Delvok carefully followed along with the sensor reading coming in from the front of the ship, all while keeping on course and trying to do his best not to rock the ship. He practically immersed himself in the sounds of the Liris as he flew it, and felt every little turn that he made with his body. Many Vulcans, including his parents, would disapprove of him steering a massive ship like this, but how would they know? The Lieutenant Junior Grade suddenly jumped up after an hour of flying like this in his chair, and the flight immediately became more Vulcan-esque.

The Captain, Lieutenant Commander Sh’ill, shot up, and spoke carefully.“Lieutenant, eyes on the road.. I think that’s what the humans say, can’t remember. No sharp turns, the armrests here won’t be enough to keep me in if you do a 180.”

Delvok quickly got himself back together, and quickly responded.“Yes, sir. I’ll keep it straight.” Delvok was on the verge of saying “distracted,” but somehow did not have enough courage to push the d-word out. It was hard for him to understand what really was going on, but he felt… odd. No matter, the ship needed to keep going, and so he shoved these thoughts into the back of his mind.

The Liris flew past the inner planets with ease, but then slowed down a bit near the gas giant at the edge of the system, the one with those mysterious readings on the sensors.

But none of that mattered to Ensign Bok Xasin, who was sweating profusely after carrying a lot of heavy machinery around Engineering. He had been hard at work to construct the probe that could destroy the blood dilithium, and so had been welding and attaching circuitry for the last hour of their flight.

Xasin walked over to the anti-grav platform, and looked down at the next piece, and down at his PADD. That indicated that this was the supplemetary power source for the probe, and would need to be welded at the back of the probe. With a heavy heart and even heavier eyelids, the Ensign picked the power generator up, and carried it to the probe, where he placed it on the back of the probe, and grabbed his welding torch and mask from his toolkit, put the mask on, and got to work. 

Now all he had to go was rudimentary go around the entire structure of the generator, and weld it in. But he had forgotten his gloves. After about 5 seconds of welding, a combination of sleeplessness and not having gloves caught up to him, and he fumbled the 3000 degree torch in his hands, and felt the torch sear through his skin, and into the bone.

Bok acted quickly, and kicked the torch to an empty place, and yelled out into Engineering.“Computer… medical to Engineeri-” with that, he passed out from the pain, and fell to the floor.

Back on the Bridge, Sh’ill looked to the console embedded in his armrest, and saw a half-assed request for medical to get to “Engineeri-”, and he immediately shot up.“Lieutenant Jatia, you take command.” With that, he rushed into the turbolift, and nearly destroyed the console with how quickly he pressed the command for the Engineering deck.

He rushed out into Engineering, and looked around quickly, looking for the Ensign.The Captain spotted him on the floor, with an active plasma torch near the wall.“Oh you..!” He yelled out, and grabbed the medpack off the wall, and ran to the Ensign’s side.

He looked over the wound, and made a quick decision: He would beam the two of them to sickbay, where he would then take proper care of it all.“COMPUTER, TWO TO SICKBAY, QUICKLY!” He yelled out, and watched the Ensign disappear into a shimmer of blue light as he saw his eyes do the same.

Now in Sickbay, Sh’ill acted quickly and precisely.He lifted the Ensign onto a biobed, and immediately placed him into a stasis field, and started immediate triage: The Lieutenant Commander got out some cordrazine, and shot it into the Ensign with a hypospray, hoping to get his heart pumping, because he knew that these types of severe burns could and would cause immediate heart problems.

Sh’ill looked over the biobed readings, and noted that the heart-rate and respiration had normalised. His next issue was the half a centimetre deep hole in Bok’s hand, which would need a lot of repair work. He sat down on the nightstand, and took a closer look at the wound.

It wasn’t bleeding, it had been immediately cauterized by the torch, but there was a massive hole in the hand. Sh’ill did not have even the slightest idea on where to begin, and he ran over the list of known procedures for stuff like this. Amputation and replacement with robotics could only be performed in a larger facility, he could grow new tissue, but that would take at least two weeks, and he needed an engineer now… it did not seem hopeful for him.

“Well, I could always take a bit of tissue, and a few rods of titanium for the missing parts of bone… yeah, but from where? Think, think!” He was talking to himself, all while leaned down by Bok’s side, and looking at the wound.“I could take a bit from the leg, take some titanium rods… mould them into the correct shape… I mean, it could work. But for now, Ensign… I have to deal with the mess upstairs. Computer, alert me if anything major changes in the biosigns of Ensign Bok Xasin.”

