Steele sat in the captain's ready room, bouncing a tennis ball off the wall. Every few minutes he would pause and look around the room, noting the blueness of the room and thinking what could be added to make the place feel more personable. Winchester hadn't put much up on the walls yet, but hanging over the couch was a portrait that showed the various incarnations of the starship Enterprise through the years. He smiled, knowing just how much his friend loved reading about the history of the Federation flagship.

Steele turned to look out the large window behind the captain's desk. From here, he had an excellent view of Litix Alpha as the Silver Hawk orbited the planet. Due to high concentrations of argon in the atmosphere, the planet had a bright violet hue. To Steele, it seemed like such an odd color for a planet, but at the same time it was very fascinating. He sighed, unable to keep his boredom at bay for long. Finally he decided it was time to try out the holodeck. He had a sports program he wanted to use, and he knew he could easily pass the time with that.

Steele left the ready room and made his way to the aft turbolift on the bridge. "Mister Jordan, you have the bridge," he said in passing.

"Aye sir," said Jordan. Just then, he heard a beep from the tactical panel. "Commander," he said, "an unidentified ship has just appeared on our long-range sensors."

Steele stopped just as he approached the turbolift, his brow furrowed in confusion. "There aren't many ships that pass by this way, but those that do are usually Federation ships. Put it on screen."

The screen switched from a view of the planet to the view of the ship. It was long, grey, and mostly rectangular. Toward the front, the top and bottom converged in an arc to a single point. There were two long cylindrical structures jutting out from either side that appeared to be thrusters. There was only one symbol on the top of the ship, a starburst shape that was yellow around the edges but black in the center.

"Analysis, Mister Newell," said Steele.

Ensign Newell's hands were gliding along the Ops panel, pushing buttons as he scanned the ship. "The ship appears to be undamaged," he said. "It's about twenty meters long, unarmed, and there are no detectable life signs."

Steele folded his arms and wrinkled his nose. "If it's not damaged, there wouldn't be any reason to abandon it," he said.

"Maybe something went wrong with the ship's computer systems," Jordan posited. "Perhaps the life support system failed."

"Maybe," said Steele. He pointed to the thrusters on the sides. "Are those warp engines?" he asked.

"No, sir," said Newell. "It seems like this ship is incapable of warp speed."

"Then they couldn't have come from very far away," Steele concluded. He turned to Lieutenant Phillips, the navigator. "Victoria, are there any habitable planets anywhere in this system?"

Phillips shook her head. "Any planet in this system would require a domed facility, much like the rehab center on Litix Alpha," she said. "It's possible that the owners of the ship could live in an environment that humans can't, but even still, the nearest planet in any direction is Litix Beta, which is six months away at full impulse power."

Steele scratched his sandy brown hair. "This doesn't make sense," he said. With a short sigh, he added, "Well, at least now we have something to do. Mister Jordan, get a tractor beam on that ship and haul it into Shuttlebay 4. Once it's in, join me down there. We're going to take a look at this." He tapped his communicator badge. "Steele to sickbay, have Doctor Campbell meet us in the cargo bay."


Winchester, Skye, and the engineers entered the main computer room of the facility. The walls were covered with banks of isolinear sub-processors, and the covers for each bank gave the room a dark grey color. At the back of the room was a small square computer unit that served as the central processor.

"So, explain to me what this process is going to entail," Winchester said to Skye. "And be concise. Just because I had to learn the finer points of engineering to pass the academy doesn't mean I want to hear all the technical jargon that goes with it."

Skye began unpacking tools from the cases she and the engineers brought with them. "Basically," she said, "we're going to be replacing some of the isolinear circuitry in the computer systems with the more current bio-neural circuitry. It won't be the whole system, just certain parts of it. In order to do that, we need to shut down the computer core. That's going to be a problem, though, because since this is a prison – albeit a low-level one – if the core goes down all the force fields will drop and the prisoners could get loose."

Winchester nodded. "I thought that might be an issue," he said. "Fortunately we don't have any serial killers or other serious criminals here, so the chance of a major jailbreak is small."

"That's true," said Skye, "but we still want to keep the power running through the facility while we work. The first thing we'll do, then, is establish a comm link through the Silver Hawk's computer core. In effect, all the major computer operations for the facility will be run through our ship. That way we can do our work and all the prisoners stay locked up." She smiled as she concluded, pleased with her response.

"Very well, then," said Winchester. "Get to work, Commander. I'll be in Commander Simon's office passing time." He grinned as a thought crossed his mind. "I think I see some drinking in our future."

