The Continuing Missions I: The Mission Continues

All Star Trek references, except where I have created them from whole cloth, are the property of Paramount/Viacom. All rights are reserved to them. However, this particular story is (c)2005 by Josh Cohen, and may not be reprinted except for personal use.

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Part Four (the last part of this episode)

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The alarm pinged. “The time is now 0800.”

Frost shook his head, rolling onto his stomach and pushing himself up far enough to see the control panel and slap it off. “Computer, Federation News Channel 58-DB-0, volume level eight.” He was grumbling, but the computer managed to decipher his request and the mellifluous voice of his brother issued forth from the bedroom speakers.

Something seemed odd, though. “Jen?” he called out. She was supposed to wake up when he did today –at 0900, she had a staff meeting to conduct – but she wasn’t there. He stood up and padded to the bedroom door, which opened obediently at his approach. “Jen?”

His bathrobe was where they’d left it the night before, thrown over the armrest of the sofa. There was a PADD on it, the message waiting light blinking, and he ambled groggily over to it, pressing the button. The PADD fell to the floor, and when he picked it up, there she was, a blue exercise top setting off her eyes.

He finally caught up with what was going on, and pressed the button that restarted the message.

“Hey Kyle. I got up around 0700 and didn’t feel like hanging around waiting for you to wake up, so I went down to the gym early – Lieutenant Ben Sholin had a cancellation, so he was able to squeeze me in at 0730. I’ll see you up on the bridge at 1200. Hope you slept well.” Her image reached forward, as if to shut off the recording, and then her face lightened as she remembered something. “Knowing how absentminded you are in the morning, I bet you’re glad I wasn’t out here having breakfast with someone. See you later.”

The PADD winked off and he set it on his desk on the way back to the bedroom. A few moments later, standing under the scalding spray of the shower, he laughed out loud as he realized what she’d meant – they never had put clothes on after she’d left the bathrobe in the living room and he’d left his pants somewhere on the bedroom floor.

“I guess you’re right, Jen,” he said to the water as he ducked his head under the head of the shower, rinsing out the shampoo, “I guess humans aren’t as enlightened as we thought.”

A switch to sonics to kick-start the drying process and a wet towel later, Frost stood in front of the mirror, his brother’s voice a comfortable drone in the background, using an offshoot of the dermal regenerator to shave, the purple beam identical to the one that had repaired his lip – a touch with his tongue to the bump there found no soreness, and he hadn’t remembered the injury at all the previous night, even with his mouth getting what Jiro had euphemized, back in secondary school, “up to no good.” He preferred the appliance to depilatory creams, in any case; it was much more precise.

But no one’s ablutions are all that interesting, and so the captain finished them on autopilot, producing a breakfast bar from the replicator that he started in on even as he left his quarters, heading down the corridor to the turbolift that was conveniently placed near the captain’s quarters. There he met up with an ensign from maintenance, who introduced himself as Julian Vincenti – the man was nearly twenty centimeters shorter than the captain, with black hair and pale green eyes – and, as the ensign monitored the autocleaner, a robotic device that cleaned the floors, walls, and ceiling, vacuuming as necessary and polishing computer touch pads and viewscreens, Frost, between bites of breakfast, made his case for stairs on starships.

Vincenti just smiled, indulging the captain in that faintly disinterested way all maintenance personnel Frost had ever met engaged in, and bade the captain a good morning as he boarded the turbolift. Navigating the back way along Deck One to his ready room, he took up a position on his sofa and began processing his correspondence. This was, after all, what he called his “office hours,” a concept new to Starfleet that officers in command positions should spend at least three to eight hours a week available to crewmembers for questions, discussions, or problems, and he didn’t have any paperwork to catch up on.

There were several communiqués, two from old friends back on Earth, one from a former Starfleet officer named Tuvok, a Vulcan Frost had had the chance to meet briefly at the Vulcan shipyards, informing the captain of a new research venture in which he was engaging that he thought Frost might be interested in – Tuvok was writing a series of articles on human-Vulcan friendships, and the dynamics there, as well as exploring theories as to why humans were the race Vulcans related best to in friendships, outside of Vulcans themselves. There was also a short text message from Rear Admiral Kellenbach’s office – Kellenbach had been the commander for the starship group that included the Palo-Alto – congratulating him on his new command.

