"The Finer Details..."

[FredM 0]

"The Finer Details..."

Stardate 0307.23

Captain Fred Michaels

 

 

       Though the ship's exact location was classified given the current circumstances, as was who was actually aboard, the time it took the Shuttle Jefferies to get from the Reaent to the Olympia had taken around eight hours at Warp 7. As Captain Michaels was learning, the trip from the Olympia to Starbase 345 was looking as if it would take almost thirteen hours. Mind you, the Jefferies wasn't exactly the smallest shuttle ever built but wasn't exactly a hotel on Risa.

 

       Upon his arrival, Fleet Admiral Salvar had been waiting in the shuttle bay. Such a procedure was quite uncommon, as normally a Lieutenant or perhaps even a Commander would be waiting to escort visiting personnel to the Admiral's office. When Fred has seen her, it had simply reinforced the fact that this was about to become a "You came but nothing happened" type meeting. As the commander of the Reaent found out in the hours following, that's exactly what would happen.

 

       As earlier reports had indicated, the same day the Cairo was destroyed Starfleet had also encountered two other saboteurs. In addition, similar to Doctor Matthews' discovery about Richard Drew, the personnel files of the said individuals had been alerted to allow for easy access to their specified targets. Unlike the Cairo however, the tides of fate were against the other two persons.

 

       While most of the situation was now going to be classified, Fred's initial concern about sweeping the incidents under the rug had been acknowledged and partly shared. Yet, outside of the Cairo, it was understood by all the implications of alerting the general public to the finer details of what had happened. After all, if all three attempts had succeeded, Starfleet would have had no choice in the matter. This would have resulted in any number of enemies now seeing an opportunity to strike against the Federation. Not through direct frontal attacks mind you, but through purely covert means.   Luckily, they weren't in that situation.

 

       As Michaels was told, the Cairo was publicly being acknowledged as having suffered from some type of catastrophic explosion. Mechanical failure or other issues would be suspected, but the investigation would publicly end there. Entering the finer details of it would result in the revelation that Starfleet's most confidential, and some of it's supposedly most secured information, had been edited to allow someone to impersonate Lieutenant Richard Drew.

 

       As with the Cairo, the other individuals attempting to sabotage two other starships had been impersonating Starfleet officers. In addition, they had apparently been aware of exactly when such a switch could take place and, like the Cairo, even knew of one ship's accelerated departure schedule. The U.S.S. Exeter, a Centaur Class Frigate, had been leaving Starbase 74 when a newly assigned Lieutenant Commander apparently attempted to disable the ship's warp core coolant injectors by causing a power overload in several key power relays. However, before the process was complete, the process was interrupted before being completed when engineering performed an unscheduled diagnostic. The said individual was pursued, but vaporized himself with some type of disrupter after killing two security officers.

 

       The interesting concept had been that the Lieutenant Commander's assignment had taken place at the exact same time that subspace traffic in the area was supposedly delayed several days due to relay maintenance. Yet no one in the area, similar to Starbase 345's situation, has since been able to confirm any maintenance.   The unlikely occurrence is that, as Salvar would point out, subspace in these two areas and near the Caitian homeworld all seemed to go offline at the exact same time.

 

       Near the Caitian homeworld, the Saber Class Scout U.S.S. Drake found itself suffering an entire environmental system failure just after picking up several passengers. One individual, apparently impersionating Commander Jake Williams, succeeded in destroying the ship's environmental controls but was interrupted when attempting to disable the secondary systems. What was later discovered and confirmed after the impersonator used a transporter to scramble his signal out into space, is that Commander Jake Williams was the First Officer aboard the U.S.S. Tolstoy. The Tolstoy is a ship which was lost at Wolf 359, all hands lost. Yet, the Commander's current service record somehow seems to indicate he was the lone survivor of the Rigel Class vessel.

 

       "Since all those involved in the situation have conveniently either perished or killed themselves," Salvar stated, "the only information we have comes from the supposedly disabled subspace relays, the Reaent's encounter at New Rigel and the continuing investigation into the whereabouts of the real Richard Drew and Muy Xiera." Later it would be confirmed, though not a surprise to Michaels, that Starfleet was no where closer to learning who had been behind the attacks and doubt it ever would be. "Outside of your analysis about the signal being sent from the moon, the one that somehow managed to appear out of nowhere, all we have been able to confirm is the person receiving the message was on Alpha Centuri," Salvar stated in a grim voice.

 

       As the Jefferies dropped out of warp and Starbase 345 became visible in the window, Fred shook his head slightly and sighed. At some point, the finer details about what had happened aboard the Cairo would remain public. "But for now, the more general the better until we can figure out who's behind this," Salvar had said shortly before the Reaent Captain's departure. What worried Michaels was if they would ever figure out who was behind it or would that person find them.