Stardate 48357.0 Admiral Garrovik sat on the couch in the Equinox ready room, sipping tea. On the other side of the table sat Captain Robert Winston. Behind him stood his first officer, Lieutenant Commander Ming. The Admiral put down his cup. "Captain, you’re no doubt wondering what we’re doing on the edge of the Breen system." "The question had crossed my mind once or twice." Winston remarked dryly. "I’m sorry that I’ve forced you so far with radio silence and evasive courses, but before we can enter the system, I have to ask for some modulations to your ship. The Breen want you to disable short range sensors, all tactical systems and one of your two warp nacelles." Winston’s jaw dropped, and Ming’s face froze. "Admiral! I know you’re top priority is the mission, but I don’t know what that mission is and I’m frankly quite concerned about the morale of my crew." "Very well. I’m here to negotiate with the Breen. I’m afraid I can’t say what I’ll be negotiating. However, they’re paranoid about their security, and our entry is conditional to certain requests, requests that you will honor. I need to enter the Breen system and talk to them. The Dominion is a threat to us all." Winston leaned back in his seat. Without his eyes leaving the Admiral, he addressed the rock solid Ming. "Commander, do you think we can do it?" "I’ll have to order a level one diagnostic on all systems to keep the crew’s minds off their confusion. It’ll prevent a morale disaster, but maybe not for long." Winston turned back to Garrovik. "Admiral, taking a nacelle off-line I can understand, but no short range sensors? What about the long range scanners?" "Your long range scanners will remain online. They know we’ve already got full star charts of their space, but being so protective of their privacy, they don’t want you scanning their homeworld." Garrovik stood and turned to leave. Right as the door opened Winston spoke. "Admiral?! We won’t be able to maintain a transporter lock on you! What exactly are you planning down there?" Garrovik glared at Winston. "There will be no need to protect me, Captain." He turned and left with his officers. Not waiting for permission and knowing Winston’s allowance of casualness, Ming strolled to the couch and slumped into it. "Rob, what is going on?" Winston rubbed his eyes, sighing. "I don’t know, Becky, but we have to do as the man ordered. Take a nacelle off-line and disable the short range sensors, and do whatever you have to for the crew to accept it okay." "Yessir." She stood and walked to the door. Winston spoke again, this time before the door opened. "Ming, I mean whatever it takes for the crew to accept it." She read through his poker face and grinned. Disobeying orders was entirely different from adding to them. The first officer stepped onto the bridge, where everyone had heard Winston’s last question the Admiral. They knew their captain was still their captain. ************************************************************************ Stardate 48357.3 Later that night, the senior officers sat around a coffee table in Ming’s quarters. All sat with keen interest as she explained the situation. "...so we have to take the short range sensors off line and a nacelle, because those are the Admiral’s orders. However, I want to arrange things a little more complicated than that." "Wait!" Syxx interjected. "Does the Captain know we’re doing this? I mean, are we even supposed to be given this information about the mission’s purpose?" "The Captain ‘suggested’ this but doesn’t want to know about so that he can protect his crew without lying or disobeying an Admiral. Also, the Admiral never said this information was confidential." "So," said Enoz. "We’re not making the Admiral’s orders extinct, we’re just helping them evolve." "Exactly." said Ming. "You and your xenobiological metaphors!" Syxx muttered. Enoz grinned. Ming started handing out padds. "These are adjusted duty rosters starting shift after next. As you can see, I’m shifting all but a few personnel to the stardrive section. I also want anyone with saucer section quarters to transfer to cargo bays or holodecks in the lower hull. Doctor L’vant, you’ll decide who goes where. Say you’re doing it for camaraderie or campouts or whatever, I don’t know-" "Recreational events to combat morale and fatigue along with the chance to research the effectiveness of my newest anticontagion inhibitors." the Betazoid blurted out. Ming glanced at her in shock. "You don’t have to be an Admiral to know how to fill a waste extraction unit." "I was about to point out that the transporter biofilters wipe out any contagions and would make your ‘test’ useless, Doc," added Syxx, but I doubt the Admiral would know the difference between a bioneural gel pack and Denebian slime devil. If he saw a biofilter, he’d probably order it to make him a cup of coffee." Everyone laughed, as tears rolled down several faces. Enoz fell off her seat cackling so hard. "Okay, folks." hoarsed Ming. "Let’s get this finished so we can get to bed." Enoz blinked in confusion, she had forgotten the others had different rest cycles. "The reason I want everyone in the stardrive core on and off duty is so that on a moment’s notice, we can ditch the saucer and leave in a hurry. Syxx, can you set something up so that we can simultaneously eject the saucer and bring our ‘bad’ nacelle back online." "Shouldn’t be too hard, Commander. I’ll just add a command to the separation sequence that automatically reroutes saucer designated power to the nacelle. That’ll give it enough energy to be back online before the ship splits in half." "Good, although I want Chief McEwen at a transporter so we can beam saucer officers off instead of waiting for evacuation. With this roster, there should only be two or three dozen. A cargo transporter should do it. Enoz, I want you to rearrange the long range scanners to short range ones if you can." Enoz nodded. Ming turned to Carter. "I want Security to patrol the corridors with tricorders on a random basis..." Ming continued through each department until their contingency was laid out, then dismissed all the officers. Each left, except Enoz, who stepped up to a mirror, wondering why her uniform didn’t wrinkle despite how much she wore it. The black didn’t shine like her skin did, which made looking at her head hard for