A United Trek Event: Task Force Vanguard
_______________________________________________
Operation Vanguard (Part I): At the Gates
*****
Captain’s Personal Log.
We’re presently en route to Caleda II, escorting a convoy of construction supplies for the Cardassian colony on that planet. This will be our fifth trip to Caleda II since the end of the war, and the visible signs of progress on that world have buoyed our spirits.
Seeing the impressive rebuilding effort by the colonists on Caleda II, whose settlements were reduced to rubble by the Dominion, is one of those things that renews our hope when we’ve begun to feel these endless escort missions are of dubious value. Whole new towns and villages have sprung up from the wreckage of the old, and the fields surrounding them are heavy with all manner of produce, enough so that what the local citizenry does not need will be placed in stasis and shipped to the Union’s more heavily populated core worlds.
Cardassia Prime itself is showing signs of recovery, from the massive urban-renewal projects in the cities to the formation of a permanent representative civilian government and the signing of the peace treaty with the former Maquis. It appears the wounds of the past are becoming a more distant memory with each passing day.
It’s been four whole months since our mission to the Badlands, and aside from a single brief skirmish with a band of Nausicaan raiders near the Kiv’vna system, we’ve had little call to utilize the upgraded weapons or defenses that were installed on Gibraltar during Operation Indemnity.
Our attendance last week at the Border Defense Conference on DS9 proved about as awkward as I had expected. As if I weren’t pariah enough among my fellow starship commanders for the events at Lakesh, the Briar Patch, and Velkohn, the fact that my fingerprints are all over the peace treaty with the League of Sovereign Colonies now seems to have rendered me persona non grata to many of my colleagues.
While I’ve grown used to such treatment, it pains me to see my senior officers suffering the same kind of rejection from the crews of other, perhaps more noteworthy vessels. It is ironic how quickly some people have forgotten the desperate, life-or-death struggles we all faced during the war. These same people now choose to look down their noses at those of us who still regularly find ourselves in the line of fire out here on the periphery, fighting battles that while nowhere near as large as those of the war, often prove just as fatal to their participants.
So be it. Life goes on aboard The Rock as we continue to accomplish whatever missions we are tasked to the best of our ability.
End Log Entry
*****
The dream came for him again that night, the third time in the past week.
Gibraltar’s bridge was awash in flames, the screams of the dying assailing his ears like a symphony of the damned. He remained fixed to the captain’s chair, unable to affect the catastrophe that unfolded around him. The viewscreen burned with white light, forcing him to look away from the monstrous cube around which their fleet of wounded starships orbited.
‘Let go,’ the voices cried soothingly. ‘You cannot fight destiny, nor bend it to your will. To become one with us is to have always been one of us. It is a bond unbroken by space or time.’
Then he was aboard the cube, his hands shackled in front of him as he shuffled along, one of a long line of prisoners. ‘A dark lord seeks you out. Without our aid he will leave you broken and humbled, at the mercy of he who has none.’
He fell to his knees before a glowing sculpture that throbbed with living energy. Raising his bound hands before him in supplication, he asked, “What must I do?”
The sculpture evaporated into mist, replaced by a beatific female face that looked down on him from atop a body gilded with shimmering armor. Colors flowed across the surface of her armor in swirling patterns that seared his senses. When her voice came, it issued forth from the martial staff she carried in one hand. ‘Come to us, Zeischt. Our hunting grounds grow nearer with each breath. We follow in chaos’ wake.’
The ground beneath him vanished and he tumbled into the abyss, his hands suddenly free of their bonds as he plunged, screaming into the dark forest within the great cube. The ground rushed up to meet him as the voices said, ‘Come home to us.’
Donald Sandhurst woke with a start, his heart pounding loudly in his ears as he gasped for breath, still in the clutches of the nightmare. After a few moments, he lay back down upon his sweat-soaked sheets as he tried to still both racing mind and heart with slow, deep breaths. He noted that the warp-effect he’d fallen asleep with was now gone, replaced by a spinning starfield out his forward facing viewport that implied the ship was changing heading. Then the ubiquitous flash as the ship transitioned to warp again, and the stars became smears of light across the transparent aluminum of the window.
