—- Starbase 86, Operations – Tharc’s Office —-

“My ship keeps getting broken,” groused the engineering officer.

Commodore Ciffao Tharc looked cross as she snapped at Lieutenant Commander James Young, “It’s Starfleet’s ship not yours.”

Commander Olivia Carrillo tried explaining the linguistics behind Young’s claim that she had ‘wrecked his ship’, “He doesn’t mean he owns it, he’s just protective of the Luna ma’am.”

Tharc looked at her, “I did not become a Commodore without learning human linguistics tics. He’s not the first malcontented engineer I’ve had to deal with.”

She softened and shook her head, “But you made the best of a bad situation and with no casualties. Yes the Luna will take awhile to get ship shape, but at least the crew is in one piece. I’m not convinced that it’s good that the Klingons have decided to lead a raid against the Devore Imperium, but that’s not my business. What is, is the crew of the Luna. Mister Young, due to your performance you’re being promoted to Commander. You are now the Luna’s third officer. However your choice of second, an Ensign Vanessa Constable, is in appropriate. Make a new choice.”

“Ensign Constable is…” Young began.

“You can’t have an Ensign leading Lieutenants, fix it Commander,” Tharc said firmly letting him know that further discussion was not warranted on the topic, “If you need an olive branch make her a lieutenant junior grade. But I want at least a Lieutenant as your Assistant Chief.”

“Ma’am,” Young said, seeing that arguing was not going to get him anywhere. He reached out and picked the pip up off her desk, exchanging the black pip for the gold as he took his new rank.

“The Luna isn’t going anywhere soon so Young is now the CO of it while in dock. He’ll oversee repairs, work with our team on that Commander,” Tharc said.

“Ma’am,” Young nodded.

“Carrillo your performances as of late have caught the eye. So you get the honor of leading another mission. Assemble a team from the Luna’s crew, about six people, and take one of your two runabouts to the location on this PADD,” Tharc said handing over a PADD with mission details on it. She nodded, “The USS Sizemore will take your team and the runabout there, you’ll need to get back on your own.”

“What’s the mission?” Carrillo asked.

“A Cardassian colony ship went through one of the portals, we want to know what it’s up to,” Tharc said, “They’re setting up platforms in underspace, and we suspect that’s not a colony. Go, find out what it is, and try to ascertain what they’re up to.”

“It could actually be a colony?” Carrillo said.

“Could be, if it is report back. But we had a Sagan-class ship go through that entrance and we didn’t find anything interesting. While Cardassians are more willing to endure terrible conditions, it’s not likely they’ve found a new homeworld,” the Commodore said then waved the two Luna officers away and out of her office.

“Mind if I take Lieutenant Murf again?” Carrillo asked.

“Okay but I need to have a conversation with her first,” Young said, adding, “And with Constable.”

—- Starbase 86, Officer’s Lounge —-

“I still get to keep an individual room right?” Constable asked, she was sat next to Lieutenant Murf on one side and Lieutenant Commander James Young on her other side.

“We’re not on the USS Anaheim anymore, everyone gets their own room now,” Young said tiredly.

“Murf you’re now Assistant Chief Engineer, and a Lieutenant Commander,” Young said tossing a pipe her way. He had decided to promote her given that she had put in more time and Constable had just made Ensign. There was little point in bumping her up to Lieutenant Junior Grade so early.

“Congratulations,” said Constable, “But I don’t have to move right?”

“I’ll double check with Operations, but yes you can keep the same room,” Young said, he couldn’t blame Constable’s protectiveness over her room. She’d been a crewman on the USS Anaheim and had to sleep co-ed in a corridor before getting made Assistant Chief Engineer and promoted to Ensign. While the Luna-class did not have corridor sleeping, some junior crew did have to share rooms.

Constable looked at him as if he was pulling something sneaky but finally nodded, knowing that she’d been lucky to be Assistant Chief Engineer for so long. While it had been one thing on a California-class ship, that they’d carried the job over to a Luna-class was a bit mad.

