"Callista, hurry up!" Rin urged. "That Bird of Prey is making me uneasy."
"It's empty," she responded though a borrowed communicator. "Like you said, all the Klingons that were onboard are currently sitting in your brig."
"Even so," she continued, "maybe we missed one. Maybe it has an auto-targeting system in its computers. Who knows?"
"The Klingons. Honestly, you are such a worry-wollok," Callista mumbled and she continued taking care of little things around the ship.
"Callista, I'm serious," Rin repeated and she looked at the Ebon Hawk through the window. "I was stuck with the Klingons for too long a time, and I know how they operate." Rin narrowed her eyes when Callista didn't respond so she rounded on the ship's engineer. "Scotty, prove me right, please, and do a scan on the Bird of Prey."
Scotty worked silently at the computer for a moment, and a puzzled expression appeared on his face. "I canna' get a lock on the Klingon ship," he admitted finally and he looked back at Rin. "You should get 'er offa' the Hawk now, just to be safe."
"Thank you, Scotty," She hovered over the communicator and demanded, "Did you hear that, Callista?"
"Come on, Rin, why don't you trust me?"
"Because I don't trust them!" Accidentally, they had flipped over into the language they had been born speaking, so every word spoken went over all the heads in the room. Callista was silent now. She knew there was no fighting her sister. "Forget it," Rin mumbled to herself. "Scotty, beam her up now. I don't care what she's doing down there."
"It'll take me a moment to lock onto her signature before I can-"
Outside, there was a blast and then an explosion from contact. "Scotty!" Rin shouted as the Klingon ship recharged.
"I'm workin' as fast as I can, Missy!" he shouted back in a frustrating tone and a few people in the room were knocked off their feet as the Enterprise fired some of her own proton torpedoes at the Bird of Prey. It went spinning off into deep space and exploded.
Moments later, and after much confusion, Callista was beamed aboard, but in a very different condition compared to how she was before. She was lying on her side on the transporter pad and she had silver cuts all over, and that was only on the outside.
Revan and Rin panicked at the sight and rushed over. She was unconscious from the blast. Rin picked her up gingerly and in what seemed to be no time flat she was in sick-bay watching McCoy look her sister over.
He was silent for a moment and looked up. "Everyone out."
Rin looked flabbergasted. "What?"
McCoy sent her a look and repeated a little more sternly, "Everyone out."
Rin stared hotly at McCoy, but before she could say anything, Revan pulled her from the room and closed the door behind them.
"I should be in there with her!" Rin told herself and Revan shook her head as she rolled her eyes.
"I've heard good things about your Leonard McCoy," she commented. "If he's kicking us out, I'm sure it's for a good reason." Rin narrowed her eyes but before she could say a word, Revan suggested, "If you don't have anything to do, could you please show us where we'll be staying during our stay aboard the Enterprise?"
Rin took a breath in attempts to help soothe her frustration and she muttered, "Come with me."
--
"Carth," she started, "you, Jolee, Zaalbar, and HK-47 can take this room."
He poked his head briefly inside the room and nodded. "It'll fit us," he replied plainly and they entered the room.
The remainder of the group walked down the hallway a bit and eventually stopped again. "Revan," she addressed, "you, Mission, Juhani, and T3 can have this one."
"But where will Callista sleep?" Revan asked curiously.
Rin thought a moment and offered, "Callista can have my room."
"But where will you sleep?"
"There are more empty quarters on this ship, Revan," she reassured her. "Don't worry about me."
Revan looked unconvinced but she held her tongue. She smiled at last and entered the room.
Rin walked away fuming. She figured if she was of no use in one of her strongest professions in sick-bay, she would assist Mr. Scott as an engineer to repair the engines.
On her way there, she practically ran into Kirk's first officer, and the instant she laid eyes on him, her rage vanished. Before he could say anything, she asked, "Who, or what, inside the Bird of Prey fired on the Ebon Hawk? Were you able to gather readings before it exploded?"
"Indeed," he responded plainly. "Moments before the Ebon Hawk was fired upon, a message was reported being sent from inside the brig, undoubtedly to the Klingon ship."
She nodded as she computed the information. "But where did the message go? To whom, I mean. Man or machine?"
He thought a moment and responded, "When the Enterprise fired upon the Klingon vessel, she hit her in a vital location, thus crippling their life-support systems. It appears that for one reason or another, the Klingons continued on and did not notice that their system had failed them. It would be impossible for any Klingon to remain alive that long under those conditions. However, a computer would not require said systems, but a computer that could man a starship on its own in such a manner is quite unheard of, and beyond the Klingons technologically."
Rin shook her head as an old memory came to mind. "But, the M5… the M5 was completely capable of manning the Enterprise on its own."
"Agreed, but recall it was not entirely… logical," the pointy-eared Vulcan reminded her. "As a computer, even if the Klingons had managed to steal the technology and implement it into their ship, it would not have acted the way it did."
"Fine then," she accepted but another thought troubled her. "What if it wasn't an advanced computer? Perhaps it was an android or either an astro-droid or protocol-droid that was manning the ship? A droid wound not need life-support, and it would be able to receive any messages sent wirelessly." The possibility was definitely there for both these thoughts. They knew if a droid was responsible for damaging the Ebon Hawk, it would only require a sweep of the Klingon debris and a report to Star Fleet, but if a computer had been the cause of all the damage… it was unlikely they had destroyed the prototype, and then all of the Federation was in danger.
"The Captain did have all living organisms beamed off the ship, did he not? If so, there were very few crewmembers."
"Granted, there were only twenty four Klingons onboard," Spock reported. "But if a non-organic being or beings were running the ship, there would be no need for a massive crew."
"Hm…" She debated between either interrogating the Klingons in her own subtle ways or convincing the Captain of the need to do a thorough scan of the space junk floating just outside.
After some silence, Spock spoke. "I will speak to the Captain and will conduct a search of the Klingon ship in attempts to find anything of importance to the pending investigation."
"Very well, she agreed. "I will head to the brig and interrogate the Klingons about the Bird of Prey. If you need me, I'll be there."
--
"Ensign, have they spoken at all?"
"No, Lieutenant," the young red-shirted man answered quickly. "Not a word."
Rin smiled suddenly as a thought crossed her mind and she whispered to him, "Excellent, because here's what we're going to do…"