Story:Bait and Switch/The Cardassian and the Trill

Davos moves ahead to the sickbay door then grunts and falls backwards, a knife sticking out from under his left collarbone. He tries to talk but only bubbles of blood come out of his mouth. A female greenskin barely wearing anything steps calmly out of the room and reaches out to him with a second knife.

I aim at her ear and fire, but the bright orange beam lances out at her and hisses into nonexistence against her shield. The Orion spins and throws her second knife. I jerk sideways and it goes flying past. There’s a muffled thrum from somewhere above me as the phaser cannon fires, then she’s upon me, having pulled two more knives from somewhere.

I swing the butt of my phaser rifle up at her chin and hear the Orion yell, “OW!” in a baritone voice. The Orion grabs me and starts shaking me, saying to me, “Eleya. Wake up!”

I open my eyes. No greenskin, just Gaarra, rubbing his jaw with his right hand.

Wait, why is he in my bed? Naked?

Oh, right.

Damn.

I sit up and look away from him, out the viewport on the ceiling. My quarters are situated against the sloping roof of the saucer on the edge of Deck 8, and it’s a spectacular view. Stars, gas pockets, and blazing dust particles stream past as the Bajor continues warping toward the rendezvous. I feel Gaarra sit up beside me, and he touches my shoulder gently. “What were you dreaming about?” I turn my head and nod at a japoro wood plaque on the wall inscribed in Ashallan ideograms. “‘By order of the Minister of Defense of the Republic of Bajor…’ Your Silver Cross?”

I sniff and my mouth quirks. “The, uh, circumstances that led to me getting it, yeah. You’ve read my file?”

“You went to help the CMO and got knifed by an Orion, yes, I remember. How long have you had nightmares about it?”

I shiver. “At least once a month ever since the night of.”

“Well, you woke me up when you started talking in your sleep and tossing and turning. Then you punched me.”

I wince. “Sorry.”

He leans in and kisses my cheek, his beard tickling my skin. “No harm done.”

I know I should be pushing him away—Prophets, we shouldn’t have slept together in the first place—but I’m still jittery from The Nightmare. I lean against him and we lie back down, my head resting on his chest and his arm around me. We stare up at the viewport for what feels like an hour.

“I’ve always found it a little frightening, myself,” Gaarra suddenly remarks.

“Found what frightening?” I ask, turning my head towards him. He jerks his head in the direction of the viewport. “What, warp?”

He chuckles. “I worked on a nav deflector, remember? That fails, any of those tiny little particles would obliterate the whole ship if it hit the warp field just right to pass through it.”

I snort. “It’s not going to fail.”

“I know that up here. It’s down here that’s the problem.”

“Pfft.” I snuggle closer to him and he strokes my hair, then leans his head over and kisses the top of mine. I shimmy further up in the bed and return the kiss to his mouth, then wriggle up on top of him.

The ship’s computer chirps. “The time is ten-hundred hours.” It chirps again. “The time is ten-hundred hours and ten seconds.”

I raise my head for a moment and say, “Computer, shut up.” Gaarra puts a hand on the back of my head and brings it back down to him.

We make love slowly, gently, easing away my jitters and worry. Afterwards we just snuggle together for a few minutes.

Finally I push the covers off, swing my legs out, and walk to the bathroom. I shower, towel off, and open the door. Gaarra’s standing by the door. “Mind if I—”

“No, go ahead.” He enters the bathroom and slides the door shut. I hear the water running as I go to my dresser and dig out a clean set of underwear and a uniform. I dress and step over to the replicator. “Two cappuccinos, two orders egg hasperat, extra spicy.” As the food trays and mugs materialize in the replicator I reach into one of the cabinets and scoop out one of the jumja sticks I bought on DS9. I grab the meal trays and take them over to the table and begin munching one of the hasperat rolls, savoring the bite of the spices.

About three minutes later I’m sipping my cappuccino when Gaarra steps back out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. He begins picking his uniform up off the floor where it landed last night and dresses. “Is that hasperat?”