Captain Taber on the Nova Scotia had sent him a short message, offering any help she could in dealing with the decidedly… “strange” was the word she used… dynamic in the personnel on the Katana, with a postscript: “By the way, Captain Frost, I have a fresh-minted ensign running alpha-shift ops, and she found something of yours in the storage cabinet under the ops console, trying to impress me by doing maintenance on it herself. It’s a PADD. She didn’t read it, but I took a look at the table of contents” – she had the decency to look contrite – “sorry, but I needed to know who owned it. Anyway, it appears to be some sort of journal, with a decidedly dark bent to it. Let me know if I should keep it.”

He smiled, sadly. That had been a dark time in his life, he thought as he touched the base of his throat, where the memory of a vicious scar and an even more vicious blow with a heavy sword had nearly severed his head, and as it was, had left him without the ability to speak for three long, agonizing years. He’d taken up writing in a journal on the recommendation of the Nova Scotia’s counselor, and it had helped a little, although not as much as having his voicebox repaired had done. After he got back to normal, Frost had used the replicator in his quarters to decompile the PADDs used for the journals into pure energy. There had been one missing.

“Computer,” he said, “draft reply to Captain Ashley Taber, USS Nova Scotia. Priority low, standard privacy code.

“Captain Taber: Thank you for your offer. Things seem to be going all right – Doctor Atridena walked in on me in something of a less than perfect situation, but we’ve got that cleared up. The crewmembers who survived the attack have grown into a cohesive group in and of themselves, and I hope they can assimilate the new crew without too much difficulty. As for myself, I’m looking forward to this tour of duty. I imagine I’m feeling some of what you felt when you got promoted – a little jittery, afraid to screw things up, you know how it is.” He paused, remembering. “Y’know that class we both attended, the special one Janeway gave when we were in the academy? I’ve always remembered her warning: ‘the person most afraid of making a mistake when a new captain takes command is that new captain. Relax. Everyone was new once.’ The way she said it, I believed it, and hey, if she can forge a crew out of criminals and malcontents on a ship lost half a galaxy away, I figured I could handle it too. I still do.

“As for the PADD? Decompile it. Check my file if you want; you can figure out why I was so upset back then. I’m surprised no one found it in the intervening years since I left the ship. I guess no one keeps much stuff in their console. Just don’t wipe it and reuse it – I wouldn’t want any intrepid members of your crew using it for an experiment and suddenly finding out that the captain of a starship was once suicidal.

“Give me a call next time we’re in the same sector. I’ll buy you a drink.

“Computer: end message, and send.”

There was a twinkle from the computer’s speakers. “Acknowledged. Message sent.”

The rest of his mail was insignificant – some information on currency valuation; congratulations from Commander Skentaub, a Denevian friend of his who commanded Starbase 316; a memo from Admiral Sharp, reminding him to contact the captains of the other ships in her command group, to say hello; a note from his grandmother – she was going to Ganjitsu to spend some time with the Daigonji family, so he could contact her there if needed; and a letter, rather severe in tone, from the Starfleet Captains’ Union, soliciting his membership and a donation. That made him chuckle: the SCU was an officious bunch of stuffed-shirt captains who wanted to change the way non-starship captains were treated by Starfleet and perceived by the Federation. It was an image they perpetuated, he’d said to Captain Murphy the last time she’d gotten one of their letters and shared it with him – “this is what you’re going to have to deal with,” she’d said – by being as irritating as they could. He keyed in a brief “thank you, no” message and sent it to them, and then set the PADD aside, leaning back on the couch, his fingers interlaced behind his head.

He must have dozed off, because there was a pinging sound, and the computer announced the time as 1000 – he hadn’t ordered a wake-up call, but he knew who’d done it. She tended to keep track of his absentmindedness for him. Laughing to himself, the captain stopped off in his private restroom to smooth his hair down and chew a tooth cleaner capsule – Doctor Iovino had turned him onto these back on the Palo-Alto as a quick way, although not one a person should depend upon on a regular basis, to scrub the taste of sleep out of one’s mouth – and then proceeded onto the bridge and down into the command area. W’Hoof was already there.

“Good morning, captain.”

“Good morning, W’Hoof.” He turned a little to his right, toward the ops console. “Status report, Lieutenant Winters.”

