File #2 - "Reflection"
Greyfell meets an unfamiliar ally while pondering his future.
#File 2 - "Reflection"
Captain Alexander Greyfell took a long sigh as he looked out the huge window in the Earth Spacedock lounge. He looked at the Warrior which somehow seemed so small and insignificant compared to the larger, more imposing starships of the Federation.
The quiet, soft murmuring from the groups of people dotted about the large room were almost drowned out by his thoughts as he fiddled nervously with his combadge on the uniform. There were only a few people left in the rather large room, with most of the table and chairs being empty and only a couple of serving staff working the night shift.
He looked back into the room, at the large clock above the bar in one corner of the room.
"3AM..." he thought... "Damn..."
He knew he should return to his quarters and try to get some rest but his mind was still racing. Tomorrow was the debriefing he had been dreading. A day that he needed to go and face a room full of Admirals and hope that it was not the end of his career in Starfleet.
"Can't sleep..." said a rather unfamiliar voice as he turned around.
There was a human male standing before him, he had short blonde hair and large brown eyes. He did not recognise him at all, he was not a member of the Warrior crew. He should know, he took the time to look through the ships entire manifest and memorising the names of only eighty people was not that difficult after he had lived and worked with them each day.
He gave a short grunt and parted his lips to take a quick sip of coffee...
"BLARGH!" he thought, realising that it had gone stone cold while he had been lost in thought.
The human chuckled a bit at his folly, he had obviously completely failed to give the confident first impression that he wanted to.
"Can I help you Captain... eh?" asked Greyfell, noting the number of pips on his collar that indicated he was the same rank.
"Damian Edwards" replied the human, extending a hand which Greyfell, looking confused for a second by the bizarre human ritual and then realising accepted. "U.S.S. Quest".
This response only deepened Greyfell's already mounting confusion. As far as he had been aware, the Quest was one of the vessels that had gone missing when New Alexandria Station had been destroyed almost twenty years ago. The Quest had been an Intrepid Class support ship which had been tasked for exploration duty in that sector and had gone missing along with the U.S.S. Republic.
The Quest had not been recovered when the U.S.S. Republic, U.S.S. Victorious and U.S.S. Arizona had returned to Federation space almost six months ago and records from another Argussian Captain of the Republic told that the Quest had been lost during the battle with the Victorious which had acquired sentience.
"I thought the Quest was destroyed in the Triangulum Galaxy six months ago?" asked Greyfell bluntly, wondering if Captain Edwards could have been in command of another Quest, possibly a successor that bore the same name?
"I managed to escape the destruction of the Quest and managed to return to our galaxy with the Arizona. If anything... I was the reason that the Arizona could return to the Milky Way."
"Interesting..." replied Greyfell, waving his hand at one of the bar staff walking past and gesturing for another cup of coffee, putting the cold one down on the table. "Maybe you could explain how that was possible?" he asked. "Starfleet's records are kinda vague on that subject."
"I cannot talk about it..." responded Damian quickly. "It's classified."
Greyfell let slip a short, almost patronising grin.
"Of course it was... all the juicy bits always were..."
A Tellarite bartender waddled up to them with Greyfell's replacement cup of coffee which he took from the tray, giving the member of the lounge staff a curt nod, his green eyes looking down into the cup at the black liquid and then back at Damian.
"So..." he asked, shrugging slightly after a few seconds of silence, both of them looking round as one of the bar staff had knocked a glass over with had caused it to smash on the floor over at the other side of the long room. "How can I help you Captain?"
"I hear you have a debriefing tomorrow?" replied Damian, his English accent coming through exceptionally strongly as he moved onto business.
"Yes, Starfleet wants to know all it can about Cetacean Crystal Technology." replied Greyfell, feeling oddly comfortable by the warmth of the mug in his hand. "Of course, I do have other concerns..."
"You mean how you violated half a dozen Starfleet principles?" chirped Damian, who seemed more bemused then the typical angry response that Greyfell usually got about the subject.
Greyfell looked decidedly agitated, using his free hand to comb gently through his long grey mane. He was trying to decide if he should throw the coffee in Damian's face considering his rather jovial attitude about the whole affair but adding Assault on a Fellow Officer to his list of charges would not do him any favours.
