The Bakersfield arrived at Thalor system at one weeks time. It happened at sixteen hundred hours Sam chimed in “Captain, I am picking up another distress signal in the lower range of the hertz again where I was forced to go to Draken system.”.

Simon said, “Ignore that and log where it’s at”.

They decided to pass along the path to Thalor and receive the message which was “USS Bakersfield, USS Bakersfield send code.” Then at that moment Sam sent the code and the transmission came on the viewscreen. ” USS Bakersfield, the Shackleton Expanse we just visited at stardate 79901.65.”

USS Bakersfield continued to the Thalor system as they made their way, the distress signal turned off. They then arrived in the Thalor system with a beautiful dim sun as the Bakersfield comes out of warp. As the Bakersfield makes her way to Thalor I, they noticed a small craft on sensors and it just blinked out like was it the Defiant class acting starship again.

USS Bakersfield started toward Thalor V and they found a corollary of a battle. She told the captain and they started looking at the sensors and out of the viewscreen a Klingon bird of prey’s hull plating was around due to the signature on the sensors but no bird of prey. They scanned the planet and found it difficult in  the ice shears on the surface was massive crevasse at least what was seen on the sensors from orbit. Not great resolution so shears can be something else. The landing party beamed down and saw the shears was something massive and barely made it back it. They decided to take a shuttle down for scouting. It snowed hard and fast close to a blizzard weather when they first touched into the atmosphere. As they scouted a massive ice mountain came into view and the shuttle just missed the mountain in the upper atmosphere.  The landing party landed in a clearing on the mountain and scanned the surrounding area and found what was so massive that scared the landing party back. The creature they scanned was massive. 300 metric tons weight, 10 foot width by 30 foot length with a massive jaw that had teeth like a shark back on Earth. They named the creature Graw Maw for the mouth it had on it. They barely made it back to the shuttle and took off. The maw surprised them when it took off after them where they saw no wings and it didn’t go past them it was trying to eat them. They entered into the ship and headed for the logs and put what they saw in Starfleet database to be transmitted when it was time to leave the survey mission.

Aurora on the other hand talked to Simon about the danger of letting his crew take over especially Sam. Simon and Aurora headed to the 2 person briefing room and talked about Sam.

“Seems you like Sam in control when it’s good for you.” said Aurora.

Simon said, “Sam is a good asset to this team and what got into your head to begin with.”

Aurora finally sits down and looks Simon in the eye. ” Do you think Starfleet has USS Bakersfield’s experimental status for a reason?” She knew it was time to let the cat out of the bag.

Simon pondered for a long minute and just nodded yes. ” Remember I watched Sam grow so even if Starfleet knows it doesn’t matter we just pretend like they don’t until Starfleet let’s it out. Now don’t worry about that and let’s get back to work. I am glad Starfleet put no technology in this room so we can talk about anything to help Bakersfield’s crew and make it home. Even the door has a override so don’t worry.” Simon and Aurora left the room and went back to work.