Boss, if you’re hearing this message, it’s because I’ve failed to stop it sending. You’ve given me a lot of leeway with the Martian Thorn and it’s probably gotten me into a lot of trouble this time. Cargo and destination will be attached, it’s all on the company books as well. Anyway, something’s happened and I haven’t gotten back in time to stop this message. So, uh, Boss, want to come and bail my ass out of the fire? Trid, Telin, Matt and the rest of the crew would kinda appreciate it.

“Well, would you look at all of that,” Lewis Chin said from the helm as the Vondem Rose dropped out of warp right on the edge of Starbase 38’s traffic control bubble. Just like a good, well-behaved and proper merchant ship would.

“Uh, did we miss a memo?” Sidda asked as she swung her feet from over the command chair’s arm and onto the floor proper, leaning forward slightly with both hands gripping the arms in quick order. “Five…ten…fifteen…great bird, is the Federation invading the Delta Quadrant?”

On the main viewscreen of the Klingon bridge the great mass of Starbase 38, Guardian Station, was barely visible as a sliver of grey running down one side. The rest of it was filled with a myriad of starships from freighters, mining ships, ore processors, and auxiliary ships and sitting right near the space designated for the Barzan Wormhole, sitting in formation with all of their running lights and pageantry, was the better part of a Federation Starfleet task force looking ready to lead the next transit.

That was what had everyone’s attention.

With a few keystrokes into the small armrest console of her recently acquired command chair, Sidda brought up the magnification on the Federation starships until they occupied the entire viewscreen. “Command ships, recon vessels, rapid response, patrol and escort ships. Are we walking into a war?”

“I’d have hoped we’d have heard something about such before today,” Orelia muttered from Operations. “Figure it’s probably to do with all those civvy prospectors out there,” she continued. “Ferengi, Federation, a few Klingon ships. A couple of Cardassian ships as well. Good old fashion dilithium rush.”

“Doesn’t the Federation recrystallise dilithium?” Revin asked as she worked her way unchallenged across the bridge to stand beside Sidda, resting a hand on her lover’s shoulder, then across to the back of Sidda’s neck. “It was an important technology to helping them broker peace with the Klingons by not pressing claims over a hundred years ago, yes?”

“It was an important technological breakthrough at the time, but merely a part of many other factors,” Tavol said from the recently expanded science station. The Vondem Rose wasn’t some Starfleet ship, it wasn’t interested in solving space mysteries for the sake of solving them, but sometimes you had to and so Sidda had finally conceded the point, using their last bit of R&R to have work crews expand the paltry science station into a less-paltry science station for her resident Vulcan. “While the Federation does recrystallise as much dilithium as possible, it is not a perfect process. There is also the requirement of new dilithium for new starships as well and while the Federation does have vast reserves, the news from the Delta Quadrant is of easily accessible and abundant dilithium sites. Likely this rush will precede a construction boom in coming years.”

“So many ships, semi-hostile space, be a shame if some of them had some hard times and needed to be rescued, for suitable fees of course,” Sidda said with a smirk as she sat back, rolling her head back into Revin’s hand and looking up at her. “When did you get off duty?”

“When I finished all my tasks in the galley,” the Romulan woman said. “Chelok stew with fresh gremmit bread rolls for end of shift and what I was told is a farmer’s breakfast for delta shift.”

“Hmm,” Sidda intoned, then pulled on Revin’s arm, guiding the smaller woman to sit in her lap, her legs draped over the arm that Sidda’s had been not too long ago as she’d been lounging on her own bridge. “No Republic ships I see.”

“Likely busy still trying to figure out which asteroid or comet the Empire’s holdouts are hiding behind,” Orelia tossed out. “Then again, those fancy singularity drives don’t need dilithium right?”

“Don’t look at me,” Revin said as Sidda tossed her a quick look. “Ask the twins.”

“Hey Boss,” Lewis chipped in before much more could be said. “Look what I found.”

The ship that Lewis brought up on the viewscreen wasn’t much to look at, especially in that cluster and gaggle of ships ready for transit. It had the typical Starfleet white-grey hull, with darker and lighter patches as some mad designer insisted no doubt. It had the bright running lights drawing attention to the ensign and cheatline running along the drive-hull and to other parts of importance around the ship as well. Windows were lit here and there in a haphazard fashion.

“It looks like an Excelsior- and a Sovereign-class had a love child,” Sidda said after a short moment. “So, why is this so important?”

“Because of this,” Lewis said with some flourish, waggling a finger before bringing it down hard on a single red key on his console and bringing the visual zoom in once more on a specific patch of the ship’s hull somewhere along the starboard nacelle.

Endeavour NCC-91502

“Well he’s not getting the chair back,” Sidda quipped. “I just got the height sorted,” she turned the chair around to face Ops and gave Orelia a mock glare.

“Not my fault you short people have the seat so low.”

She turned up the intensity of her glare a notch for a moment, before giving her cousin a smile and turning back to the viewscreen. “So that’s what the Obena-class looks like. I gotta say, it’s kinda big.”

“It’s not the size,” Revin whispered in her ear which earned her a slight squeeze from Sidda.

“Kinda ugly,” Orelia chipped in. “But in a solid sorta way. If it’s some sort of Excelsior-class knockoff, they hit the mark.”

“Mr Chin,” Sidda finally said after a silent moment of contemplation. “Bring us into formation with that cluster of merchantmen at zero-one-six mark zero-two-one. But put us on the side closest to the Starfleet ships. Let everyone get a good look at us. Orelia, run up all the running lights as well. Paid for that purple paint, might as well show it off.”

“And T’Ael’s artwork as well?” Orelia asked.

“Of course. Now, who wants to place bets on when someone from Starfleet calls us? And traffic control doesn’t count.”

“It’s going to take a while for the reports to be filed, lost, refiled, found, lost again and then finally delivered to the command crew,” Lewis said. “So, twenty, thirty minutes?”

“Less than ten,” Revin added.

There was a solid series of knocks from Tactical and Sidda turned to see Orin signing. ‘Five minutes.’

“Well for my money,” Sidda said, “I’m going to say give them an hour. Long enough for everyone to settle in for the,” she checked the chronometer above the viewscreen, “twelve more hours before the wormhole opens, get bored and then start calling everyone they haven’t spoken to or seen in a while.” 

“If that’s the case,” Revin whispered in Sidda’s ear for none to hear, “I want to steal you away.”

“And invoke the goddesses of bad timing?” Sidda asked quietly, then gently pushed Revin off her lap so she could get to her feet. “Orelia, you have the conn. Call me if anyone calls yes?”

“I just send the calls straight through to your quarters cousin,” Orelia replied.

“Eh, works for me, nothing to hide.”

It was only after Sidda and Revin had left that Lewis turned to face those behind him. “You wouldn’t really put any calls straight through would you?” Then he looked to Orin. “Would she?”

‘Sidda has nothing to hide,’ Orin signed in response. ‘But if calls were ever sent through to my quarters directly, I would break fingers.’

“I have to much respect for your Jessica to ever do that Orin. Sidda on the other hand I can tease.”

“After all,” Lewis said, “what’s family for?”

“Emotional trauma, neglect, professional pressure that drives you to a life of crime?” Orelia asked.

“Well of course all that,” Lewis said flippantly.

“Then teasing and having your back in a firefight I guess,” Orelia answered.

“As always,” Tavol spoke, not looking away from his own console, “stunning intellectual conversations. My paper on civilian crew interactions continues to have more material.”

“You have to let us read it one day,” Orelia said.

“I intended to,” Tavol replied. “I intend to.”

The ready room, her office, was a far, far cry from the original Klingon design. It was no longer a harsh, spartan retreat for a command to brood in, to plot their next battle alone or with a select few. It was now a tastefully appointed space with clear design choices of two separate individuals.

Sidda had opted first of all to remove the original battle plate desk, letting her engineers recycle it for hull repairs at some point. Instead, she’d opted for a much lower desk and large pillows on the floor, ones with slight backs built into them. You could take the girl out of Orion, but not the Orion out of the girl and that opulence was now within her ability to reach out and grasp.

Of course, she’d wanted to go with a nice rich-coloured wooden desk but Revin had stepped in, opting for a dark verging on black wood chosen purely for its smooth texture. If she closed her eyes she could feel Revin’s point, but amongst the colour she’d assembled, it stood out, drawing attention to it.

A window had even been cut into the hull recently, giving a view of the outside universe. Lighting had been turned up, but instead of bringing light on harsh bare metal walls, they’d been hidden by tasteful silk drapings or sound-absorbing panels to make the space more colourful, warmer and less echoey.

A few concessions had been left if changed. The original Klingon display monitor on the wall had been replaced when it had been damaged during the operation to install her window. It had been replaced by a larger display they had procured in a Federation shipyard. A screen was a screen after all and she’d changed the UI to what was her brand-shade of purple. A computer terminal, the best civilian grade she could source, sat on her desk, but it had a convenient little hideaway under the desk when she wanted to put it out of sight. 

And a replicator, brand new top of the line, sat where the old Klingon one would have been and vastly, vastly more capable than its predecessor. She had to admit the Klingon preference for real, fresh food was much appreciated and continued with the galley, but occasionally you wanted a nice drink or a quick snack.

And so it was in this space that Sidda sat her cup of tea down on the desk, careful to use one of the coasters that Revin had informed her on pain of death to use, then circled the desk to her side of it and sat herself down cross-legged on her customer floor pillow.

“Computer, call the Wicked Witch,” she said after drawing in a breath, her words with an element of resignation to them.

“Working,” came the response, once more in that gruff male Klingon tone. No matter how much they tried, no matter if they did it themselves or had an expert sort it out for them, the ship’s computer occasionally reverted back to that voice set. She’d resigned herself to accepting it as just another quirk of the ship. R’tin she knew took it as a personal insult from the hardware he was determined to solve, while his sister had apparently settled for deciding the ship clearly hadn’t decided what it was just yet and was still working through a few things.

“After all, it was made one way, we’re trying to make it into something else,” T’Ael had said once in a meeting discussing the issue. “We’re the ones at fault here.”

“It’s a ship!” R’tin had argued back. “It does as we tell it.”

She had pointedly not taken a position, opting to let her engineers solve the matter and just be thankful her ship was dependable, save for changing its voice from time to time and that one door on deck four that had seemingly developed a taste for sentient flesh.

“Working,” the computer repeated as a series of logos popped up on the screen in a short series. Connecting to the Federation subspace network, being routed around from one area to another, then interfacing with Starfleet’s systems closer to its destination, bridging the gap between civil and Starfleet networks, before finally displaying in nice bold lettering across the middle of the screen ‘USS Sunshine Coast – Connecting…’

And there it sat for nearly two minutes, which wasn’t surprising at all. She’d called her mother with no attempt at subterfuge this time, so the call was most certainly being screened. Conversations finished, privacy sought, likely a fortifying moment taken before the call was finally accepted.

Compared to the opulence of her own ready room, her mother’s was downright austere. Draconian. The epitome of a professional officer. Save she noted for a single piece of artwork in a small frame on the table behind her mother and then a series of trinkets, likely gifts and mementoes from across her career. The artwork was the product of a child, a few figures in green, one with a splash of red, with what could charitably be called a starship hanging overhead.

“You kept it,” Sidda said with a slight point of her chin to get her mother to look over her shoulder in the right direction.

“Of course,” Tisa Sadovu said as she turned back to the screen. “You were so determined to follow me back then.”

“People change,” Sidda said.

“Not as much as you think,” Tisa said. “I read an interesting report recently about the breakup of a pirate network near the Paulson Nebula. Your name showed up in it. And again as a footnote on a report out of the Romulan Republic.”

“So? Just taking out the competition.”

“You aren’t a pirate Sidda.” Tisa’s tone was matter-of-fact.

“Am too.”

“As you want.”

There was a moment of silence as both women stared at each other, then a false start as both tried to talk before Sidda surrendered the start to her mother. Whose eyebrows furrowed for a moment, before she spoke. “There’s barely any delay on this call. Where are you?”

“Starbase 38,” Sidda supplied. “About to head to the Delta Quadrant, which is why I called actually. Over your side of the Federation, about to head off on a dangerous adventure, figured I’d call you.”

“More so than knocking over pirates and petty Romulan tyrants?” Tisa asked.

“Don’t forget D’Ghor murderers and small-time pirate queens.”

“Oh, how could I,” Tisa said dismissively.

“My friend is missing, and could be in serious trouble, so I’m going to rescue his ass from whatever fire he’s got himself into.”

“I’m hearing some interesting developments out of the DQ Sidda. I…I want you to take care of yourself.” And for once Tisa did sound worried while talking to her daughter.

“I’m sorry for the last call,” Sidda said. “I was angry at the D’Ghor butchers and took it out on you.”

“You’ve always been rather…passionate.” Tisa sighed, then rubbed at the bridge of her nose briefly. “You would have made an excellent captain you know. Determined to do the right thing, protect those that need protecting.”

“I wouldn’t have made it past lieutenant,” Sidda said. She hadn’t told her mother, or anyone outside of her own ship about the encounter with that Other Sidda, the one who had made it to captain, who had entered Starfleet and done all the things her mother had wanted of her. “Too many dumb and stupid rules.”

“I blame your father,” Tisa remarked. “I should have been there for you instead of focusing on my career. And then when I met Gavin I really should have taken you in.”

“How is Gavin by the way?” Sidda asked.

“You have never, ever asked about your stepfather. Who are you and what have you done with my rebenok?”

“I’m her evil twin from a parallel reality trying to lull you into a false sense of security and into revealing Starfleet’s grandest secrets. Is it working?” She stroked a non-existent beard and tried to give her best overly dramatic villain look at her mother.

“Not funny,” Tisa said in a way that got Sidda’s attention. A way that said such things weren’t to be joked about. “Gavin’s good. He’s currently on a book signing tour actually but we’re due to have a holiday together in a few months together.” There was an awkward pause before the older Sadovu continued. “Maybe you could come and visit?”

“Last time we met Gavin and I had a screaming match.” Sidda shrugged. “But I’ll think about it. Even try to be nice. Heck, I promise I won’t even bring a weapon this time.”

There was silence again, the conversation running low as two people unused to talking to each other tried their best, before Tisa squinted, then leaned forward to look at a specific detail on her screen, so Sidda stayed still to let her mother do so. “Necklace,” she stated. “Let me see it.”

Sidda smiled, truly, happily smiled like a giddy child, then did as her mother commanded, reaching up to pull the chain out from under her shirt where she kept it most of the time. A Klingon ship had a lot more things for chains to catch on and she didn’t want to risk it. It wasn’t a terribly fancy chain, but the gold, silver and rose gold braided ring she kept on it was. A single purple gemstone and a corresponding emerald were the only stones on the ring, set into the silver band and cut to fit into each other on a tiny scale that hinted at either true mastery or machined practice.

“That Romulan woman of yours?” Tisa asked. “Revi or something?”

“Revin,” Sidda corrected. “And yes. We’ve been engaged for a while now actually. She only bought me this recently since I went about getting her a nice ring she insists I hold for a wedding.” She held the necklace to the camera, then changed to holding the ring specifically to let her mother see it properly. “It pales in comparison to the Ring of Chula, but I like it.”

Tisa had sat forward to get a better look, then sat back after a few moments, both women relaxing into their seats. “Did you say the Ring of Chula? Isn’t that a ring from one of those stories your father told you growing  up?”

“Maybe? But it’s real and I’ve got it.” She went about producing the ring box from a wall safe and showing the piece off to her mother before putting it away. “But don’t worry, we’re not in some fool rush. We’re happy as is.”

“Your father is going to insist on some over-the-top affair when you do get married.”

“He’s a wealthy Orion merchant, of course he will. He’ll want to show off, show how his progeny is doing, how well he’s doing by being able to afford such a gala event,” Sidda rolled her eyes and leaned back into her pillow. “You know he still keeps your name by the way.”

“And he still swears by Orion law that we’re still together,” Tisa muttered. “I was a young idiot.”

“No argument here.” Sidda answered her mother’s glare with a smirk. “Look, I…I called because, well…”

“You don’t know if you’ll be coming back,” Tisa finished for her daughter. “But you’ve always come back. So, just do whatever you’ve done all those other times again. I don’t agree with all of your life choices rebenok, but they seem to work out for you.”

“You just want me to come back so you can yell at me for being an idiot and nearly getting myself killed properly don’t you?”

“And you can then yell at me, call me an old woman and kill the line before I make my point.”

Both mother and daughter had a short laugh at that, then silence lingered for a moment. “When I get back, I want you to meet Revin properly.”

“Not as some piece of eye candy draped across my daughter’s lap?” Tisa asked. “Just because I’m married and just because you think I’m an old woman, which I’m not thank you, doesn’t mean I don’t recognise a beautiful woman.”

“Mother!”

“Oh shut up,” Tisa snapped. “But yes, I’d like that.” Again silence settled over the line for a brief moment. “Captain Sidda,” she said, addressing her daughter as she knew she preferred, “I wish you fair skies, safe travels and bountiful loot.”

“Thank you, mother. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

They both lingered a moment more before Sidda closed the channel down. She stared at the blank screen for a moment, wanting to call her mother back, talk for hours, maybe rebuild some bridges she’d burnt while standing on them, but then stopped herself. Slow and careful reproachment was probably best. Her cup of tea was reclaimed and sipped at, and then she tapped one of the controls on the computer and waited for the ready room door to fully open before she spoke.

“I didn’t start a fight this time,” she said to the hallway outside.

Revin slinked around the door frame, tapping the key to close the door behind her as she stepped in, then settled herself down on one of the pillows opposite Sidda. “Holiday with your mother after we return?” she asked.

“I swear your hearing is far, far too good,” Sidda said, hiding her face behind her cup for a moment. “Big step, meeting the mother.”

“Especially since she is the matriarch of your family,” Revin supplied. “Orelia told me. An absent matriarch, but one nonetheless.” She smiled, lifting her chin and playing at a regal bearing. “I shall deign to meet the mother of the woman who so brazenly proposed her hand to me.”

“Careful princess,” Sidda chided, “you might just find what us commoners do to the nobility when we get our filthy hands on them.”

“Promises, promises,” Revin said back with a brief waggle of her eyebrows, then slowly stood and circled around, holding her hand out to Sidda. “Come along. I want your opinion on some cakes I made since Kevak isn’t a fan of fluffy and sweet things.”

“Cream icing?” Sidda asked, letting herself be pulled to her feet and standing still for a quick peck on the cheek from her love.

“Later,” Revin answered.

“Oh the trials you put me through,” Sidda said, then finished her tea in a large gulp and placed the cup for recycling. “I also need to see where’s good for holidaying over these parts for when we get back.”

“Risa? Casperia? What about…”

“Good afternoon travellers and welcome to the Delta Quadrant,” Lewis Chin announced rather loudly as the Vondem Rose escaped the open maw of the Barzan Wormhole and into free space, along with a few dozen other ships from the Alpha Quadrant.

Already some of the pack leaders were breaking up into their little gaggles of aligned merchant ships and escorts. Some were likely undertaking checks of their ships and systems before getting underway, others were rapidly moving away at warp, having opted to get moving and make claims before others showed up behind them.

“The Delta Quadrant, for first time travellers, is home to a variety of travel concerns and advisories. All passengers can rest easy in that we will be refraining from checking in on some of the more exotic dangers, opting instead to head in the opposite direction from the likes of Borg Collective. For the other dangers in the quadrant we have come with the finest Klingon military hardware to ensure your safety and comfort.”

“Lewis, if I ever, ever get bored and go mad enough to ever found a cruise line, I promise you can be the first ship’s captain, but until then, please shut up,” Sidda said. With a quick laugh and a ‘yes ma’am’ from her helm officer, she turned to face Orelia at Ops. “Got directions to Gaeda’s destination?”

“Naroq sent them through before we left. As well as up to date financials for you to look at.” That last sentence from her cousin was said with some disdain. Orelia really didn’t like the idea of the legitimate side of their enterprises, though she did seem to enjoy the extra benefits it provided her. And she wasn’t exactly a fan of Ferengi in general, despite Naroq being female.

With a shake of her head and opening her eyes wider, the body language question of ‘Well?’ was received as Orelia shrugged an apology before looking down at her screen. “Bearing two six five mark zero zero six, twenty five light years. A KIII star with a couple of gas giants and three sizable asteroid belts.”

“Thank you,” Sidda said, then spun back around, really enjoying the much freer and lighter motion of the Starfleet chair, out of place with the rest of the decor, compared to her old Klingon chair. “Mr Chin, make your course two six five mark six and prepare to go to warp. But first let’s get ourselves out of everyone’s way shall we?”

“Behaving myself or showing off?” he asked in reply.

“Only if you can get fancy around Endeavour without pissing anyone else off, otherwise just behave.” Punching a key on her armrest brought up a tactical plot on her viewscreen and she knew that what she’d just allowed was impossible and so did Lewis as he settled for finding a hole in the expanding formation of ships and just opted to make a break for open space, taking the ship to full military acceleration up to full impulse and away.

He had to show off somehow and piling on the speed was the best he could do, with a barrel roll she noted for flair. 

“Warp speed in three…two…one…” Lewis counted down before he pushed the button that launched the Vondem Rose to speeds far in excess of the speed of light. “Warp seven point five and holding steady.”

“Excellent Lewis. Orelia, activate the cloak and let’s disappear.”

“Starfleet will likely still be able to see us, you know. Or at least infer where we are.”

“Yah, but only for a while and none of the civvies will be able to. And likely not any of the locals either. Not straight away at least.”

Admitting the lost point, Orelia tapped a series of keys and the telltale hum of the Vondem Rose shifted just slightly as the ship’s cloaking device came online, disappearing the ship from most sensors thanks to a cloaking device only a decade old versus their last one. Their current one had less than a hundred hours of use on it thanks to the IKD Va’thu spending so much time in mothballs. It was however one which Starfleet likely had good intel on thanks to previous visits from Starfleet engineers when the ship came under new management, so if Rourke and Co had dutifully shared the details, the Rose was likely hard to spot, but if they were careful could be the next best thing to invisible.

“Captain,” Tavol said from Science, “I would recommend we decrease to warp seven point two.” He tapped a few keys and brought up his findings on the main viewscreen for all to see. “Stellar dust and subspace conditions means our current speed would likely be difficult for the cloaking device to mask completely.”

“Why can’t the universe just be kind for once?” Sidda growled. “Lewis, slow us down. In fact, Tavol, you’ve got the throttle. I want to go as fast as we can while being as sneaky as we can. You two make it happen.”

“Understood,” Tavol replied.

“Works for me,” Lewis answered cheerfully.

“And with that,” Sidda got to her feet, “I’m going to tour my fine ship, then we’ll have a briefing in say an hour?” She waited for a chorus of agreement. “Lewis, you’ll have the conn during the meeting. Orelia, Orin, Tavol and I’ll see which of the twins I can drag along to the briefing.”

“You may wish to bring Doctor Ward along as well, Captain,” Tavol provided. “Starfleet have provided some interesting travel advisories that I wish to bring up with her and the wider command crew.”

She nodded in agreement to the Vulcan before handing command over to Orelia, the larger woman happy to stay at her station, before leaving the bridge and wandering through the halls of her ship. The Vondem Thorn had been small enough to go from one end to the other in no time at all, but the Vondem Rose had put that notion to rest a long time ago. The crew went from tight-knit to just over an order of magnitude larger. There were multiple decks!

And she wouldn’t have it any other way!

She knew it was a trick of memory, thinking she could walk her old ship in a handful of steps, but compared to the Rose, the Thorn was tiny! But compared to so many other ships out there, her Rose was tiny as well. But for what she wanted in life right now, it was perfect. Her, a gaggle of rogues, the galaxy at large at their mercy – anything more would be too much like starting that slippery slope to responsibility and command.

Engineering went from a cramped space barely big enough for everything to the powerhouse of the ship, though somehow retaining some of its cramped nature thanks to Klingon ‘efficiency’. A dozen people were there, going about the tasks of monitoring systems, preventative maintenance or repairs and that was just those that would have been in Engineering properly. Klingon concepts of acceptable life support had been augmented by Romulan tolerances and Orion wealth so the space wasn’t the sauna it could have been. If anything the air was too dry, wicking away moisture in the gentle heat.

“T’Ael,” Sidda called to the woman who was nominally the Rose’s chief engineer, her brother had opted to not be in charge. “Staff meeting in an hour. Want you there.”

“No can do,” she countered, tapping at a console, getting an angry response, then slamming her fist into it as a response. “R’tin can go.”

“What’s wrong with my ship?” Sidda asked as she closed, opting to stand on the other side of the console. “Anything serious? Because we can’t go back to get parts easily you know and if we need to go begging to Starfleet I’d like to go do it now.”

“No, no, nothing serious. Yet.” She was clipped and to the point. “Just an issue that kind of needs my attention.” She looked up just as one of the other engineers approached with a padd, this one brand new and of Federatio civilian design. “Secondary EPS shunts are playing up and I want to sort it out now before someone shoots at us and we need it.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Sidda said, then turned to face the rest of Engineering. “R’tin!” she shouted. “Briefing room! One hour!”