It was Beta Watch on the bridge, and Sandhurst knew any situation or orders that were vital enough to pry the ship from its current escort mission would warrant alerting the captain. He gave T’Ser ten minutes leeway as he got up and began moving around his quarters as Sandhurst tried to rid himself of the last vestiges of the reoccurring dream. When she still hadn’t called after that interval, he decided to inquire. Sandhurst was reaching up to touch the combadge affixed to his bathrobe when the enunciator to his cabin door chimed, prompting him to call out, “Enter.”
Commander T’Ser, his Vulcan first officer stepped into the captain’s quarters, giving her eyes a moment to adjust to the subdued lighting. She clutched a padd in one hand, and her face carried a pinched, concerned expression that still looked strange to Sandhurst no matter how many times he reminded himself that as a follower of the V'tosh ka'tur philosophy, T’Ser was as free with her emotions as any human.
“Hmm,” Sandhurst remarked dryly, “beware Vulcans bearing padds.”
She smirked in response, though still appearing somewhat unsure. “New orders, Captain,” she said, inclining her head towards the viewport. “Hence the course change, sir.” She noticed he was clad in a bathrobe and added, “Did I catch you at a bad time, sir?”
“Not at all,” he demurred. “Just woke up, in fact.” Sandhurst stood and accepted the padd from her, glancing at the device. “Something has you worried, Exec,” he observed. “Otherwise you’d have just piped these down here.”
“Yes, sir,” she acknowledged. “They’ve pulled us from the middle of a convoy escort with no explanation as to why. That’s strange enough in and of itself, but our orders are to execute a series of seemingly random course changes en route to an unremarkable point on the Federation’s coreward frontier.”
Sandhurst made a displeased face while gesturing for T’Ser to take a seat next to his work-desk. He sat in his desk chair, noting, “Okay, I'll grant you that's pretty strange.” Sandhurst activated the padd and scrolled carefully through its contents, his expression growing more perturbed the further he read.
“Interesting,” he assessed at last. “Each time we make one of these course adjustments, we’ll have to modify our warp signature.” He looked up at his XO. “Do these modification specs mean anything to you?” he asked.
“Sorry, sir,” T’Ser replied. “Warp field engineering isn’t one of my strengths.”
“Tarellian freighter,” Sandhurst said, pointing to one set of equations. “And here, this is the warp signature of a Ferengi merchant ship,” he added as his finger moved down to the next series of figures. “And this is a Bolian courier… an Ansata trade ship… and a Nyberrite scout.”
T’Ser quirked an eyebrow in a very Vulcan-esque gesture of curiosity. “Command orders us to shut off our ID transponder, observe complete communications silence, and to mask our warp signature with each course adjustment to make us appear to be other kinds of vessels.”
Sandhurst nodded. “It certainly looks that way.” He sighed, deactivating the padd and placing in on the desk top. “Whatever their reasons, they don’t want anyone to guess who we are or where we’re going. That means something big is up.”
“I can’t think of any hot spots in this area right now,” T’Ser remarked, looking thoughtful. “I know there have been some growing pains with the Maquis—“
“League of Sovereign Colonies,” Sandhurst corrected gently.
“—Er, right, sir, League. But nothing major’s happened there that I know of. The Cardassian insurgency is dying out, the Talarians and Orions are still sniping at one another, and the only thing out coreward of those coordinates within a hundred light-years is the Nyberrite Alliance.”
“I suppose we’ll just have to wait until we get there to find out, Exec.” Sandhurst pushed the padd back across the desk to T’Ser. “Engineering already has a copy of the warp signature modification schedule?”
“Yes, sir. As you might imagine, Mister Ashok was delighted with the news.”
Sandhurst chuckled, “I’ll bet. Okay, Commander, you best get topside and start us off on our grand scenic tour of the coreward frontier. Rig us for silent running.”
“Silent running, aye, sir,” she acknowledged, heading for the door.
