There was a singular environmental setting that R’tin and T’Ael, in all their exploration of the Vondem Rose’s computer systems, had never been able to find and change. It had a specific set of requirements, but one that both Klingon warships and marauding pirates in a stolen Klingon ship would frequently trigger throughout the course of any given endeavour. As the Rose settled into the orbit of the world simply referred to by the Devore Imperium’s forces as Depot 816, the ship was cloaked and at battle stations, which always and without fail caused the lights on the bridge to dim and take a reddish hue.

There was no need for that, no benefit gained save for giving anyone who walked onto the bridge an immediate visual status update without having to blare it constantly via speakers or plaster it as a running ribbon along the top or bottom of console screens. The ship could have functioned just fine with the lights on full blast, but no, somewhere in the computer code there was a setting that dictated the illumination on the bridge while cloaked and ready for war.

Despite all of that, as Sidda sat in her chair, glaring at the viewscreen, she had to admit the darkened, red-tinted bridge went with her mood at least. But damn if she didn’t find the darkened state annoying. Maybe, just maybe, Starfleet had something right about most of their ship’s being very well-lit, no matter the state. Though she had to admit, that could have changed. It had been decades since she’d been on a Starfleet ship in anything other than normal conditions.

Or dead in a shipyard.

This chair really did have better lumbar support. And the swivel was much, much smoother.

Depot 816 was an unremarkable little mudball of a planet. It had all the immediate visual signs of an M-class world – deep blue oceans, continents of various shades of brown, green and tan, and ice peppered around the mountains and poles. All in all, it seemed pretty standard in the scheme of things save for a few distinct differences. There were signs of a Devore prison camp on the planet’s surface, right in the tropical zone and placed on an island in the middle of one of the deeper seas. A volcanic mount according to Tavol. But there was little in the way of the native green there, all of it having been replaced with other shades of green. Some of it was cultivated in patches visible from orbit, other shades had been allowed to go wild, covering the rest of the island.

Reasonings why could wait till later.

The other pressing matter was the Devore warship sitting in orbit above the camp. The ship didn’t look to be in the best condition, its hull breached in a handful of locations, but she still looked combat capable. More like she’d come in from an extended campaign and was making good her ills, which explained the work crews over her hull, the handful of shuttles buzzing around the ship tractoring pieces away, shining lights in places shielded from the local star and the planet-shine.

“Talk to me,” she finally said after what felt like hours of brooding but was probably just a few minutes. Minutes that Tavol would have been carefully studying the passive sensors, with Orelia and Orin putting a finer focus on the ship they were sharing an orbit with.

A ship which hadn’t seemed to react one bit to a K’t’inga-class battlecruiser closing to within ten thousand kilometres of it over the last two hours.

“I can’t provide an exact count of life signs within the prison camp without the active sensors,” Tavol said, his voice sounding like he hadn’t even turned away from his console. “But I’m estimating somewhere in the order of five thousand people planetside, judging by the size of the farms surrounding the facility. I would wager the Devore are using slave labour to work the farms as I am not seeing any signs of large-scale agricultural equipment. I am also not detecting any signs of long-range communication equipment on the planet, but extensive short-range facilities. Local weather around the facility currently is around twenty-nine degrees centigrade, with around eighty per cent humidity.”

“Oof,” Lewis chipped in. “It’s not the heat that gets you, it’s the humidity. No thanks.”

“Lewis,” Sidda found herself speaking directly to him, quietly, calmly. “Not now, please.”

“Sorry Boss,” he replied solemnly and turned back to his own station.

“Thank you,” she offered to her helmsman as nicely as she could. “And what of them?” she then asked, waving a hand at the warship on her viewscreen, the image zoomed in enough to catch the movement of suited individuals, and the occasional bright glare of cutting torches or welders.

