Bullwura rapped her manicured nails against the arm of her chair, the sequential clicking of her peach-coloured French tips against the dark surface of the central console eliciting a barely audible percussive rasp. She barely suppressed a sigh as she called across the bridge without turning her head from the frustrating sight on the view screen, the planet below, frustratingly absent of the small Nova class they were scheduled to meet. “Any luck finding Nye?” The dull thudding of fingers against the console surface was the only response from the far corner of the bridge where the young operations officer was working desperately to find the missing ship. “Eddie?” The Betazoid’s drumming against the armrest continued to grow, her nails threatening to pierce the dark rolled oak surface with her growing frustration. “Edwina?”

“Give her a minute.” Indira whispered under her breath from across the nearby XO seat learning across the small divider.

“She’s had-” Bullwura glanced to the small info panel secreted in the space between the seats, “- a full 5 minutes.”

“It’s not her fault that Driverson and co aren’t at the rendevous.” Indira brushed one of her many rogue dark forelocks back behind her ear. “And it’s definitely not her fault that Driverson has gone off wandering, you know what he’s like.” She offered the captain a knowing look.

“He does want to look under every oddly shaped rock.” Bullwura conceded, letting out another short sigh. “But his message was concerning.” ‘There are storms on Rinnoa’ were the only words on his short missive to Deep Space 47. Command had scratched their collective chins at the short message. A warning? A code? It was unusual, to say the least, and when long-range communications had been unable to reach Nye, Bullwura was ordered to take Daedalus and chase down the message. “It shouldn’t be hard to find a little Nova-class, it’s not like they’re particularly stealthy.” 

“He’ll be somewhere in the asteroid belt or in the shadow of that J-class we passed the outer edge of the system.” Indira offered her best confident smile, though it faltered slightly at the corners. 

“There are other possibilities.” Bullwura could still see the concern on Captain Varen’s face as he’d pulled her to one side at the entrance to the docking umbilical, she could hear the weighty worry in his voice as he had quietly reminded her of the risky nature of the Thomar Expanse. “We are not that far from Tzenkethi territory.” She scanned the bridge for nearby eavesdroppers, it wouldn’t do to feed the rumour mill should Eddie’s scans come up short. “And they have been even colder than usual since the Underspace incident.” she continued in a barely audible whisper. 

“We’re well inside Thomar, there’s no reason why they should have crossed.” Indira waved her hand dismissively between the two women as she leaned closer. 

“And when has that ever stopped them? They don’t say anything, Indira, they just do what they like. We’re not even worth taking the time to threaten.” Bullwura found herself wringing her hands in her lap, a frustrating habit she thought she had stopped several years ago. “I still don’t know why command sent Nye out here on their own.”

“Because we’re well inside neutral territory and this planet is rich with silicon deposits.” Indira gently lay her hand over Bullwura’s, putting a stop to their incessant wringing. “The Tzenkethi have never shown any interest in this system before. We’re almost a day’s travel from the border. And you know 47 always has an eye on them.” 

The baritone trill of the comm system sounded cut across the bridge, accompanied by a low mutter that sounded suspiciously like ‘thank god’ as Eddie cleared her throat. “I have the Nye, Captain.” Indira offered Bullwura a tilted head and an ‘I told you so’ smile. 

“Where even… whatever, on screen.” the captain instructed, rising to her feet as she prepared to admonish her fellow captain for his tardiness. 

The view screen flickered for a moment before the orbital view was replaced by a dark image, a fine fuzz covering the wide viewscreen, beyond the grey interference, Bullwura could make out distant rolling dunes and a night sky, filled with barely visible pinpricks of light. 

“Can we do anything about the interference?” Indira was already crossing to the operations console, her long legs carrying her across the small bridge quickly. “Is it the same problem we had with the long-range comms?”

“It doesn’t look that way, the channel is clear.” Eddie pointed to the screen as the XO approached, “What we’re seeing is what they’re transmitting.”

From his position at the science station opposite, Maksha announced his interruption with a gentle clearing of his throat. “I believe I have triangulated Nye’s location and it may explain what we are seeing.” He calmly turned to the rest of the room. “It is not interference. It is rain.”

As if waiting for its cue the feed on the viewscreen stuttered and tumbled as a pair of human hands grasped with the video transmitter and moved it to a better position. A few nausea-inducing seconds later the face of Captain Driverson appeared on the screen, his body covered by a bright yellow kagoule and a wide-brimmed hat atop his mess of dark hair, drips of water gathering at its hem, barely clinging on. 

“Daedalus? Bullwura is that you?” The man’s pleasant baritone was bubbling with barely contained excitement. 

“Alan?”

Driverson allowed a wide grin to spread across his face. “Yes! Apologies we weren’t in orbit when you arrived, we needed the surface vehicles and well… it’s just easier to drive them straight off the ramp.” A sudden blinding flash of white light arced across the screen, fracturing into a thousand spiderwebs across the dark sky before fading from existence. Driverson returned his attention to the screen, his smile wider than before. “Plus there’s those! We’ve taken shelter under the ship, two birds in one bush as they say. I will say T’Lask did an excellent job bringing her in through the storm.”

Bullwura lifted her jaw from the deck as she slowly began to read between the lines, she looked to Maksha on the far side, sharing a silent nod of understanding with her fellow Betazoid. “Alan, are you on the surface of the planet?”

He looked like he might explode with glee as he tilted the camera slightly upward to reveal the curving arrow-shaped primary hull of Nye. “Affirmative Captain!”

“Why?” Bullwura could feel a headache beginning at the edges of her temples as she looked over the visage of Driverson in the corner of the viewscreen, grinning like a Cheshire cat. 

“Well this planet shouldn’t have an atmosphere, let alone full-blown thunderstorms.” The chubby pink fingers covered the video feed again as it was lifted into a new position. “It also shouldn’t have that.”

Several jaws dropped on the bridge of Daedalus as the pink, sausage-like fingers peeled away revealing a tall silver structure on the horizon, its smooth uninterrupted surface reaching up from the ground like one of the water droplets that hung from Driverson’s hat. A needle peak pierced the sky where it spewed out plumes of thick white vapour, churning upward to fuel the spreading stormcloud. 

The disembodied voice of Captain Driverson was even more gleeful when separated from his face, though no less frustrating. “I thought you might like that!”