“Now Murf you’re off to wherever Carrillo’s going,” Young said, “And the two of us have a ship to rebuild.”

“I wish they’d stop breaking it,” grumbled Constable.

“I know that’s what I said,” Young agreed.

—- Starbase 86, Briefing Room —-

While Murf had been on her last mission without the Luna, the rest of the team was new. Lieutenant Commander Jake Dornall of Starfleet Intelligence, Lieutenant Eshita Das from Science, Lieutenant Junior Grade William Hume from Security, Chief Petty Officer Nurse Rachel Smith, and lastly Rebecca Avila who was the leader of the ship’s Hazard Team. It was an odd grouping, one that would not have come about naturally in the course of their duties on the USS Luna, but Commander Carrillo wanted the team to bond better. Since they were getting a lift from the USS Sizemore, she’d forgone a pilot knowing that herself and several other members of the team could fly the runabout.

“We fly in, we take pictures, do scans,” Carrillo said, “We won’t try to hide who we are or what we’re doing. Being seen keeping an eye on the Cardassians is almost as important as keeping an eye on the Cardassians.”

“So no black ops stuff,” Dornall asked.

“Nope, I’m bringing you because Starfleet Intelligence is interested in this information we’re collecting, not to do anything that’s going to get us into trouble,” Carrillo said, adding, “We’ll have the runabout’s weapon compliment, but if we fire a phaser we’ve lost points. The Cardassians will have to decide to fire on us, and deal with the results, we won’t be provoke them.”

“When do we leave?” Hume asked.

Glancing at her Assistant Chief of Security Carrillo said, “Tomorrow evening. We’ll be taking the Apollo runabout again. Departing from the Luna, where we’ll rendezvous with the Sizemore, and be with them for four days. They’ll drop us off at the mouth of the anomaly, and we’ll venture in. It’s located in the Cardassian Neutral Zone, so we’ll want the Sizemore’s protection from The True Way or the New Marquis.”

Looking over her team she nodded, “Unless there’s any questions you all know your parts. Get what you need off the Luna, and prepare to leave tomorrow.”

—- USS Sizemore, Briefing Room 2 —-

“I forgot how modest these Steamrunner-class ships were compared to the Luna,” Murf said as she took a seat. The ship was good, tough, but it lacked the luxury of the Luna-class. Though Commander Carrillo suspected that all officers felt that they served aboard the best ship in the fleet, at least until they got transferred to something new.

“Quit bragging and sit down,” Carrillo said, “So we’re not allowed to engage the Cardassians, just observe and report. Starfleet wants to know what’s up with them.”

Nodding at Lieuntenant Commander Jake Dornall she said, “You’ll be my First Officer on this mission, any stealthy ideas on how we’re going to do this?”

Carrillo had read the files and knew that Dornall’s father had been captured and executed as a spy during the Dominion War and the younger Dornall had made the Cardassians his specialty. He’d joined the crew back when it was on the USS Seattle during a classified operation in Cardassian space. Though the Commander had never seen him mix up his duty with his desire to stick it to the Cardassians she knew that she would have to ensure it wasn’t now that it started.

“We want the Cardassians to know we’re there without knowing exactly what we know,” Dornall said, “When we get to the wormhole and start traveling through the anomaly we’ll start scanning. Everything gets scanned, scientific stuff, and we’ll scan the Cardassians directly. Be obvious about it, and sloppy. That’ll let us add a transmission to the signal, that they’ll not notice once they give us a once over.”

“What kind of transmission,” asked Lieutenant Eshita Das.

“That’s a need to know,” the Intelligence Officer said, “All you need to do is run your usual scientific scans along side the standard tactical scans we run. Nothing special, noting that’s going to get them to take a third look at us or the scans.”

“Alright, Lieutenants Eshita and Hume handle the scans. Let Lieutenant Commander Dornall add whatever he wants,” Carrillo said indicating the science and security officers. She wanted to know what Dornall was up to, but figured this was not the time to get into a pissing contest with him.