Skye chuckled. "Try not to work too hard, Captain," she said as Winchester left the room.


Steele and Jordan arrived at Shuttlebay 4. A handful of security personnel were already in position near the rear hatch of the mysterious ship, phasers drawn in case of trouble. Around the sides, a few technicians were scanning the ship with their tricorders to gain more information about it.

"Have we figured out a way to open this yet?" asked Steele.

"It's hard to say, sir," said one of the technicians as he approached Steele. "The design of this ship doesn't appear to match anything we've seen before. It's hard to know exactly what we're looking at."

Steele noticed the technician could not fix his gaze for very long before his beady brown eyes darted away. His nerves were getting to him. It seemed reasonable, for he looked very young and probably inexperienced. Tiny beads of sweat hung at the edge of his dark hair, and Steele would not have noticed were it not for the man's tan skin. "What's your name, Lieutenant?" he asked.

"Jenkins, sir. Forgive me, I'm not used to taking the lead on these types of assignments, sir," the lieutenant replied. "Normally Commander Skye would be doing it."

"Well, she's not here right now," said Steele, "but I'm sure you can handle it. Get yourself together and get that back hatch open."

"Yes, sir." Jenkins went back to the ship, running his tricorder along the hatch.

"The younger officers get nervous in the presence of senior staff," said Jordan to Steele. "Give them a little time and I'm sure they'll loosen up."

"I'd be happier with them opening up that hatch," Steele answered. "This is the only thing keeping me from boredom on this mission." He looked around the shuttlebay. "Where's Doctor Campbell?" he shouted out to the room.

"I'm here! Sorry if I'm late," echoed Campbell's high-pitched voice. Steele noticed he was not wearing his usual blue overcoat, instead opting for the standard black uniform with the blue stripe along the shoulders. Campbell was trotting across the bay floor to meet Steele and Jordan more quickly, but because of his bulk he looked rather silly as his body bounced up and down. Steele and Jordan exchanged glances and tried not to laugh.

"I came as quickly as I could," Campbell panted, "but I was in the middle of an experiment, you see."

Steele nodded, a grin cracking through his face. "You know, Doctor, you didn't have to run across the room like that. The ship's not going anywhere," he said. Jordan started to chuckle, but Steele quickly elbowed him in the ribs to silence him.

Campbell straightened his shoulders and began to blush lightly. "I suppose not," he said. "I hope I didn't look too foolish as I came over here."

"Well," said Steele, "as long as you promise to be on time more often, I'll refrain from reporting this to Captain Winchester." He winked at Campbell to punctuate his sentence.

Just then, a hissing sound emanated from the ship. Startled, Lieutenant Jenkins jumped back as the rear hatch began to swing outward, opening the ship.

"Well done, Lieutenant," said Steele. "I knew you could do it."

"T-thank you, sir," Jenkins said. He hurried away as Steele, Jordan, and Campbell approached the opening.

The inside of the ship was fairly dark, and the light from inside the shuttlebay was not enough to give the officers any sense of what was inside. Jordan took a flashlight from the wall of the shuttlebay and led the group inside, ducking just a bit due to the low ceiling. Being that the ship was small, it made sense to the three men that there was not much inside, but they were amazed at the sparseness of computer controls. There were two small units near the rear hatch, but there was no indication that either was active. Toward the front of the vessel, there were two large rectangular objects that appeared to be containers of some sort. It was on these containers that the men noticed a lot of buttons and panels, though they could not tell what their function was.

Jordan took out a tricorder to scan the containers. "The dimensions are large enough to store an adult humanoid," he noted. "The tricorder is picking up a lot of complex circuitry all connected to a central cooling unit. There also appears to be some other circuitry dedicated to biological use."

"These could be preservation units for a science vessel," said Campbell. "Whoever controls this ship could have been collecting plant or animal life from another planet."

"But there's no one here controlling the ship," said Steele. "Unless maybe they did it remotely, but I don't see how. There's barely anything here to move this ship along."

Campbell knelt down and examined one of the panels on the container. "One of these buttons is bigger than the rest," he said. "It's also red, which stands out from the others which are all yellow. Maybe that will open it."

Jordan checked it with his tricorder. "It does seem to be some sort of primary function panel," he said, rubbing his beard. He looked at Campbell. "Only one way to find out." He pushed the button, which chirped and began to blink red. Jordan and Campbell backed away quickly as steam poured out of the container. The top separated and rotated upward, similar to a treasure chest. When the steam dissipated, the three mean approached slowly and looked inside.

