Darick Corvin came around the line of X-wings in the Valor's hangar bay, with Miles Chase close in behind him. Shortly after the memorial service, he had noticed Deek and the rest of the Rebels who had come on board were happy to see him from a distance, but hesitant to engage him in conversation, and they had made a hasty retreat back to the Valor shortly after the service. Corvin and Miles had decided to visit the Alliance cruiser some time later and fill his squadron mates in on the events of the past two days.

They finally found Deek working on top of his X-wing at the end of the row, shortly before the line of B-wings began. Corvin called out to him as they approached.

"Darick! I uh, didn't expect to see you again so soon!" Deek's head shot up from the phi-inverted lateral stabilizer he had been cleaning, and gingerly dropped down from the S-foil to envelope his friend in a hug.

"Likewise, my friend! The past two days have been wild! I got some stories to tell yo- wait... what's with the look?" Corvin stopped mid-sentence as he noticed a mixed look of grief and pain crossed his wingman's face.

"Did you say... two days?" the other pilot asked.

"Yeah, of course. I'm surprised it took you this long to mount a rescue! Better late than never, though!" Corvin replied, playfully slapping his friend on the shoulder. "Oh man, I can't wait to see my folks either, they'd love to get their hands on the med tech here," he exclaimed, turning to Miles. "Mom and Dad are engineers for a medical tech company back on Alderaan, and they'd -" Deek cut off Corvin's sentence.

"That's... the root of the problem, Corvin." Deek leaned against the side of his fighter, and sighed. Miles glanced quizzically between the two pilots, and Corvin merely stared at his friend. From around the nose of the X-wing, a tech was wheeling a cart of tools around for Deek, and stopped short when he saw Corvin, and immediately began backing the cart away, trying to avoid the unpleasant conversation in the making as though he had stumbled across a sleeping predator in it's lair, or a nest of stinging insects.

"Deek, what's going on? Why is everyone on board avoiding me? I thought you'd be happy to see me!"

"We... are. But we assumed you knew how long you've been gone. It would have made the news I need to tell you... easier to deliver, slightly. But... it's only been two days for you? Darick... you've been gone for almost five years on our end of things."

"You're joking. You..." Corvin managed half a laugh. "You have to be."

"I'm afraid not. And... well, you should sit." He slid a crate on the deck over towards Corvin and the man took a seat on it. Deek dropped to a knee in front of him.

"There's... no easy way to say this, but... Alderaan has been destroyed."

"What?" Corvin asked, his eyes wide. "What do mean, did the Empire attack the capital city? Every city?"

"No... The Emperor deployed a new weapon-"

"The walkers?!" Corvin exclaimed, springing up from the crate. "I have the blueprints and the location where they're made! We can stop the Empire from ravaging any more cities!"

"It's not the walkers, Corvin. The walkers are inconsequential, now." Deek paused for a moment. "And I'm not talking about cities. The Empire deployed a massive space station. Its primary weapon had enough firepower to obliterate entire planets in one shot. They tested it... on Alderaan. There's nothing left."

Corvin took a step backward, bumping into the nose of Deek's X-wing. "You can't... be serious," he croaked, but the sorrow on Deek's face left no hope of the news being a deception, or a falsehood. Corvin's legs turned to jelly, and he slumped to the deck against the X-wing's landing strut, and the wave of sorrow hit him all at once. He burst into tears, bracing his back against the landing gear, his head in his hands. Some of the other pilots from Pathfinder Squadron began to gather around Deek's fighter, all of them standing in silence, ready to help their comrade through his grief when he was ready for it. Miles knelt beside Corvin, and laid a hand on his shoulder.

"We had no weapons. We willingly disarmed. Billions of people. Gone in an instant. For what?" Corvin heaved his shoulders as another wave of sadness washed over him. "How could anyone, even the Empire, justify murdering billions of people?" He looked up at his old wingmate. "How many of us are left?"