“Battered, but not broken.” Orelia brought an overlay onto the viewscreen, highlighting a few things with handy purple circles. “Minor hull damage, a few breaches, but nothing critical it would seem. She’s looking like she’s powered down at the moment for repairs with her nacelles discharged even. Her shield emitters look cold, and her weapons too. But,” the world dragged out, pregnant with anticipation before the final overlay appeared, showing the ship’s communications array and its current status, “she’s talking and talking a lot to someone out there and planetside. I reckon she’s playing the role of relay station for the depot at the moment.”

“Why?” she asked as she turned to face Orelia and Orin, her left eyebrow rising in confusion.

“Why what?” Orelia asked back.

“Why are they playing relay?”

‘To stop a prison revolt from calling for help?’ Orin signed. ‘The prison can only talk to orbit, so someone in orbit has to enable outside communications.’ Then the large man shrugged. ‘Seen it once with a Klingon prison. The prison likely doesn’t have transporters either, relying on a ship in orbit.’

“So, our friend here is what, on station acting as a relay and warden while making repairs?”

“And likely traded jobs with whoever was here,” Orelia continued the thought. “They come here, make repairs, play comm relay and whoever was doing it last gets to go out and stomp their boots on someone. Man, they do seemingly take joy in extracting the most suffering out of everything.”

“Anything else we should be worried about? Defence satellites? Surface-to-orbit weapon emplacements? An ensign with a good throwing arm?” Orin at least smirked at the last one.

‘Nothing we can see, but we are just using passives.’

“Any signs of this blood dilithium shit, Tavol?” Sidda asked, turning on Tavol.

“From this distance, and with passives, I can’t be certain, but there are storehouses planetside that are emitting subspace energy signatures consistent with dilithium.” He turned to face her; an eyebrow raised. “The computer has suggested that this planet is an ideal raiding target.”

“It has, has it?” And he nodded in the affirmative to her question. “Well then, let’s watch our victims for a bit more, see if we can’t establish some sort of comms window or such that we might be able to strike in and not set off the Devore too much.” She pushed herself up to her feet. “Orelia, you’ve got the conn. I’ll be back in an hour. I want options then or we go with whatever spur-of-the-moment insanity I come up with.”

An hour later a rather dishevelled and glowing Sidda walked back onto the bridge, sans her normal leather jacket and in a different shirt than when she’d left. Most of the people on the bridge had only given their captain a quick glance when the large doors aft had swished open, confirming who had entered the bridge, then back to their work. Orelia on the other hand had noticed and from her station took a step to the side to make room for Sidda, waving her over.

And for her part, Sidda knew exactly what impression she was giving off. Exactly why Orelia was summoning her to her side. She stepped up beside her cousin, who was just a little taller and more muscular than herself, but not by much. And propped her left hip against the console as she turned to look at Orelia. “Well, spit it out.”

“You smell like,” Orelia whispered, stopping as Sidda raised a hand to kill the statement. “You smell like her,” Orelia pressed on, even quieter than before, barely a whisper. “Your Romulan.” Sidda knew her cousin wasn’t Revin’s biggest fan.

“Yup,” she confirmed. “Craziest thing, she just about attacked me in the corridor, dragged me to our quarters and well…” A waved hand indicated her change in clothing, then went running through her hair, doing a poor job of straightening the mess. “Do me a favour, send a couple of people to check on R’tin and T’Ael will you? This was very un-Revin like and I’m wondering if it might have been something to do with this dilithium shit everyone is on about.”

Orelia nodded and turned to tap at her console just as a beep went off. “Bones to Bridge,” came the following voice of the ship’s doctor. “Where’s the captain? She’s not answering my calls.”

Sidda tapped her pockets, then sighed with defeat. Different pants, different pockets, no communicator. “Sidda here, what’s up doc?” she asked after Orelia dutifully opened the channel for a response.

“Where’s your cortical suppressor? It stopped registering ten minutes ago.”

She reached up behind her left ear for the small device. She’d been wearing it for over a week and lost track of it, to be honest. But she came up empty-handed. Then she pulled her hair back and turned to let Orelia look.

“It’s gone cousin,” Orelia said, her fingers gently checking Sidda’s ear, then the surrounding hair. “No adhesive mark though, so fell off perhaps?”