“Egg, with extra spices. Help yourself—I repped enough for both of us.”

He sits down and tries a sip of the cappuccino. He looks surprised but not disgusted. “What is that?”

“Cappuccino. Friend of mine at the Academy introduced me. Gaarra?”

“Mm?”

“We … shouldn’t keep doing this. Sleeping together, I mean.”

He takes a bite of hasperat and chews. “I know, you’re my superior officer and we could both be written up for fraternization.”

“I’m not just talking about the letter of the regs. I have to be able to depend on my crew, and me, doing their duty to the Federation first. And, to be honest, I’m going to have to separate two of my subordinates today for doing exactly what we just spent the night doing so I’m feeling more than a little hypocritical.”

“The Klingon and human from Ten Forward?” I grunt in confirmation. “Yeah, I can see how that would be a problem.” He finishes off his hasperat and washes it down with a gulp of cappuccino. “You’re my captain, and I’ll abide by whatever decision you make. It’s just…”

“What?”

“I really like you, El.”

I smile and touch his hand, so much bigger than mine. No words are needed. I finish my breakfast and we walk to the door together. I give him one last kiss on the lips and head for the bridge, sucking on the jumja stick. I come to the bridge. We’re still more than a day away from the rendezvous so there’s really not much to do besides the daily paperwork, but Tess still glares at me for arriving on duty over an hour late. I hope she assumes I spent the night in the holodeck and page K’lak and McMillan to the ready room.

They arrive about ten minutes later and I wave them into the chairs across the desk while I finish the last of my paperwork. I finally thumbprint the last PADD and drop it in my outbox. Without preamble, I say, “How long have the two of you been dating?” K’lak looks a little taken aback and McMillan blushes and looks away. “One of you start talking.”

McMillan speaks up first. “Um, two months, off-and-on. I take it you saw us in Ten Forward last night?”

I nod. “And you know that a superior officer isn’t allowed to date their direct underling, right? You know the reason why?”

“I do know the theoretical intent behind Starfleet Regulation 1138-Gamma, yes,” K’lak replies. “It is to prevent relationships that compromise the running of the organization.”

“So you see the problem. You’ve got two options. Door number one, you break up now and stay that way. Door number two, I move McMillan to a different supervisor and you find yourself a new spotter.” That feeling of being a hypocrite is poking at me but I clamp down on it.

“May I suggest an alternative, Captain?” K’lak asks. I raise an eyebrow and gesture for him to explain. “Ma’am, I am a sniper. I am, in fact, the only fully MACO-qualified sniper on the ship. I have invested a great deal of time and effort into training Kate as my spotter, and I do not believe you fully understand the requirements of the job. She does not just locate targets, she also guards me against attack. Trust between sniper and spotter is very important, and a romantic relationship only strengthens her resolve to guard me. It does not compromise the running of the ship, but in fact improves it.”

I open my mouth to reply but pause. It’s a good argument. In fact, I’m wondering if he rehearsed it, expecting I’d eventually find out. “All right, what’s your alternative?”

McMillan answers, “Um, K’lak and were talking about going exclusive. No more off-and-on. Stable relationship.”

I just sit there digesting for a moment. “All right. I’ll let it slide. But you’re both on report for a week and I want you to clear it with Lieutenant Korekh, is that clear?” Something about her face compels me to say, “This was Dul’krah’s idea, wasn’t it?”

“Well, in fairness to him, Skipper, I’m not certain he really grokked what the issue was. I hear Pe’khdar mores are … pretty wildly different from the rest of us.”

“True enough.” Pe’khdar don’t marry, and their romantic relationships usually only last long enough to produce kids, who are then the responsibility of the mother’s whole clan instead of the parents. They actually expect relationships to fade on their own, and the concept of a bad breakup is … practically unheard of. I realize I’m in a reverie and dismiss McMillan and K’lak.