*****
_______________________________________________
Operation Vanguard (Part I): At the Gates
*****
Captain’s Personal Log.
We’re presently en route to Caleda II, escorting a convoy of construction supplies for the Cardassian colony on that planet. This will be our fifth trip to Caleda II since the end of the war, and the visible signs of progress on that world have buoyed our spirits.
Seeing the impressive rebuilding effort by the colonists on Caleda II, whose settlements were reduced to rubble by the Dominion, is one of those things that renews our hope when we’ve begun to feel these endless escort missions are of dubious value. Whole new towns and villages have sprung up from the wreckage of the old, and the fields surrounding them are heavy with all manner of produce, enough so that what the local citizenry does not need will be placed in stasis and shipped to the Union’s more heavily populated core worlds.
Cardassia Prime itself is showing signs of recovery, from the massive urban-renewal projects in the cities to the formation of a permanent representative civilian government and the signing of the peace treaty with the former Maquis. It appears the wounds of the past are becoming a more distant memory with each passing day.
It’s been four whole months since our mission to the Badlands, and aside from a single brief skirmish with a band of Nausicaan raiders near the Kiv’vna system, we’ve had little call to utilize the upgraded weapons or defenses that were installed on Gibraltar during Operation Indemnity.
Our attendance last week at the Border Defense Conference on DS9 proved about as awkward as I had expected. As if I weren’t pariah enough among my fellow starship commanders for the events at Lakesh, the Briar Patch, and Velkohn, the fact that my fingerprints are all over the peace treaty with the League of Sovereign Colonies now seems to have rendered me persona non grata to many of my colleagues.
While I’ve grown used to such treatment, it pains me to see my senior officers suffering the same kind of rejection from the crews of other, perhaps more noteworthy vessels. It is ironic how quickly some people have forgotten the desperate, life-or-death struggles we all faced during the war. These same people now choose to look down their noses at those of us who still regularly find ourselves in the line of fire out here on the periphery, fighting battles that while nowhere near as large as those of the war, often prove just as fatal to their participants.
So be it. Life goes on aboard The Rock as we continue to accomplish whatever missions we are tasked to the best of our ability.
End Log Entry
*****
The dream came for him again that night, the third time in the past week.
Gibraltar’s bridge was awash in flames, the screams of the dying assailing his ears like a symphony of the damned. He remained fixed to the captain’s chair, unable to affect the catastrophe that unfolded around him. The viewscreen burned with white light, forcing him to look away from the monstrous cube around which their fleet of wounded starships orbited.
‘Let go,’ the voices cried soothingly. ‘You cannot fight destiny, nor bend it to your will. To become one with us is to have always been one of us. It is a bond unbroken by space or time.’
Then he was aboard the cube, his hands shackled in front of him as he shuffled along, one of a long line of prisoners. ‘A dark lord seeks you out. Without our aid he will leave you broken and humbled, at the mercy of he who has none.’
He fell to his knees before a glowing sculpture that throbbed with living energy. Raising his bound hands before him in supplication, he asked, “What must I do?”
The sculpture evaporated into mist, replaced by a beatific female face that looked down on him from atop a body gilded with shimmering armor. Colors flowed across the surface of her armor in swirling patterns that seared his senses. When her voice came, it issued forth from the martial staff she carried in one hand. ‘Come to us, Zeischt. Our hunting grounds grow nearer with each breath. We follow in chaos’ wake.’
The ground beneath him vanished and he tumbled into the abyss, his hands suddenly free of their bonds as he plunged, screaming into the dark forest within the great cube. The ground rushed up to meet him as the voices said, ‘Come home to us.’
Donald Sandhurst woke with a start, his heart pounding loudly in his ears as he gasped for breath, still in the clutches of the nightmare. After a few moments, he lay back down upon his sweat-soaked sheets as he tried to still both racing mind and heart with slow, deep breaths. He noted that the warp-effect he’d fallen asleep with was now gone, replaced by a spinning starfield out his forward facing viewport that implied the ship was changing heading. Then the ubiquitous flash as the ship transitioned to warp again, and the stars became smears of light across the transparent aluminum of the window.
