23 minutes

[Annabelle O'Halloran 0]

Twenty-three minutes till they reached the transponder signal which called Reaent across the Neutral Zone and into Romulan space. Not a cry for help; just an automated 'Hey there' traveling over sub-space receivers. Nothing to suggest there was intelligence at work except there had been nothing and now there was the endlessly repeating unique prefix code assigned to the U.S.S. Proxima NCC-61952, a Nebula Class believed lost in the Gamma Quadrant during the Dominion War with crew numbering seven hundred and fifty. Anna had looked at the crew manifest. More than once. She felt a little haunted by their faces. Well, maybe more than a little haunted. The ship had been missing a long time and was presumed lost. And now, the signal. Coming from Romulan space. A problem, that. The Treaty of Algeron was very clear-STAY OUT. A treaty by definition was An agreement so made; specifically, an agreement, league, or contract between two or more nations or sovereigns, formally signed by commissioners properly authorized, and solemnly ratified by the several sovereigns, or the supreme power of each state; an agreement between two or more independent states; as, a treaty of peace; a treaty of alliance.

 

A treaty of Peace, a treaty of Alliance. Anna didn't think either of those phrases very suitable for describing the Treaty of Algeron. Truth be told, she'd never thought much about it and to be very honest had missed more than her fair share of PolySci classes while in the Academy to get in more lab time. She was not a political creature by any stretch of the imagination, but she'd taken a little more interest in the past few days, for obvious reasons. A clear tenet of the Algeron treaty held that to cross into the Neutral Zone, by either Federation or Romulan forces was an Act of War.

 

She'd checked the Fed database and had discovered something very interesting.

 

The Romulans were ahead in transgressions by one:

 

Romulans: 6

 

Federation: 5

 

Stardate 41986.0, by the Romulans

Stardate 42609.1, by the Romulans and the Federation

Stardate 43349.2, by the Romulans

Stardate 43462.5, by the Romulans and the Federation

Stardate 44390.1, by the Romulans and the Federation

Stardate 45245.8, by the Romulans

Stardate 47457.1, by the Federation

Stardate 50975.2, by the Federation

 

There was nothing in the database mentioning that punitive measures had been the result to either side. Certainly no war had broken out-although she assumed there'd been some ruffled feathers...saber rattling might be more appropriate, perhaps.

 

Maybe the Captain could claim he was just trying to maintain parity in the interest of stabilizing diplomatic relations. If they were boarded perhaps that could be interjected before they were all shot with disruptors. She'd looked over at her Chief, Lieutenant Commander Doctor Brian Smith (And how intimidating was that? She still couldn't decide which title to call him by) and was about to ask him what he thought when he mentioned he was just coming back from a bout of Arabian Turtle Flu, which sounded very serious. The poor man. Then there'd immediately been that scare when the two Valdore Warbirds started actively scanning but they'd moved off and Reaent had been able to move away and go to Warp 4. Thank goodness the power was restored. Commander Von Scherer and the rest of Engineering had gotten power back on amazingly quickly. Crossing the Neutral Zone had been a terrific power drain and Ship's systems failed spectacularly between the electronic countermeasures and the holo matrix that permitted Reaent to masquerade as a rogue asteroid, with the fighters also disguised as smaller, satellite asteroids if you will, (and you would have, too, since the Captain nixed the use of Jon Shamor's nifty personal cloaking device).

 

Apparently, you couldn't use a cloaking device if you were Federation. Anna thought that seemed very one-sided. She had a very well-developed sense of justice and fair play and never felt overly bound by any restrictions that seemed unreasonable or lacked common sense. The Romulan's cloak technology utilized a manufactured quantum singularity. It was, she supposed, their intellectual property. What about cloaking technology that wasn't based on Romulan Technology? She'd been fascinated to find that Jon Shamor had some sort of personal cloaking device that could possibly have been adjusted to cloak a fighter. The Captain had refused to allow its use because it would have been obvious once the Romulans boarded that the Reaent wasn't just having navigation problems-no plausible deniability, and this could of course lead to them being shot with disruptors. Odd, how every scenario seemed to lead back to that.

 

Seventeen minutes...

 

 

 

 

Edited September 26, 2008 by Annabelle O'Halloran