“Right boss!” came a muffled response from somewhere, behind something or inside some service space. It was accompanied by a series of rapid and aggressive clangs. “If I can dig myself out of this!”

“Sorry I’m late,” R’tin offered an hour later as he stepped into the briefing room. “But trust me, you wanted me to have a shower first.” Taking his seat, he offered a smile to all present and settled on Sidda last. “Found the power issue finally, T’Ael is working with Pete and Uuhilt to get it properly sorted. Half a day at most. Turns out it was a tertiary tap that kept turning itself on and then the software shut down the starboard secondary just like it’s meant to.”

“Sounds good.” Sidda let quiet settle before starting on the briefing. “So, as you all know by now we’re out here to track down Gaeda and crew and rescue them from whatever fresh hell the Delta Quadrant has thrown at them.”

“If there’s anything to rescue,” Orelia grumbled. “Likely he’s lost the Martian Thorn you know.”

“I don’t care about the ship, I care about the people,” Sidda chided. “And besides, we can always go and pilfer another ship.” That earned a few grins, a frown from Melissa Ward and passive lack of expression from Tavol. “Heck, we could even try and procure a legal ship.” Mock shock horror came from R’tin at that, before he apologised.

“Humpf,” Orelia said. “Still though, he’s lost company property at a minimum.”

“Let’s just find out what happened first shall we?” Sidda asked.

“Fine.” Orelia tapped at a command key and the main monitor in the briefing room came up with a star system diagram, a picture of a Ferengi Daimon and text that at any reasonable distance was just a touch too small to read. “Gaeda took a cargo delivery contract to bring a special cargo out to a Ferengi mining concern. Daimon Hilke was willing to pay for delivery and a fee for having the Thorn out of commission out here in the DQ. From what was mentioned, the concern is mining dilithium, likely this new blood dilithium knowing Ferengi.”

“Likely,” R’tin spoke. “Very, very likely indeed. Interesting that they decided to set up camp so far away from the wormhole.”

‘To get away from anyone else,’ Orin signed after tapping the table to get everyone’s attention. ‘Distance means safety means less need for security.’

“And lower costs mean more profit,” Sidda followed up.

“There is some concern with this new dilithium variant,” Tavol said. “Starfleet has issued medical advice and a series of other warnings. I am naturally curious as to the medical issue, but confess my true interest lies in the scientific phenomena that gave rise to this blood dilithium.”

“Well, we’ve got a couple of probes on board, and some scanners that might help. I’m sure we can help with that curiosity Tavol.” Sidda waited for the Vulcan to subtly nod his head. “Bones, had a chance to read Starfleet’s no doubt hyperbolic warning?”

“Actually, if anything they might be under-selling it.” Bones’ voice was gruff as usual, the older woman a veteran of far, far too much in life and a former Starfleet officer as it was anyway. A frontier doctor they’d picked up when she realised the crew was ‘doing good’ and needed a ‘sawbones’ in her estimation. It wasn’t a hire so much as Bones had adopted the crew and no one had thought to tell her otherwise.

She wasn’t the crew’s mother, more like their hard-working, tough love aunt who would call them stupid when they were and offer mild praise for doing good. Much like Kevak, which is probably why the old woman and the old Klingon had some weird relationship going on that Sidda wasn’t going to pry into. She wanted to survive her next visit to the infirmary and the galley as it was.

Taking the silence as a request to continue, Bones leaned forward over the table just a touch. “Apparently this Blood Dilithium has severe and unpredictable effects on telepaths and empaths. Ranging from inability to control one’s senses, loss of emotional control and inhibitions, to total suppression in others. With a lack of sample sizes and cases, Starfleet still hasn’t got a list of what this stuff does and to who.”

“Interesting,” Tavol said quietly. “I shall have to take extra precautions.”

“And none of this stuff goes near the brig,” Bones said. “That fucker you’re keeping doesn’t need to be made any creepier Sidda.”

“We’ll all take precautions. I don’t want to find out someone was latently telepathic or such by having them suddenly floating down the halls claiming to be a god.”

“Eh, just drop a rock on them if they do,” Bones added before sitting back. “Works every time.”

“Okay…Orin, keep a rock handy.” Sidda chuckled as Orin nodded, even grabbing a padd to take a note, bringing a serious note to the joke. “And what about the engines R’tin, anything to be concerned about?”

“Nah,” the romulan engineer added, relaxed as possible given the circumstances. “Rose isn’t a dancer Boss, she’s a godsdamn mountain goat. If this wave repeats it could have some impact on our engines, but we’re not bleeding edge like those Fleeters are, vulnerable to every tiny little change in space and subspace. Solid, dependable, field-serviceable Klingon engineering. Guess those violent barbarians can get some things right.”

“Watch it,” Bones growled.

“And their cooking. And singing. And fighting,” R’tin quickly added. “They get those right too.” It didn’t make his faux pas a thing of the past, but it was oil on rough seas at least. “Sorry doc.”

“Right, well then, this all sounds like fun and games, doesn’t it?” Sidda asked. “Orelia, Orin and R’tin, I want this ship fighting ready when we get to Daimon Hilke in case we need to convince him to be polite. Bones, Tavol – pour over everything about this Blood Dilithium we’ve got and then figure out best steps for handling disasters. If that’s all then folks, be about it.”

As the room emptied out, Sidda found herself alone with Bones still seated. She waited for the door to close on the last to leave before speaking up. “I’m not just worried about the Vulcans onboard you know,” she said, nursing her cup of coffee before looking down the table. “We’ve got a handful of Romulans aboard ship as well you know.”

Sidda nodded, understanding the additional problem. “Honestly think it could be that much of a problem?”

“They’re close enough genetically it could be,” Bones answered. “Guess we’ll find out.”

“Any friends out there you could check with? Must be more than a few other Romulans running around out there that someone must have noticed something.”

Bones snorted, then slowly stood. “I’ll see,” she supplied. “But no promises. Too many young and cheerful doctors these days that haven’t seen real horrors yet.” She stopped next to Sidda. “Yet.” And with that she left.

“Cheery,” Sidda allowed herself once Bones was out of the room. “Just cheery.”

“A D’kora, two Nausicaan escort ships and something I’ve never seen before,” Orelia announced from Ops as the Vondem Rose came to a stop a good million kilometres from what was proudly announced as the Hilke Mining Consortium’s Delta Dilithium Drilling Operation, or the DeDiDrOp. Apparently, in Ferenginese it sounded better and was some sort of play on words, but lost on the crew without Naroq around to explain the joke at the moment.

And which Lewis Chin and spotted sounded an awful lot like ‘dead drop’ in Federation Standard, then quipped about how Ferengi would work miners till they dropped dead, then charge the families for corpse removal service. A poor stereotype of rampant unrestrained capitalism to be sure, but it had earned a chuckle from more than a few of the bridge crew.

The other ship was brought up on screen and was a massive monstrosity. What looked like a large engine cluster at the rear, a command module at the front and a central spine that ran over the top of massive cargo bays large enough to store the Vondem Rose with room left over. And that was just one of the three large pods underslung along the length of the ship. It looked like it had seen better days, but was apparently well cared for if it was still running.

The foremost cargo pod however wouldn’t be taking much cargo for it looked to have been converted into a through-deck loading platform for barges coming up from the large asteroid to which all the ships present hung over. Large expansive openings secured by yellow flickering atmospheric forcefields let the barges pass in and out, unloading their cargo onto conveyors leading into the rest of the cargo pod.

“Transportation and refining in the foremost pod,” Tavol announced. “Storage in the other two. Large passages between the pods likely indicate they were used for transporting mining equipment as well which the barges were likely able to deploy.”

“Hey kids, who wants to go camping? We’ll load up the car with snacks and go dig up some valuable rocks,” Lewis joked. “Makes sense though. Fill up on what you need, and as you use it, fill up on what you find. Head home.”

“Essentially yes,” the Vulcan agreed. “A mobile mining outpost it would appear. Limited refining capability to allow them to minimise waste product transportation to better facilities. Support facilities and equipment for the staff and mining gear. A crude but effective design.”

“Can any of them see us?” Sidda asked after a moment, her hands together steepled under her chin in thought.

“No response from any of them.” Orelia’s response was accompanied by switching to a tactical display, showing the seven hundred kilometre diameter asteroid as a mere pinprick and floating boxes with lines traced to where the other ships had been detected in order over a large crater and patch of blood dilithium. Then she zoomed out, far out, till a pinprick was added for the Vondem Rose a total of a million kilometres away. “The Nausicaans probably need us to start shooting at them before they’d see us. The Ferengi…depends on how cheap his sensors are, but under cloak, I’d wager we’re invisible. We could knock on his hull without him seeing us.”

“Hmm…So this Daimon Hilke is working with aliens to mine dilithium. And we don’t know who they are.” Sidda was thinking out loud and no one interrupted her as she thought. Primarily because they didn’t get a chance to as she jumped to her feet. “Drop cloak and raise shields. Standby weapons in case they get fighty.”

“Aye,” Orelia replied and the tone of the bridge changed as everyone turned back to their consoles, ready just in case of the worst. As the humm of the ship shifted, then shifted again as the shield generators came up, the entire response was a series of chirps from Ops and Orelia grumbling. A disappointed grumbling. “Two incoming hails.”

“The unknown and the Ferengi?”

“Yup.”

“Let’s start with the unknown.” Sidda crossed her arms tightly and straightened her back as best she could as a large disinterested-looking alien appeared on her screen. He, or she, it wasn’t immediately obvious, wore a rather plain uniform, practically a jumpsuit and wasn’t even looking at their communication pickup. 

“Unidentified ship, this is the Corevel Mining Consortium Platform Prospector 17. Be advised this platform is armed and able to defend itself and Malon Security Forces have been contracted to provide cargo recovery and threat elimination services in the event of unlicensed piracy. You are to remain a minimum of two light seconds from this platform unless otherwise invited. Prospector 17 out.”

And with that, the channel went dead before anyone on the Vondem Rose could say anything else at all.

“Malon? Corevel Mining Consortium?” Orelia asked.

“A species that the USS Voyager encountered. Voyager’s encounters were primarily with radioactive waste disposal ships. This being a mere-mining vessel may explain the apparent good health that our caller was in.” Tavol’s dispassionate analysis was simple enough for most to understand.

“Well, best put the Ferengi,” Sidda said.

“Klingon ship!” a whiny, nasally voice screeched. “Go away!” it further demanded. The man was wearing a uniform, but not nearly as fancy as the one the file photo for Daimon Hilke had shown. That file photo was also excellently shot, giving the Daimon as heroic a posture as possible for a bureaucrat. This individual on screen was familiar in looks but younger and obviously less wealthy with his plainer uniform. “We’ve got Nausicaans and our ship is heavily armed as well. And we’ve got local friends too! Now take your stupid small little ship and go away you thugs!” 

“Are you blind?” Sidda asked immediately after the Ferengi stopped speaking. “Did your optometrist overcharge for poor results?”

“What?” the man asked, visible confusion on his face twitching to his ears.

“I asked if you were blind. Then implied you got scammed by an eye doctor.”

“Now listen here Orion! I’ll have you,” the Ferengi started, only to stop as soon as Sidda threw her arms up in the air.

“Oh, so you can see! Excellent! Now tell me, how many Klingon warships do you know with an Orion in command, at least two others on the bridge, humans and even a Vulcan? And not a Klingon in sight! Hmm?” She stepped forward towards the pickup. “We. Aren’t. Klingon.”

Everyone could see the cogs in this man’s brain working for likely the first time in ages. Individual pieces of information being accepted, weighed against each other and then conclusions reached. “Orion pirates!” he gasped, pushing himself back from his monitor.

“Orion traders,” Sidda corrected him.

“Same difference!”

“No, see, we’re traders when outnumbers, pirates when not. Right now, as you pointed out, you’ve got protection, so that makes us…” she rolled her hand at him, indicating for him to continue the thought.

“Traders.” He scooted back towards his monitor, then spoke quieter, conspiratorial even as his face took up the entirety of the Rose’s viewscreen. “There’s only one commodity here to trade Orion and Daimon Hilke isn’t in the mood for small-time deals.”

“I want to speak with Hilke. I’m wanting to trade for some information he has and am willing to make it profitable. No loss of profit on his dilithium trade and he makes money off of just telling me something.”

The young man stroked his chin and thought about it for a moment. “There’s a scheduling and appointment fee. An entourage fee applies as well, double for extras that aren’t prepaid.” The way he spoke hinted at someone making things up on the spot, but decent enough at the improvisation game. “Ten strips for the appointment, three for each entourage member up to three, then four for each after that.”

She sighed and turned her back to the viewscreen, giving Orelia the hand gesture to mute the channel momentarily. “Any takers on this fee going directly to whoever this is?”

“Not a chance Boss.” Lewis swivelled in his chair with an exasperated look. “He’s gouging because it’s the only money he’s going to see on this whole trip.”

“Orelia? Orin? Tavol?”

“Gambling is not something I indulge in during duty,” Tavol replied. Orelia and Orin both just shook their heads, unwilling to take the bet.

With a hand gesture the channel was unmuted. “Eight strips for the appointment and two strips, two slips per each entourage member. And you pay me six slips not to tell the Daimon you’re marking up appointment fees by double and pocketing all the extra profit.”

It only took a moment for the Ferengi to nod in agreement before taping at keys, a corresponding chirp at Orelia’s console when he was finished. “Clearance to approach the DeDiDrOp granted. The appointment fee will need to be paid upfront before meeting with the Daimon. Payment details will be provided shortly.” And with that the channel was closed.

“I’m thinking nephew,” Sidda said as the screen went back to the forward view if the bridge had a window that was.

“Cousin,” Orelia said.

“Idiot son,” Lewis added. “No, wait, the actual Daimon Hilke and what is on file is his assassin distraction.”

“That would seem highly unlikely,” Tavol countered. “But as we have no further information on the Ferengi personnel here, we won’t know unless we ask.”

“And pay the genealogy fee of course.”

“Of course,” Taovol replied to Lewis’ joke.

“…still though, he’s a funny guy for a Vulcan,” Sidda said over the fading hum of the transporter, her conversation cut in half from one place to the other by the transporter as she, Orin, R’tin and Deidrick all transported down the domicile that had built on the surface of the asteroid claimed by the joint Malon-Ferengi mining operation. 

A crater, rimmed with blood dilithium like an exposed geode, had been sealed against the ever-hungry vacuum of space by a vast triple-layered atmospheric forcefield whose sheer size made it an impressive engineering feat in its own right. The crater was nearly ten kilometres across, extensive for the size of the asteroid and as such Tavol had opted to stay aboard the Rose to undertake scans. The asteroid was large enough that its own mass had sphericalised the mass. Still, even from orbit the effect of the impactor that made this crater was evident with subtle waves radiating across the surface, frozen in time from ages past.

“The way Lewis tells it,” Deidrick said, his German accent faint, the edges worn down likely by education and his time away from home, “Tavol is hilarious, retelling the jokes constantly. I suspect something is lost in the telling, no?”

“Oh, certainly,” R’tin said. “Tavol’s got this dry wit and deadpan delivery. He could tell a joke and give a casualty report without breaking stride. Honestly, he’d have killed in a comedy club on Romulus. Or been killed. Take your pick.”

“Honestly I think Lewis just has the hots for Tavol,” Sidda said as she watched a Ferengi with two Nausicaans behind him striding their way. The beam-in coordinates they’d been given were a large gallery looking over the crater from where the domicile had been perched high up on the rim, serving as a primary control point for the atmosphere shield, glamorous residence for the Daimon and his staff and more importantly a place to look down upon ‘the staff’. “This should be Assitant Deputy Manager Lek if we’ve been steered correctly.”

And sure enough once introductions had been made, the Ferengi’s identity confirmed, they proceeded to follow as a tour along the gallery window was given. Below them, patches of the crystals had already been cleared, more every minute by muscle and machine power. But mine entrances could also be seen with tracks bearing automated carts trundling along, unloading crystals into hoppers for the barges before returning down the mines for more bounty.

From this distance the only workers that they could make out were all Malon, all the others in the distance across the crater rendered into small motes operating toy-like machines as they went about their duties. There had to be thousands of workers just in the fields along the crater floor, unknown numbers in the mines beneath. Eventually, though the tour ended, an offer for an extended tour was made for a price, of course, promptly refused, and the team were finally seen into the office of Daimon Hilke.

To call it garish and over the top would be an insult to garnish and over-the-top design choices. While latnium was a liquid, typically traded safely encased in worthless gold, its reputation for being bonded to plate surfaces was well known as was its use for the extremely and obscenely rich alone. So by plating so much of his office in latnium, Hilke was making an unforgettable declaration of his wealth.

Or compensating for something.

Still, knowing Ferengi banking fees, plating everything in latnium was probably not a bad choice either.

“Don’t talk,” Hilke declared in a nasal voice as he focused on a screen before him, its contents rapidly flowing as his eyes whipped over it. “Grubs down, starship manufacturing up, Troika Arms up…” he was muttering as the news feed continued. “Pah! Another union forming! The Grand Nagus is going to ruin everything! More then he already has!” His exasperation was evident for all before he pushed the monitor away in anger and looked up.

He squinted at all of them, then glared at Sidda directly before literally clamouring over his desk, jumping off of it and walking over to her, pulling out an actual monocle to look at her. “Hmm…tall, healthy, young enough. Five bricks for her and not a slip more,” he said to Orin without hesitation.

“Oh fuck,” R’tin muttered, rolling his eyes. There was no question about stepping back when Deidrick tugged on his elbow.

“Excuse me?” Sidda asked.

“You let her talk?” Hilke demanded of Orin. “Four bricks since I’ll have to sort that out.”

Before Sidda could respond, her hand already starting to brush her jacket out of the way of her holster, Orin stepped forward between Hilke and her and signed at her, turned enough to let Deidrick and R’tin see. ‘Calm cousin, we can’t shoot our way out just yet.’

She squinted up at him, anger all over, then let out a breath and pulled her hand away from her weapon as she nodded then mouthed to him ‘I’m at least worth a pallet of bricks.’

‘Likely ten pallets,’ Orin replied then looked to Deidrick, gave the man a single nod and he stepped forward.

“Apologises Daimon Hilke, but Master Orin won’t be parting with his…” Deidrick hesitated a moment, “negotiation enhancer.”

“Hmm…well it won’t work! To much snuff you see,” Hilke commented, then looked around Orin’s bulk at Sidda one last time. “Shame. Now, what do you want?”

“Master Orin is after the location or last known trajectory of the ship known as the Martian Thorn which was contracted to make a delivery to you.”

Hilke turned on Deidrick immediately, eyes squinting, then shuffled hurriedly back to his desk and his throne-like chair behind it. “No. No no no. Don’t know what you’re talking about. Don’t know this ship. Don’t know anything about any delivery.”

“We’re just after the ship and the crew. We have no qualms or interest in any business you’re engaged in,” Deidrick said, talking a couple of small steps forward. “If you could just…”

“No! I said no! I want you to leave now!”

“We can pay you,” R’tin chipped in from the back.

“How much?” Hilke asked, almost as if it was a trained reaction before he shook his head. “No! You haven’t got enough latnium to make worthwhile…though…” He tilted his head again to look at Sidda.

A few minutes later they all rematerialised on the transporter pad of the Vondem Rose, though some were less dignified than others. Deidrick was sporting a red mark on his left cheek the size of a fist, but that was the least undignified thing. That wholly belonged to Sidda who was being carried over Orin’s shoulder, though her fit had given way to resignation as she now let herself be carried off the pad and set on her feet.

“Misogynistic capitalist scumbag!” she exclaimed.

“So…a Ferengi?” R’tin clarified.

As Sidda barged out of the transporter room she barely missed Orelia, who let her go, then stepped in, looked over Orin, Deidrick and R’tin and shook her head. “So they aren’t shooting at us, that’s nice.”

“Didn’t get the info either.” Deidrick said. “First Hilke wanted to buy the Boss for five bricks, then wanted to trade the information for her. Then declared we get out of his office and take ‘our wild creature’ with us. He’s some pre-reformation Ferengi.”

“Five bricks?” Orelia asked. “Boss is worth at least ten bricks.”

“Orin thinks she’s worth a pallet,” R’tin said as he stepped past the man, giving him a pat on the arm. “You know you don’t have to suck up to her right?”

‘Never hurts to suck up to the boss,’ Orin signed. ‘But someone has to do damage control with her.’

“Not me,” everyone else in the room exclaimed in quick order. 

“So, what exactly happened?” Orelia asked as she piled into the briefing room the three men that had accompanied Sidda to see the Ferengi Daimon. She’d opted to get a proper debriefing from them in moderate privacy versus right there in the transporter room where the operator would hear everything and anyone in the hall as well, then from there the gossip network would have it in the hears of intelligence agencies the galaxy over.

“As we said,” Deidrick had waited for the door to close behind him at least. None of them took seats which just highlighted the size difference between Orelia, Orin, Deidrick and then R’tin in his own weight class. “Hilke made some flippant comment about wanting to buy Sidda. Orin stepped in to stop her immediately opening up on him, I stepped in playing the part of Master Orin’s interpreter,” he held a hand indicating Orin, who smiled and nodded his head, “and Hilke then just kept dumping fuel on the fire.”

“Don’t forget he kind of lost it when we mentioned the Martian Thorn. Something happened there Orelia and Hilke doesn’t want to talk about.” R’tin hadn’t opted to sit, but perching on the table’s edge wasn’t out of the question. “He shut down, said he knew absolutely nothing, then suggested there was one price we might have that could jog his memory, implying the Boss, and then she lost it. Orin bailed her up over his shoulder and we high-tailed it with a Ferengi shrieking at us that we’ll never do business with him.”

‘Never seen her like that,’ Orin signed. ‘She would have shot him as well if I hadn’t grabbed her gun hand.’

“Good call on that big guy,” R’tin said. “Seriously, it was like even the concept of slavery was pissing her off.”

“It should piss anyone off,” Orelia grumbled. “And we’ve all seen dear cousin’s anti-slavery drive recently enough.” They had after all delivered most of the slavers to a Federation magistrate for processing shortly after collecting them from Port Royal, but three of them had taken rather long walks outside when the width and breadth of their operations had been discovered.

“Okay, so, we’ve lost the trail then?” R’tin asked.

“There is another group out there,” Deidrick stated. “We only went to Hilke because his assistant was talking to us and we have some idea of what a Ferengi is and wants. We could try these Malon folks.”

“You mean I could try these Malon,” Orelia clarified and Deidrick nodded in the affirmative. “Well, we can always try at least, right?” She took two steps towards the door that would lead most directly to the bridge, down the ship’s neck. “Oh, uh, did any of you actually see any slaves down there?”

‘No,’ Orin replied. ‘Plenty of hired muscle and Ferengi corporate types milling about.’

“And the Malon we saw were all working in the fields or mines without your usual slave inducements. I suspect they’re all just underpaid miners.” Deidrick pulled out a small device from a pocket, not much larger than a combadge but with a lens on one side and a simple button on the other. It wasn’t a great image recorder, but it was decent enough and lacked anything a modern holorecorder would have to set off alarms. “Fields of this blood dilithium stuff and they’re just taking it out of the ground.” The camera was tossed to Orelia.

“Right, well, let’s call the Malon and see if they want to talk business.” She looked at Orin and smiled. “Talk to Kevak, get some finger food ready. If we’re going to talk to the Malon, let’s do it with proper Orion hospitality.” Then her eyes locked on R’tin just as he was opening his mouth. “Vondem Orion hospitality, R’tin.”

“Yes ma’am. Lavish setting, nice food, and relaxing discussion. Absolutely no belly dancing.”

“Were you offering?” she asked.

“The galaxy isn’t ready for this,” R’tin replied, waving a hand to indicate his lithe form.

Not but an hour later however and Orelia found herself in sickbay, summoned with Orin on her heels by the beckoning command of Bones. It hadn’t been some polite call directly to them, asking them to come, but a shipwide barking. “Orelia, Orin, sickbay, now!” had echoed through the ship.

That directness was apparently one of the reasons Sidda liked the elder human and had kept her around. It was, Orelia had decided, an acquired taste and one she hadn’t yet. She found Bones to abrupt, grating and disrespectful. Likely it was a shared opinion, so the two would have that in common at least.

She hadn’t even had a chance to ask what the issue was before Bones was upon them, tricorder in hand, the wand from the front of the older Starfleet model in her other and waving around her throat, then the same treatment with Orin. “Typical young doctors,” Bones grumbled as she went to the computer terminal and loaded the tricorder’s findings into it.

“What,” Orelia started, then stopped as Orin tapped on her shoulder then pointed past her to a bed where Sidda was lying on her side, a blanket pulled up to her shoulder, Revin seated in a chair next to her. “What’s going on? What’s happened to Sidda?”

“Exhaustion,” Bones answered as she spun about with a hypospray in hand and stalked back over to them. “And if you don’t want to end up stretched out on one of my biobeds, you’ll be a good girl and take your medicine.”

