- 4 -

On Camus II we heard about the loss of Charon the following morning via public news channels. They featured few images and gave little detail beyond the bare fact that it was gone, but it was enough to spark a lot of conversation in the camp.

Today's training began with a twenty mile run with full backpacks to test fitness and several groups had already set off at specified intervals. Though not part of his crew and so thankfully exempt from such shenanigans, I breakfasted with Captain Lee Forrest before he too was scheduled to set off.

"Do you think the destruction of Charon was as the result of an attack or of something going catastrophically wrong at Charon Base?" I asked.

"Without more information I don't know what to think," he said, looking thoughtful. "Starfleet probably knows more, but they haven't seen fit to share that knowledge with us yet."

We were joined by Kate Shaw, a phaser against her left thigh as always, who dropped down on the bench beside me, looking concerned.

"Jill not with you?" said Lee, frowning.

Kate and Jill Finn had been billeted together in the same shelter.

"A couple of heavies from Starfleet Intelligence just came to our shelter and took her away," said Kate. "They wouldn't tell us why and Jill offered no resistance, but I thought I'd better come and report this to you immediately."

"What the devil are they up to?" thundered Lee, clearly outraged. "Jill Finn is a member of my crew. If they had any business with her they should have cleared it with me first. I'm going to get to the bottom of this."

With that he got up and stormed out.

"He looks steamed."

"Can you blame him?" said Kate, pouring herself a coffee. "They had no right to do what they did."

I envied Kate her youth and her strength. She would shortly join the next batch to set off on their run, a feat that was now well beyond my physical capabilities. I was worried about Jill Finn and wondered what Starfleet Intelligence could want with her, just as I wondered what if anything they might have done to my beloved wife. Janice had been on the USS Trafalgar when it spent several days here and I desperately wanted to know that she was alright, but private communication channels had been suspended the past few months for 'operational reasons', a bland term that could mean anything. I wondered if Kate knew any more.

"Not really," she said when I asked her. "Although I did discover something interesting when I asked around. It seems like pretty much every ship of the line has visited Camus II over the past few months. After we get processed there's only one major ship that hasn't been here yet - the USS Endurance."

I raised an eyebrow at this. It was probably just a coincidence that only the crew of my daughter's ship had yet to be subjected to whatever was going on here, but I owed it to her to get to the bottom of things before that happened.

After Kate joined the next batch of her crewmates to be sent off on the training run, I made my way up the rocky slope to the cave mouth, watched with suspicion all the while by its guards. I got to within a dozen yards of them before I was instructed to halt by the more senior of the two, a sergeant.

"This area is restricted to authorised personnel only," said one of them. "Please state your business here, ma'am."

That I was wearing the uniform of a Starfleet Intelligence officer had got me this close to them, but without the necessary authorisation I would get no further.

"Colonel Naomi Martin," I said, handing over my forged papers. "I'm here at the behest of Starfleet Command."

"May I ask the purpose of your visit?" asked the sergeant as he ran a computer check on me.

"No you may not, sergeant," I said. "That information is classified."

My credentials passed muster, as I knew they would, and the guards lowered the force field door for me.

"Do you need someone to guide you, colonel?" I was asked as my papers were returned to me.

"Thank you, sergeant, but no. I'll make my own way from here."

As I progressed along the tunnel beyond, I noticed the floor sloped down gently from the cave mouth to the network of caves below. The walls around me had mostly been ground away until they were sheer and flat, with only a few sections of exposed, undressed rock remaining. This was as I remembered it from my previous visit, but that had been a long time ago. Personnel at this facility seemed few and far between, but even so I could hardly ask one of them to direct me to the cave containing the bodyswapping device and so risk revealing I didn't belong here. As luck would have it, I stumbled across something else I knew all too well in one of the many rooms hewn from the surrounding rock.

In the room was a glass-walled chamber. In the center of that chamber was the device, which looked like a high-tech version of the barbaric electric chairs they had used to execute people in the twentieth century. This was the obscene brainwashing device invented by Khan Noonien Singh during the Eugenics Wars that he used to overwrite the personalities of captured troops and turn them against their former allies.

And strapped into the chair was Captain Lee Forrest.