"Hard to tell, even after all this time. The estimates still range from anywhere in the hundreds of thousands to millions. The Princess Organa was aboard the station as a prisoner when Tarkin and Vader pulled the trigger, her family was on-planet. There's also quite a lot of us of us in the Alliance. Unsurprisingly, most of them are Imperial defectors. There's a Captain- Celchu I think his name is- he fights harder than any of us in the name of those we lost." Deek knelt back down beside his friend. "He hasn't given up. Neither have I, and I know you won't, either."

"Yesterday, I had a family waiting for me to come back home. And now my whole world has literally come crashing down around me. I've never felt so alone in all my life."

Miles cleared his throat, choking back his own wave of grief for his new friend. "I'm sorry, Corvin. I can't claim to know how this must feel, but from the look of things, you don't have to suffer this alone." Corvin looked up, and the canine alien, a Bothan, as Miles remembered, in an A-wing pilot's uniform stepped forward.

"Your people in what is now called Rogue Squadron destroyed the Death Star, but the Emperor is... persistent. He's building another one back home. Many of my people were sent out to gather intel on this new one. There's been no news of them in quite some time." The silver-blue fur on his neck rippled. "Many more have been sent out to continue their mission. The Empire won't stop, so we can't afford to either." The canine alien took another step ahead, and Corvin looked up as the Bothan offered him his hand. "We must keep moving forward until this scourge is wiped from our galaxy..." the Bothan looked out the hangar door to the unfamiliar starfield beyond, and snorted a short laugh out of his nose. "...or any other galaxy, for that matter." Corvin grasped the hairy hand offered to him, and was pulled to his feet. He swiped tears away from his face, then took in the line of pilots and Miles before him.

"Let's go get that son of a bitch, then!" He cried out, eliciting cheers from the rest of the hangar. Corvin turned to face his friend from Starfleet. "Guess we'll be sticking around for a bit, if you don't mind," he said.

Miles didn't answer immediately, he had taken several steps away from the cheering mass of pilots to answer his combadge.

"Aye, sir. We'll be there shortly. Chase out." He tapped the badge to sign off. "Well, we have new orders. Orion took some pretty significant damage, and we've been granted a berth at Deep Space Nine for repairs, new crewmen and rearming for combat. Once we're back aboard, I'll send the coordinates to your Captain, Commander Solgan. Captain Garrett secured a berth for your ship as well. You'll be more than welcome to join us."

"Please, it's just Deek. And I'm sure we could use a little patching up as well. We'd be delighted." Deek said, smiling.

"Alright then. Corvin, you're more than welcome to stay here, but I do have a couple of ideas we could tinker with on the way to the station, if you'd like to come back to the Orion with me."

"Done. I can catch up on what I missed later, Deek. I could use a little project to... you know, take my mind off of... home." He said, shaking his old friend's hand. They bid farewell to the pilots of Pathfinder Squadron, and signaled for transport back to the ship.

Upon materialization, Corvin turned to Miles and asked "so... what's this tinkering you wanted to do?"

"Glad you asked. I've had my hands in no small amount of engine compartments in my day, everything from shuttlecraft to vintage gas-powered cars and tractors. But I've got a... personal project Commander Paxton and I just started on pretty recently. I'd like your input, if you'll come on down to the holodeck and indulge me." He led Corvin down the hallway.

"Of course. Just one question... what's a holodeck?"

/

Tyson Garrett slouched slightly in the chair at his ready room desk. His eyelids were heavy, but given the fact that they were less than six hours away from DS9, he saw any attempts to sleep as frivolous. Additionally, replicator coffee just wasn't strong enough to keep him awake. Instead, he had opted for his secret weapon: an antique French Press, and real coffee beans, hand-picked on Earth by a small farm in South America. The coffee plant was coming back from the brink of extinction back home, but most Earth-goers chose the replicated facsimile for convenience's sake. As such, real coffee beans were still considered rare and exotic, and he only broke out the "good stuff" on special occasions or emergencies. Early on in the search for Voyager, Tyson had joked that maybe he could have lured Captain Janeway back from wherever she had disappeared to using the stuff. But the time for humor in the situation had long passed.