“And if I refuse?”

“If this was a Starfleet ship, I’d relieve you of command. But it ain’t,” Bones shrugged, “so I could just settle for shooting you and then administering this boosted pheromone and adrenal suppressant.”

Orin pushed past her, presenting his upper arm to Bones and sighed one word. ‘Explain.’

“Something down there caused the captain’s body to get a little hyperactive on pheromone and adrenaline production. Like, wore her out while she was pissed off and sulking in her quarters hyperactive. Only reason she’s in here at all is missy there,” Bones tossed a thumb over her shoulder at Revin as she dosed Orelia, “called me for help when Sidda curled up for a nap and wouldn’t wake when she wanted her to.”

“Wanted her to?” Orelia asked.

“Closed space, Orion pheromones, already existing emotional bond. What do you think? Revin is as high as a kite right now and I’m lacking any medications I could use to flush her system at the moment. Going to be another few hours for substances to synthesize correctly in my lab.”

‘Will she be fine?’ Orin asked.

“Of course,” Bones snapped back. “She needs rest. She’s already dosed as well like you two. I heard about the incident with the Ferengi. Likely adrenaline helped fan those flames. And before you ask, no I don’t have a cause yet, I’m still working on that. But you two showed elevated signs of hormone production, just not to the same extent. You the least of all three,” she said to Orelia directly.

“Me, the least?” Orelia asked as she turned back to the human woman.

“Yes. Whatever it was, it was down there, you likely got some sort of transfer when they beamed back up. And no, I’m not ruling out the blood dilithium, but I’ve run a few models and for Orions it’s biochemically inert.”

“The same,” Tavol said in a surprise entrance to the conversation, “as most species. I would conjecture some sort of psychic impact on our Orion crew.” He had stepped out of the adjoining medical lab, which before they came into possession of the ship was best described as a house of horrors, though depending on your viewpoint its new purpose wasn’t too far off the original mark.

“Orions aren’t psychic,” Bones disagreed.

“That is not entirely correct Doctor,” Tavol stated. “But their potential is similar to humans at this time. But this blood dilithium seems to nonetheless have some sort of impact on Orions, females more so than males it would seem since Orin was exposed the same as Sidda and is marginally impacted it would seem.”

“And Sidda’s family line more than most,” Orelia added. “Just…trust me on that.”

“Whatever,” Bones said. “Either way, you two are likely going to feel a little off for a while. Come and see me if you feel tired or if crew members get all weird around either of you. It’s easier to dose all the Orions aboard than the entire crew.”

“Huh.” Orelia expelled her withheld breath and looked once more over to her cousin and the small Romulan woman at her side. Revin looked to be sleeping herself, head lolled to one side, eyes closed. She didn’t see what Sidda saw in her, but it wasn’t her place to question it. “Fix this,” she then ordered before turning and marching out the door.

“Doctor,” she could hear Tavol start as she walked away, “I have a theory about the Orion equivalent of the medulla oblongata I’d like to run past you.” The door to the sickbay closed behind her before the science truly started to bore her.

“And how much is this going to cost me?” Controller Messak asked as she stepped into the briefing room behind Orelia. They’d met in the Rose’s shuttlebay just a few minutes ago, but a few comments here and there had already left Orelia with a feeling that Messak’s opinions of the Alpha and Beta Quadrant had already been deeply tainted by the Ferengi and specifically Daimon Hilke.

“This Controller, is just us being good hosts to our guests.” The table of the briefing room had been laid out with a collection of plates bearing a wide variety of finger food. All of it was as always expertly made, expertly presented and no doubt soon to be confirmed, excellent in taste.

She had ordered most of the chairs removed, leaving just two on the same side of the table, turned to each other so the table was at their side with its delicacies placed in easy reach, including several carafes bear hopefully a drink the Controller would find acceptable. Settling into one of the seats, Orelia indicated for Messak to do the same. “Not everyone from the Alpha Quadrant is like the Ferengi with their hidden surcharges and unannounced fees.”

“Daimon Hilke has already warned me plenty about the peoples of the Alpha Quadrant.” Messak took a seat while examining the food, picked up a small sandwich and sniffed at it. “Moral proselytisers, interested only in destroying stable economic systems. Unhinged barbarians who attack whatever they want, whenever they want. Duplicitous sorts that betray you with every word they utter.” She bit into the small sandwich. “Federation, Klingon and Romulans. I have been warned,” she said around the food in her mouth. As soon as she stopped the rest of the sandwich was quickly consumed, another collected in her hand as the other went to grab another small snack.

Orelia smiled as she shifted slightly to reach for a carafe and poured two glasses of a light blue wine. Not the best, but it was sweet and barely alcoholic. “He’s not far off the mark on a few of those descriptions, but perhaps a bit zealous in his fears and concerns. But Orions, you’ll find are the most civilised and responsible people of the Alpha Quadrant. That aside though, I bet he portrayed himself as an upright and honest businessman that you’re learning isn’t quite true, yes?”

Messak took the drink after freeing a hand and sipped at it once before setting it down. “What do you want?”

“Straight to the point.” Orelia tapped at a control on the table and the large monitor along the wall came to life with an image of the Martian Thorn and images of the then fifteen-man crew that had been aboard her when she passed Guardian Station a few months back now. The bird-of-prey was mostly stock standard, save for a few splashes of Martian Red as Gaeda called the colour, along the hull in a semi-haphazard manner. “My captain is looking for this ship and Daimon Hilke is unwilling to tell us in what direction it went after departing here. I was hoping we could come to some sort of agreement for your sensor logs so we might be on our way.”

Messak slowly finished chewing the sandwich she had in her mouth as she squinted at Orelia, then leaned right back in her chair. “A trade of information then,” she finally said after a moment, judging Orelia. It was an expression she was used to, just on someone else’s face when they marched into a room and took ownership of it, especially when they were the one setting the demands. “I have reason to believe the Hilke is cheating me.”

“No surprises there,” Orelia chipped in, raising her wine glass in a slight toast.

“He actually has two ships out here. The other conducts trade missions with the dilithium we mine, while his personal ship stays here to watch us work. He supplied the location of this vein, some industrial equipment of spotty quality and his expertise at unloading the cargo to those needing dilithium for their starships while my company provided the manpower and local pre-processing.” She picked up and bit into another sandwich, at least waiting to chew and swallow before talking more. “It was meant to be an even split but I think he’s holding out on me.”

“Any proof?”

“Not yet.” Messak leaned forward. “My ship’s sensors are five decades out of date and were originally designed for planetary mineral scans, not scanning Ferengi mansions and starships for valuables.”

“And you don’t want to destroy your relationship with him if he isn’t lying, so why not use the stooges who just arrived on your doorstep?”

“Your words,” Messak said, grinning. “You scan that Ferengi’s compound and ship, get me the scans and I’ll give you every detail we had of this ship of yours until we lost it beyond the range of our sensors.”

“Hilke’s vessel is, just from looking out our windows, relatively well armed. And with two Nausicaan raiders at his side, is more than a match for the Vondem Rose. Once we scan his ship and compound in enough detail to get the information that you’re after, he’s likely to take exception to it. Violently.”

“And?” The single word was spoken from the doorway behind Messak, forcing the Malon woman to turn in her seat to look. Stepping through the doorway, sans her leather jacket, was a rather ragged-looking Sidda. Bags under her eyes, shoulders a little slumped from exhaustion. She looked like someone who had spent a few days without sleep and frankly shouldn’t be wondering about the ship.

“Boss…” Orelia started, stopping with a sharp wave of Sidda’s hand.

“You’re just looking after the ship. I get it.” Sidda had staggered in, giving Messak a nod as she stepped between her and Orelia to grab a few of the snacks for herself, scoffing one down as she poured a drink to wash it down with. At least, Orelia noted, it wasn’t one of the wines, but a dark-yellow fruit drink the humans aboard ship insisted was good, despite being acidic.

“Who is this?” Messak demanded.

“Sidda,” Sidda answered. “Captain Sidda.” She took another swig of the drink in hand. “You know where my people went and will tell me for pissing off a Ferengi for you. Easy enough deal.” She set the glass down with a small thud. “If Hilke has been cheating you, what are you going to do about it?”

“I’ll consider my options at that time,” Messak answered as she studied Sidda.

With a sigh truly showing her exhaustion, Sidda pushed a few plates back from the edge of the table and perched herself there, glaring at the conference room door as it opened to reveal Bones standing there.

“You have yourself a deal,” Sidda said, a small gesture to keep Orelia quiet. “We’ll make the scans of Daimon Hilke’s property. But first, you’re going to need to tell us what the locals around here would have been paying with, so we know what we’re looking for.”

“That can be arranged. I’ll need to return to my ship first.”

“Orelia, would you be so kinda?” Sidda asked, smiling at Orelia’s slight head nod. “And see that Controller Messak here gets a bottle of the Takellian Blue as a parting gift.”

As Messak and Orelia left, Sidda sank into the seat just vacated by her cousin and watched as Bones stalked towards her. She grabbed a small sandwich and chomped down on it, waving for her doctor to join her.

“Escape my sickbay will you,” Bones stated as she approached, a hypospray in hand. She gave no explanation or warning as she jabbed Sidda in the arm with it. “A hormonal suppressant and yes, I know you’re up to date.” Then she poured herself a glass of the blue wine that Messak had been drinking and another glass of orange juice for Sidda. “Get back to bed and sleep. Doctor’s orders.”

“I can sleep when I’ve found my people.”

“You can sleep in your bed, or wherever you hit the deck in five minutes.”

“You drugged me?” Sidda asked accusingly. “Respect.”

Bones merely shrugged as she sipped at her wine. “Maybe I did, or maybe you’ll collapse from exhaustion. Guess we’ll never know.”

“Is that why you mustered out of Starfleet? Kept drugging your superior officers?”

“Not superior,” Bones said. “Just higher ranked.” She downed her wine and offered her hand to help Sidda to her feet. “Bed or deck plating?”

“Bed.” Sidda took Bones’ hand and stood.

“Good, already sent Revin there.”

It was in fact less than four minutes before Sidda was once more asleep.

“So, now that Controller Messak has told us what to look for, how do we go about doing it?” T’Ael asked around the galley table at the collection of senior officers present. It had been an hour since the Malon Controller’s brief visit to the ship and only recently had she sent across information highlighting what a variety of local currencies would have looked like.

“I was hoping,” Orelia said as she looked down the table, “that Tavol might have a clever idea or two.”

“I have an idea,” the Vulcan stated. “Tunnelling sensor sweeps.” When not a single set of eyes on him seemed to register what he said, he sighed and continued. “A form of high penetration, but low perceptibility scan with low detectability. There are some drawbacks to using this method though.”

“Like?” T’Ael asked.

“The target area of the scan is very, very narrow and therefore will take some time to complete a decent baseline scan. There is also the issue that if the scan is detected there will be no doubt as to where it came from.”

“So, we can be as sneak as we want, but if we’re caught, we’re caught.” Orelia shrugged. “Or we fire up the main sensors, and get what we want within seconds but everyone knows what we did. Orin?”

Orin for this part bobbed his head side to side in thought for a moment. ‘Start with Tavol’s plan. The safest idea for now. Let’s the captain get back on her feet.’ He stopped signing and smiled widely.

“Oh, I know that smile,” Lewis said, a spoonful of cereal suspended before his mouth. “That’s the ‘Orin has a devious idea’ smile.”

‘Nausicaan guards.’ He repeated what he signed. ‘Hilke has Nausicaan guards.’

“Yes, that is part of the problem,” Orelia stated.

‘What if we had Nausicaan guards instead?’

“Bribe them?” T’Ael asked. “With what?”

“We don’t,” Orelia said, and Orin smiled, pointing at her as she got there. “But Messak can.” She stood up and gave Orin and high-five. “I best go call our Malon friend. Good catch Orin.”

“Aren’t Nausicaans some of the most fearsome and loyal warriors from where you are from?” Messak asked over the channel a few minutes later. “Unbribable Hilke had said.”

“Ha!” Orelia couldn’t help herself as she paced in front of the command seat, alone in the middle of the bridge. “Hilke likely said that just to try and convince you never to try. Nausicaans are thugs and bullies. You might not be able to convince them to fight for you, but you can certainly bribe them to stay out of anything that might break out.”

“Hmm…” Messak said, her face taking up the whole viewscreen. “I shall open negotiations with them while I await the results of your scans.” And with that, the channel went dead.

“Rule number ninety-eight,” Tavol said as he started his scanning program. “Every man has his price.”

“Let’s hope so,” Orelia said. “Let’s hope so.”

The Klingon version of a cortical suppressor was known as a solid whack to the head followed by sedatives to make sure the subject didn’t wake until properly restrained. Luckily for Sidda she had listened when Bones wanted to restock the sickbay aboard the Rose and then directed Naroq to spend more than the Ferengi initially wanted.

“Spend like you’re going to be on the receiving end of the parts and medications,” she told her chief financial officer and boy had she. The sickbay wasn’t Starfleet standard but in some ways was better, in others worse. Civilian equipment could be ahead of Starfleet’s ‘tried and true’ gear, but sometimes behind in their ‘hey, isn’t this neat!’ gear. This meant that the cortical suppressor currently behind her left ear was far smaller and more comfortable than those in Starfleet’s inventory. It wasn’t as durable, having been designed for civilian use after all, but had been built with the user’s comfort in mind instead.

“What have I missed?” she asked as she stepped onto her bridge for the first time in nearly eighteen hours. Eighteen hours of the Rose sitting around, going nowhere, not looking for Gaeda and the Thorn. Eighteen hours of blissful, solid, deep sleep, gentle wake-up call, breakfast and then finally back to the work at hand.

“We’ve got some evidence that Hilke has indeed been cheating the Malon out of their fair share of the profits,” Lewis Chin said as he approached with a padd in hand. No joke, no charm, just straight to the point. That was enough to cause Sidda to look up and she realised that Lewis was her most senior staff member on the bridge right now.

“Are you on watch?” she asked.

“Yes ma’am.”

Ma’am? He had never called her that before in his life. “Excuse me?”

“Yes Boss,” he corrected and offered a smile as an apology. “Just trying to give the right impression to the new folks.”

“The new folks who’ve been aboard ship for a few months now and know your bad sense of humour?” She teased him in good humour as she took the padd and looked it over on the way to her seat, Endeavour’s seat. The seat of a captain, not the throne of a warlord that had been originally at the heart of this ship. “Nitrium, verterium cortenide, latnium…Hilke’s sitting on a vault.”

“The nitrium and verterium cortenide will likely sell for a good price back in the Alliance,” Lewis said. “The latnium likely is what he had and what he’s been able to swindle from locals. Bet he told them it’s worthless and he’s willing to ‘take it off their hands’ to get it.”

“Have we been able to figure out what Gaeda was shipping out here by any chance?”

“Oh, you’ll love this.” Lewis had stepped along her chair on the left and now stepped forward to turn and face her. “Messak spoke with Gaeda after his delivery, where he spilt the beans to her. Turns out Hilke’s mining equipment is made by a Ferengi corporation, because of course it’s the cheapest he could find. And it all uses licensed software that locks up every so often unless you pay the fee. Gaeda was delivering new isolinear control modules for the units with cracked software to let them run indefinitely without paying a single license fee.”

“He was bringing control modules? Hilke paid how much for control modules?”

“Uh…I haven’t seen the books, Boss, so you’d know better than I do.” Lewis shrugged a shoulder. “But that’s just part of it. The gear is so shit that Hilke finally dished out for the repair manuals since his people couldn’t figure out how to fix the gear he bought. Of course, he then sent the manuals over to Messak’s people and told them to fix the gear he bought for them.”

“Charming.”

“Yeah,” he agreed.

She spent a few moments more looking over the padd, perusing the findings. “Get Orin up here and make sure one of the twins is in Engineering,” she finally said. “We’re going to confirm all the evidence now we know roughly where on that Ferengi barge to scan.”

“They’ll see that,” he warned.

“And that’s why I want Orin up here. If they want to start a fight, we’ll give it to them. And we’ll have to deal with the Nausicaans too.”

“Oh, sorted that already,” Lewis said with a boyish smile. “Controller Messak has bribed the Nausicaans into staying out of any fight with us. It’ll just be us and the barge.”

Twenty minutes later and the bridge of the Vondem Rose was teeming with activity as the main bridge crew had taken their stations, with the night shift remaining at their stations, just in case things did go sideways. Which in less than a minute after ordering a comprehensive scan of the Ferengi ship it had.

The Ferengi ship had raised shields, powered up weapons and even locked onto the Vondem Rose, bringing its array of weapons to bear. Of note however was the lack of weapon lock from the Nausicaans, though both ships had moved to their respective flanking positions.

“Surprise, surprise,” Orelia said with a drawl advertising her total lack of said surprise, “Daimon Hilke is calling.”

“On screen.”

The expectation of Hilke being on his starship’s bridge wasn’t to be as he was safely ensconced still in his latnium-encrusted office. His all-consuming anger and bluster were evident as his face filled the viewscreen, his eyes wide and face flushed. “What do you think you are doing?” he whined. “Invading a man’s privacy! I won’t stand for this Orion! I won’t be the victim of piracy!”

“Shut it,” Sidda said quietly.

“Shut it? SHUT IT!” Hilke shouted. “I’ll have you know I could blow your pathetic ship to pieces.”

She looked over to Tavol, who faced her momentarily, gave a single confirming nod, and then turned back to his station. The scans had been confirmed, and their details were transmitted to the Malon mining ship. Now she just needed to wait for Messak if Lewis’ update was correct, confirmed by Orelia when she came up to the bridge.

“I said shut it,” she reiterated. “Your partners know you’ve been swindling them, not paying them their fair share of the profits. And now, so do your hired muscle.”

Hilke’s eyes narrowed as he squinted at her, then came that monocle from earlier as he held it to one eye. He studied her for a moment then spoke quietly. “You haven’t told them yet; this is a blackmail attempt.”

“Nah, I don’t do blackmail.” She pushed herself out of her chair and to her feet. “Well, I don’t do it often that is. We’ve already sent the scans over to Prospector 17 and they’ll have forwarded them to the Nausicaans to show them you could have paid them a lot more for their trouble.”

“Pah! Rule seventeen!”

“A contract is a contract is a contract, but only between Ferengi,” Sidda said, unimpressed. “It’s that last bit that’s about to bite you.” She watched the confusion on Hilke’s face for a moment. “Messak thought, assumed, with a contract in hand, that she was operating in good faith with you. But you just couldn’t help yourself, could you? Had to swindle someone to make that extra bit of profit.”

“And what would you know of profit, Orion? You’re a female and not even a Ferengi female either! No lobes for business at all!”

“That profit is not the be-all and end-all,” she answered, earning a nasally laugh from the Ferengi.

“Oh, that’s funny! Profit is all there is! Greed is eternal and the only measure of success worth caring about. So, what if I swindled the Malon? A bribe here, a bribe there, I’ll smooth over things. It’s just business.”

“So’s this then.” She gave a hand gesture and could feel the slight whine through the deck as the Vondem Rose fired a disruptor shot at the planetoid below. Messak had given them coordinates of where to fire near Hilke’s compound just outside the atmosphere shield. Somewhere to give him a damn good shake but not compromise the mining site. To rattle the cage and provoke him to action.

“Ahh! You lunatic! Hilke to Dramel, beam me up you lumbering oaf!” The Ferengi on the screen started to disappear in a shimmer of golden light and that was Orelia’s cue to cut the channel. And Orin’s to take his next shot. With Hilke being transported, that meant his ship’s shields had to be down. The Rose might not be able to go toe to toe with a modern and no doubt heavily up-gunned D’kora-class ship, but it didn’t need to right now. What it needed to do was prevent it from running away so that it had to face not just the Vondem Rose, but the guns of the Prospector 17 as well.

Lewis had driven the ship forward, up and over the D’kora’s dorsal aspect, bringing its warp engines into view of the Vondem Rose’s rear disruptors and single torpedo launcher. Orin had only a moment to find his target and fire. Green disruptor beams lashed out, raking along the aft aspect of the Ferengi ship, and then the angry red torpedo found its target just before the shields snapped up, further disruptor bolts splashing across the shields shortly before the Ferengi’s phasers started firing.

“Shields at ninety per cent,” Orelia announced as the Rose rocked under fire.

“Lewis, swing us around behind Prospecter 17!” Sidda shouted as she stepped up behind her helmsman, a steadying hand grasping at the back of his head. “Let’s see if Hilke’s people are stupid enough to walk fire onto the Malon.”

“Aye boss,” the young man said, no jokes or jibes as he focused on the task at hand, wrestling the Rose onto her new course. She wasn’t the nimble knife fighter the Vondem Thorn had been, but she also wasn’t a stand-up brute like larger Klingon ships. She was the rank and file of a Klingon fleet, a dependable mix of attributes that meant she wasn’t much good at any of them. Jack of all trades, master of none.

It only took a moment for Hilke’s crew to make a mistake, lashing fire on the Prospector 17 in their attempt to get at the Rose. Another moment for that massive bulk of a ship to bring its weapons online and begin lashing at the Ferengi ship. The initiative swung and the Rose dove back into the short battle as Hilke signalled his surrender in quick order.

There was after all no profit in dying in battle. Especially when your hired guards were just sitting there, doing exactly what everyone had said Messak had convinced them to do.

“Well, that took an interesting turn,” Orelia said as she entered into the briefing room with the gathered senior officers nearly an hour after the fighting had come to a premature end. “Turns out Hilke didn’t order the surrender, but Deputy Daimon Grelk. Fighting us and the Malon wasn’t a winning prospect and we’ve apparently smashed their warp drive up good and proper. He’s negotiating with Controller Messak as we speak, but has already handed over profits due to the Malon, as well as Daimon Hilke for various violations of Malon laws.”

“A mutiny?” Lewis asked. “And we missed it? Dang it.”

“Boardroom infighting is the worst,” Sidda muttered. “Especially in light of an external hostile takeover.”

‘Unexpected hostile environmental conditions,’ Orin signed, ‘requiring quick action and top-level downsizing from the management team to ensure company survival.’

“I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s something like how this Grelk sells it when he gets back home. What of the Nausicaans?” Sidda asked not so much out of actual interest, but just to make sure they weren’t going to have to deal with them later.

“They went to warp about five minutes ago. Grelk paid them out and they’re headed for a place called the Markonian Outpost to wait out time till the wormhole reopens.” Orelia stepped up to the large monitor and tapped at it, bringing up a star chart of the local region with a single green line that then turned into a green dotted line as it continued towards an ominous-looking red rash. “We’ve also got the last sensor readings regarding the Martian Thorn.”

“About fucking time,” Sidda said. “What’s that?” she pointed at the red rash on the map.

“According to Messak, the Devore Imperium. Or at least their last publicly notified borders. They’ve been in a state of flux since this dilithium rush started.” Orelia tapped once more on the map and a faint red smear appeared all over it. “This is what the Malon are considering the new Devore frontier. Turns out that the Devore might give the Malon trouble from time to time, but a lot of their ships are built tough, so the Malon have been learning the borders the hard way. Malon Security forces haven’t gotten involved yet, but she thinks it won’t be long if the Devore keep hindering trade and waste dumping.”

“The Devore are a known xenophobic and hostile power,” Tavol spoke up from where he was seated it. “They were in fact put on the general warning issued by Starfleet to all ships entering the Delta Quadrant. They consider all telepaths to be anathema to a stable society and therefore a threat to be rounded up and imprisoned wherever their ships go.”

“Good thing we don’t have telepaths aboard ship then,” T’Ael said from her seat next to Tavol.

“Vulcans are in fact telepathic,” he stated.

“Oh, sure, if you get your hands on someone,” she said. “Just wear gloves.”

“That is not how that works,” Tavol said, with a hint of classic Vulcan exasperation to his voice. “In either case, Captain, myself and Prisoner T’Rev would be in violation of the Devore’s proscriptions should they run into us.”

“Yeah, well, their laws can apply inside their space as much as they want.” Orelia’s voice was cold.

“The Devore’s proscriptions against telepaths extend to their borders and the feasible weapons range of all their ships no matter where they are. Essentially if they can enforce their will upon a ship, no matter where it is, they will.” Tavol looked completely unconcerned with this possibility.

“Charming,” T’Ael muttered. “Guess we should find the Martian then and get out before that border gets any closer?”

“Oh, it gets funnier yet,” Orelia said, tapping a key and a smattering of blue dots appeared on the map inside that faint red possible-Devore zone. “Starfleet gotta Starfleet.” A few of the dots had names attached to them. Endeavour, Odyssey, Sojourner, and Sarek was even listed in two locations at the same time, which caught Sidda’s attention. One was listed as Sarek-alpha, the other Sarek-beta. The rest had no names, but designations, ships they’d not been able to get a good look at while crowded around Starbase 38, or after arriving in the Delta Quadrant before everyone ran off in their separate directions. Nosey1 was the closest to them, moving away at a decent high warp value, the numbers mostly ascending the further from the Rose they were, but a few higher numbers were closer.

