Alex rubbed his eyes as he heard the alert appear on his command console. Things became clearer and it appeared his suspicions were correct. He frowned, it always disheartened him when he was correct about bad things. Why couldn’t he ever be correct about the good things? “You’re delaying Alex,” he said to himself. Alex sighed and hit the communications button, “Benson to Cantabras crew, report to the Briefing Room.”

As the moments ticked by, the crew appeared in the Briefing Room. He sat in quiet contemplation until they were all assembled. “I received an alert from Vice Admiral Beckett. Apparently-”

A collective groan was let out from the group.

Alex put up a hand to quiet them. “There is a Dominion force assembling at Farpoint Station. There has been a fleet-wide alert for assistance in engaging them.”

“We just finished up here!” Carter protested.

“It wasn’t a request,” Alex said, looking down at the table. “Command thinks if Farpoint falls, this whole sector does too. And everything that’s been done here will be for nothing. Some incredible sacrifices have been made in this sector. Trust me when I say not all of the crews have been as lucky as us.”

“Who needs luck when you have skill?” Carter said with a smile. He dropped it when he saw all the somber faces at the table.

“Priam, what’s the ship’s status?” Alex asked.

“The shield emitters are mostly repaired. I can get the shields to nearly 100%. I haven’t had a chance to work on the port impulse engine so it’s still 64% efficiency,” Priam reported.

“What about tactically?”

“Phaser arrays are undamaged and we still have our full complement of torpedoes.”

“All right. Carter set a course for Farpoint Station, maximum warp. Dismissed.” The crew stood up and headed towards the door. “Tani, a moment.”

Tani stopped and turned to him.

“I wanted to say thank you for holding down things on the array with the Jem’Hadar. If the fighter hadn’t shown up, we could’ve provided reinforcements.” He paused, “And when we get a moment, I want to talk about what happened on Sitera.”

“I’m not a damsel in distress. I can hold my own against tough odds, I’ve been doing it my entire life. And it would be nice to hear why you let a terrorist leader purposely escape. Letting her terrorize another world, or return to Sitera after we’ve left. And why you jeopardized an entire mission to save your niece. I would love to know your objective rationale behind that.” A long pause passed, “Are we done here?”

“Yeah, we’re done.”

Tani walked out of the briefing room, leaving Alex alone.