“There’s a Class M planet shortly after the anomaly on the other side. We’ll set down there, Nurse Smith and Lieutenant Eshita, you do a planetary survey. Lieutenants Hume, Avila, and Lieutenant Commander Dornall find out what you can about the Cardassian outpost there. We don’t mind them seeing us, but please don’t engage,” the Commander ordered.

—- Runabout Apollo, Six Days Later —-

Lieutenant Commander Jake Dornall nodded, “Scans complete and the code is uploaded.”

Lieutenant Eshita Das peered at the Galor-class ship, and asked, “Do you think they see us?”

“Oh they definitely see us,” Dornall replied, “They even know we’ve scanned them, probably even know about our hack. They just don’t care, we’re like a fly to an elephant to a ship that size.”

Das found that disconcerting, while the Luna was not a big ship in the grand scheme of things, it generally tended hold its own if things got dicey. There was a certain security in that that she missed as the runabout flew under the large Cardassian warship. While she had not entered Starfleet to get into fights, it was nice to feel like if you got hit you could at least punch back.

Dornall seemed unconcerned. The intelligence officer sitting back in his chair and reclining. He even seemed to doze off, though after a few minutes he opened and eye and said, “Get some sleep while you can, once things get going we may not get a chance to for awhile.”

The others seemed to be of the same mind, and having been on station time Das realized that it had been a while since they had last slept on the Sizemore. She headed to the front of the runabout were Commander Carrillo was taking readings from the pilot’s seat. She seemed to be the only other person awake.

“Can’t sleep?” Das asked, sliding into the conn position to the left of her. The Commander, after nodding a welcome shrugged.

“Never trusted auto-pilot,” she senior officer said, “Dumb I know, but since Fleet Day I don’t really get on with automated systems. I’ll go to bed in a bit, I just don’t want us crashing into a battleship.”

Gazing at the large assembly that the Cardassians were putting together Das pondered, “I can’t figure it out, that’s too much stuff for just studying it. You’d want more lenses and less lasers and stuff.”

The Commander shrugged, the science stuff was why she’d brought Das, she needed a sense of things but only the Kindergartner’s explanation, so to speak. She turned the runabout, guiding it into orbit. Standing she nodded at Das, “I’m going to try to sleep. I’ll see you in the morning for our briefing.”

Das nodded, knowing that she should sleep now too since she’d need to collocate their findings prior to the briefing.

—- Runabout Apollo, 10:00 Hours Briefing —-

“They’re trying to close off underspace,” Lieutenant Das said gesturing to the screen behind her. The data was pretty conclusive, it was clear that they could only have one aim, and were not trying to hide it that hard.

“We thought we could close our first passage with a torpedo, why are they bringing this much stuff why not just fire a torpedo?” Carrillo asked.

“I don’t know, but it’s likely that not all access to underspace can be torpedoed shut. We may have found an unstable portal, or one that had different physics. This one, and most of the ones that Starfleet’s studied don’t shut that easy,” Das said.

Carrillo nodded, “So I guess our task now is to stop them. That’s the word from Starfleet anyway.”

Dornall nodded, “You bring some fancy new weapon that’s going to disable that battleship they have?”

Carrillo shook her head, “I did not.”

“No Galaxy-class waiting for our signal,” Lieutenant Junior Grade William Hume asked.

Once more Carrillo’s head shook. She knew the odds, and what they were up against, The runabout would not last very long against the much larger battleship. They were not even a dozen against hundreds, if not more, Cardassians.

Smaller shuttle craft transported the Cardassians to and from the platform and the Galor-class ship. It suggested a larger than normal science or engineering team aboard, but they’d be ready for trouble too and anticipating possible intervention by Starfleet.

Carrillo summed up, “There’s no calvary coming, nobody. We’re at who knows where a century of warp flight from Earth and nobody would know if the Cardassians shot us with a torpedo and just said we’d crashed on the planet.