Showdown

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Bad dreamer, whats your name

Looks like were ridin on the same train

Looks as through therell be more pain

Theres gonna be a showdown

- The Electric Light Orchestra

 

One of the Trills on board the USS Excalibur was not in a good mood. Or perhaps both of them weren’t but that’s not incredibly important right now though. What is important is that a Trill that answered to the name of Atticus Segami, wasn’t.

 

Standing at tactical, with a rifle slung over his shoulder he felt mildly like some daft show puppet. There was an intruder onboard, or intruders, and he wasn’t being allowed to handle the matter as he saw fit. This was the first time he had been face to face with the captain since their last ‘discussion’ on the matter of proper duty and now it looked like a sequel. Segami did not consider the idea of a changeling onboard truly feasible. His logic though hardly Vulcan verified that. The sightings of doubles and other unexplained personnel took place across different areas of the ship in an extraordinary short window of time. This meant that the theory would only work is if there was more than one changeling on board. This, as the Trill was aware was very rare indeed as founders usually worked alone. And he doubted if they’d be foolish enough to give themselves away so easily. If not impossible, the theory was at the very least highly improbable.

 

Though what was the alternative really? Some bizarre interaction with the Ion storm? A distortion of time and space? Mass hysteria caused by an influx of some sort of electro pulse? Though Segami suggested such phenomena on the bridge he truly suspected that the cause was most likely a mere mix of miscommunication, confusion and perhaps a few crewmembers still recovering from a hardspent leave. Well, he hoped that’s what it was. If it were indeed the case, he could simply write it off as a training exercise and rest easy.

 

If not?

 

Well, that would just be a damned nuisance. The amount of setbacks they had endured on this mission was unbearable. Even the recent leave was called simply to stop the crew going mad from grief or frustration. Another blow like this would not be good. Besides the fact that once again there would be a chance everyone could get killed again, a cheerful thought, there was the matter of the cult. With Excalibur causing a stir at every turn it was likely her prey would notice quite obviously that it was being tracked.

 

But no matter what the Captain said, Atticus believed that without any true evidence of a changeling onboard, leaping to discover one in blood test sweeps across the ship was slightly premature. And slamming it on as an order before even the most minor of inquiries could be performed was mildly irritating to the Lieutenant Commander.

 

“However, that’s you isn’t it Corizon?”, thought the yellowshirt to himself. “They’ll never put you in a desk job because you’ll give the poor secretaries lectures on proper shorthand and demand a vote on the new letterhead for the inter-office memo.”

 

Atticus did consider the Dog a fine leader. Perhaps in some ways a perfect leader. Strong-willed, determined, tenacious and most definitely brave. But a total and utter pain in the arse when it came to departmental management. He grinned a cheeky grin on the inside at the thought of saving that line for their next inevitable brawl. The two of them seemed destined to butt horns for the rest of their days and he knew deep inside that Corizon probably enjoyed it anyway. Every canine loves a good bark every now and then.

 

Currently though, these opinions would be kept secret. Just as Commander Teykier had cunningly and quietly sneaked out of his quarters in the darkest of hours on the previous night, he too would be stealthy. He would keep his emotions under the radar, deep below an official veneer. Every order would be followed and each decision, though possibly questioned would not be argued. This would not be the first time he had done this. But hopefully, if things did go right, it would go a lot better than his previous attempts. If not, it would be yet another duel of words.

 

Looking over Ensign Praxx’s internal sensors he watched the patrols proceed with the blood tests.