One
USS Bozeman, En Route to Deep Space 9 via Bajoran Wormhole Stardate 59210.5
"Come!" Theus said harsher than he had intended at the sound of the door chime.
He had been transported aboard the Bozeman almost ten hours ago and had been told practically nothing. An enlisted crewman showed him to his quarters, and although he was allowed free movement of the ship, he wasn't allowed in any mission critical areas. Least of all the bridge. Everyone he asked had repeated the same information to him he received from Commander Williams, and no one was forthcoming with anything more. It had been frustrating in every way imaginable, so Theus was surprised and glad to see a familiar face enter his quarters.
"Serg? Is that you?" Theus asked with a wide smile.
"Ensign Sergio Contreras, reporting as ordered sir." He said with a smug smile. "I've been ordered to bring you to the bridge."
"Finally. So how desperate is the Fleet? You were barely out of the Academy the last time I saw you." Theus said and walked up to shake his hand.
The young Ensign smiled back equally as hard. "What can I say? Xeno-Culturalists are in short supply these days."
"Xeno-Culture? You went into the Diplomatic Corps?" He shook his head. "What happened to geology or metallurgy? I'd never seen a cadet with such a natural talent for soil analysis before."
Sergio gestured toward the door and they both exited. Theus was relieved that his old student had been sent to bring him to the bridge, but also that he was leading the way. It had been a while since he had set foot on a starship, and an older Miranda-class wasn't as familiar to him.
"Thank you, sir, but I didn't give it up entirely. For my final studies I took up Xeno-Archeology. Discovering lost civilizations was incredible, but it also made me realize that there are countless small and subtle aspects about living cultures that we take for granted. With how much was lost in the war, and recently, it made me want to look to the present and preserving what we have now for future generations."
They reached the turbo lift and entered.
"Bridge." Sergio called.
"I can understand that. If anyone can collect the best about a species, it's you. I'm just sad we lost another future scientist to the talkers in the Corps. You sure you wanna trade in your blue shirt for red tape?"
The lift opened before the Ensign could answer. Theus stepped out and waited for Williams to turn in his command chair and acknowledge his presence before speaking.
"Permission to enter the bridge, Captain?"
Williams paused before answering. "Granted. I see you've been brushing up on your starship decorum. I was expecting you to call me Commander."
"A certain amount of decorum is expected of all Starfleet Officers." Theus said.
"I would tend to agree with you, Commander." Williams said. "However, my time is limited and I am a very busy man, what with commanding a starship and all. So, what is it that I can do for you?"
"Sir?" Theus said, clearly confused.
"You've made several requests to speak with me since beaming aboard, have you not?"
"I have sir." Theus said. "I'm just a bit surprised at the timing. I thought this would be discussed in your ready room."
"Will this conversation be sensitive or privileged?" Williams asked.
"No sir."
Williams shifted in his command chair. "Commander Eridos, you asked to speak with me at my earliest convenience. I've taken the time to devote a few minutes to your request, and suddenly you're acting shy?"
He paused and Theus heard the slight chuckles and muffled coughs of the bridge crew as they intentionally busied themselves at their consoles.
"I'm not your commanding officer so you don't report to me. As a passenger, if you have a personal issue, you can submit it to my First Officer Lieutenant Commander zhNon." He said gesturing to a tall and muscular Andorian zhen.
The entire bridge was silent save for the audible beeps and humming from the control consoles and computer systems. Theus was having second thought about his request, but decided to press his luck.
"It's not a personal matter sir, it's an official request to join your crew. If only temporarily."
"You can't be serious?" zhNon said. She sounded more taken aback than anything. "Commander, our trip will only take a few days. I suggest you, what is that human expression? 'Relax and enjoy the time.'"
"'Ride', Commander. And I'm quite serious. I'm one of Starfleet's most distinguished and decorated science officers. My Premier Distinctions and disciplines include Exo, Quantum, and Molecular Chemistry. Probability and Statistical Mechanics, Astro and Quantum Physics, Fractal Calculus, and Advance Warp and Slip Stream Theory. Not to mention Exo-Biology or my level eight medical trauma training. I feel that it's a gross waste of my talent and resources that are available to the Bozeman. I want to be useful instead of sitting in my quarters all day."
zhNon strode purposefully to stand directly in front of him. "Do you relish the opportunity to reveal your résumé to as many people as possible, in the most public way you are capable as it seems you do?" She asked.