"My God," said Campbell, "there's a man in there!" He took out his tricorder and scanned the body. "It's definitely a humanoid male, but his physiognomy isn't human. It's nothing I've ever seen before."

"Can you determine his age, or more importantly if he's alive?" asked Steele.

"It's hard to say, but judging by the wrinkles on the skin, I'd say this man is in his in forties or fifties," said Campbell. "That's assuming he ages like a human, of course. I'm also picking up extremely faint life signs from the body." He snapped his fingers. "Of course! These are cryogenic storage units. It makes sense now. We need to get these to sickbay right away."

"Agreed," said Steele. He walked back to the rear hatch and shouted to the security officers outside. "You there! Give us a hand with these!"


"What can I get you to drink, Beau?" Simon asked.

"Does your replicator know how to make a Jamaican Me Happy?" replied Winchester.

Simon groaned. "Really, Beau, you've been out in space for far too long. You need a real drink, not that tasteless fruity garbage." He walked over to his replicator. "Give me two Andorian ales," he said. The replicator generated two thin glasses of the bright blue drink. "Try this," said Simon as he handed one to Winchester. "I think you'll like it."

Winchester took a sip. The taste was quite strong, enough to make him pucker his lips. He also felt his throat start to burn. "Damn, that's potent," he said.

Simon smiled. "I know," he said. "I was able to override the replicator's synthehol component and replace it with real alcohol. There's nothing like the real thing."

"Indeed," said Winchester, gingerly placing the rest of his glass on the nearby table. He sat down and looked out the window of Simon's office. He had a panoramic view of the planet's landscape, though there were few features to speak of. Being a desert planet, all one could see outside were large dunes of sand. Dusty clouds swept in with accompanying winds. The pink sky was a little jarring to Winchester, even though he knew the scientific explanation for it.

"When you first arrive," said Simon as he pointed out the window, "it's a breathtaking sight. But trust me, spend a few years here and you'll grow tired of it pretty quickly." He sat down at his desk. "I never put a lot of things in my office because I thought I'd be transferred after a few months. Wishful thinking, I suppose."

Winchester swiveled his chair to face Simon. "Someone has to get stuck with the unexciting jobs," he said. "Not everyone gets to be a famous captain."

"I never cared for being famous," Simon said, taking another sip of his ale. "I just want to be out there among the stars. I envy the ships that pass this way. I think of the crews on board who are living out their dreams, and I feel like I'm wasting my life away in this damn desert. Be thankful for what you've got, Beau. At least you get to be out there, seeing things not many people have the privilege of seeing."

Winchester had no response for that. He could tell that Simon's feelings were genuine. Most Starfleet entrants have grand dreams of traversing the stars, but very few see their dreams realized. He truly was one of the lucky ones, but until he saw someone who had less than him that, he realized he had never understood that fact.

"Anyway," Simon continued, "I shouldn't be talking about myself. I want to talk about you."

"Me? What for?" asked Winchester.

"Well, even though news is slow to get out here, I heard about the Motavia incident," Simon said.

Winchester shrugged. "I'm lucky to still have a ship," he said. "I'll take any mission Starfleet will give me, even a menial one like this."

"You know what they're doing, don't you?" Simon probed.

"Of course I do," Winchester answered. "They practically told me as much. They've pushed me into the background until they clear things up with the Romulans."

Simon chuckled. "Beau, they didn't just push you to the back. They pushed you way to the back. You may still have a ship, but be honest with yourself – you know the Ambassador-class is an old line. It's practically eighty years old, and even though they may have grafted new technology into it to keep it alive a little longer, it's not at the forefront of the fleet anymore. They stuck you in an ancient ship running errands just so you can be forgotten about."

"I don't believe that," said Winchester. "Maybe it's just temporary. In time, when things blow over, I may get reassigned to a better ship. But I'm quite happy with what I've got."

"Keep thinking that," Simon scoffed. "See how far it gets you."

Winchester picked up his glass of ale. "As long as I have a ship to fly," he said, "I'm satisfied with whatever direction my life goes. Until the day comes where I'm stuck behind a desk looking after criminals on a no-name planet, I have no reason to be jaded about anything." He downed the rest of his ale in one gulp and forcefully thrust the glass onto Simon's desk.

The comm unit chirped. "Skye to Winchester."

"Go ahead, Madison," Winchester replied.

"The comm link's been established," Skye said. "I've shut down the main computer systems from the facility. Everything's being run through the Silver Hawk now."

"Acknowledged. Keep up the good work," Winchester said. He turned his attention back to Simon. "How about another ale? I rather liked that one."