—- Briefing Room —-

The senior staff sat around the table with Captain Adriana Cruz at the head as they reviewed their next mission. While they larger goal was getting back to Starbase 72, they were making a pit stop along the way, stopping to see if they could find a trace of the survey team that had vanished sometime after setting up their camp on a supposedly uninhabited world.

Lieutenant Yuhiro Kolem the ship’s Chief Counselor and now the Second Officer opened the meeting with a brief biography on the missing Scientists who had made up the survey team since they were all from Betazed, her half-homeworld though she had only been there a few times.

”Lastly we have Doctor Devana who is an Anthropologist and is most well know for writing biographies of famous Earth facists such as Khan Noonien Singh and Benito Mussolini,” she said finishing up.

“Fascinating,“ Doctor Va’Tok said, the ship’s Chief Medical Officer, “I believe I have read he book on Khan, and it was quite the page turner taught me a great deal about humans.”

”Before we go off on an argument about the validity of using Khan Noonien Singh as an exemplar of humanity, let’s refocus on the point of this meeting, Tashai, what do you have?” Captain Cruz said, cutting off the inevitable rebuttals about how both Khan and Mussolini were outliers for humanity.

The USS Seattle’s Chief Operations Officer, and also First Officer stood up, and gestured to a topical map of the planet that they were only days away from now. Their map had been put together both using information Starfleet had gotten back from the survey team initially and from their own long range scans.

”They landed here in the norther hemisphere,” Tashai said, “Starfleet received a weeks worth of data from them, then they went dark. Stopped contacting their home insistution of the Betazed Science Institute, or anyone involved. Their last few transmissions complained of headaches, and sleeplessness.”

Cruz nodded, “We still have to get our crew mates home, so we aren’t staying long. Twelve hours at the most, is what the away team will be done for. Tashai, Kolem, Doctor T’Rala and Lieutenant Jara, you will go down on the shuttle Pearl Jam. You have twelve hours to find them and bring them home, or not. Got it?”

Lieutenant Commander James Young asked, “What am I doing while they’re down there?”

”I want full speed when they return so whatever you need to do. We’re on the last leg of our race home, so we’ll want to give it everything we have,” Cruz said.

”Also worth reporting some of our lesser injuried male crew members will be returning to their duties soon. This includes Lieutenant Yi Zhang, and Lieutenants Junior Grade Winfield and Hume,” Doctor Va’Tok pointed out. “Unlike several other officers they did not require care at Starbase 72.”

”That’s great to hear. Tashai, Pr’Nor, Jara, talk with your officers about their coming back and ensure this goes smoothly for them. Ease them into it,” Cruz said. Looking around the table she nodded, “Aright dismissed.”

—- Nine Forward, Lounge —-

Yi Zhang sat down. He was not an overly strong man at the best of times, but suddenly not being able to depend on his body was novel. He’d never had it fail before, were even walking to a table winded him. He paused, leaned on a chair and sat next to someone he recognized but did not know Akane Sone the Stellar Cartographer. She nodded at him and continued to look at her PADD. Yi Zhang was quite for a bit then decided to introduce himself.

”I’m Lieutenant Yi Zhang,” he said offering a hand.

The science officer looked at it, looked at him then nodded, “I know. The Seattle is a small ship.“

There were only eighty-nine people aboard the ship now that they had lost five during the attack that had rendered almost all of the biologically male staff unavailable at least for a while.

”Congratulations on your recovery, I hear you’re back at work soon,” Sone said.

Lieutenant Yi Zhang nodded, “Yeah, feels good to being back to useful. It’s hard on a ship full of people doing their duty to make it all work and watching that wondering why you’re not able to help.”

”Well there’s a reason for it all,” Sone suggested.

”Is there, it all seems random to me. If it had been another ship that found those Borg tranponders it wouldn’t have been us that found Maya 3 which we only stopped at because we wanted to do a first contact mission. If we’d just gone straight home, none of this would have happened,” Yi Zhang said.

“And maybe we’d have exploded or run into the Borg again or got trapped in a special anomaly that sent us to old times Vulcan,” Sone said, “We can’t would have, should have, could have everything away.“

Yi Zhang felt it was easy to say that when you could breath without pain, but he also knew that Sone was right. This was a life, that he’d wanted to take on, that held a certain amount of risk and part of that risk apparently was a bunch of women poisoning you as an attempt to get rid of all men.

“I guess this is what we’re left with,” he said, “the dark of space and death.”

Lieutenant Sone rolled her eyes, “You could have stayed where you were, you signed up for the dark of space. It’s not dark, it’s infinite. Infinite opportunities and infinite worlds. I’ve charted over a hundred since we left Maya 3, and there were dozens of viable class M worlds out there. Yeah, we have to be careful, but it’s not all dangers and those that want to kill us.”

”What do your parents say about you being in Starfleet?” Yi Zhang asked.

”Want to know if they’re lecturing me about how I should have been a doctor, like stereotypical AsIan Earth parents?” Sone asked. 

“Basically yes,” he answered.

”Well they’re not from Earth and no, they’re happy I’m in Sciences,“ Sone said, “but I’m sure if there was still money they would want me to be a doctor.”

”Mine keep calling Operations moving boxes,” Yi Zhang said.

”Isn’t it?” Sone teased.

”There’s a bit more to it than that,” he said acting indigent.

“If you need a box moved call your local Operations Officer today,” Akane Sone joked.

”Hey that’s Assistant Chief Operations Officer,” Yi Zhang said.

”I stand corrected sir,” Sone saluted.