U.S.S. Silverfin NCC-4470
Beloti Sector, Talarian Border
2378
Their routine patrol route and so far been quiet, allowing Captain Susanna Leijten time to catch up on paperwork. She had already gone through the fuel consumption reports, crew leave requests, system status reports and signed off on the months training schedule—noting that twelve of the crew had to put in five hours or more of shuttle time or risk losing their qualification and need to re-certify. That just left her with the crew evaluations. She had saved it for last, as it was actually one of the administrative duties she enjoyed. Although she caught up on all the gossip that went around the Silverfin, and she was told of any instances of good work or problems with the crew from her senior officers, it wasn’t until she got the evaluations that she saw just how her crew were really doing. Sometimes all was going well, but other times there were various problems (personal matters, disagreements in the department, galactic news) that saw some falling behind.
Ever since Leijten had taken command of the Border Service cutter Silverfin three years ago, she had made it her responsibility to ensure that every single one of the hundred and twenty-four officers and crew onboard were alright. She knew all of their names, and at least one fact about their personal lives, if not more in some instances. Though at the Academy, her instructors had drummed into her that a command-level officer needed to keep their distance from their crew, she had always seen that as being counter-productive. Since becoming a Commander in 2370, she had led by example. Getting her hands dirty and mucking in to do what needed to be done, sharing stories and news from home, and whenever the Silverfin had put in to dock, everyone’s first round of drinks had always been on her. None of that had changed since the fourth pip went on her collar. The ship continued to run smoothly, the universe hadn’t imploded, and the crew would come to her if they were having problems they needed help with.
So much for Emerson’s lectures, she quipped to herself, thinking of the old Starship Captain who had lectured them all on Command Ethics and Protocol.
As she worked, the sound of Andorian Blues filled her ready room. Currently it was the solo work of Thilishanris zh’Sohsha, playing a zihm’ra, which sounded like a blend of a saxophone and someone strangling a cat, but it was a sound that Leijten had always found soothing. On her desk sat a pitcher of iced tea, flavoured with mango and passion fruit.
It had taken her a while to feel comfortable in the ready room after she took command. Her predecessor had kept the space very bare; only the desk, three chairs and the carpet. She had moved what furniture there was around, so that her desk faced the small viewport, under which she had brought in a small couch, and had put up shelves. She stopped short of replacing the carpet and paining the walls, but she had seriously thought about it for a while. The ready room was now decorated with her awards, pictures and holo-imagers of friends and family, a ceremonial dagger she had been given as a gift on Thrakkus XII, a small clay pot her niece had made for her, several fictional books—mostly thrillers or crime novels (there was nothing better than a good mystery)—and numerous other trinkets and knickknacks she’d picked up during her time in Starfleet. The space was very definitely her own.
Maybe I could put in new carpeting though, she mused and then shook the idea from her head with a chuckle.
She had just finished with the reports on the bridge officers, when the intercom chirped. “Bridge to Captain Leijten,” came the resounding deep baritone of her XO, which seemed to fill every nook of the ready room.
“Go ahead Amorin,” she replied, taking a sip of her iced tea, relishing the delicately blended beverage.
“We have just picked up a Federation ship on sensors.”
That made her pause. There weren’t any suppose to be any other Federation ships in their immediate vicinity. “Any idea who they are?”
“Not as yet. They are not responding to hails.”
Though to most, Amorin’s tone seemed constant, she knew her First Officer better than that, and she could detect underlying hints of caution, alarm and intrigue. “On my way. Leijten out.”
She rose, went around her desk and through the doors onto the bridge. The first thing she noticed was that Amorin wasn’t in his usual place, standing in front of the Command Chair. Even though as the Silverfin’s First Officer, he was fully entitled to fill her chair when she wasn’t on the bridge, he never did, always standing ramrod straight, with his hands clasped firmly behind his back.
The second thing she noticed was her new Tactical Officer calling out, “Captain on the bridge.”
She shot the newly assigned Ensign a knock that off look. Jose Tyler the Fifth was Starfleet from his regulation cut sideburns down to his immaculately polished boots, as was his father and his father, and so on all the way back to the mid twenty-third century, when the ancestor he was named for served onboard the U.S.S. Enterprise under Captain Christopher Pike. He had only been onboard for a month, fresh from the Academy and a few months spent at Advanced Tactical Training; he’d replaced Lieutenant Commander Ling-Na, who had been promoted to the Oslo as First Officer. Ever since his first day, he had insisted on the old naval tradition that was still found on the odd ship in the regular Fleet, but which was pretty much unheard of in the Border Service. If he wasn’t such a good tactician she’d have had him shipped off the Silverfin. But the kid would learn in time that the Border Service was different to the rest of Starfleet. It usually took Fleet officers a while to adjust to the differences, and Tyler wouldn’t be any different.
Leaving the Ensign be for the moment, she moved over to the opposite side of the bridge, where Amorin stood, bent at the waist looking over the various sensor displays and readouts. Whenever she approached the large console, she was always reminded of the day when Captain Hilgrat Ja-Inrosh and Lieutenant Alec Murphy had been crushed to death during a Cardassian ambush—even though it was more than three years ago. She had spoken with Dr. Mbeki about it, but the ship’s CMO hadn’t seen anything wrong with her morose nostalgia.
