—- Bridge —-

The USS Seattle‘s Captain did not know where her ship was going. The instructions were being parceled out by the ship’s Chief Intelligence Officer who was working on orders to keep everything on a need to know basis. Every so often he’d give them a new destination of nowhere in particular which the ship would go to. Not knowing where they were going, or why they were going, was making her job feel redundant. Captain Adriana Cruz was about to go to her Ready Room where she could at least have privacy if not a purpose when Lieutenant Eleanor Dorian the Chief Strategic Operations Officer spoke up.

”Captain we’re getting an S.O.S.,” she reported.

”Cardassian, Federation?” Cruz asked sitting up a little straighter in her chair. There were not meant to be any colonies of either power here, which was likely why they were heading that way.

”Neither it’s an old Romulan code,” Dorian said, “Really old, more than two centuries old.”

That was interesting. Cruz learned forward as a planet appeared on the main view screen, what were Romulans doing out here, in the Cardassian / Federation Demilitarized Zone? The planet was lush, green, covered in plant life and water in places. Like how Earth must have looked before humans ruined that by building cities and highways.

“I want scans of the planet, slow and approach but stay out of scanner range for now,” Cruz said, “Get full details and we’ll discuss this in two hours. Call in science to.”

— Briefing Room 1 —-

Two hours later Dorian pointed to the screen on the wall of the briefing room, “The planet is populated by about four hundred Romulans.”

”How’d they get there?” Captain Cruz asked.

”Not sure at this point. There’s signs of metal, but not a ship. However given the age of the beacon they’re using to send an S.O.S. I’d guess they broke apart their ship to use it for building supplies. Over the course of two hundred years….” the Chief Operations Officer trailed off.

Chief Engineer James Young nodded, “What was a ship no longer would read as one. These people are pre-Captain Kirk.”

”We’ll let Starfleet know, but carry on,” Lieutenant Commander Jake Dornall said, “We have a mission.”

”We don’t actually. I’m just following around nothing in the dark, our mission is to respond to a distress call, all Captains have to unless we think it’s a trap,” Cruz said.

”If you respond to that call you’ll just have to leave those people eventually,“ Dornall said, “we let Starfleet know where they are and they can investigate.”

”We’re here now, and we can supply help of a kind. I agree we aren’t taking on 400 Romulans but we have resources,” Cruz said, “I’ll contact Starfleet and see what they say.”

Dornall nodded. Cruz had a feeling that the intelligence officer would be doing the same thing.

—- Bridge —-

Four days. It was not what Cruz had wanted but it was a far sight better than the ”just ignore them” notion that Lieutenant Commander Dornall had proposed. Perhaps that was not being fair to the man, but she was getting tired of being lead around by the nose and welcomed a break from that. Commander Shraa and a team that included both the ship’s doctors and Lieutenant Jara in security along with Dornall was a good first wave team to assess the situation.

”Off to the Isle of Lost Romulans,” Jara said as her replacement at the tactical station arrived on the bridge. 

Cruz headed to her Ready Room not wanting to appear too nervous in front of her team. While this did not seem like a trap, she was no longer the USS Seattle’s First Officer and thus no longer part of most away missions. While she trusted everyone, save maybe for Dornall, she was not yet ready to let go of all the responsibility, and accept that her people were putting themselves in harms way while she remained mostly safe on board the ship.

—- Planet-side —-

The away team materialized in a clearing and Romulans were all around them. It might have been alarming had the Romulans not been of all ages including very old and young children. The Romulans looked at the colorful arrangement of characters who had beamed down. By contrast the Romulans clothing was mostly tattered and much of it was a dull green, clearly constructed from leaves and other things.

“I am Sublieutenant B’Vor of the Romulan Star Empire I’m in charge here,” the man said in formal Romulan, the universal translator handled it all.

”I’m Commander Shraa of the USS Seattle,” Shraa said, “Forgive me but isn’t a Sublieutenant kind of low ranked to be in charge of so many?”

The Romulan nodded, “I was the youngest and now I’m the oldest, and we haven’t been handing out promotions like we do in the Empire, you are Andorian?”

”I am,“ Shraa nodded and then introduced the rest of the away team.

”I am Vuclan and Doctor T’Rala is Romulan,” Doctor Va’Tok said when he noticed the Romulans seemed especially interested in the medical staff.

”So we are one happy family again,” B’Vor said.

”No, Romulans remain, much as they were separate from the Federation and Vulcan,” Va’Tok said.

