Star Trek: Odyssey: Cold Case
Hoshi stood next to the biobed in sickbay, opposite of Doctor Plumley who was leaning forward a bit to examine Kyou and Ryou. She ran a tricorder over both of the twins going upward in front of Ryou and then downward in front of Kyou. They were mesmerized by the pulsating light of the tricorder. T'Pol stood off to the side and watched the doctor do her job. At Hoshi's request, T'Pol had come aboard the Alexandria as a civilian to help watch the twins while Dustin and Hoshi were on duty. She'd even watch Zoe as well when Alex and Christine were busy with their own duties.
During the days of the NX-01 Enterprise, T'Pol and Hoshi were not exactly close. T'Pol was only supposed to remain on Enterprise for a few months but she then took command when Captain Archer was relieved of duty when he suffered from interspatial parasites that prevented him to form long term memories. T'Pol then moved to Ceti Alpha Five with Archer. Doctor Phlox had been coming up with a cure and had found one and met up with T'Pol and Archer aboard Enterprise but the Xindi attacked, preventing Phlox from proceeding with the procedure. That's when the Alexandria had come into the past and saved Enterprise from the Xindi but the two ships were later attacked by the Borg of that century which led to the assimilation of most of the Enterprise crew. Out of all the senior officers, Hoshi, T'Pol and Phlox were the only ones to survive. Phlox now lived on Earth, getting caught up with 24th century medicine and T'Pol had lived on Vulcan for a few months before coming to the Alexandria at Hoshi's request.
"The twins are going to be fine." Doctor Plumley said. "They just a bit of a cough. Nothing to worry about." She put her tricorder down and picked up a hypospray. She pressed a few buttons on the back of it and then pressed it against the arms of Kyou and Ryou. "This should prevent their coughs from getting worse if it were to."
Hoshi nodded. "Thank you, Doctor."
The intercom kicked on and Captain Allensworth's voice came through. "Commander Sato, will you report to my ready room."
Hoshi tapped her comm. badge. "On my way, sir." She then looked to her Vulcan friend. "T'Pol could you take the twins back to my quarters?"
T'Pol nodded and Hoshi thanked her with a smile. Hoshi turned on her heel and headed for the doors. Just before she approached them, they slid apart and an engineer with severe burns was being rushed in by Lieutenant Commander Kazarick and Lieutenant Commander Zofchak. The injured engineer was moaning in pain. Hoshi couldn't tell the difference between the man's uniform and his skin due to the burns on him. The man held his hands out away from his body as if they were infected and if he touched the rest of his body, it would become infected as well. Hoshi could tell that the man was in so much pain just by looking how tensed up he was.
"He was working on a conduit. The plasma torch blew up in his hands." Dustin said he and Kazarick lifted the man onto the biobed.. Doctor Plumley ran over to the injured crewmember. T'Pol hoisted the twins up in her arms and rushed out the door, so they wouldn't be exposed to such a sight. Hoshi allowed them to go out first before she proceeded to the turbolift.
Hoshi stepped off the turbolift and onto the main bridge. She walked along the aft section of the bridge and down the left side of the bridge, behind Lieutenant McKenzie at tactical and various other crewmembers at the science stations. She walked down the three steps and was at the doors to the captain's ready room. She hit the chime button and heard the captain's voice a second later allowing her to enter. She stepped through the doorway and saw Captain Allensworth sitting behind his desk with Commander Merriell standing to the right of him and Lieutenant Liz Dowler sitting across from the captain, who had turned to face Hoshi when she walked in the door. It wasn't until Hoshi stepped inside the ready room was when she noticed another person in the room, but this person wasn't really there, it was a holographic display of Admiral Kate Kreimer. She was standing in the confines of a circular platform that was the captain's holographic projector.
"Thanks for coming so quickly, Hoshi. Please sit down." Allensworth said extending a hand out offering the seat on Dowler's right.
"I have personally asked for the two of you for a special assignment." Kreimer said.
"What kind of assignment?" Dowler asked.
"Covert ops." The admiral said.
Hoshi and Liz looked at each other and Liz inhaled sharply and frowned. "That's not exactly our area of expertise."