You respected Captain Ja-Inrosh and were good friends with Alec. I’d be more worried if you didn’t think about them every now and then. Soon, there will come a time when you won’t think about them when you go near Ops. I doubt you’ll even realise it when you do. But until that day comes, just acknowledge the memory and the feelings associated with it, then keep on going, had been his advice.
She did just as he suggested, and locked the memory away again.
Lieutenant Commander Kolanis Daezan looked up as she approached, his onyx-black eyes looking right into her very soul. She knew the Betazoid felt her trepidation, sorrow and dread whenever she neared his console, and when he’d first come onboard, she’d told him it was nothing to do with him, but both of their predecessors being killed on the bridge. He had understood, and hadn’t asked any further.
“Skipper,” he said by way of greeting, which made her smile as always. His own little way of helping me to forget, she’d realised months earlier.
“What have we got gentlemen?” she asked, coming to a stop by the console and looking at the vast array of monitors and screens.
Daezan brought up the sensor sweep he’d been running, which clearing indicated a duranium hull signature. The Federation were the only ones that used duranium to build their ships.
Amorin looked up from the panel he’d been working. The tall Benzenite always startled those who hadn’t met one of his people before. Though their names sounded similar to the Benzite, aside from some having blue colouring, that was where the similarities ended. By human standards, the Benzenite weren’t an attractive race, they had bulbous cranial formations on the sides and back of their heads which served as sensory organs (similar to a dolphin’s melon), they also has small eyes which were sensitive to most light spectrums and as such, they had to wear special goggles to protect them, they also needed to wear a special breather mask over their nose and mouth to help them breathe in the rich oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere that was standard on Federation ships, from the mask came four fleshy breathing tubes, two going from his chin to where a human’s ears roughly were, and then two more going from his chin down to his sternum—as such his uniform was designed differently to accommodate his physiology. Benez’ahn, where Amorin was born, was a world located on the outer edges of his systems habitable zone, it was cold and dark with low gravity, and had a very thin atmosphere comprised mostly of carbon dioxide, with small amounts of oxygen, argon and fluorine.
“Going by the size, I would say that it is a Starfleet ship,” Amorin stated, the engineer in him going over the technical data quickly and effortlessly.
“And nothing when you commed them?”
“Not a thing Skipper, I tried them as soon as I identified them as UFP.”
“Perhaps a colony ship off course?” she suggested, trying to think of why a ship would be out here.
“No new colony sites anywhere in this sector. The FCO doesn’t seem so keen about this area since the Talarian Border Wars,” Daezan stated, referring to the Federation Colony Organisation. It was understandable; thousands had been killed when the Talarians had attacked the outposts and planets along their territory. The Talarians didn’t have the most powerful ships in the quadrant, but what they lacked in firepower, they made up with in numbers. For every Starfleet ship along the border, the Talarians had at least ten.
“Deep space explorer returning from a long-term mission?”
“None expected in this region,” Amorin told her.
“Special-Ops?”
Daezan shrugged his broad shoulders. “Possible, they are a law unto themselves.”
“Hmm,” she sighed, looking at the anomalous blip on their sensors. “Open a channel to them Mr Daezan.”
“Aye-aye Skipper,” he replied and tapped the sequence into his communications panel. “Channel open.”
“Federation ship, this is Captain Leijten of the Border Cutter Silverfin. Do you require any assistance?” She waited, but only silence filled the speaker. “I repeat; this is the U.S.S. Silverfin of the Border Service. Do you need help?”
“They’re not answering sir,” Daezan said. “If you ask me that’s just plain rude.”
Almost any other time, the Ops Officer’s quip would have brought a smile to her lips. But something wasn’t right. A lost colony ship would be begging for help, a deep space explorer would be eager to talk, and catch up on news and events they had missed out on, even Special-Ops would reply with a coded signal, telling them politely to get lost.
“Kolanis, are you sensing anything from them?” she enquired, not for the first time, glad to have a Betazoid on the bridge.
He shook his head. “We’re too far away Skipper.”
“Inform Star Station Freedom that we have located a Federation ship in unusual circumstances and are moving to investigate,” she told Daezan, and then headed for the command arena—Amorin on her heels—located in the centre of the bridge, surrounded by railings, directly in front of which was the Conn. She looked at Lieutenant Harriet Llewellyn-Smyth, with her dark brown hair tied up in an elaborate style (as it always was), flawlessly smooth alabaster skin, and slim physique. It wasn’t any wonder the crew had nicknamed her English Rose, shorted down to just Rose.
“Harriet, have you got that ship on your board?”
“Confirmed Captain,” she replied in her Cambridgeshire accent, with perfect elocution (which once upon a time would have been called simply ‘posh’).
“Alter our course and increase to warp seven.”
“Adjusting heading to one-one-nine-mark-two-six-four, increasing to warp factor seven,” she replied, entering the change into the flight log.
Leijten settled into the Command Chair, as Amorin took up his customary place standing to her right, arms behind his back, and watching everything that went on around him. As she watched the starfield shift with their change in course, she couldn’t help but speculate as to what they would find.
***