"I did what I thought was right..." responded Greyfell, looking down at the cup again in a mixture of sadness and regret. What had Starfleet expected him to do? It was an impossible situation.
"Of course you did." reassured Damian, looking at him with a compassionate glance. "And if Starfleet hadn't thought so as well, you would have been in irons and put in the brig upon your return."
Greyfell looked up, his eyes full of regret for his actions, almost at the point of an emotional breakdown. "Don't I deserve to be?" he shuddered. "I failed..."
"Failure is the greatest teacher of all..." replied Damian, with an insightful attempt to make Alexander somehow feel better about his choices. "You were placed in an impossible situation, I don't know what I would have done in your place."
Somehow that did not bring Greyfell any comfort at all, he just stared blankly down at the coffee in the cup as Damian spoke.
"A crisis of confidence is not very inspiring when I have been placed on your ship" replied Damian, almost out of the blue which caused Greyfell to snap out of the self loathing hole he was in and look at him with a confused expression, waiting for clarification.
"I have been assigned to your crew as a mission specialist." he said, as a workerbee flew past the window in the interior of Earth Spacedock, performing late night maintenance checks on the starships currently docked there for repairs. "A situation has arisen and Starfleet believes that you and your crew are the best people for the job. Especially after you established first contact with the Cetaceans. The Xenobiology Council and the Vulcan Science Academy had determined that the Cetacean race was extinct."
"What..?" responded Greyfell with a level of confusion, wondering if this was all some big practical joke and he really was going to lose his command tomorrow.
"Admiral Quinn will talk this over with you tomorrow but the actual mission briefing will take place..." he pulled out the PADD he was holding and gave it to a rather shellshocked Greyfell. "...on board a more suitable ship. As you can see, your entire crew has been temporarily assigned to this vessel while the Warrior undergoes a full repair and refit."
Greyfell was gobsmacked, maybe he was finally going to have the chance to redeem himself and his ship. He realised how James T. Kirk must have felt when returning to Starfleet Command after collecting two Humpback Whales from 20th Century Earth. He was demoted to Captain but given command of the Enterprise-A.
Greyfell could not help but let out a beaming smile as he considered the future, maybe his career was not in tatters just yet.
"It will be a pleasure to work with you Captain Edwards."
"I wouldn't worry about violating Starfleet principles." said Damian, looking out the window. "Your predecessor was a bit of a maverick as well."
The next morning did not bring Greyfell any comfort, he had finally gotten to bed about 4AM in the morning and tossed and turned continually. He had to kick himself to not yawn during the meeting with Admiral Quinn in one of the most spacious offices that Earth Spacedock had to offer.
Admiral Quinn had explained the situation to him and he still found it somewhat difficult to believe that Starfleet would still want the Warrior crew to go on this highly dangerous mission but in other ways, it made a lot of logical sense.
He swallowed his fatigue as he entered the conference room with all his crew looking up at him. It seems they already knew Captain Damian Edwards who was sat at the head of a long table in one of the many conference suites on ESD, talking with them about the old times on the U.S.S. Republic, almost twenty years ago from Greyfell's perspective.
The U.S.S. Republic NCC-91988 was a Century Class ship of the line. Impressive in both size and scale and with systems on par with those of the much larger Excalibur Class, the Republic had been a solid addition to the Fleet.
However, during an attempt to found a new colony on the edge of Federation space. The Republic encountered a new and frightening version of the Borg Collective. These Borg were hold overs from the "Borg-Species 8472 war" in 2373, lost to the Collective after the war ended and Species 8472 returned to a realm known as Fluidic Space.
Separating these Borg from the Collective should have rendered them harmless, as Borg disconnected from the Collective often started to revert back to their pre-assimilated selves. However, these Borg formed their own Collective and over the last forty years, continued their war with Species 8472, eventually achieving the one thing the Collective was unable to do.
Assimilate a member of 8472.
The Republic discovered this new and dangerous fusion of Borg and 8472 when the ship was accidentally pulled into Fluidic Space in 2394. The Republic was barely able to escape from that encounter and yet, five years later, the "Fluidic Borg" as Captain Frostmane had dubbed them, launched a scout into our realm.
