Captain Solok was seated with his legs crossed, adopting a classic Vulcan meditation pose. His palms were placed on his knees, his back was straight, and his diaphragm was properly engaged to ensure efficient full-body breathing. His form was free of any tension - not even his angled brow appeared troubled.

If Solok hadn't been so preoccupied, he might have even indulged himself with a feeling of pride at the mastery he had over his outward expression - it certainly wasn't giving away any hint of his inner frustrations. Inside his organized mind, he toiled over the myriad of facts and clues he and his Chief of Security had gathered thus far about a very mysterious phenomenon occurring on the T'Kumbra.

Three weeks ago, after they had departed from Deep Space Nine, strange events began to unfold. None of these events were particularly concerning, each of them individually being quite trivial; unexplainable taps and shuffling emanating from air flow conduits, meticulously cataloged medical supplies going missing, and strange shadows and brief glimpses of something caught on security feed in the cargo bay. Several times now, in the hours when most crew members were sleeping or not on any scheduled meal break, the security feed in the mess hall had gone offline, only to spontaneously resume normal functioning a few minutes later. This momentary security lapse was concerning but not overly alarming, especially considering that the motion-activated lights in the room hadn't been set off. However, after an investigation of the area, it was found the replicator had been used when the cameras were not operational. The picture of what, or rather who, they were dealing with became much more apparent once the replicator log was checked. Within those brief moments of camera malfunction, items such as pizza, peanut butter, cereal, toast, and other nutritionally bankrupt foods had been ordered and replicated.

It was Solok's strong suspicion that he had a human stowaway aboard his ship.

His brow gave an almost imperceptible twitch as he pondered this. A stowaway of any species would have been irksome. However, as the proverbial wounds from his recent interactions with Benjamin Sisko were still fresh, Solok was even more displeased at the possibility of having a human aboard his vessel.

He knew this was illogical, but resisting the temptation to outsmart and outmaneuver a human (once again) was impossible. The "game of cat-and-mouse," as humans said, had begun, and Solok found this game of strategy to be a welcome distraction from his other problems.

However, his other problems - or rather problem - seemed so impossible to solve, it bordered on illogical to meditate on them. The T'Kumbra, just ten days into its journey to rendezvous with the rest of the fleet, had become entangled with some sort of spatial anomaly, one that had transported them several millions of lightyears from their previous location. His navigation team wasn't sure they were even in the same quadrant anymore. They might not even be in the same galaxy, as far as any of them could tell. Based on what they knew at the moment, which was practically nothing, it was illogical to speculate.

This didn't keep him and his crew members from worry and despair. While indulging in such emotions was fruitless, it didn't make the distasteful feelings any easier to crush. A total of eleven days had passed since their predicament began, and it was becoming increasingly apparent that none of them would be able to return to their lives, see their loved ones, or continue to defend all they held dear against the Dominion.

Fear threatened to grip him, but he trampled it down again, this time with the thought of catching his stowaway. When he had begun referring to this nameless and faceless entity as "his," he wasn't sure - but as the T'Kumbra was his ship, he found no reason to dwell on it.

Despite their existence having been discovered over fifteen days ago, his stowaway had managed to evade further detection and capture. Solok had placed his Chief of Security in charge of the investigation, as was logical, but so far, he and his team had proven unsuccessful. The uninvited guest was apparently very skilled at vandalizing the T'Kumbra's security measures because, in addition to tampering with the cameras, they had also disabled the ship's internal sensors' ability to detect human life signs - and only human life signs.

Solok found this odd - it would have been much more efficient to simply disable internal sensors entirely. Choosing to be so specific meant that the ship's security wasn't completely compromised and made vulnerable; the pains taken to minimize the damage felt almost...considerate.

In any case, the stowaway seemed to have quickly mastered the routines and cycles of the ship and her crew, which Solok conceded with some bitterness, probably wasn't difficult to achieve. Vulcans were notoriously structured, punctual, and hardly ever deviated from their schedules, making it easy for the little criminal to pick the most opportune times to make a quick dart down a hallway or snatch some supplies without detection.

But Solok was prepared to remedy this by getting inside this human's mind - metaphorically, of course. To borrow another human phrase, he was going to "fight fire with fire" and track down his trespasser by embracing unpredictability and disorder. He'd take his nightly stroll around the ship at continuously changing times and intervals, he'd deliberately …

Wait.

His thoughts were interrupted by a faint unfamiliar smell ghosting past his face. It certainly wasn't unpleasant, he thought, but it was utterly foreign. Solok's eyes cracked open, now fully alert to his surroundings, and he took a few short sniffs for analysis, standing up and drawing near the perceived source - the air vent on the far side of his quarters. Solok instinctively knew the scent was feminine, though he chastised himself for such an unfounded conclusion. But instincts, he reasoned, were hardly built on logic. Beyond its feminine quality, however, he was at a loss as to how else to describe the scent. Unfortunately, whatever it was had vanished just as quickly as it had wafted in.

A tiny movement near the vent caught his attention as the captain turned to resume his meditation. He leaned forward and carefully grasped the lightly flapping object with his fingers. As he brought it closer to a nearby lamp for inspection, he noted a fiery copper shine to it - almost as if it had a metallic filament running through the middle of its nearly fourteen-inch length.

A human hair. Most likely a woman's, Solok reasoned.

Though he was alarmed that his stowaway had been inside his quarters, the sensation battled with excitement and determination. Mentally, he pivoted and devised a new strategy - he may not need to hunt her down across the vastness of his ship. Perhaps he'd simply wait for her to come to him.

In the privacy of his room, Solok didn't attempt to hold back the tiny victorious smirk curling at the corner of his mouth.