As he waited for the old coffee maker to do its work, he felt along his breastbone beneath his tunic. The Enterprise-C medallion was still there, having survived his brush with the Commando's wrist blade. He fished the charm out from underneath his uniform, and gazed first at the coin, and then to the old copy of The War of the Worlds, gifted to him by his mother.

If only you knew, Mom. He thought to himself, remarking at the unique situation he had found himself squarely in the middle of. As he pondered the literal war of worlds he was contending with, the alluring scent of fresh, authentic coffee filled his nose. He lifted the glass pot and poured himself a generous portion. Adding replicated cream, he continued to stare at the medallion and book, hoping for some kind of sign from his mother that the paths they were treading were the right ones.

He took a cautious sip to avoid burning his tongue, and turned his attention back to the damage reports on his datapad.

/

Lt. Commander Richard Paxton pulled the panel away from the housing of the bio-neural gel pack compartment, and immediately regretted his decision. The gel pack had ruptured, spilling its contents throughout the knee-high compartment, and now that the covering was removed, it flowed onto the deck and pooled around his boots. He rose from his crouch to place the panel aside, wiping some of the gel from his hands as he stood and frowned.

"Ensign Huxley, do we have anymore of these stupid bio-gel things on board?" He asked the young female Ensign who was assisting him in the repairs, making no attempt to hide the contempt for the experimental technology in his voice.

"Supplies are low, we lost quite a few when some of the subsystems on this deck backfired, but I think we have just enough to replace them all." The Ensign smiled as she handed him a rag to wipe his hands with. "Not a fan of the new tech, sir?" she asked.

"I've been a Starfleet engineer for fifteen years, Huxley. Outside of the main computer, I'm the one doing the thinking on these ships. I don't need the subsystem circuitry thinking as well," He responded, tossing the soiled rag back onto the work cart.

"Look," he continued, "I've seen my fair share of crazy technology, and I'm not necessarily opposed to it, this stuff fascinates me." He pointed at the roiling mass of bio-neural gel. "It also scares the living daylights out of me! It's alive. It can think, in a certain sense of the word."

Bio-neural gel packs were a new, experimental piece of equipment gradually being rolled out onto starships. Voyager, Orion and a few other Intrepid- class science vessels had been outfitted with the gel packs to test their effectiveness. The bio-neural gel was, in essence, alive. Capable of what had been unofficially dubbed "fuzzy thoughts" among the engineers who had to work with them, the bio-neural circuitry was able to boost performance along numerous subsystems across the ship, from food replicators all the way up to the shield auto-repair subroutines. The primary drawback to the packs, was that because they were technically alive, they could not be effectively replicated. If a gel pack burst, or was otherwise rendered unusable, it had to be replaced by another one already on hand. Furthermore, because they were not yet standard on every ship in Starfleet, finding replacements was still difficult.

"And, if these things are alive, that means they can be susceptible to organic contaminants, they can 'get sick,'" Rick continued, beginning to pace back and forth. "And what else don't we know about them, do they need to eat, too?"

"Sir, I think-" Ensign Huxley tried to interrupt.

"Look, I'm no stick in the mud, I'm just saying you never hear about LaForge or Scott ever having to bottle-feed the Enterprises just because the EPS grid was being moody!" Paxton exclaimed, his arms flailing maniacally. "And then what, one day we can't go to warp because the ship caught the Andorian Flu, or Klingon Chlamydia, or-" turning back to face his assistant, he froze mid-sentence, immediately choking on his words when he realized Huxley was no longer the only other person in the corridor with him.

"Oh, uh, Lieutenants! I, uh... didn't see you there," he said sheepishly as Miles and Corvin stared at him, doing their very best to suppress the urge to burst out laughing.

"It's... quite alright, sir," Miles said, forcing down his chuckles, but maintaining the broad smile on his face. "I was just taking Corvin down to the holodeck to show him... you know, the thing we talked about."