An uneventful day later, I’m on Deck 10 in what’s left of the main planetary science lab. Scraps of construction material litter the floor, and the sloped ceiling is bare, unpainted composite except where one of the custodial techs is spraying behind a curtain. My chief engineer, a mutton-chopped Andorian named Bynam Ehrob, is showing me the before pictures. There was a sizable crack in the Bajor’s meter-thick ablative armor shell that left this compartment and the one next to it open to space for the two seconds it took the emergency force fields to engage, and over a dozen large fragments of metal-ceramic composite were embedded up to four centimeters deep in the inner wall. “Most of the equipment was a wash. We’re still replicating replacements but this place should be back to normal in a day or so, barring any problems with the EPS conduits.”

“Were there any major experiments running that will be affected?”

Bynam shrugs and flips a thumb at Biri, who’s calibrating a shiny new mass spectrometer. “That’s Biri’s department, ma’am. I’m just the guy who plugs the holes you put in my ship.”

“Your ship?” I say, raising an eyebrow at him. He grins and passes me a PADD to get my thumbprint on the report. “Will the repairs hold if we get into another firefight?”

“We replaced and sealed all of the damaged pressure hull plates to better than shipyard spec, ma’am. Triple-checked it myself.”

“I’ll take that as a maybe.”

“Ha! Little miss negative,” he teases.

The intercom chirps and Tess’s voice says, “Captain, we’re arriving at the rendezvous point in five minutes.” I hit my combadge. “Confirmed, Tess. I’ll be there in three.” I give Bynam a questioning look but he shakes his head and waves me off. Biri and I run out the door to the nearest turbolift and request the bridge.

Turns out to be two minutes instead of three. I sit down in The Chair and hit the intercom. “All hands, this is the Captain. We are coming out of warp in two minutes, thirty seconds and counting. Kanril out.”

Tess takes the first officer’s seat next to me. I feel her stare boring into me and finally ask. “Commander Reshek,” she simply says.

“What about him?”

“Don’t give me that, Captain. The whole crew knows by now the two of you went to bed together two nights ago. I found out from Paul Jeffreys in Geology at breakfast.”

I swear in Kendran. “And?”

“As your first officer I’m required to warn you about Starfleet Regulation 1138-Theta. 1138-Theta states that—”

“That I’m not allowed to sleep with my command staff, yes, I know. I dealt with 1138-Gamma yesterday.”

Tess pauses, then grips my shoulder. “As your friend, Eleya, I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

I’m stunned for a moment. “You’re serious?”

She gives me a sardonic smirk. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m still your XO. The spirit of the regs is to protect the ship. If I ever think for a minute that your relationship, should you choose to pursue one, is endangering the ship or the crew, I’ll write you both up myself.”

“So noted. And, thanks, I’m grateful.”

“Don’t make me regret it.”

“I’ll try not to.”

She picks up the PADD next to her and makes a few strokes. “Rook to G2. Checkmate.”

“Wait, what?” I grab the PADD from her. It’s the chess game we were playing last week. “Phekk. Checkmate indeed.”

“Captain,” JG Park says from the conn, “we’re coming out of warp in fifteen seconds. Warp 8 and dropping.”

The starlines redshift and a white dwarf inflates into view. The viewscreen automatically dims it. “Master Chief, any ships in the area?”

“The USS Amaterasu just dropped out beside us, and I’ve got eight ships in a rough sphere centered a light-second ahead at one o’clock low. Reading four Peregrines on sentry, one Galaxy-class, one Exeter-class, one Typhoon-class, and one … what in the world?”

“What was that last part?” Tess asks.

“I’m not sure, Commander. The saucer reads like a Prometheus-class, but I’m getting some weird mass readings and the emissions profile is all wrong.”

“Put it onscreen.”

The white dwarf vanishes from the screen and is replaced by a wireframe schematic. I recognize the Prometheus-class’s distinctive wedge-shaped saucer, but the primary hull is bulkier, and the nacelles are spread much wider and mounted to the top and bottom of the hull instead of the center. There’s obvious hangar doors on the hull beneath the pylons. “NX-95242, USS Marduk,” I read off the display. “What the phekk is that thing?”