Theus stood his ground. He and zhNon could not have look more dissimilar. While he stood just shy of one-hundred eighty-three centimeters tall with chestnut skin, almond shaped eyes, short faded hair, and a full mouth, zhNon was almost fifteen centimeters taller. She stood above him, with skin a light blue like an Earth desert sky and long disheveled white hair reminiscent of a Vulcan monk. Her eyes were an impossible deep blue that seemed to see parts of him he didn't know existed. With her frame comparable to his own in toned muscle and a lean long torso, she was strikingly beautiful. With cheeks bones not even the most skilled artisan could sculpt and a wide mouth with perfectly symmetrical lips.
"I didn't hear you refute my assessment." Theus said back just as strong.
"Because you're correct." Williams said interrupting them.
"Captain?" zhNon said.
Before she could continue Williams held up his hand and turned to his Operations Officer, "Lieutenant Carver, please enter Commander Eridos as an active member of the crew into the ships computer. Note time and date."
"Yes sir." She said quickly.
Williams then turned to his Tactical Officer. "Lieutenant Goritan, ensure the Commander has all the security credentials he will need to perform his duties as a senior Science Officer. Level 2 clearance, bridge officer status. Enable."
"Right away sir." The lanky Denobulan said as his fingers danced across his console.
Theus wasn't sure what to say. While he was pleased that his request was approved, he wasn't expecting it to go this smoothly. It took him a moment to realize he was being spoken to when he again heard someone shout.
"Commander!"
Theus looked to zhNon. "Y-Yes sir? M-Ma'am. Yes ma'am?"
zhNon let out a sigh. "We're approaching the Bajoran wormhole, take your station."
Theus nodded and relieved a junior officer from the science station. As he logged in, he noticed Sergio in the corner of his eye at the master systems display near the rear of the bridge smiling. He refreshed the logs from the passive scans that were being performed at regular intervals by the ships main sensor array, and began to identify and classify new items that were coming into range.
A blip on the particle scanner got his attention. Theus reviewed the log notation, and cross referenced it in the computer library with known constants for this region of space. With the multitude of ships that entered the Gamma Quadrant through the worm, there was a more than reliable baseline for comparison.
"Ops, I'm sending you coordinates for review. Can you rescan and verify?" Theus said to Carver.
"That didn't take long." She said to herself.
"'Aye sir' will more than suffice Lieutenant!" zhNon snapped and gave her a disapproving stare.
"Yes ma'am." She said quickly.
Theus looked to zhNon who barely made eye contact. It reassured him to know that he was working with a professional, no matter how short the time.
"Confirmed." Carver said sounding surprised.
"What have you got?" zhNon asked.
Carver looked to Theus and nodded for him to report.
"Ma'am, I picked up highly elevated levels of neutrinos on my passive scans at grid two-two-seven, mark four-three-eight that I had Ops confirm."
"We're close to the wormhole, is there something unusual about that?" Williams asked.
"It wouldn't be sir, except we aren't close enough yet. Even if they did extend this far out, the concentration shouldn't be that high or localized."
"Do we know the source?" zhNon asked.
"Not at this time." Carver said.
"Speculations?" Williams asked.
Theus paused only for fraction of a second. "It could be a ship. All vessels that travel through the wormhole are blanketed in them."
"Tactical!" zhNon shouted.
"I've been scanning the area for a radius of fifty-thousand kilometers since Commander Eridos gave the grid coordinates and that area. I haven't detected anything." Goritan said.
"Lieutenant Mok, do you have anything on navigational sensors?" Williams asked.
The flight controller at the helm quickly ran her fingers over her console. "Negative sir." She said with a light Korean accent. "This is also the second scan I've run."
zhNon looked to her captain and he nodded to her. "All stop." She said.
"Belay that order." Theus said.
Everyone on the bridge fell hush.
"You had better have a damned good reason." zhNon said in a low growl. Her antennae became rigid and erect from anger as her face flushed a dark cerulean.
Theus proceeded un-phased. "Commander, if there is a cloaked ship out there, then the last thing we want to do is stop."
"So instead you recommend we continue and risk them firing on us while within a warp field? A few well aimed torpedoes and they can destroy us with their first volley." zhNon shot back.