“We’re only catching glimpses on sensors because, well, Klingons have made it their business to keep an eye on their ally slash sparring partner, and Tavol has made some modifications to help with our…extra-legal activities back home.” Orelia offered a nod to the Vulcan, who replied in kinda. Lewis for his part gave the Vulcan a gentle punch to the upper arm, which confused the Vulcan.

“Any damage from the fight with the Ferengi?” Sidda asked.

“None. Discovered a flutter in disruptor four’s power supply, but R’tin is solving it now,” T’Ael said. “My brother might be an idiot, but he’s good with weapons. And now he’s got a team of people to help, so should have it sorted in no time versus taking days to sort.”

“Good.” Sidda sighed, tossing one last look at the map. “Lewis, plot a course and get ready to get us underway. Orelia, Orin, take the ship to condition…ah fuck it, fuck the Klingon conditions, take us to yellow alert. If something jumped the Martian Thorn I want us ready for it.”

With affirmations and nods, all three stood and left the briefing room to go about their duties. “T’Ael, work with your brother, make sure we’ve got a solid team of engineers ready at all times. I want that cloaking device ready at all times in case we have to run and hide.”

“Will do boss. She’s a lot less temperamental than our last one was.” She too stood and left.

And that left just Sidda and Tavol in the briefing room with each other. He made to stand and leave, but she waved him down, waiting for all others to depart. “Well?”

“Concerning which matter?” he asked back.

“The blood dilithium,” she clarified, adding a wave of her hand to indicate the suppressor behind her ear as well. “What have you found?”

“It’s a curious substance I must admit. One which I’m sure Starfleet has more information on than I do, seeing as they would have more working on the problem than just myself.” A glare of impatience from Sidda moved him along. “I admit to feelings of unease when I’m near the singular example I brought aboard the ship, even when it is safely inside an airtight container, behind a forcefield and in another room. I feel like the ship is lurching gently from side to side and compounded with a feeling that something is watching me though logically I know nothing is there. T’Rev reports hearing discordant singing.”

“I don’t like the idea of him hearing things.”

“Neither do I,” Tavol added. “I’ve taken the liberty of consulting with Doctor Ward and adding a mild sedative to his rations. And mine as well,” he stated. “Not enough to dull my senses but to slow reaction times and strength, in case of a worst-case scenario. Doctor Ward still insists on keeping a large rock ready to drop on me should I develop maniacal godlike attributes.”

“Prudent.” The rations, not the rock. “What about myself, or Orelia and Orin?”

“I would need a volunteer for testing, but it would appear that whatever mysterious psychic phenomena the crystal is producing excites a portion of the Orion brain that is responsible for hormone production. It’s triggering a key hormone that tells your body to begin adrenaline and pheromone production at a vastly heightened and possibly dangerous level.”

“Why didn’t Orelia or Orin get flattened by it then?” she asked.

“Orin is male and Orelia’s only contact so far would have been trace amounts of particulate dust you likely encountered at Hilke’s compound. You on the other hand are female and were inside the crater. The effect of the crystal does seem to be a function of proximity and quantity. Orelia also hinted at perhaps an element of your family line might come into play.”

Sidda sighed, folding her hands on the table and resting her forehead on them for a moment before gently banging her head into the back of her own hands a few times. “Bundle up your findings and then transmit them to the nearest Starfleet ship. Let’s be good citizens for now. Besides, I don’t want to suddenly hear that a Starfleet ship has gone missing after some Orion inadvertently caused the crew to tear themselves apart.”

“I would think that highly unlikely,” Tavol responded.

“Yeah, but stranger things have happened in space. Just…send Starfleet a warning. And then make time this afternoon with Bones, I’ll pop down to sickbay and we confirm your hypothesis.”

“Anything?” R’tin asked.

“Still nothing?” came his sister’s reply from all around him. Admittedly that ‘all around’ was just the confines of his EV suit’s helmet. There was directionality, no drop off in volume to give an idea of distance, just a nice, clear sound as if she was speaking to him from right next to him in a small space.

They’d both been up and about when the Vondem Rose had detected something on sensors that didn’t belong in the Delta Quadrant – a derelict Klingon warship. At least not in these parts anyway. So when they’d finally closed with the ship they had both volunteered to go aboard the ship to figure out what happened. The broad strokes were pretty clear at least just from looking at the ship, well, through the ship that is. Three large holes bore right through the vessel, clean shots taken on a ship not defending itself.

There had been other damage to the ship, enough to hint at an attempt to evade, but the damage to the ship’s engines was enough to explain why someone was eventually able to put killing shots through the ship. They’d clearly fired on the ship in locations not intended to blow it to pieces, but to pierce as much of the pressure vessel as possible, to render anyone who could be hiding dead to the elements in short order.

It was a spiteful and mean thing to have done.

And foolish.

Since they’d dropped out of warp and seen the wreck on the bridge viewscreen, Sidda had apparently only said one thing – “Go.” While it had taken the team currently aboard the Martian Thorn time to gear up and then beam over, she’d apparently done nothing but glare at the viewscreen. At least according to Orelia when she had updated them in the transporter room before coming over.

Someone was going to get it, the question really was would it be the Devore Imperium, Gaeda Ruiz, or both?

“Hey R’tin,” came another voice, human, gruff and with some weird twang that he’d been informed meant that Gavin Leckie was ‘southern’. “Ann and I have just popped the external fuel hatches. We’re ready to start salvaging the antimatter pods.”

“Hold off,” he replied, then keyed his suit comms to another channel, back to the Rose. “R’tin to Rose. Gav’s got the antimatter pods ready. But we float them over and start transferring fuel, the Rose is going to be a sitting duck for an hour or so.”

“Can we do it under cloak?” Orelia came back.

“Uh…sure?” he replied. “But we’ll have to float them over first. And those of us over here won’t be able to transport back till you drop the cloak.”

“An hour you say?”

“Well, around an hour.” He continued his in own search of the ship while having the conversation and stopped to look through the hull breach, through two compartments and out of the ship right to the looming bulk of the Rose. “Depends on if there’s any difficulty in connecting the magnetic traps, flow rate, and fuel load in each of the pods. But, should be about an hour.”

There was silence for a moment. “Right, send them over.”

Another flick of the comms, another quick conversation and then Gavin and Ann were both pushing an antimatter containment pod each across a couple of kilometres of empty space to the Rose and a couple of engineers on her outer hull waiting to receive them. It was a straightforward operation, just time-consuming and dangerous in that the ship would be helpless if the Devore showed up. Hence the question about the cloak. It had its advantages besides just combat.

“R’tin, guess what they missed,” T’Ael said over the comms. He’d made sure he had an always open line to his sister; she would have heard his side of the recent conversations unless she’d opted to eavesdrop on all the channels during their salvage operation.

“Gaeda’s vault of highly valuable loot we’re not going to tell anyone about?”

“Wait, he has one?” she asked back, then ignored the obvious baiting. “Nevermind. The main computer, it’s still in one piece.”

“Wait, really?” He abandoned the room he was in, everything a mess from when a high-powered energy weapon had ripped through it, making his way through the ship as quickly as mag boots would let him run. A wall become a floor momentarily, he pushed off another to speed himself along.

Bigger ships might have had a computer core access room, or the computer spanned many decks such that the best way to maintain it was from the inside. But Klingon ships weren’t Romulan, or even Federation starships – they were warships. They didn’t need to carry the glory and magnificence of Romulan culture or all the scientific journals of the Federation. They needed to be able to operate and control a starship for glorious combat. As such a ship like the Martian Thorn had a much, much smaller main computer and its ‘computer room’ was more like a closet behind a hardened and secure hatch.

T’Ael stood there, waiting for her brother, her torch scanning over what could be seen from the now-opened hatch. “It looks intact.” She shone the light in his direction and he reflexively raised a hand to shield his eyes till she lowered it. “Just doesn’t have power.”

“And the Rose just raised its cloak, so no portable generator.” He snapped his fingers, a gesture that was fairly muted in a complete vacuum. He didn’t even hear the snap in his own suit, just the sound of armoured fingers sliding across each other. It was disappointing and nearly derailed his thinking. “The Martian should have one around here, right? Just like the old Vondem Thorn, right? Uh…starboard emergency supplies.”

“That’ll do it. Go grab it, I’ll find the power hookup and then cut the line to the rest of the ship. Don’t need to drain the generator straight away.”

A few minutes later, a short wrestle with physics and the mass of the portable power supply, and the Martian Thorn’s main computer was booting to life, ugly Klingon script tracing over the screen, blinking away, back again, more screens as systems started up, programs woke, did their thing, woke up others before going away. It took a few minutes for the computer to start from scratch, especially with the checks it was doing and which neither he nor his sister wanted to override.

“Fuck. Yes.” T’Ael turned and punched him in the arm, a stupid grin on her face, as the computer finally finished rebooting. Any audio warning had been completely missed, but the warnings on the small diagnostic screen before them were exactly what they’d expect to see in a situation like this.

Weapons not detected.

Sensors not detected.

Engines not detected.

Life support not detected.

Computer running in safe mode.

Enter command authorisation.

At least the computer wasn’t complaining about its own state of being. “T’Ael to Rose, we’ve got the Thorn’s computer core. Going to set up a data transfer, but across a communicator, it’s going to take a bit.”

“You’ve got time T’Ael,” Orelia came back. “Continue searching the ship, we’ll look the data over when you get back.”

“Will do,” she replied, then turned to him. “Now, you said something about Gaeda’s vault?”

“I was joking,” he said with a chuckle. “But we could go help salvage the torpedoes.”

“Well, I guess…”

“Captain’s log, uh, Wednesday, October eleventh, twenty-one seventeen hours,” Gaeda’s voice came out loud and clear over the briefing room speakers. “I swear this date display keeps getting smaller. Right, where was I?” There was a pause, even the sound of a drink being sipped at. “We’ve taken all the passengers off of the Lucky Fish and given Captain t’ch’lik what spares we could spare for him to get his ship fixed. Hopefully, if these Devore show up that everyone keeps telling me about, he’ll just get harassed for a bit and then be allowed to go on his way. If the Devore are so desperate to impound a wreck like his, then cripes, I’ve got to get the boss out here for the pickings. We’ve got the Martian packed to the rafters right now with thirty-seven refugees aboard. We’re proceeding under cloak to the destination that t’ch’lik was taking them.”

Orelia tapped a button when the log finished and the map on the large monitor updated with the destination that the Martian Thorn’s computers had logged and speed information. The icon for the ship moved along a prescribed line that started back at the DeDiDrOp and ended where the Rose sat right now. It was presently two-thirds of the way along moving towards its final spot. It progressed before stopping and the speakers came to life once more.

“Captain’s log, Saturday, fourteenth of October. We’ve had to drop out of warp and drop the cloak thanks to a class three ion storm. Nothing too troublesome for a ship with shields, but you wouldn’t want to see me flying even the Rose through one of these under cloak. Reports of nausea amongst the Brenari guests, but I can’t blame them actually. Trid’s doing her best to work with the storm for a smooth ride and Eshe is doing what they can for sea sickness. Sea-sickness in space. Honestly.”

The briefing room was silent once more. R’tin had his forehead on his folded arms but was listening. T’Ael was just staring at the rich wood table. Orin was drumming his fingers and staring at the monitor, along with Tavol, who was just stock still. Bones was at the far end, opposite Sidda and looking like she’d been chewing on a lemon the whole time. Lewis was the one to break the silence. “Class three storm? With shields, it would have been bumpy at most, but the Thorn would have ridden through like a champ.”

“Agreed,” T’Ael and R’tin both said in unison, the latter muffled as he spoke into the table. “Jinx,” he muttered to his sister straight away.

“Last long,” Orelia said as she looked at her cousin, who was just glaring down the length of the table. “Explains everything.” She then looked to Revin, at Sidda’s side with a hand on her shoulder, and gave a small nod.

The Romulan woman slid her hand from Sidda’s shoulder to the base of her neck gently, earning a small response from Sidda as she pressed back into the chair, pinning Revin’s hand in place.

“Captain’s log, supplemental.” Gaeda sounded rushed, there were other sounds in the background, of people going about something on the side of a door. “Engines are offline at the moment, but that’s not the biggest problem. We’ve got two Devore warships bearing in on us. Cloak isn’t a good idea with the storm still lingering. We’re fucked in about six different ways right now. I’m purging what we can of sensor records to protect t’ch’lik and their crew. Then encrypting everything for good measure anyway. R’tin, if you’re hearing this, it’s because my failsafe back home lured the boss out here and you, you nosey little Romulan git,” this got R’tin’s attention as he sat up, a smile on his face, “are too damn good with my passwords. Do me a favour will you and come rescue all of us will you?”

Silence once more, then Orelia brought up the last transmission that the Thorn had received.

The image was an older man, at least by the room’s average frame of reference, wearing a black uniform with what looked like a bandolier, from what could be seen at least. “Gaharey vessel, stand down and prepare for inspection. Any attempt to flee will be dealt with harshly. All crew are to stand away from their consoles and be unarmed. Resistant to inspectors will be dealt with harshly. You have been warned.”

Sidda breathed in deeply, nodded once, and then let out her held breath. “Casualties?”

“None from what we could see or according to the computer,” T’Ael spoke up. “It looks like they boarded the ship, found these Brenari and then summarily sentenced them and the crew to a prison camp. They beamed everyone off the ship and then used her for target practice.”

“They didn’t take the cloak?” Bones asked over the lip of a large cup of something no doubt dark and caffeinated.

“Someone burned it out shortly before the Devore came aboard,” R’tin said. “Well, overloaded the circuity, then put four rounds from a disruptor rifle through it. Guess Gaeda didn’t want to risk a cloaking device falling into their hands.”

“Take the boy out of Starfleet, can’t take the Starfleet out of the boy,” Bones quipped. “Eh, Sidda?”

“Guess so,” she replied coolly. “But why even take telepaths prisoners? You don’t like them, why stop them fleeing?”

“Hell, encourage them even,” T’Ael added. “Bundle them all up and ship them out.”

“Unfortunately, the Devore’s logic for their actions is not something I am privy to,” Tavol said. “At least not currently.” He shrugged a shoulder in the face of T’Ael’s continued gaze. “If I had to hazard an educated guess, based on the unfortunate histories of many member worlds in the Federation alone, such decisions maybe be motivated by a need to blame the Other, to them show them being punished in order to continue selling a political or spiritual narrative to the masses in order to sway them one way or another.”

“Political fucking theatre?” T’Ael asked.

“Stop,” Sidda said and sure enough things did. Attention turned on her as she sat forward. “I don’t care what the Devore think. I don’t care if they think they are saving the galaxy or just getting their jollies being bad holo-novel villains. Everything I’ve heard and read makes it sound like slavery and oppression, plain and simple.” A chorus of agreements went around the table. “They’re bullies, no two ways about it.”

“Plan boss?” R’tin asked.

“Nope.”

“Intention?” Orelia followed on with.

“Find a Devore warship. Ask them some polite questions about where my people are, then we go get them.” Sidda’s grin wasn’t a nice thing. It was downright predatory.

‘Polite,’ Orin signed. ‘So, no torpedoes.’

“Only if they’re hard of hearing and need the extra motivation to listen and answer.” That got a few chuckles around the room. “Get with Deidrick, make sure everyone is armed at all times. If we get boarded, we’re damn well repelling with prejudice.”

Orin nodded his understanding.

“Lewis, set course for the Devore border, maximum warp. Let’s go fishing.”

“Aye boss, running towards the fascist police state while screaming that we want to steal something.” Lewis’ eyes snapped straight to Orelia when she couldn’t help herself snort for some reason at his joke.

“Right, dismissed. Go make my ship ready to fight.”

As everyone piled out of the room, Bones approached, stopping at Sidda’s side opposite Revin. She took a moment to produce a small flask, take the top off, pour some into her cup, and then hand it to Sidda. The alcohol smell wasn’t as strong as she suspected, but she wasn’t going to say no to a sip of the doctor’s own stores when offered. She was just about to hand it back when Revin snatched it up, taking her own swig at it before handing it back with a slight cough.

“Geez princess,” Bones commented. “If I had known you’d have some, I’d have at least topped up on the good stuff.”

“I’m not a princess,” Revin answered.

“Yes, you are,” Bones countered. “You’re hers after all.” Then she looked at Sidda, giving a series of small nods. “Your mother as much of a bold bitch as you are?”

“She’s just a bitch.”

“HA!” Bones barked. “A hundred years ago, maybe more, you’d likely have made a damn good Starfleet captain. Nowadays, you’re just a damn good captain. I’ll have sickbay ready for anything.” And with that, she left.

And then there was a slight squeal, rather undignified, as Revin was pulled around and to sit in Sidda’s lap without warning. An arm snaked around the young woman’s waist, holding her tight. “I want you armed too, just like everyone else. Nothing to chance, okay?”

“Promise me you’ll use your second disruptor then,” Revin answered. “We don’t need you shooting out a bridge console when you miss your first shot.”

“I don’t miss!”

“Yes, you do.” Revin then turned as much as she could to face Sidda directly. “I was reading what there was about the Devore’s culture. Very Romulan-like in some cases.” She leaned forward, foreheads and noses touching. “Apparently, they appreciate galeri music or galeri-like at least. Human Classical, Orion mid-Imperial, most non-mathematical Vulcan. That sort of thing.”

“So…”

“So, that horrific collection of Orion post-modern punk you have would be…” Revin teased out, not finishing the sentence.

“A bloody brilliant way of getting some attention.”

It only took the Vondem Rose twelve hours to gain the attention of a Devore border vessel.

Twelve hours of barrelling towards the Devore Imperium’s new expansion territories at warp eight point five.

With her cloak down.

Flooding a decent number of subspace frequencies with the Orion post-modern punk band Kolar Blight’s entire catalogue blaring as loud as the transmitters of the ship could.

Sometimes, just sometimes, you had to kick a door in while blaring your own personal soundtrack.

And sometimes there was just no accounting for good taste.

“Anything?” Sidda asked as she stepped up beside Orelia at the Ops console.

“Three merchants and two more Starfleet ships have asked us to cut out broadcasting on so many frequencies. Two merchants have asked us to send them the album collection and one politely sent us their music collection and told us to play good music.” Orelia tapped at her screens and brought the messages up for Sidda to scroll through. “But otherwise, nothing.”

“This one,” she said with a tap to the last message to show Orelia. “Keep an eye out for them. If we ever run into them, I’ll show them what good music sounds like.”

“You aren’t shooting at someone over music disagreements,” Orelia said.

“Fuck you, Kolar Blight is awesome and they will be forced to admit it.”

“Kolar Blight is horrible,” Revin countered. “I love you Sidda, but your music choices are questionable at best.”

While Sidda herself had been pacing the bridge, Revin, not having anything else to do at this time, had come to visit and opted to take the only seat available. Revin had been slowly turning the seat around to keep Sidda in view but her attention was on a padd that she was reading and running her fingers running along its screen, still working on putting the written word with what she’d learnt.

“I gotta agree Boss, Kolar Blight is horrific,” Lewis chipped in. “Now, Qo’nos Death Guard, that’s a band.”

A loud knock on a console to gain attention and Orin’s disagreement was seen by all. ‘Vulcan Philharmonic Orchestra.’ Notably, no one tried to hassle the large man about his choice of preferred music, though Tavol nodded in approval.

“I actually like this human group of royal bards I found,” Revin spoke lyrically. “Queen, I think it was called.”

“Uh, that’s not,” Lewis turned to look at Revin, a finger raised in objection, then shook his head with a smile. “You know what, it’s not important. But a good choice in classical music.”

“Fucking mutiny,” Sidda muttered. “Airlock, the lot of you.”

“We’re all kinda busy. Space ourselves later?” Orelia asked.

“Yah all right,” Sidda conceded. “Just when you’ve got nothing better to do, see yourself out.”

“You look and sound better cousin. The brooding look was starting to wear thin,” Orelia said, quietly so only Sidda and possibly Revin could hear.

“I’m still fucking pissed. But I’ve got something to aim that anger at now and we’re going to make them pay.” Sidda’s left hand was drumming her fingers across the top of Orelia’s console, each finger falling heavy and forceful.

“Would you sit down?” Orelia then asked. “Peering over everyone’s shoulder is going to make things go faster.”

“I would,” Sidda replied, her hand falling to the sword on her hip, “but this thing makes sitting down a pain in the backside.”

“Take it off then. And besides, it’s a stupid showpiece and you know it.”

“And get surprised by the Devore? No thank you.”

“We’re not going to get,” Orelia started before an unhappy chirp from her console stopped her in her tracks. “Devore warship on an intercept course,” she grumbled, looking at Sidda who was now grinning at her coincidental victory. “Twenty minutes at present intercept velocities.”

“That only took half a day running at their borders,” Sidda remarked as she then walked over to her chair, leaning forward to give Revin a quick kiss on the forehead before tapping the button and summoning forth a warbling alert through the ship indicating an all-hands announcement. No Starfleet whistle on this ship.

“All hands to your stations. Make ready to repel boarders. If you have a weapon with a stun setting, use it, I’d like to take some prisoners to ask questions of. Otherwise, well, make it quick folks.”

As Sidda lifted her finger from the button, Revin grabbed her wrist and looked up into her eyes. “Where do you want me?”

“At your station galleymate,” Sidda teased. “Kevak, K’tah and Lern will keep you safe. After all, we are going to get boarded shortly and I’d rather you behind the Klingons than potentially in front of them. And the Devore are likely to target critical areas first.”

“The galley is critical,” Revin said, slowly getting to her feet, well within Sidda’s personal bubble, intimately close. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“So do I,” Sidda answered, enjoying the extremely close proximity a moment more then sent Revin on her way.

“Time?” she asked Orelia.

“Eighteen minutes.”

With all the impatience of a child on a long trip, Sidda paced the bridge, occasionally asking for updates on the time. Whatever universal principle dictated that when one was waiting for something time had to slow down settled over the Vondem Rose as the next fifteen minutes stretched out into eternity.

“Incoming hail from the Devore,” Orelia announced before putting it on the main screen.

“Gaharay vessel, you will cut your drives immediately and prepare your crew for inspection,” the officious-looking middle-aged man on the screen announced. “Your ship will be searched for any telepaths. If you are found to be transporting telepaths your ship will be impounded, and your crew detained and relocated to a penal colony. Any attempt to escape will be an admission of guilt and you will be fired upon.”

The Vondem Rose’s visual pickup and been set to maintain a close crop of Sidda’s face, to hide the bridge layout and to hide the fact that everyone was armed at the moment. With that in mind, Sidda tried to put on her best innocent face. “I’m sorry, under whose authority are you ordering me to a stop?”

“Under the authority of the Devore Imperium, all gaharay vessels will be searched before proceeding any further if not immediately turned around.”

“Oh, Devore!” Sidda said. “I thought your borders were another two days away at our best speed. Have we made better time than we thought? Must excuse us, our inertial reference positioning system needs calibration I think.”

The patience of the Devore officer was starting to wear, the exasperated sigh evidence enough. “You have ten seconds to cut your engines and await further instructions.” And with that, the channel was cut.

“He was a barrel of laughs,” Lewis chimed in. “’Oh sure, you have made great time. We’ll help fix your IRPS. Thanks for taking an interest in the Devore Imperium, but we’re busy being galactic bullies at the moment. Come back in the tourist season.’ Jerk.”

“Cut the engines Lewis, let’s play dumb for the jackboots.” As the ship dropped out of warp in deep space, awaiting the Devore interceptor in a few minutes, Sidda couldn’t help but smile. All according to plan. “Orin and Deidrick at the transporter?” she asked Orelia, getting a nod in response. “Still okay to manually target the weapons?”

“No targeting scanners to give us away, weapons only discharging their capacitors means we’ve got one volley, then about twenty seconds to bring them back up to charge to continue any fighting.” And Orelia too was grinning. “And one torpedo in the tube, preprogrammed for straight flight and contact detonation.”

“One hell of a brick to throw through a window,” Lewis added. “Helmed locked out Boss. No way one of them is flying my baby.”

A minute passed and then the viewscreen came to life once more. The same boring yet angry-looking toadie appeared on the screen. “Gaharay vessel, lower your shields and prepare for inspection. All crew are to step away from their consoles, disarm themselves and make themselves available for inspection. Failure to comply within twenty seconds will be considered an admission of guilt.”

“All right, all right,” Sidda replied. “Happy now?” She could hear Orelia complying, as well as a keyed sequence putting a computer plan into motion. The Rose’s sensors were watching, waiting for the first inbound transporter signals before the program would activate.

The reply to Sidda’s acquiescence was just the channel going dead. And then she heard it – the whine of transporters depositing invaders to her ship across so much of the ship. In one smooth action, she drew her disruptor and aimed it right at the face of the man materialising at the front of her bridge.

“Hi,” she said as he fully materialised and the discontinuity of the transporter ended. He had just a moment to take in his surroundings, specifically the ugly end of a Klingon disruptor right in his face. The vaguely cross-eyed look as he looked at the weapon was worth it she decided.