“Computer, identify starship class,” Tess requests.

The intercom chirps and the Bajor’s AI reports, “Starfleet Prototype Charlie-Victor-Lima-Two-Five. Marduk-class fast attack carrier.”

“Explain project code,” I say. I recognize ‘CVL’ for ‘carrier, light,’ but the rest is a mystery.

“Project classified delta-two, code word CHARISMA SHRIKE NOVA.”

I start to confirm my clearance but Ens. Esplin pipes up from comms. “Ma’am, we’re being hailed.”

“Onscreen.”

A light-furred, blue-shirted Caitian female appears on the screen. “USS Bajor, USS Amaterasu, this is USS Marduk. Captain Kanril and Commander Chuba, Admiral Kree has requested you to approach to standoff range and beam aboard.”

“Acknowledged.” I hand-signal Park and he begins tapping in commands. The Caitian vanishes and the viewer switches to a layout of the sector. By now the sensors have decrypted the IFF transponders of the other three ships. USS Dominant, a big Typhoon-class battleship. USS Hanson, a Series 20 Galaxy named for an admiral killed at Wolf 359. USS Ivanova, a spindly Exeter-class cruiser only a couple years old, named for an Earth Starfleet captain from the Earth-Romulan War.

We approach within 25 kilometers of the Marduk and Park brings us alongside. “All stop,” I order. Park sets us at station-keeping relative to the fleet as the Amaterasu joins us. “Tess, with me. Biri, you have the bridge.”

“I have the bridge,” she confirms.

We head for the transporter room and step onto the pads. “Captain,” Chief Bandicek says, “I’m synced with the Marduk’s transporter room.”

“Energize.”

The Benzite strokes her panel and I feel an electric tingle. Then my transporter room is abruptly replaced by one set into a cozy room full of computers. A female Benzite with commander’s pips materializes to my right a moment later. Commander Chuba from the Amaterasu. She’s clearly one of the gene-altered ones: no chlorine sprayer attached to her uniform.

A Cardassian with shoulder-length black hair wearing a Starfleet CO’s uniform is standing at the foot of the steps. I’m a little surprised by this but Tess, Chuba, and I salute—he’s clearly senior to me—and he returns it. “Permission to come aboard?” I ask.

“Granted,” he says in a warm tone. “Welcome aboard the Marduk, Captain Kanril, Commander Chuba.”

“Uh, my first officer, Commander Tess Phohl,” I introduce.

“Welcome, welcome. I’m Bronok Zell, Admiral Kree’s flag captain.”

“You’re, uh, not what I expected, sir,” Tess says.

He rolls his eyes. “Why don’t you just come out and say it? ‘What’s a Cardassian doing commanding a Starfleet flagship?’”

“I—”

He shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it, I get that all the time. I’m sure you’ve heard all the horror stories about Federation colonies winding up in Cardassian territory when the paper-pushers redrew the borders back in 2370? That knife cut both ways. A few of our colonies, including Res’toka where my family’s from, ended up in the Federation.” He gives a rueful smirk. “Goes without saying, we got the better deal there.”

“I suppose I deserve that for not reading the files,” I remark. “Interesting ship. I’ve never seen a Prometheus-class with fighters before.”

“Well, she was supposed to be the lead ship of a variant class, a pocket carrier for surgical strikes.”

“What happened?” Chuba asks.

“Budget cuts, I think. Everything that was left went to building more escorts. Heh, as if we needed more of those.”

“Don’t remind me,” I say. “I’ve always been on a cruiser. I really don’t get Command’s obsession with escorts these days.”

He grins. “Preaching to the choir, Captain. My last command was an Excelsior-class, USS Kyle Brennan. Bit of a junk heap compared to the Odyssey but could she ever take a hit! Marduk’s tough, but not that tough.”

“I’m sure. Probably better not to keep Admiral Kree waiting.”