"If we stop, they'll know we've detected something, not necessarily them. They can slow to a crawl and adjust their speed perfectly to fire on us when we're at our most vulnerable."
zhNon turned to the Captain. "Sir, I recommend we drop out of warp. At least we would have open space to maneuver and fight. It gives us the best defensive posture we can muster, and it prevents our engines from being an easy target."
"I have an alternative, sir." Theus said. "Continue on course. We alter our heading slightly to take us around the wormhole and to the adjacent system. It would require us to keep our shields down, but we would have a better chance of identifying a target, thus giving us a solid weapons lock."
"How?" Goritan asked. "Running a tachyon sweep is inefficient in this large an area, and a metaphasic scan would be useless on more advanced cloaks. A tachyon burst might reveal something, but the ship would have to be within range or right on top of us. All of those options reveal us to the ship, and are the only legitimate way to identify a target save for crashing into them."
"We skim the edge of the wormhole." The helmsman said.
"What do you mean Lieutenant?" zhNon asked.
Mok looked to Theus and said, "If I'm understanding your plan sir, you want me to skim the edge of the event horizon of the wormhole correct?"
"That's exactly what I want you to do." Theus said. "If I were a cloaked ship, I would wait until just as we are entering the wormhole to attack. By skimming the edge, we can excite some of neutrinos and get them to saturate the area. They won't detect anything directly, but a ship would have to pass through the field. And we can detect the distortion in the dispersal patterns of the particles."
"The ship would essentially be a brush dragged through a large blot of paint on a canvas." Mok said.
"That's brilliant." Goritan beamed. "Captain, I concur with the Commander's tactical solution. It would give me the best opportunity of acquiring a target and eliminating the enemy contact first should it turn out to be one."
"I concur." zhNon said and nodded to Theus.
"Very well." Williams said. "Helm, make your course, four-nine-three, mark zero-one-nine, warp five.
"Aye sir." Came Mok's reply.
zhNon said, "Tactical, load a full spread of quantum torpedoes in fore and aft tubes and be ready to raise shields at a moment's notice. We may only get one shot at this." She looked over to Theus. "You seem to be on a roll. Why don't you set the condition, Commander?"
Theus was about to question why he was being ordered to do so, but thought better of it. They were in a potentially hostile situation.
"Ops put me ship wide." Theus said. When she nodded he began. "This is the bridge, all hands, battle stations." The lights to the bridge immediately dimmed and bathed the deck in a deep red light as a thrumming klaxon wailed. "Department heads, set decks for possible hull breach. Secure emergency bulk heads and critical systems."
zhNon nodded and began to turn from him, but Theus was not finished.
"Bridge to Engineering."
"Bridge this is Chief Bloss, I don't recognize your voice so you must be the new guy. Tell me, did you break something up there or did you forget how to raise shield entirely?"
Theus looked to zhNon who actually cracked a smile before saying, "Senior Master Chief Warrant Officer Bloss, enlisted officer, and very Tellarite."
Theus chuckled in comprehension. "Chief this is Lieutenant Commander Eridos, science division. I need you to increase structural integrity field strength by two-hundred thirty-three until we raise shields."
"Oh sure, would you also like me to get the Klingons to become pacifists while I'm at it? Seeing as how I'm good at doing the impossible."
"I'm sending you several new formulas now, integrate them into the existing protocols the shield generators use for hull polarization."
"And where exactly am I supposed to get the power for this increase?" He asked indignantly.
"As you mentioned Chief, I forgot how to raise shields."
The Chief huffed loudly over the intercom. "Look sir, I'm not sure who taught you engineering, but this plan of yours and the fancy formulas a-are….they're..." Bloss drifted. "Where did you learned this? Oh we have to talk when this is all ov-"
Theus closed the channel and turned to zhNon. "We're ready."
"Captain." zhNon said. She took her seat next to his and leaned over to whisper, "I've never seen a SIF configuration like that. He just gave us the equivalent of thirty-five percent shields without one generator being active. I don't think a ship would be able to detect it if they weren't looking."
Williams set his jaw as his brow tensed. "Nor would they be since no Starfleet vessel utilizes only hull polarization. So, it begins." He sat up straight and said aloud to the helm, "Engage."