“Bye.”

What started as an ambush descended rapidly into a furball on the bridge. Sidda had with zero hesitation vaporised the man who had appeared before her, but that had only seemed to make her the primary target for his enraged fellows. Only quick feet and a barrage of various weapons fire had given her the cover she needed to fall back behind her command chair, then from there to behind the port side console usually behind her.

She could hear struggling, a solid thump of metal against flesh, and then the sound of a body hitting the ground. Peaking past the console’s support pillar she could see Lewis on the deck, a rather nasty gash on his forehead as he lay there. She could just make out the feet of a Devore soldier, now using Lewis’ chair as poor cover, another only a few meters from her using one of the bridge side entrances as cover.

“Cover me,” she shouted to Orelia, or responded with a confused look, a mouthed expletive, then popped up just enough to let loose a few shots with her weapon. The purple beam of the phaser Orelia fired almost hurt the eyes with its intensity and caught some attention as she popped up and threw her now discharged disruptor at one of the Devore, missing but bouncing off a console and hitting him in the back of the head.

It didn’t hurt, but it turned out to be lethal anyway. It distracted him as she vaulted the console and drew her sword in a smooth action, slicing through the man’s weapon, through parts of him and embedding itself in Lewis’ chair as the monomolecular edge did most of the work. The density of the Klingon chair, built to offer its occupant some protection in combat, was however just enough to bring the weapon to a halt, the chair heavy enough to clamp down on the blade’s flat sides and pin it in place.

Her only saving grace was Orelia putting a final round in the last Devore on the bridge as she fought to free her sword from the chair. Sure, it could slice through metal, mostly, but then it got stuck.

“Allow me,” Tavol said as he gently took over the task and freed the weapon, giving her time to collect her disruptor, swap its power pack out, and look at the two intruders. The one before her was dead before he hit the deck, and the other was moaning in agony from Orelia’s weapon before one of the other bridge crew, a man whom she’d seen plenty, just not gotten to know, picked up the Devore weapon and smacked the man with the butt of his own weapon, silencing him.

“Report,” she barked, just in time for the Rose to rock under weapons fire from outside. It was a hit straight to the hull, with no shields in place to protect the ship. Another rocked the ship but then no more.

“Breach on deck five, section thirteen. Buckling on the starboard nacelle,” Orelia responded. “Devore weapons looks to have gone offline.”

“What about engineering?”

“Get!” T’Ael shouted as she fired wildly over the console she was using for cover. “Off!” A few more disruptor shots, the green beam of the older Romulan weapon casting their colour choice in with all the others. “My ship!”

R’tin came scrambling on all fours from somewhere, his face already forming a dark green bruise, blood dripping from a small cut in the middle. “It’s fine,” he reassured his sister. “Dan and Rach are literally sitting on the guy that got me.”

“Three inside the main door, three I think in the corridor outside. We’re pinned in.”

“Excellent, just where I want them,” R’tin said, then took a moment to peak over the console, dropping to the floor so fast he fell on his backside, then to his back, and had to scramble to get back to his feet. The shot that went over his head had barely missed.

“Okay, so they’re angry and they know where you are,” he informed her.

“No shit,” she glared at him, then fired a few more rounds from her disruptor. She wasn’t popping up, just holding the weapon over the top and firing in the vague direction of the Devore intruders. “What are you thinking?”

“Two of them are in the actual doorway.” He stopped as two more figures joined them, he and T’Ael both nodding to the humans who came up to them with mismatched weapons, one handing a very utilitarian snub-like weapon over to R’tin that T’ael had never seen. “As I was saying, two in the door, two inside Engineering. Didn’t see any others.”

“So?” the human female, Rach, asked. “We know where they are, how does that help?”

“Because I’ve got a good throwing arm,” R’tin said as he then snatched his sister’s disruptor off of her.

“Hey, give that back!” she demanded and had the alien weapon forced into her hands. “No, don’t you dare! R’tin, don’t even!”

“It’ll be fine! The old girl can handle a small explosion in Engineering,” he said, then with a few key presses on the disruptor that no sane mind should ever do, gave the weapon a lob over the console and down the length of the control console space of Engineering.

The others with him glanced at the weapon, then at their crazed companion and quickly copied him in dropping down and jamming fingers into their ears as the weapon’s high-pitched whine grew louder and louder.

When Revin had first arrived in the galley, she had expected Kevak, K’tah and Lern to all be armed. She even expected one of them to thrust a ‘proper’ weapon into her hands when she did arrive in preparation to repel boarders. What she hadn’t expected to find was three properly kitted out Klingon warriors, one a might bit pudgier than the other two, and all armed with bat’leths.

She also hadn’t expected to see them still in the galley, with Kevak actually over a large pot, spoon in hand as he contemplated what he’d just tasted before grabbing some spices and throwing them in.

“Preparing a victory meal, are we?” she asked as she stepped up beside Kevak, his weapon leaning against the kitchen bench between the two of them. “Or are we expanding into culinary warfare?”

“Don’t joke princess,” he said with good humour. “Each meal is a battle, glory and honour in a good meal, hearty and filling of stomachs and souls is just as good as honour on the battlefield.”

There was a single grumble of disagreement from Lern, but his wife, K’tah, put an end to it with a momentary pointing of a knife in his direction. Like so many others on the ship she’d failed to get out of the two just what had forced them to leave the Empire, to take up service not under Sidda but under Kevak, but no one doubted their skill as chefs or warriors. And the marks of honour on their uniforms were enough to indicate that as well.

“Today is a good day to dine?” she asked.

“Ha!” Kevak barked. “Yes, little one, it is. It should always,” he stopped as the whine of transporters could be heard, not here in the kitchen but in the mess beyond.

Everyone went silent, the three Klingons all collecting their weapons and crouching down to see through the low window out into the mess from the galley, the mass of Devore soldiers present there evident. Twenty in total, they’d picked a large empty space to beam in and were already making for the doors, none of them bothering to look through into the kitchen.

Metal boots on metal decking shouldn’t have been quiet, but Revin had to admit Kevak and his cooks knew what they were about before the doors to the galley hissed open and the Devore found themselves on the sharp end of a Klingon response to unexpected visitors.

“ke’chaw petaQ!” Kevak bellowed as he slammed his shoulder into one of the Devore, sending the woman to the ground, then buried one end of his bat’leth in another nearby. Lern and K’tah were equally a wave crashing into the Devore, those about to leave suddenly turning back in the confusion, momentarily stunned by what was happening before they could raise their weapons.

Shots started firing, but the three Klingons were constantly moving, cutting down Devore as they went, or in K’tah’s case taking the shot in a shoulder, but still fighting on. There was the clash of bat’leths against metal as weapons were hastily used to block the blows coming in, or improvised into clubs to be blocked or beaten back by a bat’leth in turn.

By the time Revin has slipped out into the mess, taking a weapon off a down Devore, whose fate was not worth thinking about, the last Devore present was being dispatched by Kevak, the old man panting in unexpected exertion, but smiling like a young man. Then he turned to his warriors, seeing K’tah now sitting on a table, her good hand to her opposite shoulder, her uniform streaked with blood. Lern had already ripped the first aid kit off the wall, something that Bones had insisted on being in the mess, but was staring at the inside of it in confusion.

“Princess, watch the doors,” Kevak ordered as he stepped up and took the kit from Lern, grabbed one instrument out and jabbed it forcefully into the wound after pulling K’tah’s hand out of the way. She winced, but nothing more. “You’ll live warrior.”

“Yes General,” she replied.

“Lern, Engineering. Clear any intruders you find on the way.”

“Sir, I request,” Lern started, then stopped when the old man glared at him. “At once.” And with that he turned and marched out the door, bat’leth raised and ready to strike.

“Princess, over here,” Kevak ordered and she approached. “Can you escort this warrior to sickbay?” K’tah’s protest was on her face but she didn’t voice it.

“Yes chef,” she answered, hefting the weapon she’d picked up, holding it as Orin had taught her. She then handed it over to Kevak when he wordlessly asked for it, inspected it, and then handed it back to her with a grunt of approval.

“I’m trusting you not with this warrior’s life, but this cook’s life,” he said, then collected his bat’leth and went for the opposite door out that Lern had used. “Qapla!”

“So, a general you say?” she asked K’tah as the more physically imposing woman got to her feet and snatched up her own weapon before leading the way.

A few of the bridge consoles had been blown out in the short firefight, but enough had remained for the Rose to be controlled. Someone was tending to Lewis, perched in the centre seat at the moment, which would need some attention after coping a couple of stray shots. The faint whiff of smoke in the air was fading as life support worked to exchange the air out. Sidda was now herself at the ship’s weapons consoles, scanning the Devore ship before her own for something, anything to shoot at.

Their plan had been daring, bold and risky and would only work this one time if anyone ever reported it back to the Imperium. One could never know about these things. They’d waited, the ship’s computer had been left in charge of various systems just as the Devore had arrived. As one group beamed in, Orin and Deidrick led their boarding parties to the Devore ships, the transporter cycling as the Devore were arriving. Both ships were suspectable to being boarded and of course, the boarders rarely expected to be boarded in response.

Weapons had been intentionally left unpowered from the mains, but the capacitors charged, enough for a single shot. And Orelia had used the time the Devore had monologued at them to get her best guess optical targets. Of the ten shots the Vondem Rose had fired on the Devore, only two had hit. One of them however had been the torpedo they’d fired. It hadn’t been launched properly, just the tube pressurised before the torpedo and then the doors opened, the weapon pushed out into space where its engine fired up and it went hunting for its target – a non-Klingon warp plasma trail.

With shields down and thinking themselves in a position of power, the Devore had never expected to be boarded and shot at by their victim. They’d never expected a sudden raising of a transporter jammer preventing them from retrieving their people, or sending more across. They never expected mad men and women to be running around their own ship, happily bringing destruction from within while it rained from without.

In the end, most of the fighting was over within minutes. Devore boarders were still being hunted throughout the Rose for now, but their ship had been crippled and wasn’t plucking them to safety. Prisoners had been taken, disarmed and bound and then thrown without care into a cargo bay. Her people had been rescued from the Devore ship when their positions had become untenable, the Rose taking more damage in the rescue before shields could be raised again, a feat the Devore couldn’t do as their shields had been knocked out by internal explosions before Sidda herself had picked off the external emitters.

“We got them,” Orelia finally said from her station. “Inspector Yinpel is hailing.”

“On screen,” she said as she stepped around the console and forward, past her injured man in her seat. No more was the comms set to just frame her face, the Devore could see her entire bridge, where two bodies still laid on the deck plating. “You have information I want and I have prisoners I’m willing to return.”

There was silence as this woman, maybe a decade older than herself stared at her, considering her options. “And why should I give you what you want?”

“You have the authority of the Devore Imperium, yes?”

“Yes,” the Inspector replied.

“I have the authority of fourteen disruptor banks, two torpedo launchers, a short temper and a serious desire to find a reason to exercise my authority. Now, you can either give me what I want and take this whole experience as a teaching moment, save your people who are still alive over here and slink back home or I try my luck with the next idiot in those unfashionable uniforms.”

The other woman glared at Sidda for a moment, eyes narrowing. “What do you want?”

“Your Imperium encountered a ship recently, the Martian Thorn, and detained its crew and passengers. You’ll tell me where they are.”

The woman looked off-screen for a moment, then back. “It’s being transmitted to you now. It won’t do you any good, gaharay, as I’ll inform the prison you’re coming. A flotilla of ships will be waiting for you, ready to destroy your ship for the crime of striking against the Imperium.”

“Yeah, good luck with that,” Sidda said, turning to face Tavol. “Well?”

“The information we’ve received does line up with a star chart that does contain a habitable planet. Three days away at maximum warp.”

“Excellent. Inspector,” she turned back to the viewscreen. “I won’t be spacing your people today because you’re actually good at taking orders. Well done you.” Then she smiled, a wicked thing. “But you threatened me, so marks off for that. Orin, destroy their starboard nacelle please.”

The Rose rumbled briefly as precise disruptor fire racked along the side of the Devore ship, the impact evident as the Inspector was thrown out of the pickup of her comms.

“Oh, and I know your comms are damaged, but I still can’t have you calling your people either any time soon. So…”

More weapons fire impacted the Devore ship, the power and shot calculated just enough to destroy the ship’s long-range communications. Combat damage however ultimately resulted in the entire comms array being knocked out and the comm channel went dead.

“No, that’s cool, I was done gloating anyway,” she said, turning back to her cousin. “Nice shooting by the way.”

‘It’s what you pay me for,’ Orin signed, his skin dusted with soot from his time aboard the Devore ship. ‘They wouldn’t have left us alive you know.’

“I know.”

‘They could still get their comms working within a day or so. Warp drive in a few days.’

“Maybe, but I don’t think so.”

‘You really wanted to blow them up, didn’t you?’

“Damn right I did,” she answered as she stepped up beside him. “They think they can fly around and impose their view, their order on whomever they want. They beamed onto my ship and killed three of my people because they think wherever they go is their space. They took my people prisoner for the mere crime of trying to get innocent people away from their space. Fuck yes, I want to blow them out of the sky.”

‘Then why don’t you?’ he asked.

“Because I’m…because we’re all better than they are. We’re just pirates. They’re assholes.”

‘And torpedoes are expensive.’

“I know right? We so need to sort out a supplier when we get home. Unless you think we can steal some from Starfleet?”

‘I’m sure one of Rourke’s officers would be willing to send a few our way.’

“Violently and at speed. No thanks.”

There was a singular environmental setting that R’tin and T’Ael, in all their exploration of the Vondem Rose’s computer systems, had never been able to find and change. It had a specific set of requirements, but one that both Klingon warships and marauding pirates in a stolen Klingon ship would frequently trigger throughout the course of any given endeavour. As the Rose settled into the orbit of the world simply referred to by the Devore Imperium’s forces as Depot 816, the ship was cloaked and at battle stations, which always and without fail caused the lights on the bridge to dim and take a reddish hue.

There was no need for that, no benefit gained save for giving anyone who walked onto the bridge an immediate visual status update without having to blare it constantly via speakers or plaster it as a running ribbon along the top or bottom of console screens. The ship could have functioned just fine with the lights on full blast, but no, somewhere in the computer code there was a setting that dictated the illumination on the bridge while cloaked and ready for war.

Despite all of that, as Sidda sat in her chair, glaring at the viewscreen, she had to admit the darkened, red-tinted bridge went with her mood at least. But damn if she didn’t find the darkened state annoying. Maybe, just maybe, Starfleet had something right about most of their ship’s being very well-lit, no matter the state. Though she had to admit, that could have changed. It had been decades since she’d been on a Starfleet ship in anything other than normal conditions.

Or dead in a shipyard.

This chair really did have better lumbar support. And the swivel was much, much smoother.

Depot 816 was an unremarkable little mudball of a planet. It had all the immediate visual signs of an M-class world – deep blue oceans, continents of various shades of brown, green and tan, and ice peppered around the mountains and poles. All in all, it seemed pretty standard in the scheme of things save for a few distinct differences. There were signs of a Devore prison camp on the planet’s surface, right in the tropical zone and placed on an island in the middle of one of the deeper seas. A volcanic mount according to Tavol. But there was little in the way of the native green there, all of it having been replaced with other shades of green. Some of it was cultivated in patches visible from orbit, other shades had been allowed to go wild, covering the rest of the island.

Reasonings why could wait till later.

The other pressing matter was the Devore warship sitting in orbit above the camp. The ship didn’t look to be in the best condition, its hull breached in a handful of locations, but she still looked combat capable. More like she’d come in from an extended campaign and was making good her ills, which explained the work crews over her hull, the handful of shuttles buzzing around the ship tractoring pieces away, shining lights in places shielded from the local star and the planet-shine.

“Talk to me,” she finally said after what felt like hours of brooding but was probably just a few minutes. Minutes that Tavol would have been carefully studying the passive sensors, with Orelia and Orin putting a finer focus on the ship they were sharing an orbit with.

A ship which hadn’t seemed to react one bit to a K’t’inga-class battlecruiser closing to within ten thousand kilometres of it over the last two hours.

“I can’t provide an exact count of life signs within the prison camp without the active sensors,” Tavol said, his voice sounding like he hadn’t even turned away from his console. “But I’m estimating somewhere in the order of five thousand people planetside, judging by the size of the farms surrounding the facility. I would wager the Devore are using slave labour to work the farms as I am not seeing any signs of large-scale agricultural equipment. I am also not detecting any signs of long-range communication equipment on the planet, but extensive short-range facilities. Local weather around the facility currently is around twenty-nine degrees centigrade, with around eighty per cent humidity.”

“Oof,” Lewis chipped in. “It’s not the heat that gets you, it’s the humidity. No thanks.”

“Lewis,” Sidda found herself speaking directly to him, quietly, calmly. “Not now, please.”

“Sorry Boss,” he replied solemnly and turned back to his own station.

“Thank you,” she offered to her helmsman as nicely as she could. “And what of them?” she then asked, waving a hand at the warship on her viewscreen, the image zoomed in enough to catch the movement of suited individuals, and the occasional bright glare of cutting torches or welders.

“Battered, but not broken.” Orelia brought an overlay onto the viewscreen, highlighting a few things with handy purple circles. “Minor hull damage, a few breaches, but nothing critical it would seem. She’s looking like she’s powered down at the moment for repairs with her nacelles discharged even. Her shield emitters look cold, and her weapons too. But,” the world dragged out, pregnant with anticipation before the final overlay appeared, showing the ship’s communications array and its current status, “she’s talking and talking a lot to someone out there and planetside. I reckon she’s playing the role of relay station for the depot at the moment.”

“Why?” she asked as she turned to face Orelia and Orin, her left eyebrow rising in confusion.

“Why what?” Orelia asked back.

“Why are they playing relay?”

‘To stop a prison revolt from calling for help?’ Orin signed. ‘The prison can only talk to orbit, so someone in orbit has to enable outside communications.’ Then the large man shrugged. ‘Seen it once with a Klingon prison. The prison likely doesn’t have transporters either, relying on a ship in orbit.’

“So, our friend here is what, on station acting as a relay and warden while making repairs?”

“And likely traded jobs with whoever was here,” Orelia continued the thought. “They come here, make repairs, play comm relay and whoever was doing it last gets to go out and stomp their boots on someone. Man, they do seemingly take joy in extracting the most suffering out of everything.”

“Anything else we should be worried about? Defence satellites? Surface-to-orbit weapon emplacements? An ensign with a good throwing arm?” Orin at least smirked at the last one.

‘Nothing we can see, but we are just using passives.’

“Any signs of this blood dilithium shit, Tavol?” Sidda asked, turning on Tavol.

“From this distance, and with passives, I can’t be certain, but there are storehouses planetside that are emitting subspace energy signatures consistent with dilithium.” He turned to face her; an eyebrow raised. “The computer has suggested that this planet is an ideal raiding target.”

“It has, has it?” And he nodded in the affirmative to her question. “Well then, let’s watch our victims for a bit more, see if we can’t establish some sort of comms window or such that we might be able to strike in and not set off the Devore too much.” She pushed herself up to her feet. “Orelia, you’ve got the conn. I’ll be back in an hour. I want options then or we go with whatever spur-of-the-moment insanity I come up with.”

An hour later a rather dishevelled and glowing Sidda walked back onto the bridge, sans her normal leather jacket and in a different shirt than when she’d left. Most of the people on the bridge had only given their captain a quick glance when the large doors aft had swished open, confirming who had entered the bridge, then back to their work. Orelia on the other hand had noticed and from her station took a step to the side to make room for Sidda, waving her over.

And for her part, Sidda knew exactly what impression she was giving off. Exactly why Orelia was summoning her to her side. She stepped up beside her cousin, who was just a little taller and more muscular than herself, but not by much. And propped her left hip against the console as she turned to look at Orelia. “Well, spit it out.”

“You smell like,” Orelia whispered, stopping as Sidda raised a hand to kill the statement. “You smell like her,” Orelia pressed on, even quieter than before, barely a whisper. “Your Romulan.” Sidda knew her cousin wasn’t Revin’s biggest fan.

“Yup,” she confirmed. “Craziest thing, she just about attacked me in the corridor, dragged me to our quarters and well…” A waved hand indicated her change in clothing, then went running through her hair, doing a poor job of straightening the mess. “Do me a favour, send a couple of people to check on R’tin and T’Ael will you? This was very un-Revin like and I’m wondering if it might have been something to do with this dilithium shit everyone is on about.”

Orelia nodded and turned to tap at her console just as a beep went off. “Bones to Bridge,” came the following voice of the ship’s doctor. “Where’s the captain? She’s not answering my calls.”

Sidda tapped her pockets, then sighed with defeat. Different pants, different pockets, no communicator. “Sidda here, what’s up doc?” she asked after Orelia dutifully opened the channel for a response.

“Where’s your cortical suppressor? It stopped registering ten minutes ago.”

She reached up behind her left ear for the small device. She’d been wearing it for over a week and lost track of it, to be honest. But she came up empty-handed. Then she pulled her hair back and turned to let Orelia look.

“It’s gone cousin,” Orelia said, her fingers gently checking Sidda’s ear, then the surrounding hair. “No adhesive mark though, so fell off perhaps?”

“Must have lost it Bones. Do I really need it though?” she ultimately asked the disembodied voice.

“Maybe. Get your ass down here for a scan. Now.” Then the line to sickbay was closed.

“This is your ship,” Orelia muttered.

“It’s our ship,” Sidda said, a sweep of her hand to broaden the word ‘our’ to all. “I’m just the captain. She’s the doctor.” She took two steps towards the door, leaving the bridge as quickly as she arrived, then stopped, spun on her heel and marched right up beside Orelia. “I’ve got an idea. Either a really bad one, or a really good one. Back the ship off from the planet, out to the outer system, then start calling around and see if anyone has some good bioscans of a Devore. I need to know if they’re…malleable.” The last word was said as sensuously as Sidda could make it, stretched out just a smidge, her eyes half-lidded.

And then she spun once more, offering Orelia a mischievous smile and just reaching out with fingertips to gently touch Orin’s upper arm in slight affection before she departed.

“Yup,” was all Bones said as she finished her scan of Sidda’s head.

She was sitting on a biobed, its self-contouring surface adjusting to each move to make a damn comfortable seat and no doubt for the few that have ended up using the bed lately, a fantastic bed. Na’roq really had splurged on Sickbay. “Yup what?” she asked of the doctor.

“You still need the suppressor.” And then the older woman, who was somewhere between crotchety and cantankerous in age, marched off into the medical lab, returning moments later with a new one, which she fitted with a touch more care this time than last. “To make sure it stays on this time,” she defended her kind actions as purely professional.

“We don’t have any blood dilithium on the ship, so why is it still impacting me?” she asked.

“We might not have any onboard, but someone around here has a decently sized collection of it.” Bones shrugged, flipping her tricorder open once more as she programmed the suppressor. “I bit of time, a bit more looking into things, I don’t think you were impacted by dilithium dust at that Ferengi operation. I think the crystals in the crater themselves did it. Which is why Orelia was impacted so much less severely. But something here is having the same impact on all of you Orions and the Vulcans on board too. We’re further away from the planet and I don’t see a giant crater full of the stuff, do you?”

“No, but there is a prison site with a dilithium warehouse planetside.”

“Hmm.” Bones stroked her chin in thought. “Refined or raw?”

“Don’t know.”

“I’ll wager refined then,” Bones said.

“No bet,” she replied, hoping off the biobed as Bones finished with her. “What about Romulans?”

“What about them?” Bones asked, not looking up from the final diagnostics of the suppressor.

“Could the blood dilithium impact them like it could for Vulcans? Aren’t they the same for the most part?”

“What, no, of course they aren’t,” Bones protested, then stopped dead, looked up and whistled. “Geez kid, that’s a damn scary thought. They’ve only been genetically different for a few millenia. They could just be. Why do you ask?”

“Personal reasons,” she replied. “But mind if I bring Revin, R’tin and T’Ael in one at a time for scans and such?” When Bones just looked at her confused for a moment, she continued. “About an hour ago now,” she looked to the clock on one of the larger displayers around sickbay to confirm the time, “and I kid you not, I got jumped by Revin in a rather un-Revin display of public affection.”

“That could have been those freaky Orion pheromones of yours just working through her system,” Bones stopped when Sidda gave her a glare that said ‘that was weeks ago now’. “Bring her in, I’ll make sure you haven’t broken her.”

“Be worried she could break me,” Sidda retorted.

“You’re a big girl, take care of yourself,” Bones replied, going back to her task.

Sidda stepped up to a computer terminal just inside of the sickbday doors, entered in her command codes and signalled the bridge. “Orin, can you meet me outside my quarters please.”

She wasn’t taking any chances getting Revin to sickbay. Her fiancé had been…extremely energetic and honestly very persuasive. On her own, she’d fail to bring Revin in for a checkup, falling for the woman’s charms, her soft touch, and her insistency that had taken all of Sidda’s will to break earlier. But with backup, well, this will be a sight she will treasure for a while.