“Yeah, that would be bad. I’ll be along shortly but I have to go deal with something in Main Engineering. This idiot acting ensign Command saddled us with keeps breaking things with his science projects. Would’ve kicked him off months ago but he’s some ambassador’s kid or something so we’re stuck with him. Conference room is left out of the door, fourth room on the right.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tess, Chuba, and I leave the room, passing a mess hall and a sickbay. “Sir,” Chuba says to me.

“Yes?”

“If you’ll pardon my asking, what the shi’tzien are we doing here? We should be out there, trying to hunt down those pirates.”

“Don’t look at me, Commander. I wanted to stay at Dreon VII.”

We turn the corner into the conference room. It’s cramped, up against the sloping roof of the pressure hull, and several junior officers and noncoms are clustered around a holoprojector showing a sun with four planets and a hexagonal icon in the Oort cloud. Standing between it and the table is a female admiral in a red jacket and black pants with an eight-centimeter combat knife belted at her waist, reading a PADD. This must be the Admiral Amnell Kree I’ve heard so little about. She’s about 170 centimeters tall, shorter than me, with tanned skin, a mass of scar tissue surrounding her left eye, and roughly back-length iron-gray hair in a loose ponytail, draped over her right shoulder. She’s also got the telltale dual rows of leopard-spots of a Trill host. She’s well-preserved but something about her leads me to peg her age as sixty-something. She looks up from the PADD and says in a cool, well-seasoned soprano voice that sounds vaguely irritated, “Good, you’re finally here. I’ll skip the pleasantries; we’re in a hurry. Take a seat, Captains.”

She waves in the direction of the table. I sit down next to a Ferengi in a featureless black leather jacket and trousers with a faint scar on the left side of his forehead. Tess and Chuba sit down to my left. Across the table is an older Bolian with commander’s pips, a dark-skinned human female with a captain’s uniform and graying hair, and a Denobulan male with lieutenant commander’s insignia. “Who all are you?” I ask.

“Commander Rixx Broht, captain of the Dominant,” the Bolian says.

The human says, “Morjana Shenna, USS Hanson.”

“Kairan Juvex, USS Ivanova,” the Denobulan names himself.

“Kanril Eleya, USS Bajor,” I say. “This is my XO, Commander Phohl.”

“Commander Chuba, Amaterasu.”

The Ferengi starts to say something but then Captain Zell jogs into the room. “Sorry I’m late, Admiral.” She glares at him and points at the empty chair next to Captain Broht. He takes a seat without a word. “Now that some of us have deigned to grace us with their presence, we can get started.” Kree leans over the console set into the table in front of her and bangs out a command, and a holoprojector in the table’s center produces a layout of the sector block. “As I’m sure you’re all well aware, at approximately 1600 hours Tuesday evening Deep Space 9 began receiving distress signals from ships and stations all over the sector block.” Markers appear on various stars and points in deep space. “Those responding found that a segment of the Orion Syndicate had launched a massive, coordinated series of raids nearly simultaneously. We’ve confirmed thirty-two attacks, and they destroyed over forty million tons of shipping and killed or kidnapped approximately 16,000 people”

The number’s gone up. I raise my hand.

“Yes, Captain Kanril?”

“Pardon the interruption, sir,” I say. “You said ‘a segment’ of the Orion Syndicate. What does that mean, exactly?”

“I was getting to that. Our most current intel suggests that this attack was not officially sanctioned by the high command under Melani D’ian. The action was taken by one of her admirals, a matron named Gaila Hyrax. Supervising Agent Grell?”

The black-suited Ferengi taps a few keys and the screen zooms in on a nebula several light-years across. The Badlands. “Thanks, Admiral. We have a source among—”

“Wait, wait,” Tess growls next to me. “Did I miss something? What in the name of Phelha is Section 31 doing here?” She’s staring angrily at Grell and it suddenly clicks where I’ve seen the uniform before:  Franklin Drake, that smarmy, self-righteous human spook who sent us back in time to fight Devidians two months ago, whose very existence Starfleet Command categorically refused to either confirm or deny.