She turned to face Frost. “We are approximately three hours out from Cardassia Prime. Deep Space Nine has contacted us with well-wishes and a sector report that I’ve forwarded to yourself and Commander W’Hoof. Cardassia Control has also contacted us, confirming our arrival time, and they have attached a primary timetable for your approval that I’ve also forwarded. Premier Lok would like to meet with you at 1415 today.”

“Excellent work, Lieutenant,” the captain said, favoring her with a smile – her pale skin colored a little. “Carry on.” Then, to W’Hoof, “Satan had better watch his back, or she’ll end up in his position.”

Only Ensign Shin’ta, monitoring the ship’s course at the helm console, could have seen how bright red her face turned at the compliment, but he didn’t notice, nor would he have cared – as a Vulcan, such displays of emotion were unimportant to him.

“Standard orbit, Melimora,” the captain said. “Satan, if you would, hail Cardassian Control and announce our arrival.”

Satan, having replaced Winters when alpha shift began, played over the ops board. “There’s no response.”

W’Hoof’s ears perked forward as the captain stood and slowly walked over to Satan’s station, looking down at his board. “Try again.” His voice was thoughtful. “Maybe they’re on a break.”

There was an insistent beeping from the ops console. “Nothing, captain.”

“Sir,” came the dry voice of Commander Briarcliff, “I’m picking up something on the tactical sensors. Extreme range.”

Frost turned to see the dark-skinned chief of security manipulating his board. “Increase power to the long-range sensors, Commander. Pluck it out of there.”

“I have it, captain.”

Frost turned to the viewer and saw what the sensors had found.

Three Breen heavy battlecruisers.

Heading their way.

Frost quickly went back to his chair, his console extending forward. “Briarcliff, stand by to raise the shields, just in case. Lieutenant Shibasht,” he called to the Horta at the science station, the platform upon which she sat already raised up so she could manipulate the controls through a direct neural link – it was something inherent in Horta biology that they could create direct links to certain computer systems, and that had generally led them toward the scientific fields. “Passive scan. What the hell are they doing out there?”

Her voice issued from the voder nestled between two of the tendrils of, for lack of a better term, her skin – it was a warm, slightly amused tone most of the time, but now she was utterly serious. “Captain, it appears as though they’re scanning us with fire-control sensors. That’s odd, since they can’t possibly hit us from out there. Our scans show normal Breen heavy battlecruisers, standard armament.” She shuffled around, presumably to give the impression to the captain that she was speaking “directly” to him. “Captain, those ships are far more than a match for us.”

Frost turned to W’Hoof. “I didn’t come out here to get killed.”

“Agreed, Captain.”

“Shibasht, what can you pick up from the Detapa Council Headquarters? Lifesigns? Energy signatures?”

She turned to connect herself to the console again. “Looks normal… no, wait. I’m picking up energy leakage from the building, non-Cardassian signature. Appears to be… captain, computer confirms a Breen containment suit has been breached. Lifesign readings are blocked, but I can estimate at least 25 Breen down there.”

“That’s just wonderful,” Frost muttered. “Lessener, prepare a message packet for Starfleet. Include all current information, and send it. Request instructions.” Over her “aye, sir,” he said, “Briarcliff, stand by to power up the phasers. Load the quantum torpedo bays – at this distance, they shouldn’t be able to see that.” He pressed a key on his console. “Doctor Atridena, we may be heading into a battle situation. Prepare for possible casualties.”

“What? Why?”

“Check your screen, doctor. The Breen are here.”

“What are they doing here?”

Frost shook his head. “We’ll figure it out. I’m going to try to keep us out of a fight, but you be ready, just in case.”

“Got it. Sickbay out.”

“Melimora, prepare evasive patterns.”

“Yes, captain.”

“Satan, coordinate with engineering. I want to be ready for anything.”

“Yes, captain.”

“Sir?” This from Shibasht.

“Lieutenant?”

“They’re coming.”

As a group, the bridge crew’s faces swiveled toward the screen as if drawn by a magnet. There they saw the three Breen ships begin to grow in size.

“Damn.” Frost looked over to W’Hoof, who looked totally lost. Evidently he hasn’t been under that much stress as a command officer, Frost thought. “Satan, hail the Breen. Standard friend-or-foe, and politely inform them they’re in the space of a Federation protectorate.” This was loosely true. Cardassia, under Premier Garak, the first Premier since the war, had become if not a full-fledged member of the Federation than at least at the status Bajor was at the end of the Occupation.

