SEASON 3: EPISODE 01

CROSSFIRE: Part Three

  “Is this it?” she asked in shock.

  The cavernous space of cargo bay 2 looked almost empty, only around a quarter of the floor space was in use and even then it was hardly cluttered.  There were dozens of pieces but they were hardly bigger then her hand.  There was one large piece, a shuttle nacelle.

  Apart from herself only one other person in the bay.  Lieutenant Paul Dyson was walking amongst the pieces with a tricorder and a padd.  He looked up at her and with an expression that was almost pity and replied, “I’m afraid so.”

  Dyson was a joined Trill and contained within him was a symbiont, which probably had experienced several lifetimes.  She had no doubt he would therefore have a unique perspective on death having experienced first hand in far more ways then she could ever experience.  She was trying to appear composed but by Dyson’s reaction she did not think she was doing a very good job.

  “I’m just cataloguing all the pieces,” he said pre-empting her next question.  “The Annan gave as a manifest of what they could recover and I’m just making sure it matches.”

  “What will happen next?” she asked.

  “We’ll store the debris in case Starfleet decides an investigation is warranted, then it becomes evidence; otherwise the pieces will be recycled.”

  “Can I look through it?” she asked

  “Of course.”

  Daley walked among the pieces.  Nothing was really of any interest that she would want to pick them up.  They were just pieces of twisted, damaged scrap metal.  When she got to the nacelle she ran a hand along it.  Compared to the other pieces it was amazingly intact.

  “Are they sure this was from the Captain’s shuttle?  How confident can they be given that it is mostly scrap?”

  “The nacelle had external markings that identified it as the Brumby.  The internal hatches also confirmed this.  Commander Celcho also looked at the nacelle and picked up on several particular features that were unique to the Brumby.  Replaced panels, chips, that sort of thing that is individual to a particular shuttle.  The Commander, Celcho and Letac were all convinced that the nacelle came from the Brumby.”

  “What about the smaller pieces?”

  “Well, it is impossible to connect them with the Brumby given their anonymous nature due to their small size and the damage.  The best that they could do is at least confirm the most likely cause of their damage.  Namely the explosion of a small warp core and shearing due to high velocity impact.”

  Something tugged at Daley’s subconscious as the Lieutenant explained.  She was not sure what it was but it seemed to have something to do with the cause of the destruction of the shuttle.

  “Do you have another tricorder?” she asked.

  “Sure, what type of engineer would I be if I didn’t carry a spare tricorder?”

  The Lieutenant pulled out another tricorder and handed it to her.  She started to scan the debris, though she had no idea what she was looking for.  When she found something she actually did not immediately recognise it as important until that nagging feeling caused her to have another look.

  ‘These pieces are irradiated,” she stated.

  “As I mentioned the crash would have ruptured the warp core and that would have contaminated the debris,” said Dyson patiently.

  “I know.  It’s just it’s all at the same level.”

  Dyson walked over to her.  He did not look like the information Daley just gave him had any impact.  He looked a lot like someone who was about to politely show another person that what they had found was in fact nothing.

  “The levels aren’t very high.  You’ll need to set your tricorder to a more sensitive…that is odd,” he admitted as he looked at Daley’s tricorder.

  He had obviously thought she had not set her tricorder to display significantly small numbers such that its display would round the radiation levels up or down and so everything would appear to be the same.  Though once he had a look to see that the tricorder was set at a reasonable setting and after he increased its sensitivity to find the same thing.  He then used his tricorder to check her findings and confirmed them, he looked perplexed.

  “We should see a bit of variance in the radiation level of individual pieces of debris based on how far it was from the rupture of the core and how much solid matter was between the object and the rupture,” he explained as he went and scanned several more pieces with his own tricorder.  “I wouldn’t have noticed this if you…the nacelle should be clean.”

  Daley scanned the nacelle and found the same readings as the other pieces.  “Why is that?” she asked.

  Dyson looked up at her with a slight look of confusion on his face.  “It was separated from the ship in space so it wasn’t near the core when it exploded.  Even coming into contact with the other pieces shouldn’t give it the same reading.  This doesn’t make sense.”