”I was raised by humans,” Doctor T’Rala said.

”I remember some of my kind might have killed you for that alone. But after so long, I don’t believe you’ll find anyone that passionate about Romulus here doctor,” B’Vor said.

”We should probably discuss some things that have happened while you’ve been here, but first do you require medical assistance?” Shraa said.

”We have been using what we can find in nature, but our supplies of medical equipment, and medicines were depleted long ago,” B’Vor said, “I am sure your doctors, can assist in many ways.”

”Va’Tok, T’Rala set up a clinic go through everyone, make a list of what you can get from the ship. B’Vor how did you get here?” Shraa asked.

”We were testing a prototype device, one that could help render ships invisible,” B’Vor said, “We called it a cloaking device.”

”Romulans have that in our time, I mean today,” Shraa confirmed.

”Well we were tasked with sneaking through Cardassian territory to prove its usefulness. Unfortunately we had a malfunction and here we are,” B’Vor said.

”What went wrong?” Shraa asked.

B’Vor shrugged, “I was a Sublieutenant, and quite young. I do not know, the engineers are all long dead.”

“Do you have this cloaking device?” Lieutenant Commander Dornall asked.

B’Vor shook his head, “No after five years we knew Romulus was not sending help so we broke down everything to build what you see here, keeping only the transponder and emergency beacon going. Converting those to solar power. The cloaking device is gone.”

A young man walked up, “These are humans?”

B’Vor nodded, “Yes. Not the blue one, but the other two are. The ones over there are Vulcan and Romulan. This is B’Var, my son.“

Shraa nodded, “Pleased to meet you. We’ll return to our ship, the doctors will stay though, but I need to inform the Captain of what’s going on, and we’ll be back with more supplies.”

B’Vor nodded, “Thank you.”

—- Conference Room, USS Seattle —-

“I’ve spoken with Starfleet, they’ll be letting the Romulan factions know about the survivors,“ Captain Cruz said a few hours later. With the exception of Doctors Va‘Tok and T’Rala the crew was back on the ship, both doctors remained on the planet conducting medical tests on the roughly 400 Romulans there. Cruz did not mention that Starfleet would likely wait a week to not interfere with the ship’s still secret mission that it was in the middle of.

“Could we take the Romulans back with us?” Chief Counselor Yuhiro Kolem asked, the half-Betazoid trying to work out the logistic of such a thing in her head.

”The Rhode Island class can hold about 200 crew,” Lieutenant Commander Jake Dornall said, “But that’s crowded, we could take maybe a third of them if we were to forget the important mission we’re on.”

Chief Operations Officer Tashai nodded, “We could stack Romulans two or three deep to fit them all in here, but it wouldn’t be comfortable and we’d be basically running back home. As it is I’ve got teams taking supplies down to them, realistically we have a few days left, we need to do what we can for them and then leave.”

Cruz sighed, three days left seemed insufficent to help people who had been here for nearly two centuries. Most of the survivors were second and third generation here. Their entire experience with Starfleet would be the ship stopping by, and then leaving.

“Lieutenant Kolem and I can help, announce what happened to Romulus,” said the ship’s Chief Diplomatic Officer Lieutenant Diya Acharya, and Kolem nodded in agreement.

They had three days, and with that the Captain dismissed everyone, as they broke from the meeting to start the task ahead of them. To Lieutenant Kolem this reminded her of being back on the USS Anaheim, and the missions that the California-class ship dealt with regularly. A Rhode Island-class however was much more constrained.

As Kolem was heading the transporter room she was waylaid when she was pulled into a supply closet by Lieutenant Commander Dornall. 

“When you get back you should stop by my room,” Dornall said.

”So you can show me your idols,” Kolem said, not sure Dornall understood the concept of taking it slow. It was tempting to throw caution to the wind around him, but she held strong to her earlier conviction and stepped back when he stepped forward, not that there was much room to maneuver in the supply closet.

”Yeah,” Dornall said.

Kolem shook her head, “How about a drink in the lounge, with Lieutenant Acharya to keep it nice and plutonic.”

”She’s cute, maybe you both can come and see my idols,” Dornall said grinning cheekily.

”You’re giving Risians a bad name. Or at least living down to the reputation you already have,” Kolem said slipping past him and out the door into the corridor. Dornall followed.

”Fine, call me, I’ll meet you at the lounge,” he said, “And bring whoever makes you feel the least interested in me.”

”I don’t know if I can get my mother onboard on such short notice but sure,” Kolem joked and waved as she headed to the transporter room.