“Must have lost it Bones. Do I really need it though?” she ultimately asked the disembodied voice.

“Maybe. Get your ass down here for a scan. Now.” Then the line to sickbay was closed.

“This is your ship,” Orelia muttered.

“It’s our ship,” Sidda said, a sweep of her hand to broaden the word ‘our’ to all. “I’m just the captain. She’s the doctor.” She took two steps towards the door, leaving the bridge as quickly as she arrived, then stopped, spun on her heel and marched right up beside Orelia. “I’ve got an idea. Either a really bad one, or a really good one. Back the ship off from the planet, out to the outer system, then start calling around and see if anyone has some good bioscans of a Devore. I need to know if they’re…malleable.” The last word was said as sensuously as Sidda could make it, stretched out just a smidge, her eyes half-lidded.

And then she spun once more, offering Orelia a mischievous smile and just reaching out with fingertips to gently touch Orin’s upper arm in slight affection before she departed.

“Yup,” was all Bones said as she finished her scan of Sidda’s head.

She was sitting on a biobed, its self-contouring surface adjusting to each move to make a damn comfortable seat and no doubt for the few that have ended up using the bed lately, a fantastic bed. Na’roq really had splurged on Sickbay. “Yup what?” she asked of the doctor.

“You still need the suppressor.” And then the older woman, who was somewhere between crotchety and cantankerous in age, marched off into the medical lab, returning moments later with a new one, which she fitted with a touch more care this time than last. “To make sure it stays on this time,” she defended her kind actions as purely professional.

“We don’t have any blood dilithium on the ship, so why is it still impacting me?” she asked.

“We might not have any onboard, but someone around here has a decently sized collection of it.” Bones shrugged, flipping her tricorder open once more as she programmed the suppressor. “I bit of time, a bit more looking into things, I don’t think you were impacted by dilithium dust at that Ferengi operation. I think the crystals in the crater themselves did it. Which is why Orelia was impacted so much less severely. But something here is having the same impact on all of you Orions and the Vulcans on board too. We’re further away from the planet and I don’t see a giant crater full of the stuff, do you?”

“No, but there is a prison site with a dilithium warehouse planetside.”

“Hmm.” Bones stroked her chin in thought. “Refined or raw?”

“Don’t know.”

“I’ll wager refined then,” Bones said.

“No bet,” she replied, hoping off the biobed as Bones finished with her. “What about Romulans?”

“What about them?” Bones asked, not looking up from the final diagnostics of the suppressor.

“Could the blood dilithium impact them like it could for Vulcans? Aren’t they the same for the most part?”

“What, no, of course they aren’t,” Bones protested, then stopped dead, looked up and whistled. “Geez kid, that’s a damn scary thought. They’ve only been genetically different for a few millenia. They could just be. Why do you ask?”

“Personal reasons,” she replied. “But mind if I bring Revin, R’tin and T’Ael in one at a time for scans and such?” When Bones just looked at her confused for a moment, she continued. “About an hour ago now,” she looked to the clock on one of the larger displayers around sickbay to confirm the time, “and I kid you not, I got jumped by Revin in a rather un-Revin display of public affection.”

“That could have been those freaky Orion pheromones of yours just working through her system,” Bones stopped when Sidda gave her a glare that said ‘that was weeks ago now’. “Bring her in, I’ll make sure you haven’t broken her.”

“Be worried she could break me,” Sidda retorted.

“You’re a big girl, take care of yourself,” Bones replied, going back to her task.

Sidda stepped up to a computer terminal just inside of the sickbday doors, entered in her command codes and signalled the bridge. “Orin, can you meet me outside my quarters please.”

She wasn’t taking any chances getting Revin to sickbay. Her fiancé had been…extremely energetic and honestly very persuasive. On her own, she’d fail to bring Revin in for a checkup, falling for the woman’s charms, her soft touch, and her insistency that had taken all of Sidda’s will to break earlier. But with backup, well, this will be a sight she will treasure for a while.

Now just to wake Sleeping Beauty and get her to the doctor.