The command deck of disabled Ju’Day-type raider, formerly civilian courier, wasn’t in the best of states anymore. It likely hadn’t been in the greatest of states a mere few hours ago, but the gentle attentions that had been rendered upon it by the starship Republic, hanging in space above the ship like a cat watching a mouse, certainly had made things worse.

Almost every single computer screen present was lit up red and blinking one series of error codes or status alerts. A few were just inky black voids, with nothing to report. Which left just one that was busy blurting and bleeping in protest every few seconds as one Lieutenant Commander Matt Lake was attempting an interrogation or another of the ship’s computer.

He was alone for a while until the hatch hissed open, admitting Republic’s chief engineer, Evan Malcolm, similar in rank and almost the exact opposite in complexion and disposition. Evan’s scowl looked worse than normal as he stalked over to a seat near Matt and sat himself down. “What the hell did they call this rust bucket again?” he asked, deflating slightly into the comfort of the seat.

“Madeleine,” Matt answered. “Under the command of Captain Jack Mackenzie.” While Evan had been assessing the ship’s engineering systems for possible salvage and his team doing a thorough inspection for contraband in any smuggling compartments, Matt had come over to interrogate the computers. “Oh, managed to get the bridge replicator working again,” he said with a smile to his colleague.

“What? Why?” Evan asked as he glanced at the wall-mounted unit. It, the door controls and the life support station were the only ones aboard the Madeleine that weren’t announcing imminent doom.

“Because I wanted a coffee and I wasn’t going to pester someone aboard ship to beam me one over.” Then he shrugged. “Though maybe I should have. I heard Revin was trying muffins again.”

The mention of the Romulan woman drew a brief grumble from Evan almost immediately. It wasn’t, Matt had learned, that Evan disliked her. Or Romulans. He disliked their executive officer and unfortunately bringing up Revin was too close a subject to Commander Sadovu not to irritate Evan. It had all been dragged out of Evan a few weeks back when others had caught him actually commenting the young woman on her baking.

“Is it at least good coffee?” Evan asked before making an effort to force himself out of the seat and back to his feet. “And by good, I mean is it not dirt in water?”

“For a rag-tag group of pirates, scoundrels and ne’er-do-wells, the crew of the Madeleine have some pretty impressive replicator patterns.” Matt turned back to the console he was working at and the work he had been deep into. “It’s no Beans’d It back on DS47, or even our replicators, but it’s pretty good.”

The sigh of relief that soon followed signalled that Evan’s requirement of ‘not dirt in water’ had been met. His return to the seat next to Matt was heralded by a second cup set down next to Matt on the console. “Black, two sugars, yes?” Evan asked as he once more sunk into the seat, verging somewhere between a tired Starfleet officer and a liquid holding a vaguely human shape.

“Spot on.” Matt’s attention didn’t shift from the screen as he read along, then reread a section, before finally rereading it while running his finger along underneath a particular piece of text. “Looks like Selu was right, these folks are Maquis reenactors.”

“New Maquis,” Evan said around the lip of his cup. “Found some…literature. Syiar found a padd with it while we were searching deck three and started reading it aloud. Bunch of tripe if you ask me.”

“New Maquis? I wasn’t aware the Union was terrorising Federation citizens in the non-existent DMZ. It’s all Federation territory these days.” Matt continued reading the output on his screen, then stopped again before slumping back. “Damn, these guys are good. They wiped their entire communications history, sensor logs and navigational database before we beamed them off. I’ve run every rebuild protocol we’ve got and all I was able to turn up was the names of the three we have in the brig.”

Evan squinted, then found the energy to sit up, and even slid forward on his seat to look at Matt’s display and read the report himself. “Did you try running the rebuild on the comm buffer itself?”

“No, because the buffer is just that – a buffer. It gets overwritten regularly.”

“It gets overwritten when communications are initiated,” Evan corrected. “And Republic only called them once. We might be able to reconstruct the last,” Evan looked to the ceiling, clearly running numbers and odds in his head, “three or four communiques.”