“Confirmed. Alert set up.”

“Good.” With that, he stood up from the nightstand, and looked to the blooded block of dilithium in the middle of his Sickbay.“And you better not go anywhere either.” With that, he walked out of Sickbay, into the turbolift, and shot to the Bridge.

The Lieutenant Junior Grade had been keeping on course around the planets of the Droth system, and he slowly manoeuvred past the planets, and slowed as he came upon the last planet of the system. He looked to his console, and saw where he was in the route: just past the fourth planet, and nearing the fifth, not near any of them, but not that far from either of them.

As he deduced this, he felt Lieutenant Erti creeping over his shoulder, and looked over: ”Lieutenant, if you are attracted to me, you should say so instead of invading my private space.”

Jatia jumped up from his side, and straightened out. “Uh.. I’m not.. I was just looking at your console, wanted to see where we are.”

Delvok raised his left eyebrow, and turned back to face his helm console.“Then I suggest, ma’am, that you use the console in the Captain’s chair, it’s much more convenient than walking here.”

Jatia damn near started yelling, but calmed herself down before starting.“You… ah, Vulcans. Alright, alright, I’m going.” She fell back into the Captain’s chair, and stretched a bit, right as she heard the turbolift door opening. “Captain!” She jumped up, and moved to the side. “What was the emergency?”

Sh’ill ruffly walked onto the bridge, and over to the MSD, which he stared at for a solid minute.“We’re out of an engineer, Jatia. A chunk of his right hand was burned off by a plasma torch, he went into a shock, and is currently recovering in sickbay. He’ll make it, but he’ll need extensive surgery, which I can’t provide here on the Liris. Well, I can, but I’d need additional medical personnel, and I have only myself. But that’s the least of our problems.”

He walked to his chair, and sat down in it.“Lieutenant Erti, you’ll be in charge of both ops and science for now. Delvok, ready that torpedoe for launch. Time to see what the hell is that thing in that belt. Follow the course, and when we are nearest that object in our course, make a sharp turn towards it and shoot that torpedoe. No more secrets shall be in this system.”

The Vulcan Lieutenant nodded, and continued following along the course, all while keeping a fniger over the weapons trigger, ready to fire at anything.“Understood. Maintaining course, making approach to Droth 5V5. Closest point above sensor anomaly in one minute. Maintaining speed of half impulse.”

The Liris soundlessly cruised through the system, t’was only a speck of dust on the cosmic scale, but for the crew of the ship it was their entire world, and they would protect it with their lives, whatever that anomaly turned out to be: a magnetite rock or a Devore fleet. Now only a few seconds to their turning point….5… 4… 3… 2…

Delvok nearly shook the Liris apart as he executed the 90 degree port turn with a pitch down. Now facing the anomaly, he hit the trigger to fire the modified torpedoe, and it shot off into space with a mighty red glow the like of which could not be recreated even by the finest of the fine red-shirts.

The tachyon torpedoe plunged towards the object, and only a kilometre from it detonated, coating the area in tachyons.The Captain shot up in his chair, and turned towards the ops station, and half-yelled at the Bajoran Lieutenant who was staffing it.“What is that? I want readings, now.” He made a 270 degree towards the helm, and looked to the viewscreen, trying to figure out what was it that he had just uncovered.

In the wake of the explosion all that had remained looked to be… a piece of metal? No, it couldn’t be, Sh’ill thought to himself.Jatia read over the sensors, and responded to her Captain’s inquiry.“Looks to be some hunk of metal that’s messing with sensors. I’m doing a deeper scan, but it doesn’t look dangerous. Hold for a minute, the scan is taking a bit.”

Sh’ill rushed over to the science console, and looked over the readings himself, somehow hoping that it was something interesting, but also hoping that it really was just an irradiated hunk of metal that had given him anxiety.

The readings seemed to confirm what the Lieutenant had told him, that it was just a hunk of metal that was messing with sensors.“Hmm. Delvok, keep us here, we’ll wait until we have better info about that thing.”Sh’ill walked back to his chair, and sat down on it as he looked out into the distance.

Delvok nodded, and took to his console to execute his orders, but the words of his Captain seemed to be repeating, and so he turned around to check what was going on: his Captain was sat quietly, and the Lieutenant was performing what looked to be a scan. The Lieutenant looked back at his console, and shrugged a bit. Something was off, and the voice speaking was not of his Captain.