Chapter Three

U.S.S. Clemency, N.C.C.-05589

Transporter Room 3

It was one of those days for Transporter Chief Lydon down in the transporter room. His was the only one that was operational so, naturally, everyone who was embarking from the Starbase wanted to do so via transporter. Frankly he wondered whether routing three-hundred people (so far) today through one transporter might not overload its systems, given that it was used to beaming an away team up and down every couple of weeks. That was when he received the call from the bridge.

"Transporter room this is the bridge." Came the stoic voice of Lieutenant Rovek, the Vulcan ships operations officer. Lydon opened a comm channel.

"This is the transporter room, go ahead." He replied in a slightly bored manner.

"Please beam aboard the five life signs aboard a runabout directly to the aft." Rovek said. Lydon, at first, thought that it was some kind of sick joke. Then he remembered that Vulcan's, as a rule, don't play jokes. In fact they had a sense of humour deficiency.

"Understood." He replied and locked onto the five life signs that he was reading to the aft of the ship. Then he began to mutter to himself as he went through the process of beaming them aboard. "This level of laziness in the twenty-fourth century is getting absurd. 'Oh yeah, there's five guys in a runabout but they've decided they can't be bothered flying the last few hundred yards to the runabout bay. Will you beam them in?' One of these days I swear…"

He continued muttering as the patterns began emerging on the transporter pad but stopped abruptly as he realised that one of the people who had just beamed in looked a hell of a lot like the captain. In fact it was the captain. One of the other four crewmen he was with looked like he had just seen a small portion of hell. For starters he was shivering.

"Could somebody get this crewman a blanket?" Asked the captain and, when he took another look at him, added; "And a stiff drink?"

U.S.S. Clemency, N.C.C.-05589

Runabout Bay

It was an odd sight in the runabout bay. There were no less than four senior officers standing in a circle around the landing pad staring at it in bewilderment. As well as Captain Anderson and Lieutenant Commander Robinson there was the ship's first officer; Commander Darren Miller, and chief engineer Lieutenant Velora. There were also four security officers, trained in bomb disposal, standing around too. One of them, Lieutenant Jennifer Hudson, was scanning the landing pad with a tricorder.

"I have a couple of questions." Said the captain, breaking what can only be described as an extremely uncomfortable silence.

"Yes sir." Robinson replied.

"The most pressing of which would be how the hell was someone able to smuggle and install a bomb onto my ship?"

No-one had an answer for that. Hudson stooped down while using her tricorder when it began to beep furiously. The senior officers, when they heard this, instinctively took an alarmed step back. All of them except Robinson that was. Hudson closed her tricorder, stood upright and turned to face the security chief.

"Well, the bomb is most definitely armed sir." She started. "It appears to be pressure sensitive, extremely pressure sensitive. It wouldn't take a runabout landing here to set it off. Even an unlucky crewman stepping on the pressure pad would have set it off. We think…"

"Can you remove it, lieutenant?" Anderson asked, beginning to grow impatient. Hudson turned her attention towards her captain and, just for a split second, he thought he could see annoyance in her eyes. Of course she was professional enough to mask any annoyance towards her CO.

"As I was just about to say, sir." She added the last word as more of an afterthought. "We think we can remove it safely."

"Don't think lieutenant, know." He responded. Hudson turned to face the security squad that were standing nearby the area of the bomb, looking thoughtful. In the mean time Anderson turned to address his senior officers. He started with his security chief and his chief engineer. Lieutenant Velora was a Coridanite, an alien species most distinctive for their greying, almost clay-like skin. "Chief, Lieutenant I want a full sweep of the ship; make sure there are no more bombs anywhere. Also I want everyone who isn't looking for bombs confined to wherever they are right now."

Both men nodded and exited the runabout bay in an orderly fashion. That was when Anderson turned to his old friend and new first officer, Miller. "Good to see you again, Darren."

Commander Miller nodded. "You too John."

And then that was that. Both men had known each other for more than twenty years and they were probably closer than brothers. It was, however, no time for swapping stories of new adventures. They were both all business.

"Darren, I need you to get up to the bridge and contact Admiral Green." Anderson began. "He probably already knows about the situation. Tell him we've got everything under control and he needn't worry about us blowing a big, Clemency-shaped hole in his space station. I want you to liaise with him and try and find out who would and, more importantly, who could pull something like this off."

Miller only nodded in response and set off in much the same direction as the other officers. Anderson turned around and saw Lieutenant Hudson and the security team had begun dismantling the floor surrounding the bomb.

"Lieutenant?" Anderson asked, as politely as he could.

"Yes sir." She replied without looking back at him.

"Is it safe for you to be doing that?"

She didn't reply, which Anderson thought was probably for the best.