"OH! I almost forgot about that! Kid, you're gonna love it!" Paxton said, clapping Corvin on the shoulder. He pointed back over his shoulder with his thumb, to the mess of gel and steam still belching forth from the panel by the floor. "I wish I could join you, but I've kind of got my hands full at the moment." Miles looked over the chief engineer's shoulder at the bubbling puddle of blue gel caking the floor around the access hatch. A bubble rising up from the gel congealing on the floor popped, a gout of steam and a foul stench emerging from it. A noticeable fleck of blue gel spat up from the rupture, landing with a wet smack on Miles' boot.

"Need a hand? We've got time." Miles asked, scraping the gel off one boot with the heel of the other.

"Nah, Huxley and I can handle this just fine," Paxton said, turning back towards the Ensign, a look of mild shock taking over the relief that had crept on to her face at the mention of her commanding officer potentially leaving and sparing her from any more of his ramblings on new tech. Corvin caught on to this interaction, and gave Miles a discreet nudge in the ribs, and the other man smiled knowingly.

"Oh, come on, Rick," he began. "A bright young star like Huxley can get this done in no time. Besides, you think Scotty or Captain LaForge ever got the chance to do what you've cooked up in Holodeck Two?" He continued, playing to the earlier rant by his superior officer. Rick's face lit up, and he offered a victorious and commanding gesture down the hall.

"Alright, fellas. You're on! Huxley, you sure you're fine soloing this one?" He asked the brown-haired Ensign, who immediately perked up, clasping her hands behind her back and straightening to parade ground attention.

"Oh, uh... y-yes sir! Absolutely, no trouble at all!" she responded with only a slight hint of relief in her voice.

"Off we go, then!" Commander Paxton began leading the two younger men further down the hall, and Ensign Huxley made a point to mouth out "thank you" to Miles and Corvin before they departed, to which they responded with a discreet thumbs-up as they followed Paxton.

"Klingon Chlamydia, sir?" Miles snickered as they walked.

"Can it, Lieutenant, or I'll have you scrubbing carbon filters til you retire!" Rick snapped, half-mockingly, prompting Miles to throw his hands up in a gesture of surrender. The three men laughed together for a moment. The general mood on Orion was pleasant enough, given the circumstances. The deaths of three crew members, plus another eighth of the crew down with injuries, had certainly lowered morale to a degree, and the workload on the remaining crew was high. The three of them stopped twice along the way to provide assistance to some of them, the first time simply to take a hover dolly of parts to a section that was on their route to the holodeck.

A few minutes later, they were passing a young Andorian female Ensign in the hallway next to the holodecks, struggling to lift and replace a heavy bulkhead panel over one of the EPS conduits by herself. As they passed by, she lost her balance and stumbled backward, the panel crashing to the floor. Corvin, the closest to her, reached out and caught her underneath her arms as she fell backwards, while pulling her slightly further back to keep the panel from crushing her feet as it fell forward. The Ensign, who introduced herself to him as Talee, thanked him profusely, her light blue cheeks turning a distinct shade of purple as he assured her it was no trouble at all. She brushed a lock of stark white hair away from her face, and batted her eyelashes at him, and upon picking up on the visual vues, Rick and Miles refused to let Corvin continue on without first getting her personal comm frequency. As they left the young woman behind, Corvin wiped his now sweaty palms on his flight suit, then began asking questions about this side project his friends were letting him in on.

"So, what's this thing you want me to help with?" Corvin asked, looking back at Talee to offer her a casual wave goodbye. "Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to help if I can, but I'm still trying to figure out how to use your sonic showers, I don't see how I could be any use with an engineering project? And again, why are we going to this... 'holodeck' place?

"You haven't told him?" Rick asked, an eyebrow raised.

"Didn't wanna spoil either of the surprises," Miles responded, eliciting laughter from Rick.

"Oh, man! This is gonna be good. Like I said, Mr. Corvin, you're in for quite a treat. In more ways than one."