  This was what Daley had found but she did not know why it was strange, only that it was.  “What do you mean?”

  “For them all to be of the same level they would have to be at a uniform distance from the source or in an enclosed space so that the radiation can blanket it without losing too much to the surrounding environment.”

  A thought flashed into her mind.  “Would a cargo hold do?”

  “Yes, a cargo hold would do.  But this bay was empty and clean.  The transportation process would not have this effect so you can rule that out.  What are you getting at?”

  “What if someone just wants us to believe the shuttle crashed?” she asked with a conspiratorial tone

  “The shuttle is definitely not in one piece.  Even if the rest of this is not from the shuttle there is no doubt the nacelles is.  Having a nacelle torn off, because that is what the evidence suggests, does not bode well for a shuttle.”

  “Okay, then they are hiding the truth about the shuttle, it survived and these pieces were gathered to put us off the scent.”

  “Who is hiding the truth?”

  “The ship that delivered the debris, the Annan.”

  Dyson looked at her like she was crazy.  “Why would they do that?”

  She paused.  She had no idea why, she was just rolling with the punches and not putting a lot of thought into exact details.  The point was something was wrong with that had happened recently.  Deep down she did not feel like Captain Masters was dead.  Then she noticed a feeling she had, it was the feeling she had woken up with earlier but less intense.  She had not really noticed it before, maybe it was due to the drugs she had been under wearing off or she was just distracted, she did not know.  One thing was for sure, Masters was alive but in danger, she could feel it.

  “Okay, I don’t know that part.  But the best course of action would be to go to the Naos system to check the crash site.”

  “Are we just going to walk in?  What about the Prime Directive?”

  “I think I’m a bit past caring about the Prime Directive, don’t you agree?”

  Masters silently agreed.  They had reached the village after a rather strenuous hike through the forest.  He was not sure but he was convinced that Sela had not taken them in the most direct route to the village.  Whether it was to avoid anyone making a direct route to and from the shuttle and village or if it was just to keep him tired and less of a threat he did not know.  Sela marched him towards the town her weapon out and clear to see.  As they entered they got a number of looks from the villagers but other then that they did not seem the least bit interested.

  “Is it just me or are they the least curious people you’ve ever seen?” he asked.

  “There might be a good deal of genetic diversity on this world.  Our differences might not be that surprising to them.”

  “But your phaser and equipment should bring more attention…not to mention our uniforms.”

  Masters thought they were going to walk through the entire village without anyone doing anything.  Finally a man walked up to them.  The man appeared to be aged with a lined face and leathery skin, but he was not sure if that was a sign of advanced age or a life spent outside under the sun.  He was human looking but with shoulders that seemed to be a bit too broad for his body.  The only other difference that was visible was that he had a high widow’s peak with bony ridges that followed his widow’s peak in a way that made it appear the ridge was holding back his hair and then continued down the side of his forehead to the outer edges of his bushy eyebrows.

  “Greetings stranger,” he said with a wide disarming smile that suggested friendliness.

  The translation was instantaneous, which was not too surprising.  The Federation made a habit of making sure that they collected samples of languages from all races inside its sphere of influence including pre-warp ones.  Sometimes it was very easy if the species had developed audio transmitters, a ship in orbit could easily eavesdrop on transmissions.  For species that had not reached this level of technological development the Federation had covert methods to gain samples without the civilisation ever knowing that they had been visited.  It was done both for scientific reasons, to see the development of languages across the quadrant, and for tactical reasons, so that if need be first contacts would be done without the risk of misunderstanding due to difficulty communicating.

  “Hello, I’m Jonathan Masters and this is Sela.  We are…travellers new to this area.”

  The man smiled.  “That I could guess.  I am Skipler, head of this village.  We have not seen you’re type before, do you also come from the stars?”

  Masters masked his surprise at Skipler’s question and quickly glanced over at Sela who was not masking her surprise that well.

  “What makes you say that?” he asked.

  “You are not like us and given the fact we have been visited before by others it is not hard to figure out.”