This scout, took almost all the resources of the Task Force: Republic, a loose alliance of ships which defended the colony of New Alexandria, to defeat. Victory was only possible when Fluidic Borg, attempting open a singularity back to Fluidic Space by using the collapsed star in the New Alexandria system was disrupted, causing the small black hole to magnify in amplitude and pull the Republic and several other ships inside, transporting them to the Triangulum Galaxy.
The Republic and her crew had been declared officially "lost" over the next twenty years. With the crew trapped in the Triangulum Galaxy and no way to know they had also travelled almost twenty years into the future.
The Republic and Victorious were able to return to Federation space when both ships were infected with an organic based "virus" that melded itself into the ship and became the living embodiment of those vessels. The U.S.S. Warrior, which was on a shakedown at the time, encountered both ships, allowing the crew to finally return home.
Greyfell could not imagine what that must have been like when he looked at the expectant faces as he entered the room. To come back from such an impossible distance and then realise that twenty years had passed since then. He was not sure that he could have dealt with that.
Doctor Braveheart was obviously somewhat annoyed that his shore leave had been cut short as he was still sat back in the chair, arms crossed and looking like he was going to bite the head off anyone who unsuspectingly began talking to him. He grunted to Greyfell as he sat down.
"I'm sorry to cut your shore leave short.." he interjected, before anyone else could start to complain about it. "But Starfleet has an urgent mission for us."
Commander Tempest looked across the table, his constant professionalism, shining far above officers like Chief Engineer Muraco, who was currently eating pancakes and syrup and exclaiming loudly about how "human food was so good."
Doctor Storm put his PADD down, looking over at the Captain.
"I thought Starfleet was going to punish us... well maybe not us, probably you." he said with characteristic bluntness.
"It seems that Starfleet have changed their minds about that... at the moment." replied Greyfell, trying to ignore the rather large frog in his throat as the thoughts about what had happened continued to creep back into his mind.
Greyfell coughed and cleared his throat, the only sound being that of Chief Muraco eating a stack of pancakes during a mission briefing. Greyfell did not even try to contest the obvious lack in protocol, he knew it would make not difference. Muraco would never have survived on any stricter vessel that did not know precisely how to handle him.
"I believe you all know our assigned mission specialist... Captain Damian Edwards." said Greyfell, gesturing to the other side of the table.
"Indeed" replied Commander Tempest, who took a sip from his cup of tea that was sat on the long table in front of him. "I was very happy to hear that the Arizona was able to make it back in one piece as well..."
Damian nodded, he knew these people well, which was why Starfleet had assigned him specifically to work with them. He had served on the Republic prior to his promotion to Captain and command of the Quest. But Starfleet also had other methods which Damian had declined to speak to anyone else about. They had also put him there to keep an eye on Captain Greyfell so that Starfleet could correctly decide what to do with him after this mission was over.
"Yesterday, a transmission was intercepted by the U.S.S. Challenger in the Hoteb Sector." started Damian, rising from his chair to turn on the display behind him which sprung to life with a display of an all too familiar region of space for everyone but Greyfell in the room. "We identified the signal as being from New Alexandria Colony."
"That's impossible!" exclaimed Doctor Braveheart as he looked over to Damian.
"But the colony was destroyed..?" said Counselor Mewsin, looking up in shock. "I remember seeing it explode..."
"Ah... But did it?" asked Commander Tempest, looking over to the dumbstruck Counselor. "All we saw was an explosion as we were pulled through the anomaly. For all we know, the colony survived."
"Regardless" cut in Greyfell to stop further speculation from his crew. "Starfleet wants us to investigate this signal. It is completely possible that there could be survivors on the colony that may need rescue."
"After twenty years!?" exclaimed Chief Muraco, who had been stuffing his face too much to be able to contribute to the conversation until now.
"Possibly?" ruminated Captain Edwards.
Doctor Braveheart looked somewhat unconvinced by the evidence as he got up in his white lab coat and looked over at Captain Edwards, walking over the replicator to retrieve a morning cup of tea. "Tea, English Breakfast... Hot" he said to the replicator and then looking over at the group. "But the Warrior is still undergoing repairs... Are we going via Runabout?"
"No" replied Captain Edwards, pressing a button on the wall display which immediately darkened the lights in the room and activated a holographic projector at the center of the table which began to display the three dimension image of a ship.
"Ladies and Gentlemen... " he said proudly. "This is the NCC-91988, U.S.S. Republic. Well... a new Republic."