“No response, captain,” Satan said.

“Sir,” Briarcliff put in, “tactical scanners indicate Breen weapons active and ready.”

“Raise the shields. Arm phasers. Activate phaser locks, but hold your fire. Oh, and bring the ion pulse cannons on line.” Ion pulse cannons were a new technology, developed by engineers working on the Borg technology brought back by Voyager, a form of energy beam that disrupted energy flow in starship systems without causing physical damage. “Satan,” Frost said again, “inform the Breen that firing upon a Starfleet vessel would be an exceptionally bad move. And Jennifer, just in case,” he said over his shoulder, meeting her eyes around the side of Briarcliff’s chair, “call for reinforcements.”

All his orders given, Frost could only watch, along with the rest of the crew, as the three Breen warships bore down on them. Satan continued sending hails, providing a deep, repetitive background, as the ships swelled on the screen. Their forward weapons ports shone a bright red.

“Stand by, all. Melimora, prepare to drop us a kilometer on the z-axis.”

“Ready, sir.”

“Take your cue from Commander Briarcliff. And Briarcliff,” he said, “I expect you to know they’re firing before they fire.”

“I’ll try, sir.”

W’Hoof growled. “Do or don’t, William, but grarf trying.”

Frost’s eyebrows rose. “Try not to curse on my bridge, W’Hoof.”

The Kanid had the decency to look embarrassed. “Sorry, sir.”

Whatever the captain was about to say, it was lost in Briarcliff’s shout of “now!” They all felt the ship surge as she fired the thrusters, the first two ships missing completely. But the third ship had anticipated, and fired a brace of torpedoes into the Katana’s path.

“Compensate!” W’Hoof shouted, but it was too late.

“Brace for impact!” yelled Briarcliff.

Then the three torpedoes hit the leading edge of the saucer section, and the entire ship shook, twisting sideways from the impact.

Frost, clinging to his armrests, snuck a look over at his first officer.

“What a way to start a mission,” he said softly.

The ship shook off the blow reasonably quickly, the inertial dampeners and artifical gravity not even missing a step, and Melimora whipped them around behind the Breen. “Briarcliff, if you would?”

The security chief grinned savagely as he pressed several keys on his board at the same time. Bolts of red phaserlight from the compression phaser emitters mounted below the saucer section kicked into the aft shields of one of the Breen vessels, and conventional phaser blasts scored over the other two. Then two blindingly-white quantum torpedoes burst from the Katana, smashing into the first Breen ship.

“Captain, the center ship has lost its aft shields!” Shibasht sounded excited and young, despite having lived for more than a century.

“Ion cannons, Briarcliff!” the captain called. “Melimora, begin evasive pattern alpha.” The green ion beams, looking for all the world like focused versions of Borg tractor beams, attached themselves to the aft section of the weakened Breen ship, and green fire began crackling over their hull. Then, as Melimora sent the ship into an evasive maneuver, barely missing several Breen torpedoes, the ion cannons dragged the third ship along with them, keeping them in the Katana’s sights.

“Captain,” came a voice over the speakers, the sibilant tones of Thenow, down in engineering, “the ion pulse cannons are draining more energy than simulations predict. We should shut them down.”

“Shibasht, status of that Breen ship?”

“Ten percent power.”

“Noted, Thenow. Briarcliff, cease fire.”

“Captain?” Briarcliff’s voice was dryly incredulous. “Shouldn’t we eliminate them?”

“We’re not at war with them anymore, Commander. Let them be. They aren’t much of a threat anymore.”

“Sir, I must protest,” W’Hoof said. “We should destroy that ship before it comes back to haunt us.”

“We don’t have time to argue.” The other two Breen ships were arching around in opposite directions. Their weapons ports lit up again. “Melimora, evasive pattern…”

He didn’t even need to finish the sentence. Heavy pink beams of energy burned across space from somewhere behind the Katana. “What was that? Shibasht? Briarcliff?”

It was the Horta who responded. “Cardassian cruisers. Must have warped in behind us, using the planet as a shield.” The ships shot forward past the Katana, tearing into the Breen shields. They attempted to fire back, but Frost was having none of that.