Kree’s response to Tess is as cold as methane ice. “What they’re doing, Commander, is providing actionable intelligence on mass murder and kidnapping of Federation citizens. That’s the last I want to hear about it. Is that clear?”

Tess subsides but keeps glaring across me at Grell. He shakes his head and continues. “As I was saying, a source among Hyrax’s forces gave us the location of one of her fleet bases in the Badlands. They’ve got some sort of suppression field set up to protect it from the plasma storms, as well as a transwarp conduit they got from somewhere that exits in the Oort cloud of the Ultima Thule System.”

Kree hits a key and brings up the Ultima Thule System on the projector. “This is Operation Blue Friday. The Bajor will take point. We know where the conduit is within about a 250,000 kilometer radius—it moves about on its own to keep clear of cometary debris—so you’ll have to drop out, find it, and use the debris field to mask your approach. We want them to have as little warning as possible, so we’re only sending one ship: The whole battle group would be easily detected.”

She focuses in on the conduit and brings up some red triangles, representing likely enemy forces. “Once you make contact, you will jam their transmissions and neutralize any forces at the conduit. The fleet will then warp in, activate it, and proceed to the base to capture it and get whatever intel we can. If the kidnapped civilians aren’t there maybe we can find out where they are. Any questions?”

“Where the phekk do they get these codenames from?” I mutter rhetorically, sotto voce, eliciting chuckles from Grell and Captain Shenna.

“Random number generator,” Kree says. “Any pertinent questions?”

“How long have we known about the base?” Chuba asks.

Kree straightens and crosses her arms. “We’ve known about the station itself for over forty years. It was a Maquis supply base before the Dominion War. Chakotay’s Val Jean and T’Chon’s USS Mjolnir both used the place. We thought the Dominion had destroyed it but then Grell’s source reported a few weeks ago that the Syndicate had started the station back up. Starfleet’s stretched so thin right now the base just wasn’t a priority.”

Broht asks, “What level of fleet strength do we expect to encounter?”

Kree looks to Grell, who taps a few commands into his console. “According to my source the Ultima Thule end is only lightly guarded, one squadron of frigates and a cruiser or two at best. They don’t want to draw attention from the civvies deeper in-system.” He hits the console again and the projection shifts to a diagram of an old K-class space station built into a large asteroid. “The base is another story. Several frigate and fighter groups and at least two or three battleships. No orbital defense platforms though. They wouldn’t survive a hit from a plasma storm in the event their suppression field failed. So that’s some good news.”

I ask, “Who’s this source of Grell’s? Do we trust him?”

“That would be classified,” Grell answers, giving me a toothy grin. “I can tell you that I trust my source. Whether you do or not is up to you.”

Nobody says anything for a long moment. Kree finally says, “No other questions? Good, you’re dismissed. We move out in fifteen minutes.”

The other captains and the admiral stand and file out the door but Grell catches my eye so I stay. “Well, well, well. Captain Kanril Eleya of the USS Bajor. You’re younger than I expected.”

“What have you heard?”

“All good, don’t worry. Frank Drake spoke very highly of you the last time we talked.”

“You know Franklin Drake?”

“We’re old friends. I was one of his contacts in the Ferengi Alliance Defense Fleet, then I applied for Federation citizenship and he recruited me. Half of what I know about being a spy, I learned from him. I moved up and he stayed a field agent but we keep in touch.”

Despite knowing I’m talking to someone who in a just world wouldn’t be allowed to exist, I’m having a hard time disliking this Ferengi spy. “What’s Section 31’s interest here?”

“Political. We’ve been tracking Gaila Hyrax for almost two years now. Erm, that’s two Ferengi years; that’d be around three-and-a-half standard. Anyhoo, we think she’s trying to unseat Melani D’ian and this is a power play.”

“Why is a coup against D’ian a bad thing?” Tess asks, probably curious despite herself. “I would’ve thought it’d cause some useful chaos in the KDF.”