Now just to wake Sleeping Beauty and get her to the doctor.

“What the hell is going on here?” Orelia barked as she stepped through the main doors into Engineering, summoned by the team she’d sent down to check on the twins after Sidda’s suggestion.

T’Ael for her part had been found obsessively reading a Klingon repair guide, barely acknowledging the team and was still sitting at a console, a half dozen padds spread around her. Her attention flicked from one to another, back to the console, a string of utterances and then back to the padds. The security team had elected to put just one of their number to watch her, with an engineer, to ensure she was not doing anything detrimental.

The reason for that was R’tin, who was busy struggling against two men who massed half again more than he did. They both had him by an arm and were dragging him away, toward the door she had just entered through. They’d failed to remove the tool in his hands, but they had firm holds on his wrists and arms, preventing him from swinging them in any form of attack.

“Let go of me!” the Romulan man shouted. “I’ve got work to do! Don’t you see that you dull-witted thugs?” R’tin tried to get his feet under him and push against the deck to head back to wherever it was they had found him, but he lacked the mass and proper leverage, finding himself quickly dragged again before he attempted to repeat the process.

One of the security team, a human a smidge taller than she herself was if he ever stood up straight, nodded at her. “Found him attempting to disconnect the secondary,” the main stopped, eyes going to the ceiling as he struggled for words momentarily. “Secondary plasma manifold.”

“Powers the cloaking device,” the other human said, this one slightly taller than her, even slouching which he looked to do constantly. Then again, he did look to have a few decades on her as well.

“Goddesses,” she muttered, then walked around them to look at R’tin.

“Ah, Orelia, excellent, tell these oafs to let me go, I’ve got work to do!” He shouted the last bit at her as he managed to get his feet under him for once since they weren’t trying to drag him anymore. He looked ready to fight the entire Klingon Empire by himself, if not for being held in place.

“And why are you working on the power systems for the cloaking device?” she asked, keeping her tone low and quiet, but carrying an edge of menace to it. “And this had better be good little man,” she continued.

“Because it needs to be done,” he answered like it was the single most logical thing in the world. “I wasn’t going to disconnect the power, just work around the main power connections.”

She sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose. Even she knew it was idiotic to do maintenance on a critical system when it was powered and oh, keeping them from being detected. With another sigh she stepped closer to him and then considerable effort and protest pried the tools from both of his hands, dropping them on the floor.

“I’ve got things to do!” he screeched, followed by a gasp and exhalation of air as she punched him solidly right in the gut, bringing his cries to a halt as he gasped for breath.

“Sorry,” she said, finding herself actually feeling that way, before stepping back. “Take him to sickbay,” she said to the two men. “Tie him down and stick with him. Whatever Bones wants, you do.”

“Aye ma’am,” the older man said. “Right lad, shall we?” And with R’tin still struggling to get his breath back managed to drag him out without further incident.

That handled, her attention drifted to T’Ael and Orelia found herself in short order taking a seat next to the engineer, after carefully clearing the seat of padds, which had earned her an unhappy sound and the padds snatched away to be set somewhere else. T’Ael had barely stopped in whatever it was she was doing, but it certainly looked complex. No diagrams or computer screens with ship systems open, so it seemed benign enough.

“What you doing?” she asked. She wasn’t exactly friends with T’Ael, but she hadn’t annoyed her as R’tin had and therefore she was willing to at least be neutral with the Romulan woman.

“Rewriting all the maintenance manuals,” T’Ael said, an exasperated sigh following before she took up a padd, swiped at the screen a few times and then shoved it at Orelia. “They’re shit. Worse than shit in some cases. I swear their engineers must be taught master an apprentice-style because this manual,” she said, jabbing at the screen Orelia was trying to read, “is unhelpful at best, dangerous at worst.”

“Okay, but why now?” she asked.

“Why not now?” T’Ael countered. “R’tin is handling maintenance and this has been bugging me for weeks. So, I’m doing it now. Then at least people have something they can reference.” Her attention then switched back to her work and it was as if she’d just decided Orelia wasn’t there by the total lack of regard she spared.

“T’Ael, we just dragged your brother to sickbay.”

That got her attention. T’Ael sighed, looked at Orelia, then past her at the engineer who had been tasked with watching the chief engineer. “Find Telrob, tell him to get onto R’tin’s maintenance list.”

The Engineer looked to Orelia for confirmation before he departed, leaving to speak with a middle-aged Bolian, who glanced in their direction, nodded his head, and then called over a few others. Delegation at work.

“T’Ael, I want you to go to sickbay as well,” Orelia said.

“Busy,” T’Ael replied.

“You can work on your rewrites there,” she countered.

“If I agree, will you stop asking me and let me work?”

“I’ll even ask Bones to give you one of the private rooms.” Not that they were private rooms, a Klingon ship being what it was, but more a converted space that Bones had insisted on to let some patients have privacy. Or to act as a medical brig in the worst situation.

She could watch T’Ael’s mental calculus, a glance to the chaos of Engineering then agreed, gather her padds, carefully, handing some to Orelia, some to the security officer, then gather the last herself and leading the way, all while still reading.

Half an hour later she was in Bones’ office with Sidda, all of them standing while looking at a medical readout of Revin, T’Ael and R’tin. There were both physiological and brain wave scans present for each patient, their brains rendered in green with rashes of red and blue in a dozen places.

“Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” Bones said with a shrug. “No physiological changes, save for changes in brain activity in certain locations.” She pointed at the red patches, highlighting the similarity in all three. “But it’s had a different effect in all three.”

“In plain Vondomese please Doctor,” Sidda said, arms crossed her whole posture a little tense, which put Orelia on edge almost instinctively.

Bones glared at Sidda for a moment, as if she had a question but left it. “It’s the Blood Dilithium, especially that refined cache on that prison planet. Its effects were considerably more potent. The monitors you and Orelia are wearing both had to start working harder as we neared the planet and have eased up as we moved away to make calls out without being heard.” She tapped the monitor and brought up Revin’s scans. “In Revin’s case, as you’re aware, it made her rather,” the older woman trailed off at Sidda’s disapproving look. “Oh, grow up, we’re all adults here. You want me to be respectful or medically precise?” And with that Sidda took a moment to nod her head and shrug, gaze returning to the large monitor.

Orelia really didn’t like seeing this woman speak to Sidda like that, but she’d been told to let it be. At least for now.

“So, Revin got rather amorous with you,” Bone continued, barrelling over the conversation point. “And forceful as well.” Then brought the brain scan up. “This section of the Romulan brain is responsible for things like feelings of affection, this part here lights up typically with aggression.”

“Carrying on,” Sidda muttered as a hand came up to rub at her left shoulder briefly.

“R’tin seems to have lost impulse control.” Bones brought his scans and the rotating model of his brain up in detail. “More activations here, less here,” she said, pointing at a red and blue rash respectively. “All three of them have similar results, but his are greater in these locations. Looks like for him a dash of poor decision making, poor impulse control, a dash of aggression.”

“And T’Ael?”

“Different, but similar.” Bones brought up the third scan, the same blobs of red and blue essentially, just different in intensity or size. “I’m trying to do a touch of this with what I can recall, but it looks similar to obsessive-compulsive disorder across multiple species, reduced impulse control. She got it in her mind to work on a project she’s been putting off and right now she’s unlikely to change her mind.”

“So, both my chief engineers are down,” Sidda grumbled. “Telrob?” Sidda asked her.

“Already taken over. Good thing we settled on our gamma shift leader before we came on this little adventure.” She’d interviewed the Bolian with T’Ael, R’tin and Sidda nearly three months ago, but it had taken months and more interviews with T’Ael and R’tin before settling on Telrob as gamma chief.

“Do me the favour of breaking the bad news that he’s the chief engineer until T’Ael and R’tin are on their feet. Tap the shift deputies to run their respective shifts.” Sidda then looked back to the medical scans. “Actually, I’m pulling the captain card.”

“Oh?” she asked her cousin.

“Yeah, tell Telrob he’s not just a gamma shift leader but our third chief engineer. Engineering needs a triumvirate.”

“More stable leadership?” she asked and smiled when Sidda nodded her head.

“Why weren’t Tavol and T’Rev affected?” Sidda then asked.

“Oh, they were. But Vulcans consider mental health and discipline fundamentals from as early as childhood. Both are wearing monitors and picked up the same changes, which then induced increased activity in the portions of their brains responsible for emotional control, at Tavol’s recommendation from a few days ago.” Bones brought up a scan of Tavol in comparison. “They are being affected, but they both also have a much tighter rein on their emotions and impulses.”

“Huh. Bet Tavol’s going to want to bore us with details about this at some point,” Sidda said.

Bones cleared her throat for effect more than anything. “I also don’t want to put pressure on you, but these changes are a bit more than what you Orions are experiencing. These activity changes could have long-term effects since none of them has a Vulcan’s mental discipline to help reign in behavioural changes. We need to either stay away from large Blood Dilithium deposits or I need to come up with a treatment plan. I’ve got an idea on how to help all three with cortical stimulators and suppressors, but I need to test it first.” She paused momentarily to get Sidda’s attention. “None of them are in a fit mind to volunteer.”

“I hate you,” Sidda said to Bones, who just shrugged at her. “Hmm, who’s the most likely to respond to treatment?”

“Any of them. But,” and it was a pregnant but, “R’tin is rather fighty and T’Ael could get extremely fighty if I need to keep making modifications and interrupt her with no improvements in her behaviour.”

“Oh, I really hate you,” Sidda said, then sighed, turning to Orelia. “I’m a compromised decision-maker.”

“You’re in charge,” she said to her cousin, who glared at her. “Fine.” She spared the monitor one last look. “Revin. We need our engineers more than we need a cook’s apprentice.”

“Fuck,” Sidda muttered. “You’re right.”

“Of course she’s right,” Bones stated, then produced a small hipflask for her lab coat’s left pocket and handed it over to Sidda. “No, I haven’t been drinking,” she said in defence before the question was asked. “I keep some nearby for folks who have loved ones in my sickbay.”

There were no further words spoken, just a passing around of the hipflask, a sip taken, Bones’ more like a hint of a sip before Orelia managed to usher Sidda out of sickbay after Bones insisted on checking their own cortical suppressors one last time.

“Did you have any good plans for dealing with the Devore ship?” Sidda asked her after about five steps past the door.

“Not yet.”

“I’ve still got a really bad plan for the planet.”

“Tavol has confirmed the Devore are malleable to suggestion,” she said, which garnered a wicked grin from Sidda. “Turns out a Malon Security Forces ship nearby was willing to send us scans they had as payment for our help with the Prospector 17.”

“A good deed earning another? Why I never! Did Starfleet ever answer our calls?”

“Not that Tavol has mentioned.”

“Right,” Sidda turned down a corridor, heading for the bridge. “Not surprised really. We’re just merchants after all.”

“Pre-emptive salvage merchants,” Orelia joked.

“So, let’s go make some salvage,” Sidda said. “This is a Klingon ship and that’s a wounded enemy cruiser out there. Let’s go be Klingons for a few minutes.”

“Are we repeating what we did to the D’Ghor?”

Sidda didn’t answer, just smiled wickedly as the door to the bridge opened and they stepped across.

Today was a good day to make someone else die.

There had been no call to surrender, no polite request to stand down, just a vicious surprise attack that was as merciless and efficient as could be achieved. It was the type of attack that could only be pulled off right at the start of a fight, only against an unaware enemy and only if the universe itself deemed that such was befitting for those undertaking it.

As it stood, the Devore warship guarding the planet known to them as Depot 816, was at station keeping in orbit over the planet’s sole piece of technical civilisation. Her shields were down, her engines cold, and her weapons offline. Crews scrambled over the hull conducting repairs, making good the ship’s ills from a few months of dealing with the Imperium’s enemies. Most of the crew wouldn’t have even known they were under attack until that final moment when the universe would have exploded around them.

The Vondem Rose had approached from the Devore ship’s dorsal starboard aft, diving down on the Devore warship and in particular a large breach in the warship’s hull. At a quarter impulse, she was crawling by combat standards, but compared to the at-rest Devore ship she streaked by, two torpedoes fired in rapid succession from the ship’s single forward launcher, her disruptors raking along the hull for good measure. The first torpedo had been enough to kill the ship, burying itself deep in the ship and gutting her as matter and antimatter annihilated each other in the tens of megatons range.

The second torpedo punched right through the ship, breaking it into two large pieces as it denoted against the far hull of the ship. And as the Rose sailed past its victim, her rear launcher spat out one last torpedo, targeted at a hatch on the ship’s ventral aspect that they had scouted a few hours before. As the torpedo cracked the hull there it shattered the Devore ship’s antimatter containers and the entire vessel disappeared in a seething ball of plasma instantly.

The shockwave shook the Rose as she swooped into a lower orbit than the Devore ship had occupied. The unexpected light from the hundreds of megatons explosion pushed back clouds in the planet’s atmosphere, flashing so much of the surface in the fury of the early universe from so close. But for those living, or held prisoner, on the planet below, they were spared much of the furious wrath as the Rose imposed itself between them and the bright temporary star.

“Goddess,” Orelia muttered from Ops. “There’s nothing left at all.” She took only a moment more, confirming on her console a single reading. “No distress calls and more importantly no outgoing communications either.”

“Tavol, get me a scan of that compound,” Sidda said from her command chair, spinning on her science officer, grinning like a fool as she did. “I want to know everything about it.”

“Yes captain,” the Vulcan replied, having learned recently not to say ‘ma’am’. With no one to watch them that could shout to the outside world about what they were doing, the Rose was now free to bring her active sensors online, the secrets of the compound below no longer hidden from them.

“Preliminary details on screen now,” he said and almost all attention went to the main viewer. The orbital view of the prison facility was in much finer detail now than before, the purely optical now enhanced with the full suite of active scans. Dots had appeared on the view, red ones clustered primarily in a single compound to the side of a larger one, with a few scattered around the larger compound and fields in groups no smaller than four or five from the looks of it. Then came the wave of blue dots all over the place within the large compound and in the fields near the red dots.

“My initial estimate of nearly five thousand looks to have been incorrect,” Tavol said. “I’m detecting three hundred twenty-seven Devore life signs,” the red dots dutifully blinking in response, “and one thousand, one hundred twenty-two non-Devore life signs. Including humans, bajorans and betazoids and romulans.”

“Right on the money then,” Sidda said as she got to her feet. “Lots of farms though for such a small population.”

“Likely supplying fresh produce for visiting starships in the region,” Tavol continued. “There are storehouses and refrigeration units on site.”

“So, we’ve confirmed prison labour then? Put that on the Devore’s tally card.” Sidda rubbed at her chin for a moment. “Guess we’re not just going to be lucky enough to be able to beam all the prisoners out, are we?”

“They’ve just brought a transporter jammer online that encompasses the compound and most of the farms currently being worked,” Orelia said. “I could grab maybe thirty people.”

“Better than none. Do it,” Sidda said, then turned on Orin. “Get Deidrick, get a team ready to go with me planetside. And grab all the rebreathers you can as well.” With a single sharp nod, Orin was on his way out the door and down the long corridor to the rest of the ship.

“You’re coming back,” Orelia stated as Sidda stepped up beside her.

“Yeah, of course I am,” Sidda said with a smile. “Revin would never forgive me.”

“I mean Orin has already reassured me he’ll drag you out of there if things go wrong,” Orelia said. “I don’t care about your fiancée; I am not taking command of this ship if I can help it.”

“Hey, Orin tends to get shot before I do,” Sidda said, then clasped a hand on her cousin’s shoulder. “Back in a bit, call if trouble shows up earlier than expected.”

Ten minutes later nearly thirty of the Vondem Rose’s crew had materialised in the farmlands outside the Devore prison camp. All but Sidda were wearing rebreathers that encompassed their mouths and noses, filtering everything they breathed and in this instance specifically calibrated for a particular pheromone.

“I feel naked,” Sidda complained, standing in the middle of her people without her jacket. She’d ditched it in the transporter room after taking a small satchel from Bones, with the doctor’s complaints of course, and advice about more exposed skin would help with her bad plan.

“It’s hot enough that leaving your jacket behind,” Deidrick said as he walked up on Sidda’s right, Orin on her left, “was probably the right call.” Most of the men and women around here had opted to leave jackets behind when they’d heard the temperature was thirty-two degrees with seventy per cent humidity. Those that hadn’t were already in the process of shedding jackets.

“But I have such fashionable jackets,” she complained half-heartedly.

“Then just show them your guns boss,” Deidrick said, gave Sidda’s upper arm a light tap with the back of his hand and then walked on with no regard for her playful shocked expression. With a whistle that was likely heard nearly a kilometre away at the compound’s outer walls, he got the rest of the away team’s attention. “Not only is this our boss,” he said turning to point at Sidda, “she’s also our secret weapon here today.”

“Because she’s such a good shot?” someone asked, earning a few laughs.

“Because she says she’s our secret weapon,” Deidrick clarified with no humour in his tone. Any laughter stopped as Orin stepped up beside Deidrick and both men’s glares brought things to a serious level. “We’re going straight for the dilithium stores they’re keeping here on planet. We get those stores; we win the planet. Easy as that.”

“What’s the catch?” someone else asked from behind Sidda.

“The catch,” she said, speaking up nice and loud for all to hear, slowly turning to face all of the away team, “is that none of you are to take off those rebreathers. You’ve also got a number of them with you in your kits. You see a prisoner or one of our people, you give them rebreathers and you tell them to get out of the prison.” As she finished one slow spin, she continued. “Do not take those rebreathers off until you are back aboard the Rose. Understood?”

There were a few murmurs of acceptance, head nods in the affirmative, then a few louder responses when Deidrick barked out his own seeking question. With that settled the band settled into the trek towards the prison camp.

“Commandant, the gaharey troops have reached the outer wall.”

The command centre of Depot 816 was a well-lit room, with monitors liberally spread around supplying feeds from the multitude of cameras inside and outside the prison complex. It served as the all-knowing brain of the facility, watching all movements within the walls. But right now the room was far tenser than normal. General Quarters had been sounded; prisoners forcibly returned to their cells when the gaharey in orbit had landed troops outside the inhibitor field. The commandant had attempted to communicate with these invaders, to give them a chance to surrender before the weight of the Imperium fell upon their heads for their impudence and murder of so many Devore soldiers, but they’d failed to respond.

“Show me,” the older man said as he walked over to the officer who had updated him on the invader’s position.

With a few quick commands and the image that the younger man had been looking at went from one of the many small screens in front of him to the large screen above the consoles in his section, meant for supervisors to look at in situations just like this. It showed a rabble of people, no uniforms to speak of, carrying a variety of weapons that he couldn’t identify at all. Not even the species were identifiable, save some could perhaps be the humans that Command had been warning of.

“Why are they all wearing masks?” he asked rhetorically. “Where is this?”

“Camera 789. Exterior wall of the dilithium storehouse.”

“That won’t do them any good. No direct access from there to here. They will still have to break through a checkpoint to get anywhere important.”

The image feed showed the rabble standing around, watching up the wall and out into the field, most with a relaxed guard, as a few were working on something against the base of the wall. Then with a spoken word, the whole lot moved away in mass before a small explosion tore away at the wall. Just then a dozen minor alarms went off around them.

“Confirmed Commandant, they have breached the storehouse.”

That much was evident as the camera showed them streaming in through the gap they’d blown in the concrete outer wall, while one figure, the only one without a mask on her face, stopping just long enough to look up at the camera, wave, then pull out some long sidearm from a thigh holster and fire at the camera, knocking it out.

But that bit of defiance was for not as the camera inside the storehouse started to track the team’s movements as they broke up into two lots, heading for the only two proper exits out. They stacked up, waiting, not proceeding just yet.

But one camera showed the green-skinned woman, accompanied by a singular green-skinned man who while as large as the commandant himself, was all muscle and youth compared to his portlier self. She stopped at one of the cases in the room and cracked it open a touch, bathing herself in the blood-red glow emanating from within.

“Aside from the exterior wall, is the rest of the storehouse’s shielding still good?” the commandant asked.

“Yes Commandant,” the young officer replied. “And all prisoners are in their cells now as well. The lining of their cells should stop anyone from being affected.”

“Save those in there,” the commandant said as he watched the green-skinned woman lift a chunk of the blood dilithium from its storage case, glowing brighter than the raw crystal since it had been cut, shaped and polished, ready for inclusion in a warp drive or whatever else the Imperium was planning. He then watched as she reached into a satchel at her side, pulled out what looked like a gaharey version of their medical injectors and injected herself in the neck before removing a device from behind her ear, the injector and device going into her bag.

“Watch them, I want to know exactly where she is at all times,” the commandant commanded.

“Yes sir,” the young officer replied.

‘Ward says I am to stay with you at all times,’ Orin signed. ‘In case someone else needs to give you a stimulant.’

“Or put the cortical suppressor back on,” Sidda said with a smile. She stretched her neck left and right as she tossed the large chunk of crystal from one hand to another without looking at it. “Man, this feels weird. I feel good.”

‘Stimulant?’ Orin asked.

“No, more than that. Like I could take on the universe,” she replied. “Energised, excited, giddy almost? And pissed off too. Like, really angry, but excited you know?” Orin shook his head in the negative at that. Then she stopped tossing the crystal from hand to hand, put it in the satchel, adjusting it so the strap cut across her chest just right, taking a moment to appreciate the effect, and then smiled as she walked past Orin and to one of the breaching teams.

“All right boys and girls,” she announced herself to the people, disruptor now in hand, “let’s go be bad guys.”

And with that, the doors from the storehouse were blown open as the crew of the Vondem Rose breached Depot 816.

“Why can’t anything ever go according to plan?” Deidrick shouted as he and four others were hunkered down behind a barricade, pinned in place by a continuous stream of particle weapons fire from a dozen Devore soldiers no more than ten meters away.

Soldiers with way better firing positions.

Almost like a prison was designed to resist prison riots or armed assaults.

“Because then life would be borrowing,” the young man beside him said. Hendricks was fresh-faced but wasn’t a fool, having spent some time with Starfleet Auxiliary before opting for a life in the grey areas of the law. “Besides, Mel should be circling around in a moment, we just need to keep these guys looking at us, not checking their rear.”

That was in its simplest form the actual plan, but the happy day plan was just to waltz in, find the Devore willing to surrender, do what they came to do and waltz out. Unfortunately, that plan never came to be, so Plan A it was – multi-pronged rapid assault through the prison, sweeping and clearing choke points.

With a sigh of inevitability, Deidrick checked his phaser’s charge level once more, simply out of habit more than a real need, then popped up briefly to take a handful of shots before dropping back down once the fire shifted from the other two back to Hendricks and himself. “Mel should have hit them from behind by now, what’s the hold-up?”

“Beats me, but what can we do?”

While Deidrick and his people had split off into groups throughout the prison, all with objectives or coordinated plans of attack as they weaved through the prison sowing chaos, Sidda and Orin were moving with a dedicated purpose in a direction away from the administrative tower that dominated the southern wall of the prison. They’d stop, consult a tricorder, proceed some more, occasionally ambushing a couple of soldiers busily making preparations to fight off a massed attack. They said nothing but moved with haste at least till they got to a single cell block door.

It was sealed, power cut to the controls and after a quick try deemed too heavy to try and force.

“They’re right on the other side of that door,” Sidda growled, pacing back and forth as she pondered her options. “Right there!” she shouted.

With an audible sigh to get her attention, which failed, Orin reached out to spin Sidda to face him, then shoved his tricorder into her hands to free his. ‘Air vents,’ he signed, then pointed to the sword on her hip. ‘Covers are hardened against most weapons.’

“You want me to crawl through the air vents?” she asked, then shoved the tricorder back at him without even looking at it. “I’d be asking to get shot!”

Orin’s eye roll could have been heard a lightyear away as he pointed to the rebreather on his face, covering his nose and mouth, then at the satchel at Sidda’s side. ‘Get in the air vent, give it a minute, then move.’ He looked at her seriously for a moment, before signing a single word that caused Sidda to sigh with dramatic exasperation.

“Don’t you fucking start calling me that,” she warned him, then looked up for the nearest air vent, then corrected another with Orin’s guidance. “Need a boost,” she added and was dutifully given one to first get the needed reach to cut through the grills on the vent with the sword before she grumbled as she slithered into the vent, sword leading the way.

“I need a knife,” she muttered as she crawled awkwardly through the confined space, pushing the sword before her and careful how she moved thanks to the disruptor on her hip and the satchel now occupying a weird space between her back and the ducting’s ceiling.

“Dammit Mel, where are you?” Deidrick shouted as he dropped back behind the cover again. Hendricks was there beside him but the man had effectively been side-lined when one of the Devore had managed to shoot him in the arm, the only saving grace being they’d missed any arteries and everyone was at least somewhat first aid trained.

“She’s on her way,” Hendricks replied, looking a little pale, the sleeve of his shirt more stained in red than before. “Got held up she said.”

