...no other traces have been found. We are unable to form
any firm conclusions on the disappearance of the USS
Mary Sue and are moving on to the last known location of
the USS Gryphon."
Excerpt from Captain's log, USS Adventure, Captain
Frank Peabody commanding. Stardate 1635.0
"Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit." Shimona was saying like an
incantation by the time Admiral Dewey's announcement
was over. "Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit." The words were
barely audible, and Larssen thought she was unaware she
was speaking aloud. "Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit."
"What is going on?" Brand asked plaintively. "First they
order general quarters, then nothing happens for twenty
hours, then they declare martial law and an evacuation?
What in the galaxy is *going on*?"
He addressed his question to Larssen, and as if on cue
everyone in the room turned to her, the only one still
seated at the table after all the others had leapt to their
feet at the allcall hail from Admiral Dewey, poker game
forgotten. She looked at their puzzled faces and wanted to
point out that she was in no real sense a responsible
party, but a random high ranker in a group of lower-end
crew.
"I'm sure we'll find out as soon as we need to know, Mr
Brand." she said instead. "We've notified command of our
whereabouts and our evacuation orders will come through
when necessary."
"Is this normal?" Rand asked. "You were in an evacuation,
Cory. Was this how it went then?"
"No." Larssen said. "But evacuating a Starbase is not in
any way a 'normal' procedure. I don't think there's any
sort of blueprint experience we can compare this against."
"What happened?" Lim asked. "On that other Starbase,
what happened?"
Larssen paused. Starbase 4, twenty two years old, a
yeoman. A ship coming in from the deep beyond, not
answering hails, moving at impulse power only but
straight for the Starbase. Firing on the shuttles they
sent out to tractor her and bring her down safely. Her in
the lab, halfway through an analysis series, her hand
reaching out to flip the viewer forward at the moment the
allcall came. She could see that moment as clearly as if
she were still there, the way her hand had looked, pale
against the equipment, fingers curled to press down on the
buttons, a tear in the cuff of her uniform.
"Was it bad?" Lim asked quietly. "Did they get everyone
off?"
The shuttle-hanger and people screaming. Screaming at
her, holding on to her, clutching at her as if just touching
a Starfleet officer was enough to ensure their safety.
Herself, having to wade through them as if they were an
natural obstacle, a muddy ditch or a snowdrift. A child
clinging round her neck, wailing. People soiling
themselves with fear while she tried to make them
understand the launching procedures, explaining every
step slowly and clearly and knowing there was no time, no
time, no time. The transporter beam taking her mid-
sentence as the USS Denham got there and started
beaming people out as fast as they could.
And on the Denham, the whole ship listening on allcall as
an away team, beamed onto the rogue ship, tried to work
out how to override an automatic pilot and defensive fire
patterns laid in by god knew who for god knew what
reason. 'Almost there, sir, almost-'
The sound of the static when they failed and ship met
station at one tenth light.
She still dreamed about that sound sometimes, or
thought she heard it at the edge of her hearing as she
dropped to sleep. Every time it brought a sharp pain
in her chest, not the thump of shock or the burn of
remembered embarrassment but a fierce piercing pain
like an arrow finding a gap between her ribs and
striking straight into her heart.
"Almost everyone." Larssen said evenly. "Everybody who
didn't panic."
"They can't bundle us off like a bunch of civilians!" Lim
said. "We could be out *there*, doing something!
*Helping*!"
"Getting in the way." Larssen said calmly. "They've
spent twenty hours organising their schedules in
conjunction with the ships in dock and insystem. If
they had felt the urgent need for the aid of another
fifteen or so assorted yeomen, they would have told
us. As they haven't, we deduce from this that they
would like us to remain here until called." She looked
at her cards, and then at the stack of chips in front
of her. "See and raise, Shimmy."
Larssen looked steadfastly at the other woman until
Shimona took a deep breath and walked back to her seat.
"You're bluffing."
"It's cost you find out."
"See you."
"You're going to keep *playing*?" Brand yelped. "While
martial law is being declared? You're going to keep
*playing*?"
"Of course I am." Larssen said. "I'm winning. You, on the
other hand, might want to take the opportunity to quit. I
foresee winning your entire extra calorie allowance in a
little less than another hour."
That got him back to the table to scowl at his cards, and
after a moment the others followed. The onlookers drifted
back as well, until you couldn't have told that the game
had been interrupted.
~Except,~ Larssen thought, ~for the new current in
the air of anxiety well out of proportion for the small
stakes of the game.~ Anxiety rippling through the air and
stinging the skin, and with it the stale smell of fear.
She reached out and pushed her entire stack of chips into
the centre of the table. "See and raise." she said.
That got their attention.
When the summons came through for her, and her only, to
report to Command, she hated to leave them. "Shimmy,"
she said softly on her way to the door, "keep their chins
up."
"I hear you," Shimona muttered, barely moving her lips.
Then she looked across the poker table at John Lim,
smiled sweetly, and the last thing Larssen heard as the
doors hissed shut behind her was Shimona proposing they
switch over to *strip* poker.
She resisted the urge to open the door again and say
'Chins, Shim, *chins*.'
Entertaining glum thoughts about Shimona, a room full of
high-spirited youngsters barely out of their teens, strip
poker and Shimona's remarkable abilities at hand-to-hand
combat, she took the turbolift to Command, announced
herself to the officer nearest the door and out of habit
found a wall to lean against. When Admiral Dewey
detached himself from the group of officers he was
consulting and beckoned her to join him she straightened
up, straightened her uniform, and tried not to look at the
evacuation plans on her way across the room.
