"Because of the storm..."

[FredM 0]

"Because of the storm..."

Captain's Personal Log

Stardate 0305.29

 

 

      Though Michaels was sitting in his ready room chair, his mind was light-years away. As Doctor Matthews and Commander Ridire had a question/answer session, the Captain kept thinking to the lasting implications of what his Chief Medical Officer was saying. Nothing about this mission had been enjoyable, with this latest revelation making things even worse.

 

      What he was hearing would involve a great deal of planning and knowledge which simply couldn't be learned overnight...or at all. The first implication in the Doctor's theory would be somehow Lieutenant Facon was purposefully infected with Quillick Syndrome. At the time, given the virus's scarcity, no one questioned the illness. As the Captain had previously thought, he simply got the sickness while at the engineering conference on Trill...a meeting Michaels himself had attended numerous times. While coming away with a flu once, it wasn't uncommon for someone to get exposed to a new virus.

 

      So there was the possibility one person was involved. Then there was the figure known as Lieutenant Richard Drew. Obviously there was Drew himself but according to Matthews, the DNA on file doesn't match the DNA of the body. Yet, his picture did match that of the person who boarded the Cairo. Was the file in error? It wasn't unheard of...accidentally putting officer A's details with officer B's. Perhaps there was someone named Drex with a file which was actually Drew's. Yet, this itself was circumstantial. If it wasn't, it would imply that someone had altered a personnel file, kidnapped or killed an engineer, and then impersonated the said person.

 

      Even for Captain Michaels, this was a bit much to accept. It simply wasn't something that happened. But then, outside of all the circumstantial evidence regarding the Cairo itself and Mr. Drew, there was the matter of New Rigel. An entire colony of nearly a thousand people now missing and an unknown sensor jamming device on the surface of one of the system's moons. While indeed a mystery, the added intrigue was that a ship entered orbit carrying a Starfleet transponder code...claiming to be the Cairo. A false transponder code could be explained, but the impersonation of the doomed Intrepid Class vessel was more troublesome. Unknown to most aboard the Reaent, the situation had not yet been made public. In fact, only a few persons aboard Starbase 345 even knew why the facility had been locked down.

 

      Yet, given the lack of information, a ship had arrived at New Rigel. Somehow they had known the Cairo would not be showing up to resupply the colony. In addition, they had known the ship had been delayed for at least two days by the ion storm. If the storm hadn't had happened, the Cairo would have come and gone by the time this unknown vessel claiming to be Starfleet arrived. Their presence would have alerted the colony and some type of struggle would have taken place. But, because of the storm.....because of the storm....

 

      It was a radical thought, something Fred Michaels shook his head at slightly. If the theory was correct, it might give some limited confirmation to Doctor Matthews' story. After all, the Chief Medical Officer was only discussing numerous circumstantial events. But even as he tried to dismiss it, was it possible? Could numerous Starfleet officers, plus who knows what other forces, had for some reason conspired to destroy the Cairo?

 

      "I don't think so," said Debbie shaking her head. Somewhat startled, Michaels glanced at her and then Aidan. Perhaps there was a way to see if theory was reality...