“Briarcliff, add our fire to theirs. Quantum torpedoes.”

The security chief pressed the firing control more savagely than strictly necessary, but Frost didn’t care at this point. The torpedoes broke from the ship and slammed into one of the Breen vessels, taking down its shields seconds before a Cardassian torpedo hit, and as a result, that Cardassian torpedo slapped into the Breen’s warp engine manifolds on the underside of the ship, and it promptly exploded in a shower of fire.

“The Cardassians are hailing the Breen,” Shibasht said, “ordering their surrender.”

“They won’t, you know.”

“Sadly true, sir,” the Horta said, and true to their words, the other Breen vessel, already weakened by the relentless fire from the other Cardassian ship, burst into flame and then into small white sun as the warp core blew.

“Captain,” Satan said, “the third Breen ship does not have enough power to destroy itself.”

“Call off the Cardassians. Ask them to stand down.”

“They are hailing us.”

The screen changed from a view of the disabled Breen vessel into a look at the bridge of the Cardassian ship. In the center seat was a gul Frost didn’t know – not that he knew many Cardassians anymore, but that didn’t change anything. “I am Gul Sikint. You have thirty seconds to convince me to spare the Breen.”

The captain rose from his chair – Cardassians respected others who negotiated from a position of strength, even a perceived one. “This is Captain Kyle Frost of the U.S.S. Katana. Gul Sikint, we disabled that ship with the intent of interrogating its crew. It would be wasteful for you to ignore our hard work.”

“Indeed. And how did you disable them?”

“New weapon,” Frost said promptly. “Ion pulse cannons. Developed with Borg technology. Nice, aren’t they?”

Sikint’s ridged brows lowered. “They seem a useful addition.” He folded his hands. “Very well. We will tow the Breen vessel to our spacedock.” Then he appeared to realize something. “Why are you here?”

“Premier Lok invited us to meet with him. Also, we have supplies to deliver.”

“Ah.” Sikint looked as if he’d swallowed something rotten. “Very well.”

Then Frost remembered something. “Shibasht, what’s going on down on the planet?”

Her screens changed rapidly as she stretched the sensors outward. “Cardassian Control shields are down. I’m reading no Breen lifesigns, and we are being hailed.”

“Satan,” Frost said, “acknowledge the hail and figure out what the hell is going on. Gul Sikint, thanks for your help.”

“Yes. You were lucky, you realize. Without those ion pulse cannons, you would never have defeated that one Breen vessel. Your class of ship is not equipped for these kinds of dangers.”

“Never underestimate humans, Gul Sikint,” the captain said as he returned to his chair. “Your people didn’t fare so well against us in the war.”

“Do not remind me.” Sikint closed the channel.

“Melimora,” Frost said, “standard orbit.” He turned to W’Hoof. “Not very pleasant, is he?”

“No, sir.”

The captain tilted his head to one side, an expression of Kanid body language. “Something on your mind, Commander?”

W’Hoof lowered his voice. “Sir, I was in security before becoming first officer. My instincts tell me something odd is going on here on Cardassia. Things I do not think even Premier Lok is aware of.”

“We’ll see, W’Hoof. We’ll see.”

Premier Pythas Lok was a gaunt, pale-gray shade of a Cardassian warrior. To Frost’s memory, he’d always been a paler gray than most of his people, but this was beyond. Still, he rose and extended a hand across a remarkably bare stretch of desk. “Frost. Captain, now. It is… a relief… to see you again.”

The captain shook Lok’s hand gently, as if afraid to break him, and then sat down in the chair opposite the Premier. Commander Briarcliff, hand close to his phaser, took up a position behind him, and the other security officers – one of whom was Ensign Palmer, both of whom were armed with compression phaser rifles – took up positions in the corners behind the officers, able to cover the room.

“Sir,” Frost began, but Lok cut him off.

“I think we are friends by now, Captain. I shall call you Kyle, if you would call me Pythas.”

The captain smiled, just a little. “Very well. Pythas, then. How did the Breen manage to cut off reinforcements so totally that only two ships came to our aid?”

“You certainly cut to the chase more often than you used to,” the premier said thoughtfully, leaning back. Frost’s gaze did not waver, his brows lowered. Eventually, Lok shrugged. “I suppose I was becoming too comfortable in this position. When Garak and Ghemor and the others set up this democratic process, and neither of them had any trouble, I assumed it would continue. But it did not, as you can see.

