Bliss Interupted

[Cptn Corizon 0]

The Excalibur hummed along silently in the openness of the space between Earth and Alpha Centauri. Normally the corridor between Earth and her closest neighbor was filled with trading ships, Starfleet clippers and an assortment of pleasure boats and training vessels. Today the load was light and Excalibur mostly had the roughly four-light year area of space to themselves.

 

Generally the trip between the two took a starship like the Excalibur, a sparkling Sovereign-class barely two years out of dry dock, a few hours at standard cruise. However, with the low traffic and time to spare, Rear Admiral Corizon had ordered Excalibur to a much lower cruising speed of warp 3.

 

The mood on the Excalibur-D was light and airy; even the Admiral, long known for his temperament, had a bounce in his step and a smile on his face. They'd been essentially been ported at Spacedock for over a month, kept from furlough, and spent the better part of it cleaning deck plating or whatever else they could think of to pass time.

 

In his Ready Room, Ah-Windu watched as the stars streamed by in an array of white and blue streaks with rainbows behind them. It had been a long month for the Dameon; he'd spent the better part of it in either San Fransisco, Paris and Geneva selling his Project: Kami to the Admiralty, the President and the Federation Council.

 

Commissioned by the former, Project: Kami was to be Starfleet's response to recent activity that suggested a possible alien invasion could take place. As he was one of the few officers still active who'd been part of Starfleet's responses to the Borg and the Dominion some four decades prior, he was the perfect man, apparently, to prepare Starfleet for another possible invasion of the Alpha Quadrant by a hostile and in some ways technologically superior force.

 

After conceptualizing the initial proposal, he'd spent weeks tweaking the plan to meet the operational and fiscal demands and restraints placed on him by the brass and the diplomats. The final plan, which had been approved only a day before by the Council, wasn't completely what he wanted, but in the end it was still a very sound plan, one he felt would keep the Federation safe.

 

So now he was on his way to begin stage one of the implementation. A brief stop-over at Alpha Centauri to rotate out crewmembers, and he'd be on his way to Antares Fleet Yards to begin overseeing Phase I of the project, the bringing out of mothballs nearly three-hundred ships that would sure up the the core fleet and allow a number of ships from the Steamrunner, Sabre and Norway-classes to be transferred off those duties and into a new fleet of scouts that would more accurately give the Federation and Starfleet eyes and ears on the fringes of known space.

 

Concurrently, Utopia Planetia and the newest fleet yards at Sunatra would step up production of the “capital” classes like the Sovereign, Akira, Galaxy and Prometheus-classes to bolster what was being dubbed the “Starfleet Rapid Response Defense Force.”

 

He'd just popped open a celebratory bottle of sparkling Romulan ale a colleague had procured for him, something from the N'Dak vineyards he was pretty sure, when alarms started sounding all over the stately Sovereign-class.

 

“What the blazes,” Corizon growled as he was commed to the bridge over ship-wide.

 

He stepped out on the bridge to find the mood decidedly sour and frantic. “Report,” he growled as he took his place in the command chair.

 

Toramon Komarzad, the Trill tactical officer looked up from his console to the Dameon commander with a worried look. “We're receiving a distress signal on ship-to-ship wireless frequencies,” the Trill said quickly.

 

As his ears stood up into upright positions, Corizon swiveled in his chair. A distress signal? “From where?”

 

“I am triangulating it now...”

 

“Transponder matches,” the Xindi-Primate operations officer chimed in. “You're not going to believe this sir...”

 

“Try me...” Corizon said as he swiveled in his chair.

 

“It matches the Agincourt.”

 

“That... that's impossible.”

 

Shaking his head, Komarzad glanced back to the his console before announcing. “Confirmed, transponder is an exact match for 'Court. The signal's coming from somewhere around Pluto... we're cleaning up the signal now...”

 

“Let's have it...”

 

“Text only at this range sir...”

 

Corizon nodded for the Trill to read it aloud.

 

“They're warning of a hostile fleet entering the sector...”

 

Letting it soak in for a moment, Corizon took a deep breath. “Alright folks...” he paused for a moment then continued, his resolve unshaken. “Go to Red Alert, all hands to battle stations. Set course for Earth at maximum warp.”

 

“Aye,” came a call from about three different officers as they went to work.

 

“Relay the message onto Alpha Centauri tell them to spread the word,” Corizon's mind was in overdrive and his body on auto-pilot. “And send out the same general message to any ship in range.”

 

So much for Project: Kami keeping the Federation safe.

 

The Excalibur dropped out of warp and made a sharp u-turn and jumped again to high warp.

 

“How long before we can be in range?”

 

“Thirty-five minutes, sir.”

 

“Damn.”

 

Corizon only hoped that'd be enough time.