By pulling away the hardened hull plate, he revealed the secrets of communication within.  Only the hull antennas were normally visible through the small opening in the plate.  This unassuming appliance, designed to blend into the starship exterior, possessed the great power to connect a crew with beings in other systems and other sectors.  The simple repair work that had already been completed on the hull plate sbelied the dysfunction of the USS Constellation’s ability to communicate, hidden under the skin.

Nune swayed the tricorder, built into his environmental suit’s gauntlet, closer to the transceiver.  He was hovering in the zero gravity of space, attached to the starship by a tethered line.  His hands reached into the opening in the hull while his legs trailed behind him.   The holographic scanner readings, hovering over his forearm, told Nune the subspace transceiver array was in working condition.  The readouts also confirmed its connection to the electroplasma system had been locked out, protecting him from electrocution.  It was the direct field energy waveguide that had been shattered into little more than crystal dust.  Without that waveguide, nothing connected the antenna to the transceiver.

While he used a small suction tool to remove the crystal debris, Nune continued his voice recording.  He was preparing a communique to be transmitted to the crew’s liaison officer to their Romulan Free State scientists, Laken.  Ever since the day Laken had returned to RFS territory, Nune had been prone to record rambling voice messages, detailing the minutia of his day.  In his previous career as a Starfleet engineer, Nune had replaced enough waveguide crystals to repeat the maneuver without it requiring his full attention.  As he affixed a new waveguide into place, Nune narrated the Romulan food he had tried for breakfast that morning and the name of the new Kolar Blight song he thought Laken needed to hear.

The holographic display in Nune’s helmet began to blink at him upon receiving a subspace communique from Laken.  Nune paused his recording but he didn’t open the communique just yet.  He magnitised his tool kit and he affixed it to the hull.  Nune closed his eyes and he surrendered to the feeling of weightlessness.  He closed his mind to the starship hull and to the drydock beyond. He gave in to the giddy feeling of his body snugly protected by the EV suit while simultaneously being completely freed from the constant tension of artificial or planetary gravity.  There was nothing pushing on him, nothing pulling him down.  Nune felt like little more than free-flowing consciousness in this state.

The last subspace message he’d sent to Laken had been of a similar temperament.  It had been an hour-long ramble about the happenings and stray thoughts of Nune’s day.  At the message’s conclusion, though, Nune had posed a question he expected to be provoking.  He asked Laken why he hadn’t kissed him when he was leaving Constellation.  Nune’s Betazoid senses had picked up on Laken’s physiological reactions, his desires, as he’d stepped on that transporter pad.  Every fibre of Laken had screamed to reach out to Nune and yet he had resisted.

Laken’s response was brief and to the point.

Filling Nune’s helmet, Laken’s recorded voice said, “To kiss you would be a cruelty.  We are discordant,  the two of us.  Doomed.  Don’t you think?”

Captain’s Log, supplemental.

 

With the support of our entire crew complement, our ship repairs are proceeding ahead of schedule.  The facility commander of our drydock expects Constellation will be back to newly-refit condition soon enough.  …However, she has requested that I not return her back to the fleet yards again quite so soon next time.  My inquiries to the personnel deployment department have not been as encouraging.

 

The scope of casualties on Frontier Day, especially at Earth and across the quadrant, has been staggering.  Starfleet has lost a great many of its experienced officers, eliminated by the Borg because they hadn’t been successfully assimilated by the Borg DNA programming hidden in our transporters.  My requests for crew rotations and replenishment will only be satisfied by a small handful of recent academy graduates.

 

As a result, I take confidence in my decision to maintain the battlefield promotions I offered to my senior staffers through the Dominion invasion and Frontier Day.  I am proud to log Executive Officer Kellin Rayco’s promotion to commander, Chief Medical Officer Pimpinellifolia’s promotion to lieutenant commander, Chief Science Officer Sootrah Yuulik’s promotion to lieutenant commander, and Chief Operations Officer Indira DeVoglaer’s promotion to lieutenant.

 

These promotions are overdue for some and they pose a leap of faith for others.  All of them will be tested in their new responsibilities and authority as we chart a course back out there.  Now that the Constellation has been rotated out of task force seventeen, we’ve received new orders once our repairs our complete.  And those new orders come from the Delta Exploration Initiative.