She failed, but all she could make out was a brief glimpse
of the Starbase blue-prints in holoprojection, marked up
with arrows and dotted lines and all the other signs of
severe, but currently contained, emergency. All were
familiar to her from the evacuation of Starbase 4, her last
posting prior to the Enterprise.
Dewey waited at the door of a smaller office until she
joined him, then led the way inside and pointed at a chair.
"Sit down, sit down, Lieutenant."
She sat. Her first real live admiral and she wasn't about to
disobey him.
"Drink?" he asked her.
"No, sir." she said automatically before she realised it was
a specific, rather than a general, question. "Uh, orange
juice or something soft?"
He poured her a ginger ale, and himself something
stronger.
"Lieutenant, what I'm about to tell you cannot go outside
this office. it certainly cannot."
"No, sir."
"There is a very grave threat to the security of this
station, very grave, very grave indeed, and our
scientists estimate its arrival in a little under seventy
hours. When our deadline arrives, all ships that are or
will be present will pull back to a point of safety
regardless of the status of the evacuation at that time."
He paused. "We estimate that at that time the
evacuation will not be complete, not quite. Even at our
best estimates, nearly five hundred people will
unfortunately still be on this Starbase at that point.
Five hundred of my officers have volunteered to be
those people." He paused again, and gave a wry smile.
"Actually, over two thousand of them did. I chose the
ones without families, as much as I could, well, as much
as I could."
He didn't seem to be about to go on, so Larssen said,
"Yes, sir." He was going to tell her that the fifteen
examination candidates hadn't been factored in, were
unaccounted for on the plan, and ask her to ask them to
also volunteer to stay behind. So he didn't have to chose
more people with families from his list of two thousand.
Dewey's next words seemed to confirm her fears. "I
admit, Lieutenant, the presence of examination
candidates without ships or duty stations slipped all our
minds, careless as that might seem, indeed. It was only
half and hour ago that someone brought your message to
my attention."
"Yes, sir."
"You've been in an evac before, haven't you?" He had a
PADD on his desk, and glanced at it. Her record, Larssen
guessed.
"Yes sir, Starbase 4."
"Promoted. Commended. You got more than a hundred
panicking civilians onto shuttles and into escape pods
despite it not being your duty and despite not having either
orders or authority to do to, no, not a single order."
"Sir, I was acting under General Orders, Directive 4.
Safeguarding the lives of civilians."
"I know what Directive 4 says, Lieutenant."
"Yes, sir."
"You interpreted it with considerable latitude." He
rattled the ice in his glass. "Considerable latitude
indeed."
"Sir, the General Orders are phrased in a deliberately
broad manner to permit officers to act to ensure that
the spirit of the order is carried out."
"You mean, General Orders are phrased in such a broad
manner as to allow you to interpret them to mean just
about anything. I understand you interpreted the
Emergency Powers Act, Starfleet section, subsection 119
yesterday to enable you to take command of the other
examination candidates. Do you think that standing
orders are there for you to find a way to do whatever you
want, Lieutenant?"
His gaze nailed her to her chair. "No, sir." she said. "I
believe that standing orders are there to provide me with
guidance when confronted with a situation outside my
personal experience, sir."
She had passed some kind of test. He nodded, looked
down at the PADD again, took a drink. "Starfleet
agreed. Field promotion to lieutenant j-g, hardly
unheard of but hardly common, either - not the best
performance on your examinations at your promotion to
yeoman, Ms Larssen. You must have been relieved,
relieved, relieved indeed to take that next step."
"Yes, sir." Larssen said.
"I have a job for you and your examination candidates,
Larssen." He picked up the PADD and tossed it to her,
and as she caught it she saw that it wasn't her record
after all. The rotating symbol of the Judge Advocate's
Office showed in the display, advising any viewer that
the PADD constituted a legal document. "There's a ship
here that isn't co-operating with the evacuation effort,
not in the slightest. As far as we know, they aren't
even aware of it. The communications relay is off-line,
the ship is dry-docked and being overhauled, the
captain and the first officer have left the station leaving
the chief engineer as officer of record. We sent
someone down to bang on the lock, but they got no
answer, nothing at all. Based on her class, if she can
be fitted to carry passengers and got underway in the
time needed, she can carry at least four hundred
people. Maybe more. But I don't have anyone to spare
to set her up. If she can't be put in action, taking the
time to try could mean another hundred, two hundred,
left here." Dewey finished his drink. "That's your
job, Larssen. If it can't be done, report back, and
we'll let you know where your evac berths are. You
have sixty five hours, to be on the safe side. We'll be
sending you civilian evacuees if you can take them - we
need all our Starfleet personnel working up to the wire,
right up to the wire. You're holding the papers that
impound the ship and place you as officer of record.
Good luck."
"Yes, sir, thank you, sir." Larssen said levelly, mouth
on autopilot as her mind raced. "What ship is she,
sir?"
Dewey stared at her, and then blinked. "Didn't I say?
She's the CIV Lady Grace. You'll find her at berth 403"
Larssen felt her heart sink a little. The Lady Grace, and
the chief engineer in command. Chief Madison. And she
had to walk in and take his ship away from him.
"Yes, sir. If that's all, sir?"
He waved her towards the door. "Go, go on. Do your
best. It might not be possible. But good luck."
Larssen made her escape, PADD clutched in her hand.
She asked the nearest officer for a comm., and getting it,
paged John Lim.
When he answered, she could hear whoops of laughter in
the background.
"Mr Lim, tell the others to get their clothes on and get
down to the dry-dock, berth 403. On the double."
"Yes'm." he said, and broke the connection. Larssen took
a breath, pushed a strand of hair back behind her ear, and
ran.