It was Beta Watch on the bridge, and Sandhurst knew any situation or orders that were vital enough to pry the ship from its current escort mission would warrant alerting the captain. He gave T’Ser ten minutes leeway as he got up and began moving around his quarters as Sandhurst tried to rid himself of the last vestiges of the reoccurring dream. When she still hadn’t called after that interval, he decided to inquire. Sandhurst was reaching up to touch the combadge affixed to his bathrobe when the enunciator to his cabin door chimed, prompting him to call out, “Enter.”
Commander T’Ser, his Vulcan first officer stepped into the captain’s quarters, giving her eyes a moment to adjust to the subdued lighting. She clutched a padd in one hand, and her face carried a pinched, concerned expression that still looked strange to Sandhurst no matter how many times he reminded himself that as a follower of the V'tosh ka'tur philosophy, T’Ser was as free with her emotions as any human.
“Hmm,” Sandhurst remarked dryly, “beware Vulcans bearing padds.”
She smirked in response, though still appearing somewhat unsure. “New orders, Captain,” she said, inclining her head towards the viewport. “Hence the course change, sir.” She noticed he was clad in a bathrobe and added, “Did I catch you at a bad time, sir?”
“Not at all,” he demurred. “Just woke up, in fact.” Sandhurst stood and accepted the padd from her, glancing at the device. “Something has you worried, Exec,” he observed. “Otherwise you’d have just piped these down here.”
“Yes, sir,” she acknowledged. “They’ve pulled us from the middle of a convoy escort with no explanation as to why. That’s strange enough in and of itself, but our orders are to execute a series of seemingly random course changes en route to an unremarkable point on the Federation’s coreward frontier.”
Sandhurst made a displeased face while gesturing for T’Ser to take a seat next to his work-desk. He sat in his desk chair, noting, “Okay, I'll grant you that's pretty strange.” Sandhurst activated the padd and scrolled carefully through its contents, his expression growing more perturbed the further he read.
“Interesting,” he assessed at last. “Each time we make one of these course adjustments, we’ll have to modify our warp signature.” He looked up at his XO. “Do these modification specs mean anything to you?” he asked.
“Sorry, sir,” T’Ser replied. “Warp field engineering isn’t one of my strengths.”
“Tarellian freighter,” Sandhurst said, pointing to one set of equations. “And here, this is the warp signature of a Ferengi merchant ship,” he added as his finger moved down to the next series of figures. “And this is a Bolian courier… an Ansata trade ship… and a Nyberrite scout.”
T’Ser quirked an eyebrow in a very Vulcan-esque gesture of curiosity. “Command orders us to shut off our ID transponder, observe complete communications silence, and to mask our warp signature with each course adjustment to make us appear to be other kinds of vessels.”
Sandhurst nodded. “It certainly looks that way.” He sighed, deactivating the padd and placing in on the desk top. “Whatever their reasons, they don’t want anyone to guess who we are or where we’re going. That means something big is up.”
“I can’t think of any hot spots in this area right now,” T’Ser remarked, looking thoughtful. “I know there have been some growing pains with the Maquis—“
“League of Sovereign Colonies,” Sandhurst corrected gently.
“—Er, right, sir, League. But nothing major’s happened there that I know of. The Cardassian insurgency is dying out, the Talarians and Orions are still sniping at one another, and the only thing out coreward of those coordinates within a hundred light-years is the Nyberrite Alliance.”
“I suppose we’ll just have to wait until we get there to find out, Exec.” Sandhurst pushed the padd back across the desk to T’Ser. “Engineering already has a copy of the warp signature modification schedule?”
“Yes, sir. As you might imagine, Mister Ashok was delighted with the news.”
Sandhurst chuckled, “I’ll bet. Okay, Commander, you best get topside and start us off on our grand scenic tour of the coreward frontier. Rig us for silent running.”
“Silent running, aye, sir,” she acknowledged, heading for the door.
*****
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