Personal Log Sd 10405.05

[Cptn Moose 0]

Zar Alces swore aubibly as sparks from the shield re-modulator singed his uniform. Not only did it hurt, but now he was going to smell of burnt synthetics until he could get a decent shower. And considering the beating that the Arcadia was sustaining, that wasn't bound to happen soon.

 

"What is happening? Does anybody know?" he called out in general. Engineering was in a state of organized chaos. Efficiency experts would call it pandemonium, but on the other hand, efficiency experts wouldn't know which end of a screwdriver to use if it wasn't labeled "This End Up". Everyone had a job to do, and it looked to Alces as if they were skillfully staying out of each other's way. It reminded him of the ballet on Windsor III, except that everyone was dressed.

 

"We've been attacked by a Romulan warbird," an unidentified voice shouted back. "We're going to try to enter the trans...". The hiss of a the faked warp core breech drowned out the sound. Did Alces hear that right? Was Captain Moose going to enter the transwarp conduit?

 

It was insane, and it wasn't fair. The ship couldn't withstand that kind of stress, especially with the shield re-modulator taking shots at him. And Moose had no business entering the conduit while Alces was anywhere on the ship. The last time that happened, Alces spent 10 years stranded on an unreachable chunk of rock in the Devil's Nebula. He wasn't supposed to be in space again, he was supposed to be retired on Risa ... planetbound. But that manipulative Captain Raishel had forced him back into service.

 

And then that ... that Moose, had gotten him involved in that whole Coalition thing. If Alces hadn't been on the Arcadia to take Hayden to meet the Coalition Ambassador, he never would have been dragged on the Romulan mission. He's be on a Starbase somewhere, playing dom'jot and cheating cadets out of their wages. If this conduit stranded them somewhere undesirable, Moose was going to owe him big.

 

But Alces knew that now he was the one who wasn't being fair. And his debt to Moose went back too many years to repay on a single mission. Hundreds actually, whether Moose knew it or not. He doubted that Moose was aware of his ancestors involvement in the NX project. But Zar had lived it, as Mirona Alces, and no matter how bad his memory was there were some things you never forgot.

 

Like this, he thought, as the evacuation klaxon sounded. As he was ushered out of main engineering, he thought again of that decade in the Devil's Nebula. Old debt or not, Moose would pay for this one.