After only a moment’s more consideration, Matt’s fingers flew across the controls, ordering first a shutdown of Madeleine’s communications system to prevent any incoming calls, then kicking off the data recovery process he’d been running across the computers before sitting back. “And now we wait.”

The order of the day was then small talk and coffee, the time slipping past as a progress bar slowly ticked along. It was nearly half a cup of coffee before Madeleine’s computers chirped in the positive, a small handful of files recovered to various degrees and written to a partition to prevent their loss. “I have to ask, where did a yard engineer learn a trick like this?” Matt asked as he brought up the first record, confirming it was the brief conversation between the Madeleine’s captain and Trid as she delivered the captain’s order to surrender.

“Learn a trick or two talking to fleeters,” Evan answered, referring to the engineers of the active fleet, which he was now part of. “And I’ve done my fair share of diagnostic and repair work as well. New comm systems not working, or battle-damaged ships dragged in that we need to fully understand what went wrong.” His own eyes had been glancing at the file details as well and he pointed at one. “This one.”

As the comm record in question was brought up, the image was a little blurry, choppy in some places too. But the audio was perfectly clear. “You sure about this?” the woman on the screen asked. She was an older Bajoran woman, dressed just like those in the brig right now – holonovel freedom fighter. “We can both outrun that Starfleet junker.”

“Eponine can, but the Maddy can’t,” came an unseen voice – Jack Mackenzie, the captain of the Madeleine and currently safely squirrelled away in Republic’s brig. “We’ve still got that plasma distribution issue and you’ve got the real prize aboard anyway. We’ll cover you and buy you time. Just do whatever you can to wash out your warp trail. Never seen a ship like that, don’t know what they’ve got.”

The woman on screen nodded her head once solemnly. “We’ll keep the lights on for when you get out.” And then the playback stopped.

Matt looked to Evan, whose face was scrunched up somewhat before he spoke up. “Well, I couldn’t confirm if there was or wasn’t any distribution issue. The plasma network is a mess on this boat now. Heck, we’ve only got lights and life support thanks to beamed power.”

“Didn’t seem like some sort of practised lie either though,” Matt added. “Sounded genuine enough to me.”

“Yeah. Wait a second.” Evan scooted forward again on his chair, balanced right on the edge. “Bring up the last few seconds of the recording would you.”

As the recording was brought back up and paused right before it finished, Evan stood, pushing into Evan’s personal space as he closed with the screen to check something, grumbling about small screens and old ships. The screen was filled once more with the older Bajoran woman’s face. There were wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, and traces of grey at her temples that were close to matching her grey eyes. The image was clear enough to make out her earring, which could certainly help any authorities who might run across the woman in future.

But besides her, there were a handful of others in the background. Eponine was better staffed than Madeleine was just from the bridge crew alone. It seemed like every station on the cramped bridge was staffed, with another two standing around as reserves just in case. But there were two other figures in the background of the bridge.

“Those two,” Evan said as he pointed at the screen.

Matt needed no further impetus as he zoomed the display on them. An older Andorian woman whose face was familiar to the senior officers of the Republic and a human male standing beside her. The Andorian woman was dressed much like one might expect any researcher to be dressed with smart lines to her clothing and a labcoat over the top, the man beside her was even more over the top than the Maquis were with his black everything, from his leather boots to the duster and stetson hat he worse.

“Well that’s not good,” Matt spoke up as he enhanced the image as best as Madeleine’s computers could do, bringing the face of Doctor T’Halla Shreln into a near-focus. “Not sure I like the idea of this so-called New Maquis having a mass-murdering bioweapons expert on their side.”

Evan stood up straight, stepping back from Matt and the console. His features were even more disgruntled than normal as he looked at his fellow officer. “We have to tell the captain.”

“And Starfleet. And the Cardassian Union,” Matt said as he transferred the files to an isolinear chip before standing up himself.

“Yeah, sure,” Evan answered after a moment’s hesitation. “Guess we have to.”