((Ready Room))

Tyler sat pondering their current situation. The CC had been reassigned to perform its other assigned duties and would be circling back in about a week. He and Aruin were doing the final round up on all the days activities.

“I’ll have my Deputy draft a response to the Formicans request about their warp drives. We can assist them in refits and upgrades, but Starfleet is restricting us to using their own materials, devices or suitiable alternatives?” Aruin asked.

“Right, we can help them make what they have as good as it can be, but we can’t give them any tech beyond their own level, atleast until some sort of official relations between us develop.” Tyler replied.

Aruin grinned. “Sooooooo…that means we can give them anything up to and including mid 2380s Ferengi tech then I assume, since technically they have access to that already.” Aruin and Tyler were in lock step together on the plan to free the Dergans, for the most part.

Tyler snickered, “Exactly, we just keep that as the quiet part as far as Command is concerned though.”

“Excellent idea Captain. What about our battle hungry friends?” She said referring to the Klingons. She was certainly one of the most unique diplomatic corps officers Tyler had ever met.

He had discussed a plan with Kerak to have the Slivin creeping around the system cloaked and gather some more specific information about the Ferengis operation here, and to monitor their interactions with both the Dergans and the Formicans.

“They’re keeping an eye on things. They have a bit of an economically extortionate relationship with the Formicans, but that’s par for the course with the Ferengi usually. The interactions we’ve noticed between them and the Dergans though, that seems more like indentured servitude and exploitation. The Ferengi bill the Dergans for everything. In return the Dergans use their primitive space sphere pods to mine Dueterium, in the form of ice from an asteroid cluster that comes close to Derganix orbit twice a year. A dangerous job with frequent accidents. The Ferengi haven’t helped the Dergans upgrade their ships as much they have with the Formicans.”

“I mean, can we just cut to the chase and kill the Ferengi now, save us all the trouble?” Aruin shrugged her shoulders, she wasn’t kidding either. She didn’t see this ending well for either them or the Ferengi, so why wait.

“Oh it gets better Commander.” Tyler continued reading from his padd, erroneously taking Aruins statement as a joke.

“The Ferengi also buy rare Gullian quartz lattices from the Dergans after discovering a rich vein in the southern continent.” Indeed in the early days, making a trip to the lattice field was a good way for young Dergans to make some extra money and get ahead. But as the planetary debt with the Ferengi began to soar, wholesale mining had begun.

“But at the rate the Dergans are mining, and the rock bottom prices the Ferengi are paying for both the lattices and the dueterium, the Dergans don’t stand much of a chance at playing off their debt for atleast a decade. That’s what my social sciences team has gathered today.” Tyler finished.

“Yeah, I’m sticking with -kill ’em all, then we can help these 2 new friends we have found out here on this expanse- angle” Aruin said as she slapped her thighs and stood, recognizing they were at the end of the list and she also knew they were both tired.

“My first officer and Captain Kerak have that end covered if the need does arise. But I’m counting on you to help diplomacy prevail.”

“That’s always my goal sir, I’ll have these drafts and communiques on your desk by 1000h tomorrow.”

“Thank you Commander. G’night.” Tyler said as Aruin left.

A few minutes later Tyler had the computer begin a personal log, and said;

The Blythe is remaining on station in orbit around Derganix and has assumed the monitoring and training of the Dergans use of the Industrial Replicators, away from prying eyes of the Ferengi. They had been properly preprogrammed to not allow replication of any banned material, or anything beyond basic industrial needs. No weapons and highly advanced technology will ever be produced by the Replicators as the programming was hard coded in such a way that the device was simply unable to produce any of the items.

Tesa’s engineering staff has taken over the duties monitoring the fusion generators the Culver City has supplied and finished teaching the Dergans about how to operate them safety. The generators themselves are essentially fool proof I’m told. They have a runtime life span of roughly 10 years when being used as a base load supplier to a grid. If the Dergans ever need to do an maintenance or upgrades to the power plant itself, it’s as simple as turning off the generator and locking it out, just like their existing solar and hydro electric based power supplies they have. Those older systems had started to buckle and decay under the weight of the Cabbage epidemic as many other facets of the Dergan had. The malevolence of the Ferengi involvement in the Dergan society is becoming more evidence with each passing day it seems. End log.

As Tyler checked his terminal, he noted that Starfleet had responded to his report from the previous day, and would be sending the USS Soval, an Ambassador class ship. which had been on station at Framheim as TF72’s Emissary and diplomatic response ship. They would also be bringing a high powered Vulcan diplomat to hopefully and a small Federation engineering support team that would be able to assist both the Dergans and the Formicans if neccesary. The Diplomat and the large cruiser, which was a class that many of the Ferengi would be aware of and respect, would hopefully be enough to influence the Ferengi to either withdraw or play nice.

An hour later, as the weary and bleary eyed Captain was about to stand up and drag his ass to bed, the bridge called. “Sir we have a subspace communique coming in from Earth for you.”

He assumed he was going to be receiving some new additional orders from an Admiral as was usually the case when a call from SBB, SB72, or Earth came in. Hopefully it was quick. Fred was already predicting that it would be some Admiral telling him to hand over command of the mission to the Captain of the Soval when they arrived.

“Yes, uh transfer it in here please.” Tyler hadn’t realized he had been in a Ready Room for a few hours at this point doing his documentation duties. A shift change had already occured.

“In where sir?”

Tyler shook his head in disgust of himself. “In my ready room please Mr. Singh.”

“Yes Sahib.” The 25 year old, new provisional Head of Communications said from his newly reprogrammed starboard side rear console on the bridge. The UT had failed to translate Sahib to sir the second time he said it because the word Sahib was so close to so many different names and depending on the context, and intonation of how Singh said it, if was a crapshoot whether or not the translator converted it ‘sir’ or not.