“Some members of the Council were still furious over our losses in the war. So they formed a coterie of sorts, taking over the military. Then they called in the Breen to get rid of their opposition, but fortunately, my guards were much more loyal.”

“And,” Frost added, “you had my ship to convince Gul Sikint that he should come to our aid.”

Lok nodded. “There is that. Sikint was on the fringes – he was negotiating with one of my soldiers to bring part of the fleet over to my side when the Breen came. I would suppose that seeing his people attacked again won out over his hatred for myself, and for the Federation.”

Frost leaned forward, his hands folded in his lap. “So what you’re saying is that you’ve made a democracy out of Cardassia, in your own way, you and your people.”

“How do you mean?”

“Two parties. Yours, and your opponent’s.”

“Oh, but that’s not entirely true,” Lok said, his smile widening, his presence seeming to strengthen, to fill the small room with the force of personality Frost had felt in their first meeting, all those years ago. “You see, there is no more opposition leadership.

“They’re all dead.”

An hour or so later, the supplies sent from the Federation were offloaded, and the Cardassian sector fleets, under the newly-minted Legate Sikint, were escorting the Katana back to Deep Space Nine at a stately Warp Four.

Captain’s Log, Stardate 67586.75:

Our mission has succeeded. We have offloaded the supplies the Federation sent, and checked up on Premier Lok. However, Admiral Sharp responded to our report with a private communiqué, warning us to stay clear of the Cardassians for a while. Evidently there has been some dissent between the Cardassian representatives and the Federation Council that was being hushed up. I do not foresee many more missions into Cardassian territory, not until this situation is resolved.

Supplemental:

I thought the Cardassians had moved beyond this petty infighting, but I should have known it was a part of their culture, a part that couldn’t be wrung out, even after a war that could have decimated their people, had it not been for certain individuals. I guess I was wrong.

Once we reach Deep Space Nine, we’ll get a little help from their engineering staff in repairing the minor damage we received at the hands of the Breen, and then I suppose Admiral Sharp will contact us with our next mission.

Frost pressed the “log commit” button on his console and turned to W’Hoof, who was sitting next to him on the bridge. “All in all, Commander, I suppose it could have been worse.”

“That is true, captain.” W’Hoof scratched the underside of his muzzle, where it shaded to gray. “I had not expected to get into a battle on our first mission.”

“I didn’t either, W’Hoof. But on the bright side, consider: we were attacked when we didn’t expect it, and despite all of the difficulties we encountered these past three days,” and at that, he turned and favored Doctor Atridena, who was sitting in the observation seats to the captain’s right, with a small grin, “everyone performed better than could be expected.”

W’Hoof looked around the bridge. “Yes, captain, that they did.”

The bridge crew obviously was pleased with that assessment. Melimora sat up straighter in her chair, Shibasht’s smile – in a Horta, an invisible thing – could be felt, and even Briarcliff and Thenow, at their stations behind the captain and W’Hoof, seemed relieved. Doctor Atridena actually smiled, which made Frost grin at her again. And while the captain couldn’t see her, he knew Lessener was smiling too.

“Captain,” Satan said – not smiling, as the Vulcan way dictated, but still emanating a feeling of satisfaction at a mission well done, “we have reached the border of Cardassian space.”

“Our respects to Legate Sikint, Satan.” He turned to the helm station. “Melimora, shall we return to friendly waters?”

“Captain?”

He sighed – Pentekostans didn’t travel on the water as a rule, their planet only having an interconnected system of rivers, with no oceans to speak of. “Set a course for Deep Space Nine, Warp Six.”

“Ah.” She played her board. “Course plotted and laid in, Captain.”

“Let’s get to work.” Frost shared another grin with W’Hoof, whose muzzle showed enough teeth to scare even the most comfortable of humans, and then turned back to the main viewscreen.

“Engage.”

The long, lean shape of the Katana seemed to stretch for a moment before catching up with itself, the bright blue light of her warp nacelles following her into a flash of transition and warp speed.

The mission continues.

***

End of Episodes 1.01/1.02

Feedback is welcome.

I've made a start on Episodes 1.03/1.04, but I haven't written anything on them in quite a while. I suppose I could come back to the characters at some point.