"I read your report of your mission to the Mirror Universe when you and Counselor Nycz infiltrated the ship of your mirror counterparts." Kreimer said.
"Hardly my finest hour." Dowler said.
"Based on what I've read in your files, you both have precisely the sort of skills and capabilities we need for this mission."
"Why do I find that hard to believe when Starfleet Intelligence has its own specially trained field operatives?" Liz asked.
"To be honest, we're shorthanded. But even if we weren't, I'd still be here talking to you."
"Why?" Hoshi asked.
"I'm sure you've heard about the explosion at the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards."
Both of them nodded. "It wasn't just an industrial accident, was it?" Hoshi asked.
"What I'm about to tell you can't be discussed with anyone not involved in the mission. Understood?" All four of them nodded. "The explosion was part of an exit strategy by a spy who stole designs for the slipstream drive. There's evidence that a phase cloaked Romulan ship was involved in the extraction of the spy, which suggests this was an act of espionage by this new alliance that we've gotten reports about between the Breen, the Romulans, the Gorn, the Tholians and the Tzenkethi."
"I'm still not seeing what this has to do with us." Liz said.
"We've been monitoring shipping activity throughout the territories of this new alliance. We were looking for patterns that suggested they were gathering material and components for the construction of a slipstream drive. Three weeks ago, we correlated our latest updates and found what we think is a secret shipyard, hidden on a world inside Breen space. We're looking for a planet called Memchr in the Rakis system. It's not much more than a mostly frozen chunk of rock, but its been getting quite a bit of cargo traffic from the Breen and Romulans lately. We haven't found much beyond a few small installations on the surface, but we think that's because the real action is on the ground."
"As in a concealed shipbuilding facility." Liz said.
Kreimer nodded. "We have eyes on every shipyard in the alliance, so we know they aren't building a slipstream drive prototype at any of them. But this world is where they've been shipping critical parts for a chronoton integrator, which allows the ship to pass through the slipstream without slamming into anything at a hundred times the speed of light."
"If they are making a prototype there, why not just send in a fleet and frag the planet?" Merriell asked.
"Tempting, but ultimately self defeating. We're in no condition to start a shooting war with the alliance, Commander. Besides, just because they're building it there doesn't mean that's the only place they have the plans. But it does mean that's where they're doing their research."
"And updating the schematics with new data as they figure out how to make the drive work with their ship designs." Dowler said catching on.
"Exactly, Lieutenant. That's this target's real value. Consequently, we've been ordered to initiate a full sanction operation. Which means that whomever we send in has a license to kill, authorized by President Bacco herself. "We don't just want to take out the shipyard, we want to sabotage the stolen data and its backups as well."
"And how much time do you think this will buy us?" Allensworth asked sounding skeptical. "They'll figure out slipstream eventually, with or without our plans."
"True, but it'll take them a hell of a lot longer without the plans." Kreimer said. "Our best estimate is that sabotaging this program will buy us another decade of being the only ones with slipstream, by which point we hope to have fully recovered from the Mirror War and expanded our reach to new regions of the galaxy. But if we don't then we may become a second rate power in less than a year and what happens after that, I don't think any of us want to find out."
"That still doesn't answer our question on why us?" Hoshi said.
"Our knowledge of the Breen is limited." Kreimer said. "We can barely translate that machine speak of theirs, and their culture's a total blind spot. Remote observation has yielded almost no usable intel about their society or their biology. Whoever we send to Memchr needs to be more adaptable than anyone we currently have available. We've picked you, Lieutenant Dowler because of your astral anthropology field of study and you're one of the best in the fleet. We've picked you, Commander Sato or Commander Zofchak, whichever you prefer, because of your linguistic skills. You are able to become fluent in a language after just hearing it once. No one else in the fleet can do that." Kreimer could sense their reluctance. "We need both of you. If you turn us down, we will go forward without you, but frankly, I don't like the odds."
Liz and Hoshi looked at each other and then to Captain Allensworth. They both nodded to their captain. Allensworth stood up and faced Admiral Kreimer. "Looks like you've got them, Admiral."