some, and she didn’t quite like the blue stripe across her shoulders. Back in the Wardyssian system, blue on black was the color scheme for the Flinkbumoti flag, the planet responsible for starting all the bloodshed that she had fled. Ming sighed and sat back in her chair for a moment. Having a meeting in her quarters late at night kind of waived protocol, and Enoz was three times her age, but Ming was still the first officer and it was her quarters and she did want some sleep and here Enoz was just standing here and Ming realized her thoughts were drifting towards sleep when Enoz spoke- "Request permission to speak frankly, Commander." The surprise formality caught Ming off guard. She stiffened and sat up, nodding her assent to Enoz. "Ming, I won’t use my age to judge you or tell you how to do your job, but you need to back off." "Back off from what? I’m the first officer." Ming mumbled. "That’s my point. I’m not the doctor, but I am a mother and I can tell when a kid is trying too hard." Ming’s brows furrowed in insult at a junior officer calling her a kid. "Commander, let me or Syxx set all this up for you tomorrow, we don’t need sleep just yet, and you need more than your average nap." Ming considered this for a moment, then handed her padd to Enoz, saying "All right, but I’m doing this for my own health." "Of course, ma’am." protested Enoz. "I mean this isn’t going to get me to change my mind about letting you transfer that crazy Klingon on board. Not with her record, she’s insane." Enoz merely lowered her head and exited the door. Syxx was waiting for her, leaning on the other side of the corridor. "What was that all about?" he asked cheerfully. "I wanted to give her some motherly advice and she gave me a lecture about transfer politics." "Kalamarina’s name came up? How?" "I don’t know. This wasn’t about that." As they strolled down the empty corridor, Syxx punched up something on his padd. "I looked at some of the deflector algorithms Kalamarina’s written, they could be helpful." "Her work is good enough to attract your attention, Syxx?" "Not really, I just make it a habit to brush up on files of anyone that might get posted here. Her patterns stretch too specifically, too far, actually. I can’t figure out why she’s doing them that way, but an applied inverse computation to them might help us make short range sensors out of long range sensors. Shall we?" He awkwardly put out an elbow as he’d seen humans do. She smiled and accepted as the walked on to deflector control. Enoz was relieved that she had at least one friend on board. ************************************************************************ Stardate 48360.8 Ming sat in the command chair on the bridge, restless. All was going as ‘planned’, except that at the last minute, Garrovik had insisted on Winston joining him on the surface. The Captain had been down there nearly a day, and all Ming could do was wait. "Lieutenant Enoz, are there any readings of significance?" Ming was too bored to even turn to see the Oblokoni working furiously over her station with Syxx. Carter was at the Tactical console double checking their work. "Not really, ma’am. We’re still trying to fine tune our adjustments." "Can we even get a transporter lock on the Captain?" "No, not him or the Admiral’s party." Enoz said. "I only asked about the Captain, not the others, Lieutenant." Enoz and Syxx looked at each other in amazement. They then turned back to their work. As the ship orbited and began its pass over the night half of the planet, solar interference subsided drastically and their monitors became much clearer. "Commander Ming!" shouted Syxx. "There’s an orbital weapons platform locking onto us!" "Red Alert! Bring your systems up to full capacity!" Syxx leaped to another console and began powering the shields. The helmsman on duty, Chief Hunter, brought both nacelles back online while Carter charged weapons and Enoz realigned the scanners. Everyone understood that the saucer option was no good if it meant leaving Winston behind. "The platform is charging!" Enoz stated firmly. "Ming to Winston, do you read, over?" The reply was fully garbled. "Captain, this is Ming, do you read, over?" "Affirmative, Ming!" A phaser blast was heard in the background. "Get me....shhhshhzzz." Ming turned to Enoz. "Can you lock on yet?" Enoz shook her head, the scanners were out of focus with all the adjustments overlaid. "Shall I fire at the platforms, ma’am?" Carter asked nervously. His scanners weren’t as badly out of line, so he had already locked phasers on what he thought to be the platform. "No, we haven’t been fired on yet!" Ming barked. Carter, seriously expecting permission, hit the fire control anyway. A beam lashed out to what his console said was the platform but sliced right through a comet. The fragments scattered between the ship and the planet. "Commander," Enoz said, while Syxx was glaring at Carter. "Those fragments are making my sensors worse." Ming turned to the helm. "Hunter, plot course 312 mark 257 at warp two, we’ll engage for only 2.7 seconds." "Oh great." muttered Syxx to himself. "We’re going to make believe we’re the Enterprise and pull a Picard maneuver." "Enoz," Ming continued, "will that be enough distance to allow you to triangulate the Captain’s coordinates and beam him up?" Syxx’s jaw dropped. "I’ve never heard of a transport being attempted like this but it could work." the Oblokoni replied. "Lock onto and beam up anything registering as human whenever you can-Hunter, engage!" The Equinox rode the edge of subspace for just under three seconds. "Winston to bridge, I’m on board." "Captain, what about the Admiral’s party?" "Just get us out of here." Ming did so gladly. After Winston came to the bridge, he explained that Garrovik and his officers were Changelings. When the Breen realized that, Garrovik had escaped, but the other two had been vaporized by the Breen. Out of suspicion, the Breen had then targeted the Equinox. Enoz found Syxx standing beside her again. "Makes sense," Syxx muttered. "It would have started a war between the Federation and the Breen. Just what the Dominion wants." "And to think," Enoz added. "Ming prevented it. The navigation was hardly original, but transport lock by triangulation while in motion? I have to give her credit for that one." Syxx grunted and shook his head.