“We’ve been here too long,” Deidrick argued.

“No argument there,” Hendricks answered. “Shit, left!” he suddenly exclaimed and Deidrick swore as two Devore soldiers came at them from down the corridor that they had used to get here.

A hasty shot sailed right between the two black uniformed and generally unpleasant looking individuals, neither the Rose assault team them having any cover, but Deidrick was the only one firing at them. His second shot wasn’t much better.

One shot from them just about took off his ear, slamming into the barricade he was hiding in behind from the dug-in defenders. Another went right over his head; the Devore mistimed the shot as he ran and it sailed high. The defenders could see their fellows approaching as all their fire seemed to switch to the other piece of cover that Deidrick’s people were using, leaving him with two brutes.

Both he and the flankers had time for another shot before they closed into melee with him. He got one, his phaser set to the highest stun setting the old 2360s type-3 phasers went to, taking the attacker in the torso and imparting a spin to the man as he went limp and slammed into the ground. The other attacker had fired and he spun his shoulder out of the way but himself right into the butt of the rifle as the man closed on him.

What should have been a quick fight turned into a series of brutal blows as weapons were turned into cudgels, each man capable of taking a beating and dishing it out. A fight that Deidrick would swear went on for ages but was in reality only a handful of blows ended with him knocked to the ground, his weapon scattering across the floor as the Devore’s sub-nosed rifle was aimed right at him, the man’s sneer perhaps the more frightening thing though.

“Gaharey scum,” the Devore brute drawled. He opened his mouth to say something else but took a high-pitched phaser blast right to the face. There was no time to get out of the way of the man as he dropped on Deidrick, dead or unconscious he couldn’t rightly tell.

There was no more weapons fire, just a handful of shouts. “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

“Clear!”

“Took you long enough.”

“Medic!” Deidrick managed to shout out as he rolled the Devore off of himself before taking an offered hand to get to his feet and then accepting his phaser from a sheepish Mel and her team as they came from the direction of the checkpoint his people had been holding. “Hendricks needs evac.”

“Fuck that,” the injured man said. “I’m good coach, put me back in.”

“Out, now,” Deidrick said, then rubbed the back of his hand under his nose. It was purely a subconscious reflex, looking at the back of his hand and the slight smear of blood there. He must have looked a treat. Then it hit him – where was his mask? He hadn’t even started to scramble before Mel was offering him a fresh one.

“Sorry we’re late, got held up helping dig Klec’s team out of trouble. We’ve got the whole sector now so no surprises behind us.”

He nodded, then offered a proper nod to Hendricks and one of the others who was helping the man back the way they came to a staging point they’d already declared as a fallback. “Path to environmental controls?”

“Only three more checkpoints between here and there,” Mel said. “And the Devore have been kind to us.” With that two of her people showed off the bandoliers they now sported with a trio of spherical objects each. “Should we give them back their grenades boss?”

“Yeah, let’s go do that.”

“I’m telling you Jasec, there’s only one of them left out there, we can pop the door and take him.”

“And I’m telling you we have orders to stay put Helvin, so stay put we do, you understand me?”

There were three of them guarding this side of Cellblock 9’s door. Jasec, Helvin and Krell weren’t exactly the elite of the Imperium. They weren’t even the run-of-the-mill as evidenced by their being prison guards, but they had their duty and they’d do it. But right now, as far as Krell was concerned, both Jasec and Helvin were acting like a pair of macho idiots, intent on proving something.

Helvin wanted to march out there and take out the one gaharey they could see on cameras that were still there, waiting for something to happen or someone to arrive. Jasec was against the idea, increasingly violently so, intent to do his duty, to be an upstanding soldier of the Imperium and all it stood for.

And as for Krell, she was getting sick of their behaviour. It was like the schoolyard all over again with two boys trying to prove to each other who was the better.

“Boys, can you please stop with the display of who’s better than who so we can do our damn jobs?” Krell said, her tone edging towards irritability now as well.

“Listen here, Private,” Jasec said, “I’m in charge here, I give the orders.” He then turned on Helvin. “And we are staying right here.”

“Oh, enough of this,” Helvin said as he went for the open power box beside the doors. “I’m going to get in on the action. Kill me some gaharey invaders.”

“Stand down private!” Jasec shouted and moved on the other man. A hand on a shoulder was met with a punch, which was responded to accordingly and soon enough both men were at each other. A few punches, and a couple of kicks and both men were wrestling on the floor so quick that Krell had barely gotten to her feet to break them up when an air vent clattered to the floor behind her and a green-skinned gaharey dropped to her feet from above, a sword, an actual sword in one hand, a vicious looking sidearm in her other.

The woman’s skin was sweat-slicked and her hair was matted to her brow and the sides of her face as she levelled the weapon on Krell, a mere moment having been spent to assess Jasec and Helvin and dismissing them. “Men, am I right?” the alien woman said. “How about you be a dear for me and stun both of them?”

“How did you,” she started to ask, before her vision filled with a bright green bolt that hit her in the chest. Pain wracked her body and she dropped to the ground, clutching at her chest as the gaharey woman walked up to her. She reached out one hand, unable to form words.

And was met with that sword tip and a gentle shushing sound from the woman. “Better than you people deserve,” the woman said as she then withdrew the blade and stepped past her. And as Krell lay there dying, the last things she heard were two screams of sharp pain from Jasec and Helvin before the grinding sound of the door they’d been tasked with guarding.

“You hear that Cap?” Matt Horne asked as both he and Gaeda Ruiz took note of the noises reverberating through the structure of the prison they’d called their unwilling residence for over a month now.

They’d both noted the thump nearly ten minutes ago that had driven through the entire complex. A single heavy bass note that they’d never noted here. That it had been nearly twenty minutes after the prison went into lockdown had meant only one thing to both men – an explosion.

But the latest noise they heard had been something entirely different. Something rather familiar.

“That Mr Horne was a Mark 38 Klingon disruptor pistol,” Gaeda replied. “Specifically, one with a dodgy compression coil.”

“You can hear a bad compression coil?” Matt queried.

“You have some idiot fire that thing off multiple times next to your ear and tell me you can’t recognise it.”

“Wait… you’re not hearing the compression coil, you’re hearing a specific weapon.” Then it clicked for Matt. “Oh fuck, they got your message.”

“And if you ever tell Sidda I called her an idiot, I’ll tell her this whole thing was your idea,” Gaeda threatened with a smile.

Both men were wearing drab red jumpsuits, to better stand out against the vegetation should they try and flee while working the farms. They were also both looking a lot more ragged than they had over a month ago, having endured physical labour, poor food, worse medical care and psychological oppression bordering on sadistic. In other words, a forced labour prison camp. But they’d never given up hope once Gaeda had informed his crew of his failsafe message. They knew help was on the way.

That weapon fire echoed through the cellblock a few more times, accompanied by Devore weapons and another heavier-sounding disruptor before all went silent. Within two minutes Gaeda and Matt were staring through the centimetres thick transparent aluminium cell door at the most magnificent thing either of them had seen in months – Sidda and Orin.

The cell door was opened and before either man could say anything Orin had thrown them each a rebreather mask and jabbed a finger at his own. The hint was taken and they both popped the masks on straight away without complaint, though both had noted Sidda’s distinct lack of a mask.

“Sorry Boss,” Gaeda finally said after he was happy the mask had sealed. “Lost the Thorn.”

“I saw,” Sidda replied. She looked terrible to his eyes – wired yet tired. Sweaty, a touch twitchy, but with a slump of exhaustion to her. And it didn’t help she reached into a satchel, pulled out a hypo and dosed herself. “Couldn’t be helped.”

“Least I denied them a cloaking device,” he said.

“Thank the goddesses for that,” Sidda muttered, then turned to look over the railing of their floor at the rest of the cell block. “Trid and Telin in here?”

“Telin’s up a floor, Trid is on the other side, right there,” Gaeda said as he stepped up, pointing at a cell almost directly opposite. “Just busting us out?”

“Busting everyone out,” Sidda said, then turned on her friend and threw her arms around him in a hug. “Fuck I’m glad you’re alive.”

“Would have been a shitty rescue if I wasn’t,” he answered.

The hug only lasted a moment before Sidda turned him loose and took both Gaeda and Matt in. “Don’t like that red on either of you,” she commented. “Don’t take those masks off unless you want to be fighting each other over me.” Then she reached down and unholstered her disruptor, offering it to Gaeda.

“Shall we?”

He took the weapon, immediately dialled down the settings on it, checked the powerpack and smiled as it whined happily in his hands.

“Oh, I’ve got a complaint to lay with management. Turndown service here sucks.”

“Who are those people?” the dark ruddy-skinned woman whom Jenu Trid was unlucky enough to share a cell with asked. When the call for all prisoners to return to their cells warbled through the depot, most prisoners simply went to the cells, laid on the bunks and waited for whatever drill or surprise visit to be over. But there was always a handful who practically glued themselves to the transparent doors to watch whatever the guards were doing in the cell block and Trid had found herself cursed by the Prophets and Pah-wraiths together to have been bunked up with Mel’keck Trell.

“Probably just some visiting commissar wanting to make themselves feel more important,” Trid found herself saying lazily, eyes closed and trying in vain to take a nap to wait out the lockdown.

“Never seen a green-skinned Devore though. Do Devore even come in green skin?” Mel’keck’s story, which she’d relayed to Trid in astonishing detail had hinted that her people had never even heard of the Devore Imperium.

The ship Mel’keck had been on nearly a year ago had been a small long-range explorer intent to study a pulsar nearby. Her people were in a reasonably tight mutually beneficial alliance with a handful of other species, like an early Federation, and it had been one of the crew of forty that had caused the Devore to impound their ship and imprison the entire crew. She doubted her nation had even heard from the Devore about their imprisonment, so any follow-up crews would have been just as unwitting as they had been.

Which is to say that Mel’keck’s sum knowledge about the Devore could fit on a single piece of paper, in large font, double-spaced, and still leave room for a drawing of a jackbooted thug stepping on the common folk of the Delta Quadrant.

Trid on the other hand knew a bit more, having read what information she’d been able to get publicly back home before the Martian Thorn had come through to the Delta Quadrant, as well as what SI had been able to provide her in a quick briefing at SB38 when the Thorn had stopped in. And she knew, at least to Starfleet’s limited exposure at the time, that the Devore were fascist, xenophobic and prone to excessive speciesism.

And decidedly not green-skinned.

All pretence of her nap was forgotten as she sat up, briefly sighed when she couldn’t see past Mel’keck, who was doing her best to turn a transparent door into an opaque door, then got to her feet to step up beside her cellmate and look across at the visitors that had inspired the first question. Right on the other side of the cellblock’s atrium, outside the cell she knew that Gaeda and Matt had been bunked together in, were two of the most unexpected and wholly welcome individuals she’d ever laid eyes on.

“That Mel’keck is our ticket out of here,” she found herself saying with a grin as Gaeda waved in her direction, a Klingon disruptor now in hand, his lower face covered in some sort of transparent rebreather mask.

“Oh, friends of yours then, from this United Federation of Planets of yours?”

“More like my boss and loyal minion.”

“Your boss is very big,” Mel’keck said as she looked at Orin.

“He’s the loyal minion. She’s the boss.” She saw Sidda step aside, to let Gaeda and Matt pass, Orin too, to free her and Telin, wherever he was, and only then did she notice that Sidda wasn’t wearing a mask. That triggered the Intel officer in her, that need to know what was the different variables at play. “Did you see them when they came in?”

“Been here the whole time,” Mel’keck replied.

“Was she wearing a mask when she came in?”

“No,” came Mel’keck’s reply. “But she used what looked like a medicinal injector just before I spoke. She looked exhausted but looks much better now.”

“Stimulants?” Trid asked herself out loud, barely a whisper though. Any follow up however was interrupted by Gaeda and Matt arriving just outside, both men smiling like crazy. There was no need to ask to be let out, or any other cliched question, she just waited as they tried a few combos on the cell door’s control panel before the door opened.

Both she and Mel’keck were given a rebreather mask in quick order. “Put these on unless you want either killer headaches or anger management issues,” Gaeda said with a smirk. “And no, I’m not joking.”

The mask was a standard Federation model, widely used in civil and Starfleet uses. Remove the film on the adhesive around the edges, apply it to the face, and massage to ensure the outer edges all make contact with the skin and adhere properly. Only once the mask detected a good seal would the little indicator light change colour for observers, the wearer notified with a happy little cheerful ‘bleep’. No doubt a sound decided upon by a committee after years of sampling, consultation, focus groups and whatnot. But all things Trid was familiar with and did without thought. Mel’keck on the other hand was taking instruction from Gaeda after he had insisted she wear the mask or he would be forced to lock her back in the cell.

“Please tell me we’re not going to have to wear these when we get back to the ship?” she asked Matt once she was happy with the fitment, leaving Gaeda to help Mel’keck with her mask.

“Sidda says the masks are better than us dosing up on oripromazine every ten minutes,” Matt answered with a shrug to cut off the follow-up query. “I know, I know, oripromazine is usually good for a few days at a time. Guess we’ll get the full story when we get to the Rose.”

“If we need masks or oripromazine, Orin too, then that means Sidda isn’t taking pheromone suppressants,” she said, thinking more out loud than anything. Her train of thought however was again derailed with Matt passed her a hand phaser that looked like Dominion War vintage. And knowing the Vondem Rose’s eclectic armoury, likely was as well. But everything worked and worked well thanks to Orin’s insistence on damn good armoury techs.

She didn’t even think about the handful of steps she took when the weapon was put in her hands. Confirm the powerpack was present, check the setting, charge level and quick function test to ensure the frequency hopping function was working. All part of her training, part of Matt’s and Gaeda’s as well, so no one even questioned it.

By now Mel’keck was masked up. There was no need for introductions, months here had eliminated that need. And could be done while walking and talking with Sidda and Orin. Soon enough Orin was with them, Telin looking like his disreputable and ill-tempered shadow. “Right then,” Gaeda spoke up, “shall we go see what mayhem the captain intends for us to commit today?”

“Only if I get to crack some skulls in,” Telin grumbled.

“I hear that,” Gaeda said, offering a nod to Telin, then spun on his prison-issued heel and led them back across the atrium walkway to Sidda.

“Welcome to the Osterman Environmental Control Facility,” Deidrick announced as the rescue party arrived at what had been his objective for the plan. He had been waiting for them to arrive by the door, a solid lower arm grasp for both Gaeda and Matt, a hug for Trid and a momentary standoff with Telin which resolved in both men offering a grin to each other before a handshake that could threaten to break steel. There were others of the Martian Thorn crew to rescue, but Sidda had insisted on Gaeda and the fact the Thorn’s senior staff was in one cellblock was a bonus.

His plan for seizing the environmental control facility had been perhaps more overly complex than it needed to be, but he needed the Devore defenders to not know what he was truly after until he had it in his hands and more importantly before they could lock him out. After all, he had hoped that they wouldn’t consider it a critical defensive position. After all, who really needs environmental controls in a planetside facility when you could just crack a window open for fresh air if you really needed to?

What the Devore however didn’t know could and certainly would hurt them shortly. Well, it would entice them to hurt themselves. Oh, to be a fly on the wall inside the admin building in an hour or so.

There was never a possibility of a direct assault on the compound, not with the Devore having more people on the ground than the Rose had in total. Sure, they could have cracked the admin building open like an egg with the Rose’s weapons, but they could have damaged the prison with unintended consequences. They needed to get inside and disable the transport inhibitors without demolishing the building first.

And that’s where this entire crazy plan had come into play.

“We naming what we take now are we?” Gaeda quipped as he walked into the cramped environmental mechanical room. There was no fancy control set-up, that was elsewhere. What was here was a variety of readouts and control interfaces spread throughout the pieces of gear they matched. This was a proper working space.

“Where?” was the single-word question that Sidda asked of Deidrick as she stepped in, Orin looming behind her. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days and he could see anger in her eyes, but it was muted with exhaustion. So, he pointed her down one of the walkways and watched her leave before turning back to Gaeda.

“Good to see you lot safe and sound. And as for naming things, I figure if I take it, I can name it.” Deidrick started leading the rest down the same way that Sidda and Orin had gone, but at a somewhat more sedate pace. “I had teams running around causing chaos, they probably thought I had stumbled in here by accident, not with a real plan.”

They passed a point where four Devore soldiers were unconscious on the floor, ankles and wrists bound, then secured to piping and for an added insult to injury, all of them were gagged for when they eventually came to. “Heavy stun, they’ll be out of it well after we’ve left,” he reassured the others.

“So, what is the plan exactly?” Trid asked from the middle of the group. “I figure it involves the captain, what with the masks and her looking like she’s been run over by a freighter convoy.”

“Was she bucking for being your XO?” Deidrick asked Gaeda.

“I’m right here,” Matt chimed in. “Loyal officer and all.”

With a slight laugh had by all, the first for some of them in weeks, Deidrick answered the question posed to him. “We found some of this blood dilithium stuff,” the whole group nodding in affirmation that knew about it, “and turns out it has some impact on telepaths. But it also seems to do things to Orions and Romulans as well.”

“What?” Gaeda asked. “Explain.”

They had reached the end of the walkway between large pieces of environmental plant and were now climbing a set of stairs, switching back on itself a few times as it rose to the ceiling of the building and the roof access.

“Apparently it throws Orion biochemistry for a loop, increasing adrenaline production like it’s going out of style. That then ramps up aggression, anxiety and pheromone production. Hits the captain even harder. But it also wears them out. Orin’s wearing a cortical suppressor to stop that part of his brain from sending amped-up signals out since he’s been in close proximity to a huge chunk of blood dilithium since we got here.”

“Do I need to worry?” asked Telin.

“Nah big guy, you’ll be fine. Women more than men by a large margin. Just keep your distance from the captain, you should be fine.” Deidrick held the door to the roof where a number of his team were standing around, keeping an eye mainly on the admin tower and anyone there who might want to take shots at them.

“As for Romulans, well, does all sorts of wonderful things apparently. T’Ael’s become obsessive-compulsive, R’tin tried to cook himself by doing maintenance on a live plasma feed and Revin apparently…well…I heard she took to Orion pheromones quite well.” There was a chuckle from Telin but silenced when Trid gave him a glare that rightly should have vaporised him.

“So, Sidda’s a walking pheromone factory, we’ve got control of the prison’s air conditioning, what’s the plan here?” Gaeda asked.

They turned around past one of the roof units of the building to find a series of fan vents that led down into the complex machinery below. Some were blowing air out, others were sucking it in. Vast grills covered all and on one in particular they could see Sidda now sitting herself down on the grill, working her way to the middle before she laid herself down spread-eagle over as much of it as possible.

“We took filters out down below and now the boss is going to work her magic,” Deidrick answered. “Let them get a mega-dose of Orion pheromones, let their aggression ramp up, tempers flare up a bit, then we just wait for them to start fighting with each other as an indicator they’re cooked and we move to the next step.”

“And the rest of the prison? We don’t need a riot I’m imagining.”

“Don’t worry about that Gaeda, we shut down the aircon to the rest of the depot ten minutes ago. It’s just admin getting nice, cool, refreshing air just like they make it on Vondem.”

“It’s as you thought Commandant, they’re settling in for a siege,” the Major reported as he stepped into the glass-walled office of the depot’s commandant. It was situated on the rear wall of the operations centre, opposite the banks of displays and stepping out allowed one to look down on the various banks of operations stations. The walls offered silence, and a panopticon view to remind everyone here that the Imperium’s representative was always watching.

“Still tracking thirty?”

“Twenty-five now. Four retreated with an armed guard out past the inhibitor field.”

“Very well,” the older man said as he continued reading the report he’d been reading before his executive had interrupted.

“Sir, we can retake the entire depot, right now,” the Major said, with an edge to his voice that drew the Commandant’s attention.

“I’m aware, but I’m also aware that thirty people breached this prison and have managed to capture or kill nearly twice their number already. We can bunker down in this tower and await reinforcements.”

“And when will that be?” the Major demanded.

“When we miss our next scheduled communication, the Imperium will send a ship to investigate why the Buskin failed to respond. At that time either these people will withdraw or be crushed by the weight of the Imperium.”

“Waiting when we could be doing?” the Major asked. “We should strike out.”

There was no outburst from the Commandant. Just a slow, methodical change as his gaze went from his report to the Major, hands rested on the desktop and he rose to his feet, leaning over the desk, weight over his hands. “We will wait,” he said, slowly, carefully and with menace to his tone to ensure the Major understood.

“Yes sir,” the younger man finally said, then turned on his heel and walked out. Without asking to be dismissed.

That would have to be remedied.

Soon.

“Flash of light in a window,” one of the Rose guards on the roof said.

“Really?” Sidda asked, sounding groggy, downright sleepy even.

“Yes boss. Oh, there it goes again.”

Sidda sighed, exhausted. But before she could ask anything Orin was already offering a stimulant hypo to her. Once more she injected herself and waited for the chemically derived energy to sweep through her. It didn’t feel like a night’s rest, but she went from feeling lethargic to being able to move at least. It would take a bit more for her brain to get the memo though, like a caffeine high, giving her some mental speed, but it wouldn’t be too far behind. A few minutes.

She’d preferred a coffee though. Triple shot espresso, sugar, cream.

But no, apparently that wasn’t going to be enough. Only Doc Ward’s Miracle Stimulant Supplement for the Growing Orion Siren for her today.

Next came the cortical suppressor being offered to her by Orin, giving a look she’d have expected from any mother anywhere in the galaxy. One that said ‘You will never formulate a good enough argument to dissuade me.’ And so she complied and put it behind her ear. It wasn’t turned on, but a mere double tap would do that. It was hidden by her hair and she held a hand out to get helped to her feet and off the aircon unit.

“Guess that’s my queue then,” she said, then gave Orin a quick hug when she was sure none of the crew was watching her. “Anything happens, kick the door in and rescue me all right?”

‘Yes Mistress,’ Orin replied.

“Don’t you fucking dare start with that,” she warned him. Then hugged him once more. “Right, off to go throw myself on the mercy of those I’m about to conquer.”

She made her way off the roof, past her people downstairs, a number of them resting, or trying to at least while they waited for the plan to progress. She passed Gaeda and Deidrick, letting them know the next step of the plan was in the works, then asked for her weapon back, Gaeda having up-armed with a Devore rifle.

That done, feeling at least a bit more dressed, still missing her jacket now that the sun was started to drop in the sky, she walked to the admin building by herself, in plain view of all the cameras, waving at a few of them.

“Knock knock,” she shouted when she reached the bottom of the small, wide flight of stairs that led to the massive double doors that served as the main entrance. “I’m here to discuss surrender.”

“Commandant,” one of the operators said, breaking the stunned silence of the control.

Not ten seconds ago the Commandant and the Major had been yelling at each other, the elder demanding the Major stand down, that the depot would hunker down and wait, the younger demanding a more aggressive and decisive plan of action. The argument had started in the Commandant’s office but had spilt out into the control room, stunning all there into silence as two normally rational and amiable men were at each other’s throats.

The fight had ended when the Major challenged the Commandant’s right to command and the elder man’s response had been swift and decisive. With a quick and unexpected action, he drew his sidearm from his holster and shot the major in the chest, sending him to the floor dead as evidenced by the smoking hole in his chest.

While the yelling had sent everyone back to their stations, professionally ignoring the argument to the best of their ability, weapons fire had simply stunned almost everyone. They weren’t doing their jobs; they were busy trying to look like they hadn’t seen anything at all. Yes, the mood of the room had changed over the last hour, but no one was going to get snippy with a man wielding a weapon and unafraid to use it.

But one man, a lieutenant by the beading on his uniform sash, obviously saw a moment to impress his commander and spoke up, pointing at the camera display that had garnered his attention. The green-skinned woman whom they had been watching lying on top of an air intake on the environmental building was now outside the doors of the admin block, by herself, waving at the camera. He could make out the weapon holster on her right thigh and an actual sword scabbard on her left hip.

“Let me hear it,” the Commandant said, emphasising the last word in reference to the creature on his screen.

“…discuss surrender,” the creature said. “I want this over as much as you do.”

Silence once more settled over the control room as the Commandant stared at the screen, considering his options. There were so many things he could do. Open the doors and kill this gaharey scum, keep the doors shut and wait for reinforcements he knew were coming, or drag that thing inside and force her to her knees and admit the superiority of the Devore. And right now, he needed to reassert control, to show everyone he was in command here.

Demonstrating that one more of his incompetent and useless staff would undermine what control he did have. But a gaharey willingly surrendering presented an option. Cruelty to an alien wasn’t real. But would show his people his resolve.

“Send six soldiers, bring that thing to me now,” he grumbled.

“At once Commandant.”

“So, her plan is to get captured by a bunch of intoxicated xenophobic fascists, then rely on wits, guile and some sort of super-pheromones to get them to all start fighting each other over her and use the distraction to somehow turn off their transporter inhibitor?”

