Sipping at her coffee, Cadet Lyrakkiton Parze was seated at one of the cafe tables at Brew that looked out at the wide passageways and bustling activity of Starbase Bravo’s promenade.  Her eyes scanned from side to side; it was only when the fishy smell of her special-order coffee-drink wafted towards her that she would take a sip from the mug.  The Saurian had the mug clasped between both of her scaly hands and nearly spit out the sip of coffee when she said, “Oh!” Parze downed the rest of her drink and jumped to her feet a moment later.

Breaking into a sprint, Parze called out, “Lieutenant!” as she ran towards the woman she had spotted. Parze tore across the promenade, towards a familiar woman in a security uniform. She asked, “Lieutenant Thompson, is that you?”

Sonja had been running later than usual this morning, after a restless night sleep. She had slept through her alarm, which caused the rush to be worse than usual. She hurriedly got ready and rushed out of her quarters heading to her office. When she heard the familiar and excited voice of Cadet Parze. She spun around and nodded “What’s wrong, Cadet? You seem a bit frazzled.” She said trying to calm the Cadet down.

“Lieutenant, have you ever seen something, but you weren’t sure what you’d seen,” Parze asked, at length, “and so you starting to think maybe you had only imagined it, except then you couldn’t forget about it, even though you couldn’t remember exactly what you had seen, only that you had seen something, that something had happened, but you didn’t want to seem stupid for saying anything?”  After that run-on sentence, Parze took a deep, deep breath.  Then she winced and she tacked on a, “Hypothetically, of course.”

Sonja held up her hands “Calm down, Cadet. Let’s go to my office where we can sit down and talk in private. Get you calmed down a bit because I can tell you’re frazzled.” She walked with Parze the short distance to her office, where she shut the door and sat Parze down. She grabbed a water for the Cadet and sat it in front of her. She say back down at her desk and folded her hands “Alright, now slowly from the top what is going on?”

Parze sipped at the water and she took a deep breath.  Her eyes darted left and ride, belying her internal conflicts about what she wanted to say, what she thought she was supposed to say, and what she knew to be right.  “Sir, I’ve been assigned a couple of shifts in the logistics department, as part of my Squadron Bravo cross-training.  In all of my assignments, I’ve been intently observing my environment, like we talked about on the promenade a few weeks ago,” Parze said, speaking slowly, as if she was afraid to actually get to the point, or be misunderstood.  

Parze went on: “I noticed something yesterday.  At least, I think I did?  There’s an officer on the desk beside mine, who prepares and distributes courier cases.  My eyes are drawn to the movement when he hands them off.  Those Starfleet briefcases are so shiny, it must trigger an ancient hunter instinct in me?  …Anyway, I think I noticed something?  A pattern?  One out of every ten or twelve cases has no distribution plate on it when he hands them off.  It’s like he’s sending them to nowhere!”

Sonja rose an eye “So your saying that one case is being picked up, but has no destination on it?” She began writing things down at this point regardless of what could be the case this would need to be looked into. “Do you know who this officer is?” She asked stopping for a response.

Nodding abruptly, Parze said, “Yes, whenever Ensign Camillo Belarius hands off briefcases, they have destination codes on them.”  She winced a puzzled expression and she took another sip of water.  “Except for the ones that don’t.”

Sonja immediately took notes of the officer who the Cadet mentioned and began to determine that something was off. It wasn’t normal for a Starfleet officer to be reported for suspicious activity like this. “Ok, so how long have you been seeing this activity take place? Do you know the ratio of the cases that do not have the destination codes on them? And who grabs the cases after Ensign Belarius hands them off?”

“No, I… I…” Parze tried to answer, but her mouth hung agape, and she squinted, as if that effort would help her to remember better.  She shook her head, saying, “I don’t remember, exactly.  I haven’t been in that department long enough to recognize all the faces yet.  I’m sorry, lieutenant.  I don’t mean to fail you.  With all of the Romulans and Remans on board, it has to mean something, no?  Whatever it takes, I’ll help you find out more.”

Over-excited, Parze declared, “I’ll go undercover, if I have to!”