be automatic movements were labored, her fingers searching for the correct position, her brain searching for the correct combinations, and let’s not even talk about TAC-OPS crossovers. Thank the gods for Crystal’s even temperament and her expertise at TAC. Knowing Crystal was there relieved some of Jami’s anxiety. Crystal understood the pressure they were under and the need for patience with an OPS-challenged senior officer.

 

But there were more important things to think about besides Jami’s elephant-stomping on the OPS console. Manticore’s best officers were aboard an experimental runabout about to challenge – and hopefully board – a crystal ghost ship that only appeared when they ran battle simulations. Trying to wrap her mind around the crystal ghost ship part was hard enough, and now they were boarding it?

 

They were flying a new assault craft, the Chimera: state-of-the-art, but no shakedown. Unproven but well armed: pulse cannons, quantum launchers, quantum torps, not to mention the loaded-for-bear weapons lockers, she was a tactical officer’s dream. With regenerative advanced shields and ablative hull armor and a warp capability of 6.2 for 2 hours she could easily hold her own.

 

But the most disconcerting part was that Manticore’s prime officers were aboard. Not a crewman #6 among them. Executive Officer Sovak, Security Chief Precip with his best officers Faldek, McFly and Kenickie; Medical Chief Kyle Mele and his newest officer Ritah Lowen; Science Chief Keb Mizu, Nav. Specialist Doug T, and Warp Specialist Richard Hilee. All were needed for the nature of the mission: highly specialized observation and surgical insertion for search and rescue. And as the mission progressed, the Chimera in place outside the bounds of the simulation and the battle simulation begun, a sense of déjà vu settled over the remaining bridge crew.

 

And Jami Farrington began to feel more and more that this was a bad idea. It began at the base of her spine and worked itself up to make the hair on the back of her neck stand on end, then turned violently to twist her insides into a Gordian knot. Energy beams pummeled the Manticore as Chimera closed in, drilling a hole in the crystalline ship’s defenses and finally allowing the boarding party access.

 

The crystalline ghost ship, strangely oblivious to Chimera’s presence, abruptly changed and hit Manticore with an intensely-focused energy weapon. Power on the Manticore blinked. Holoemitters failed. The crystal ship vanished . . .

 

. . . along with Captain Sovak and most of the crew of Chimera.

 

Jami froze at the sight, her mouth dropping open into a barely audible, “This can’t be good.”