  “Others like us have visited here before?” asked Sela hurriedly.  A look of worry came to her face as she started to look around, the grip on her rifle tightened.

  “No, not like you.  They were different as well.  The ears and skin.  I will show you.”

  The man walked off and returned with a young girl.  She was carrying a canvas of some sort.

  “This is my niece; she is going to be a great artist.  She has drawn the others.  Look.”

  Masters felt a chill run down his spine as he viewed the image.

  “You seeing what I am seeing?” he asked Sela.

  The man pointed to one of the figures.  “That is Lady Jasis.  She was travelling from her world to another when she was forced to stop here.  She talked of a ship capable of travelling the stars, it is hard to imagine...at least for us.  The ship could not make the journey so it left her here.  She came to our village and stayed with us.  She was a pleasant woman, though she travelled with personal guards who were not as…pleasant.”

  “Jem’Hadar are not known for their social skills.”

  “Yes, that is what she called them sometimes when she didn’t refer to them as a number.  They called her…Varter…Vort…Vorter...”

  “We know of the Vorta and Jem’Hadar.  What were they doing here and how long were they here for?”

  “They came two vthynjr ago.  Lady Jasis said she was new to the area and needed to rest before continuing her journey.”

  The universal translator was not perfect.  It just failed to translate the time span the man had used.  It instead came out as unintelligible garble.

  “Sorry, how long?”

  The man repeated but the translator again failed.  The man saw the confusion and repeated the word again, only slower and louder, not that it helped.  Masters needed to establish a common reference that the translator would then be able to work off.

  “How many times has the sun appeared in the sky?”  Masters asked pointing to the sun and plotting what he hoped was an accurate enough path for it to travel during a day cycle.

  The man nodded and said another word the translator did not recognise.  “It has been 13 days since they arrived.”

  The translator managed to take the word and translate it for Masters.  He repeated what the man said to make sure.  The word the man had used before was obviously referring to a fairly small grouping of days, similar to a week.  This showed that they language had evolved since the last time a sample was taken as it was hard to believe that examples of how they measured time was not gathered before.

  “How many were here?”

  “One Vorta and always six guards.  Though there might have been more.  Some were convinced that the guards here were not always the same, but it was difficult to tell them apart.”

  Masters could sympathise with him.  The Dominion’s genetically designed soldiers did tend to all look the same.

  “Did they spend the whole time here?” asked Masters.  He needed to gather information on the Dominion forces on the planet.  It was a shock to have any here so far behind Federation lines, whatever they were up to it definitely was not a friendly little Q and A with the local indigenous population.

  “No, they made several journeys to the mountains,” said Skipler pointing to a mountain range that was not far away.

  “Doing what, do you know?”

  “They were very secretive.  But I followed them one day without them noticing.  They have a cave they visit.  I was not able to get inside.  They took things into the cave but what I do not know.  They had very strange items I have never seen, like her weapon.”  He pointed to Sela’s phaser.

  “You know these are weapons?”

  “We might be less advanced then you but we can still tell when someone has a weapon.  The Jem’Hadar carried many items that had a similar design as what she holds.  Plus the manner which she holds it also shows that it is a weapon.”

  For a second he thought that Skipler would ask why he was not similarly armed but he did not.  The fact was he directed most of his comments to him might mean he thought that like the Vorta and Jem’Hadar, he was a leader and Sela was just a guard.

  “Could you show us this cave?” asked Sela.

  Masters felt his suspicion of Sela increase.  She had insisted she was a patriot and had been heading away from the Cardassian border, which suggested she was not dealing with the Dominion, but things could change.  She was on the run and if the Dominion offered her sanctuary he did not know if she would ignore the offer.  He half wished that Skipler would deny the request, but he also wanted to see what the Dominion was up to.

  “Yes, it will take some time to reach it though.”

  “Can we leave now?” asked Sela.

  The aged looking man considered it.  “We can leave promptly.”

  She smiled at Skipler.  It did not actually ease Masters’ concern.  “Then we have all the time in the world.”