Trid couldn’t believe the plan that she just summed up. It was ridiculous and insane. Not least of all no single Orion produced pheromones in such quantities to cause that sort of chaos, that she knew of at least. Most she knew wouldn’t give anyone a slight buzz unless in extremely close proximity for an extended period. Even on a starship, renowned for closed-loop life support, the life support systems would filter the pheromones out of the air so quickly as to not be an issue.

“That’s what I’ve gathered. I’m not sure how this whole pheromone thing works, but Doc Ward signed off on it, so if the Doc thinks it’s a thing, then I’m happy with it.” Deidrick shrugged as he spoke, his body language communicating his lack of understanding of the science, but his willingness to just accept it and go with it.

All of them had moved up from the environmental facility, now occupying a few side alleys closer to the admin building, ready to move in if need be, or cut down rallying defenders if they had to. And waiting left time for catching up and speculation. Speculation that was fuelled by a lack of information as what was planetside right now was the best of the Rose’s grunts, not a scientist or a doctor amongst them.

Orin was opposite them in the alley and looked up from his weapon to Trid, reading the questioning look on her face. His weapon was settled against his bulk, the strap over his shoulder and neck keeping it close by as his hands came up. ‘You can ask Sidda herself when she returns, but you will not get an answer from her. She won’t talk about it,’ he signed.

“I’ll talk to Ward then when I get back to the ship,” Trid replied.

“Doctor/patient confidentiality is a thing you know,” Deidrick countered. “Just let it be and if you’re so damn curious, look it up when we get back to the Federation.”

“Signal from the ground forces,” the human relief officer said at Ops. “The captain has entered the bunker.”

Orelia had been pacing the bridge like a caged tiger, wanting, needing to do something, anything. But she’d been entrusted with the Vondem Rose and so she did what was asked of her. Didn’t mean she had to like it. But this update had finally given her at least a little something to do.

“Stupid plan,” she growled, then stepped up to the command chair, a small and pathetic thing compared to the last one that dominated the bridge. A finger jammed on the control panel. “Bridge to all transporter rooms. Standby to commence rescue operations. Prisoners first to the cargo bays before we get our people out.”

That done, she then paced directly over to the meagre little science station. “Well, how’s it looking?”

“The transport inhibitor is still active, but otherwise no change on the surface. I am detecting a handful of sensor echoes on long-range scans that may or may not be ships moving at warp speed.” Tavol’s manner was exceedingly Vulcan – calm, nearly perfectly monotonal, not hinting of anything the man might be thinking personally.

Or the troubles he might be experiencing thanks to the apparently very potent refined blood dilithium on the planet below.

“Best guess?” she asked.

“Three Devore warships moving at warp eight. Two days away at their present speed.” He hadn’t tried to insist he wouldn’t guess, or that he lacked sufficient data to guess, just went right to presenting the most likely scenario with the data at hand.

“Worst case?”

“Cloaked Borg armada that is moving to invade the Devore Imperium.” He paused, then turned his chair to face her. “You did ask for the worst case.”

“He’s still working on humour,” Lewis chipped in from the helm. “We’ll get you there yet buddy. Remember, make it believable. The Borg don’t use cloaking devices.”

Tavol’s expression said enough to Orelia, the slight eye roll as he returned to his work was just him making it obvious to her what he was thinking.

“Let me know if anything changes.”

“Orelia to Deidrick,” burst forth from Deidrick’s communicator, drawing everyone’s attention in this particular alley. While the other side of the road had a handful of Rose crew discussing something, over here it was silence contemplation, now broken.

“Deidrick here,” he said after a moment and a tap on the device. “I’ve got Gaeda with me too.”

“Good. Gaeda, you can be Sidda’s XO again. She’s insane.”

“Yeah, but you love her,” Gaeda said loud enough for the communicator to pick up. His comment drew a slight chuckle from the others assembled around them. “What’s up Orelia?”

“The inhibitor field just went down. We’re running the transporter at full tilt grabbing as many of the prisoners as we can. I’ve got Kevak and Bones leading the welcome operations in the cargo bays right now but we’re going to be packing the Rose to the frame members.”

“We knew that coming down here,” Deidrick said. “If the inhibitor is down, then the boss has done her part. Do we wait for her to come out, storm the place, or get the transporters to snatch her out?”

“You could just ask me,” Sidda then said as she stepped into the mouth of the alleyway. Her sword was drawn, blood still on the blade, her disruptor was long gone, her left shoulder looked like she’d taken a grazing shot and her face now bore a few scratches and bruises from someone getting personal with her.

“Oh fuck off,” Gaeda exclaimed. “How long have you been waiting around the corner?”

“Minute or so. Orin saw me and I told him to tell everyone over there to keep quiet.” Now she was grinning, looking a lot more like her old self. Like someone who had once more pulled through a tight spot. She turned, gave a sharp whistle to the other day and waited for them, taking the time to clean her sword on her already ruined shirt before sheathing it once more. “I’m done with this planet. I’ve got my people back, I’ve liberated a bunch of prisoners, I’ve killed a bunch of assholes and left the rest fighting amongst themselves. And I stole the last bit of data from the commandant’s computer about Devore outpost locations.” She produced a data rod of alien manufacture and handed it over to Gaeda.

“Got any good places to take all the prisoners?”

“Refugees now,” she corrected Gaeda. “Markonian Outpost? It’s on the way back to the Barzan Wormhole, it’s a freeport so should be able to find some help getting to where they want.” With no objections, she pulled out her own communicator and flipped it out. She’d defended her choice of a retro-style communicator many times already. “Sidda to Rose, can I get off this rock please?”

“Two minutes,” Orelia responded. “And I mean two minutes.”

It turned out to be much longer than two minutes before they got beamed up. And longer still before Sidda was able to walk onto her bridge. Someone had ambushed her at the transporter and given her a message from Bones to see her at once. And ignoring doctor’s orders was a hobby of hers, but she still wasn’t sure if Bones had drugged her that one time or not, so it would be best not to anger the older woman.

Complaints about the state of the prisoners being brought up, about the living arrangements, about how long they’d be on the ship. All while giving Sidda a once over with a scanner, then complaining about Sidda’s own physical state, prescribing bed rest and then administering a much lower-grade stimulant to give her an hour or so before she would crash out.

Long enough for Sidda to step onto her own bridge and give a few orders. “Orin, let Telin have control of the weapons for a moment, will you?” she asked and the larger of the two large men stepped up to the controls as Orin made room for his larger brother.

“Orders?” Telin growled. She hadn’t missed that, but at the same time, she had. Having the band back together in one place was nice. At least they had more room on the Rose, or would once they offload some people.

“There’s dilithium stockpile in the depot. Target it and prepare two torpedoes, maximum yield.”

Telin’s grin was downright predatory as he made sure to very carefully go through the steps, not wanting to miss a single beat. “Target locked.”

“Aren’t there still Devore down there?” Orelia chimed in.

“Eighty-seven lifeforms in the admin building.” Tavol then turned away from his readings. “The building is hardened, so there is a high likelihood it will survive, if barely.”

“They made their bed,” Sidda said, then looked to Gaeda, who was standing beside her new command chair. He’d been there when they stole it from the Endeavour’s carcass, the old Endeavour that is. He’d even been there when it was installed, but had yet to sit in it. “Mr Ruiz, I understand we have two torpedoes armed and ready to fire. You have the conn.” And with that she turned and started to walk away, but stopped beside Orelia, nudging her cousin with her shoulder.

Gaeda wasted little time, spinning the chair about by its headrest before sitting in it. Then did a full spin in it, grinning with joy. “Okay, that’s much nicer.” The moment had, the enjoyment noted, he turned back to the viewscreen. “Put the depot on screen.” It took a moment before an orbital view came up.

“Telin, please render those torpedoes you prepared safe by throwing them overboard,” Gaeda ordered and the deck plating of the bridge thumped twice in quick succession as the torpedo launcher barked out both weapons.

It would take a few seconds for the torpedoes to close on the depot and the bridge went silent to watch. The first hit, a fireball engulfing the entire prison as a massive thermonuclear explosion took place, matter and antimatter unleashing their fury on one another. Then the second torpedo arrived and the subsequent explosion didn’t double the first or extend the fireball’s life – it magnified it by many, many orders of magnitude.

“Santa Maria,” Gaeda exclaimed briefly. “Shields up! Lewis, full impulse, get us away from the planet.”

Despite turning and running as fast as they could as soon as people started to notice something was wrong, the Rose still got outpaced by the subspace shockwave from the dilithium explosion on the planet below. The ship was sent tumbling through space, inertial compensators barely stopping passengers and crew alike from being tossed like corks. And when it was all over and they had a chance to look back at the planet from their new perspective, it looked like an asteroid had hit the planet.

The island was gone, vaporised in the explosion. The seas were still rushing away from the epicentre, tsunamis bound to devastate coastlines far away in a few hours. The seafloor was visible, water hadn’t yet started to pour back in. Rock, now glowing white was still arcing upwards, away from the planet, before gravity would pull them back down in their own devastating impacts.

Whatever happened, it was at least quick.

“Fucking hell,” Sidda said from the back of the bridge. “I said blow up the depot, not half a planet.”

“Go big or go home,” Telin said in his defence as he stepped away from the weapons controls.

“Indeed,” Tavol quipped. “I’ll look over the sensor logs and see what happened.”

“Tell someone who cares,” Sidda said. “Sorry, I meant, I’ll read it once I’ve had some sleep and Bones clears me. Gaeda, Telin, go see Bones as well. Orelia, you okay to get us to Markonian?”

“Lewis, set course one six five mark zero one zero, maximum warp,” Orelia said as her reply. “Engage when ready.”

Only a little over a week ago it had been Sidda sleeping on the biobed and Revin waiting on her, now the roles were reversed.

Bones had said the effects of the Blood Dilithium on Revin, R’tin and T’Ael were reversing, with a speed she didn’t quite understand. Because of that, she wasn’t hastening recovery from the medically induced comas she’d put both R’tin and Revin, letting them come around naturally. “They’ve got enough stress going on, I’m not going to add to it,” the woman had said when she explained it to Sidda.

At some point she had laid her head down beside Revin, arms folded under her, just to rest for a moment, nothing more. Just a short little rest she’d told herself, but apparently, sleep had snuck up on her and cudgelled her without warning.

It was the gentle stroking of her ear, soft and repetitive that had slowly brought her around from sleep. Not a jolt, no alarm, no one calling her name, just a gentle repeated action that slowly woke her up. Eyes still so heavy, she forced them open and saw Revin there, a couple of pillows behind her, the bed raised slightly, with a sleepy but content smile on her face.

“Hello sleepy,” Revin said, her usually lyrical voice a touch rough. Hearing herself speak she reached for a bottle of water beside the bed. “Did we win?”

“And then some,” Sidda said, struggling to sit up. She took a moment to kiss Revin’s hand as she moved just out of reach. One, two kisses, then a third just above the ring on Revin’s finger. “Got everyone out, rescued a bunch of prisoners from the Devore, blew up an island.”

“Are we not toppling regimes today then?” Revin teased; a sip of water having done wonders for her voice.

“I draw my line at planets love. I’d need a lot more than just one ship of lunatics to take on something like the Devore Imperium.” Sidda scooted her chair sideways, closer to Revin so that she could reach her lover’s hair as well, loving strokes to sort out stray hairs, tucking something behind pointed ears.

“But what a crew of lunatics though,” Revin said. “They’d follow you; you know that right?”

“I know,” Sidda said, but she knew there would be dissent if she ever did something that stupid. “But first, maybe I should lead them on a raid of Casperia Prime?”

“Let Gaeda lead them in raiding the bars. You promised me an introduction with your mother.”

The defeated sigh, the head collapsing to the bed beside Revin once more, was all dramatics, but the laughter from the younger woman was exactly what Sidda needed to hear herself. She still had her Revin. “Kill me now,” she said, muffled by the bedding.

“Oh no love, this is torture I want to see.”

“I’m not a fan,” Gaeda said as he stood just inside the door of the ready room with Orelia at his side. It had been a few days and the luxury of a sonic shower, then an actual hot water shower, a shave, and a handful of solid meals where Kevak tried to make the Thorn’s crew die of overindulgence had all resulted in a much tidier looking Gaeda Ruiz then what had beamed up a few days before. His Beard was trimmed, decent clothes replicated and a replacement holster on his left thigh, sans weapon currently, put him right back where he felt comfortable style-wise at least.

“Neither am I, but I’m not the boss,” Orelia replied. “She wanted modern Orion chic, so she got it.”

“But a low table? Cushions?” He stepped into the room, arms crossed, examining the furnishings for what they were. “Desk is nice though.” The grumble from Orelia was hint enough. “Revin’s input? What’s your problem with Revin anyway?”

“Sidda could do better.”

“Ha!” Gaeda laughed, then brought it under control under a withering gaze. “What, you?”

“Hells no!” Orelia shot back. “I’m a cousin.”

“Like ten times removed,” he challenged. He had worked his way around the desk and considered the floor cushion before admitting defeat and sitting himself down on it, a wave of his hand just the invitation Orelia needed to sit herself down, with a pointing hand to show Gaeda where a secret compartment had been well hidden, the liqueur inside soon freed.

“Five times,” she corrected him. “My family owes her family a debt.”

“Complicated Orion family debts and honour that would take me a lifetime to understand?” he asked while pouring, the nod of her head answer enough. “Okay, I’ll take your word for it. But who then? Some Orion princeling, or princessling? Vondem is a part of the Federation and a democracy.”

“Family still means something. And Vondem isn’t the only Orion world you know. The Twelfth Empire never really stopped,” she said, taking her glass, waiting for Gaeda to finish pouring his own and offering a short toast. “To hair-brained schemes.”

“To dilithium explosions covering our tracks,” he replied, the down the glass and only just winched at the burn. “Jesús, what is this?”

“Fucked if I know, but Sidda likes it.” She set her glass down, a handwave to refuse anymore. “But yes, she could be so, so much more than just some pirate or vigilante or whatever we are these days.”

“She could be so much more, as long as she let parts of her life be dictated by the expectations of others, rules of society and the trappings of station,” Gaeda countered. “She wants to live her own life, not some stuffy Orion aristocrat. And hell, we’re doing good things, more so than when I was in the fleet. Hell, Sidda has enough trouble with authority, why do you think she got kicked out of the Academy?”

“Sidda never went to Starfleet Academy.”

“Oh yes she did,” Gaeda smiled wickedly. He knew something that Orelia didn’t about the woman she was apparently charged with keeping safe. “Made it a week before she got put on report, made it only one more before she cursed out a lecturer and I’m still not sure if she was drummed out or walked out, but I do know she only lasted a week.”

“No,” Orelia said. “Sidda ran away from her father when she came of age, joined a tramp freighter and then fell in with pirates. She never went to the Academy.”

Gaeda eyed Orelia intently for a moment, poured himself a second shot and then wordlessly insisted on pouring her one as well. “Fucking mystery woman, she is. All right, you tell me what you think happened, I’ll tell you what I think happen, then we go beat the truth out of her?”

“Let’s get Kevak’s version as well,” Orelia said as she accepted the drink. “All right, so, what I know is that…”

“Nope, no, not happening, don’t believe it out,” Trid exclaimed as she walked onto the bridge to the sight of Lewis Chin sitting in the command seat doing slow rotations while reading from a padd.

“Believe it,” he said without looking up. “Good to have you back by the way. But without the Thorn guess we won’t be swapping again.”

“Yeah, guess not.” She had walked past ops and tactical, only the former manned at this time, to prop herself against the front of the ops console. “Everyone on this boat must be mad if they let you be a shift leader.”

“They must be mad to let Gavrint at the helm,” he said, a thumb over his shoulder at the small, bright orange-skinned man at the helm who was wearing enough layers to be mistaken for a pile of laundry if not for his head and hands being visible.

“Piss off Lewis,” was the only reply. “Good to have you back Trid.”

“Nice to be back Gavrint,” she said to the man. “Still the best pilot Lewis, so I’ll be taking that chief helmsperson title off of you.”

“Oh no, not that easy.” He rose to his feet and took the two steps needed to then offer her the padd he had been reading. “We fight for it.”

She read the padd, or at least the title of it in quick order. “Small, medium and large-scale starship piloting challenges.” She handed it back without bothering to read the rest. “Where’re the challenges around organising and running a department?”

“What?”

“You know, the things a proper chief helmsperson has to do.” She shook her head from side to side, tutting at him. “Maybe your right, maybe it’s best you keep the job.”

“Hey now,” he said quickly. “Maybe…maybe we co-lead this department for a while yeah?”

“I want Alpha shift.”

“Beta,” he counter-offered. “Sidda takes Beta more often, being an afternoon person.”

“All right, Beta. But we spend three hours a day getting helm and navigation sorted into a proper department now that it is more than just you and me.”

“Three hours?”

“Be grateful you aren’t in Starfleet. I hear some of their really good pilots don’t even get to sleep, doing all that paperwork.”

Lewis’ anguish was perfect and enjoyable. She only savoured it briefly though. “Now, tell me, where are we headed?”

“Markonian Outpost. Some sort of freeport. We can dump all those telepaths and other prisoners off there. Even a Starfleet office there, so we can make their life hell when we get there.”

“How far?” she asked.

“Three more days. We’re still at warp seven with the cloak running just to make sure we don’t get any more Devore attention, but we’ll crank it up to warp eight in about another hour. By the time anyone can figure out what that weird intermittent sensor blob in their screens is, we’ll be long gone.”

“Thought of everything have you?”

“Nah, Tavol suggested most of it,” Lewis said. “Clever guy he is.”

She smiled at him, having heard some bad rumours already and decided not to spread them but just seek confirmation straight from one of the parties involved. “Tavol? Our resident Vulcan? Whispers are you and he…”

“Watch your fingers,” the large, barrel-chested Klingon cook said as he brushed past Sidda with an exceedingly hot dish in hand. Roasted meat was occupying the pan, freshly removed from an oven and the scent of it was absolutely heavenly with the preparations that Kevak had dressed it with.

The kitchen was running full tilt producing hearty, soul-filling food. And with Revin still groggy Kevak had deputised a few of the other galley crew from their normal jobs to help in the kitchen, then shanghaied other staff into those now vacant roles. Serving meals and manning stations was like damage control, or engineering, or operating a transporter, right? They had nearly fifteen hundred extra mouths to feed, some of them who hadn’t eaten anything more than Devore prison rations for years, decades in a handful of cases, and were consuming the offerings from the Rose’s kitchens with gusto.

Gusto that Kevak wasn’t denying at all.

“They aren’t fighters or warriors but they fought a harsh and cruel enemy, each day they refused to die another glorious victory. Sto’vo’kor will hear their tales one day,” Kevak had explained it to her a few days back.

And she could kind of agree with his sentiment. She just viewed it as an oppressed people being too spiteful to let their oppressor win. The same thing really, right?

“Thought I’d come down here and tell you we’re a day out, General.” She was smiling when he turned on her at the use of a rank.

The roast dish was set down, mitts carefully removed and tucked into his apron’s pocket as he stalked towards her, looming large, closing well within personal distance so he could look down at her and just held her gaze for a handful of seconds. “Princess,” he growled at her, just loud enough that no one else would hear over the hustle and bustle.

“That’s Revin,” she replied.

“No, that’s you,” he countered. “Princess Sidda.” Then his voice lowered even quieter. “I gave up my rank to protect others. Never call me that again.”

“Yes, Chef Kevak,” she answered, getting a smile out of the Klingon. “And never, ever call me princess again.”

“At least until you marry that woman of yours,” he said, then turned away to return to his job. “Now, there are three hundred mouths to feed out there.” He picked up a large set of prongs and a long serrated cutting knife. “Get to work.”

“Oh no, I’m not a kitchen hand.”

“You’re in my kitchen, so yes you are.” The way Kevak said it, it wasn’t a command but a statement of universal fact. He gave voice to the concept and so it was.

Knowing she wasn’t going to be able to get away she accepted her punishment for exploring the piece of knowledge Revin had passed to her about Kevak, took the offered tools and got to work cutting up the large roast.

Turned out that preparing meals and seeing the faces of the refugees filling themselves on Kevak’s cooking was good for her own soul too. Especially when Kevak insisted she tell tales of her glorious fight with the Devore. After all, what kind of Klingon mean didn’t have a story to go with it?

“Delusions about working on live power systems?” Bones asked.

“Just the inside of the warp reactor,” R’tin answered, then sighed under the glare. “No ma’am.”

She hummed a bit more while he lay on the bio-bed, the scanner unit running back and forth just over his head, taking intense scans of his brain. The machine was silent aside from a slight electrical hum as it did its work, the benefits of paying for the high-end equipment that Na’roq had acquired.

“Scans look good, you’re back to your usual self,” she announced, the scanner then moving to its rest position at the head of the bed, letting R’tin sit up without hitting it. “But I’m going to insist you wear this scanner for the next few days,” she continued, showing him the cortical scanner, then popping it into place when he turned his head slightly.

“Why me? I know T’Ael and Revin aren’t wearing one.”

“They both didn’t try to kill themselves by being idiots.” Bones fitted the scanner, turned it on and then spent a few moments confirming its link with the ship’s computers. “Two days, but you’re cleared for work now.”

“Really?”

“Really,” she confirmed. “Just, keep it light, will you?”

“Will do,” he said as he hopped off the bed. “Hey doc, I know I was in a coma and all, which I totally understand, but uh, what’s the scientific consensus on feeling or remembering anything from time in a coma?”

She mulled the question over for a moment. “I don’t know what it’s like for Romulans to be honest. Haven’t read that deeply into it. Why?”

“Well, I just,” he stopped for a moment. “I just have this weird recollection of sadness and happiness at the same time while I was asleep.” He moved from one foot to another a couple of times. “Overwhelming anger and a desire to hurt someone, then absolute joy, explosive joy even, at the deed done, then sadness that it really didn’t fill the hole.”

“And after that?”

“Resignation?” he answered, testing the word. “Tiredness.” He was quiet for a few more moments. “Then I woke up.”

“Sounds like you need to speak to a counsellor, but seeing as we don’t have one, I’d suggest either myself or Kevak.” She stuffed her hands into her lab coat pockets, then closed on the young Romulan man. “I mean it.”

“I…yeah, I’ll do that Doc.” He shrugged, as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders, then just dropped, forgotten with a simple shrug. “Thanks again.”

“You’re welcome. Now get!” She shooed him out of her sickbay then returned to her office. “Ward to Tavol, pop by when you can and bring those sensor scans of that explosion with you. I’ve got a hypothesis for you.”

The Vondem Rose that arrived at the Markonian Outpost wasn’t the pristine and mostly pure ship that had arrived in the Delta Quadrant nearly a month ago. This ship bore a couple of new patches of carbon scoring along some aspects, and nearly her entire dorsal aspect was discoloured from just the bright light of an explosion that had forever changed the surface of a world. Purple paint had blistered and bubbled, exposing the grey-green of the ship’s birth colour for all to see, even the KDF emblem on the port wing was peeking out from under purple.

She had arrived in proximity to the station under cloak, well outside of anyone’s weapon ranges, her arrival heralded by the twisted screaming and horrendous discordant beats and notes of Fight for Paradise/Kick ‘em before they Stand, one of Kolar Blight’s very few political songs that was edging on thirty years old, blaring over subspace before the ship decloaked, finishing her journey at a sedate quarter impulse.

They had only managed to make it to the first chorus, which was just a series of shouted foul-mouthed rhymes with the name Layton in a dozen Federation languages, before the avalanche of demands to cease and desist came through from those ships with powerful enough transceivers to overpower the Rose’s own. And not wanting to annoy the natives, or the reforming gaggle of Starfleet ships around the station awaiting the chance to go home, the Vondem Rose complied.

After letting the chorus play out of course.

It took nearly a day to unload all the passengers they’d brought with them, station authorities wanting to stagger their arrival, process them and help people get at least some form of identification. But with refugees from the Devore Imperium’s brutal oppression offloaded, with a generous donation from Sidda personally at the end, the Rose had no need, or desire to remain in the Delta Quadrant.

“Trid,” Sidda said as she strode onto the bridge, Gaeda on her heels from seeing the last Brenari family off the ship, “clear all moorings and push off from the station.”

“Destination?”

“Barzan Wormhole. We’ll go play sentry there until the wormhole opens. Go to warp once you’ve got clearance.”

“Aye, Barzan Wormhole,” the Bajoran woman replied, going through the motions of clearing the Vondem Rose and getting her underway.

“Gaeda, Orelia,” she turned to face the two of them. “Figured out which of you is my XO for now?”

“He is,” Orelia got out before Gaeda could even speak. “I’m happy being second officer for now. But the next ship we steal is mine.”

“Dammit,” he muttered, the smile giving the joke away though.

“Excellent. Gaeda, why don’t you find someone in Operations, say, the head of perhaps,” as she smiled at Orelia, “and work out a shore leave roster? Two weeks, no, three weeks off for everyone.”

“Where we going?” he asked, the question perking everyone’s ears.

“Casperia Prime.” Sidda turned to face the viewscreen once more just as the Rose jumped to warp. “I need a beach.”