“It’s what would happen after things settle down that worries us. Hyrax is a skritz-jeb fanatic, and a val-eff to boot.” My confusion at his terminology must be readily apparent, because he gives an apologetic look. “Sorry, Fed English is my second language. I still mostly think in Ferengi and some of our concepts don’t translate particularly well. A val-eff is someone who doesn’t accept bribes or negotiate.”

“What about ‘skritz-jeb’?”

“Profanity.” He takes a sip from the water glass on the table in front of him. “27th Rule of Acquisition: ‘There’s nothing more dangerous than an honest businessman,’ and that goes double for politicians. Hyrax is a jingoistic nut, whereas D’ian is relatively malleable if you keep your wits about you and your pheromone masker turned way up, so it’s in the Federation’s long-term interest to keep her in charge.”

I get it. “And because interfering in internal political matters runs counter to the Federation’s usual principles—”

He taps his nose and gives a toothy smile. “Bingo. I knew I liked you.”

“You sure you won’t tell us who this source of yours is?”

“My source has been deep undercover in the Syndicate for a carefully unspecified length of time. I’ll reveal him or her if and only if it becomes relevant. Otherwise, unless you manage to pull a sigma-12 security clearance out of your butt, not happening.”

“Fair enough.”

“Captain,” Tess says, “we have to get back to the ship.”

I nod. “Maybe we’ll talk some more later, Agent Grell.”

“Looking forward to it.”

Tess and I leave him in the now-nearly empty conference room and head back to the transporter, just in time to see Commander Chuba vanish in a cloud of blue sparkles. “I don’t like this, ma’am,” Tess says as we take our places on the transporter pad. “Starfleet Command’s reassigns us twice in a week, puts us under an admiral we’ve never heard of, we get sent out with minimal intelligence, and now we’re working with Section 31?”

“I don’t like it either, Tess, but it’s the lead we’ve got. It’s not up to us anyway: we’re not an independent command anymore. Chief,” I say to the Marduk’s transporter operator, “energize.”

Another electric tingle and we’re back on the Bajor. We head for the bridge and I take my seat. “All hands, this is the captain,” I say into the intercom. “Secure for warp, T minus ten minutes.” I release the key.

Esplin says, “Captain, the Marduk just hailed us.”

“Onscreen.”

Captain Zell appears, sprawled inelegantly in his captain’s chair. “Captain Kanril, we’re transmitting the coordinates. You go ahead and head out now while we’re recalling our sentry ships. We’ll be going at warp 9.3.”

I shrug. That’s high, but not dangerously so by a long shot. “Yes sir.”

“Good luck. Zell out.”

“Park, lock those coordinates into navigation and lay in a course, warp 9.3.” I hit the intercom button again. “All hands, this is the captain again. Amend my last. Secure for warp, T-minus one minute.”

There’s a lull, then Tess says, “All sections report readiness, ma’am.”

“Very well. JG Park, engage.”

Author's Notes
Here we meet the odd couple of the piece: Admiral Amnell Kree, the hard-bitten, hard-driving, mostly humorless Dominion War vet who does not suffer fools gladly, and Captain Bronok Zell, her unapologetic goofball of a flag captain, and a Cardassian, no less. And the funny thing is, she requested him.

The jab at escorts dates back to before Cryptic launched the and started giving ship classes besides tacscorts more love. Just like Eleya, I've always been a cruiser guy.

The "Phelha" that Tess mentions is an Andorian war goddess (my creation). Tess herself is agnostic, though (she doesn't think there's enough evidence either way, and doesn't particularly give a shit), so it's basically the Andorian equivalent of "Oh my god" or what-have-you.

The USS Mjolnir (NCC-73275) is another background-building reference. ship whose crew defected to the Maquis, then vanished without trace after the Dominion crossed into the Alpha Quadrant.

As far as Section 31 is concerned, I'm of a mind to take 's comments in at face value. A society like the Federation needs a helping of both bright idealism and ruthless pragmatism to survive. The one gives it a reason to fight, the other the ability. Now, I agree Section 31 went further during the Dominion War than they probably should have, especially with that bioweapon that didn't really have any effect on the war in the long run, but I get why they did it.