Greetings in the Mess hall

Posted on Tuesday December 6th, 2022 @ 4:58pm by Lieutenant Finchley Kerr & Lieutenant Steven Edgeware

Mission: Shore Leave
Location: Mess hall
Timeline: Current.

[ON]

-Mess-

Steven examined his fingers. Two small tooth marks glowed red , in his finger. It had happened in the main science laboratory. Steven had absentmindedly poked a couple of fingers through. The bars of Penny’s dog the Wee ones carry kennel. Suddenly a high pitched snarl rang out and he felt pain in his fingers.

“ I thought you had him fixed?” Steven said waving his fingers

“ Ouch. I am so sorry. He hates it in there. It won’t happen again.” Penny cried.

Fearing his temper might get the better of him. Steven went to the Mess for a drink, to calm down.

As he ordered his drink he noticed someone.

“ Hello Finchley.” He said

Finchley was tired, way more tired than he wanted to admit. The journey back to the Oberon had been a long one, both he and Karadis were looking haggard and a little dishevelled, but the honest answer was none of them really cared. After the last ten days, looking like hicks from the sticks was the last thing on his mind.

As someone said his name, he looked up to see Lieutenant Edgeware looking at him. Summoning the strength to talk he replied "Hello Lieutenant Edgeware."

Even though he was no longer the Chief Medical Officer. The medic in him looked at Finchley with concern. He looked exhausted , Steven was going to suggest he took him to sickbay. But then Edgeware remembered he was now on Science.

“ How are you doing?” Steven asked.

Finchley contemplated the question for a moment, then replied "I must admit to having felt better, it's been a tough last two weeks and I'm utterly exhausted. How about you, how are you doing?"

Steven looked at his injured fingers.

“ Well. Things have changed since we last met.But look let’s have a sit down and a chat. I fancy some of the Oberon’s rather delicious sandwiches. They go very well with a good mug of coffee. Not the Klingon stuff everyone is raving over. In my opinion it tastes like gooey mud. One of my new perks is being able to have my own coffee beans brought on board. You must try this coffee it’s a special blend of Colombian with a touch of chicory.” Steven said

Finchley nodded "If you can stretch it to two, I'm sure Karadis here would appreciate a good cup of coffee as well" he said, nodding at Karadis. The Klingons head slowly swivelled round at the mention of her name, but all she could do was stare at Finchley with hollow looking eyes.

“ Of course of course please join us Karadis. There is plenty to go round. One of my new perks is having some extra living space. I was happy with my old quarters so I asked the Captain if I could have some cargo space instead. To store my coffee beans. Once they have been through quarantine of course. Don’t get me wrong. The replicators are fine on the Oberon. It’s just they don’t quite get the coffee just right you know. Now you must have some of these delicious sandwiches. They will perk you upon no time.” Steven said

Finchley wasn't in the mood for small talk if he was honest, but it was good to see Steven again "Of course, thank you."

He looked at Karadis and saw she was nearly out on her feet, so he guided her to a table, sat her down and then took a seat himself. As his backside hit the hard chair a shiver went through him, and memories of the last ten days came back. He found himself holding his breath and clenching his fists, so he forced himself to relax and breathe out. Once again he turned to Karadis, watching as she sat there in silence just staring at the table.

"We're safe now Shr'Nesh, it's over, there's nothing else they can do to us" he said softly.

Her head turned towards him and she bared her teeth in a horrific glare "Nothing is over, they took us and be..."

"I know, I know..." Finchley replied soothingly "and we'll see to it that it's dealt with, but for the moment, we just need to know that its over."

"How can you say that, you were the worst off of us, look at what happened!" she replied, anger in her voice.

"Yes, that's true, but I'm the one responsible, I carried the can and now I'm looking out for the both of us" Finchley said "It's time to bury your anger."

She looked away and said nothing.

Finchley looked towards Steven and bid him to come join them at the table.

Steven smiled and sat down carefully so he would not spill his coffee. He also placed a plate of small sandwiches on the table.

“ Please tuck in there mostly cheese and assorted toppings. Actually Karadis I am glad you have returned. I just want to apologise for my behaviour the last time we met. I was going to apologise then but events kind of over took us. Anyway I am sorry.” Steven said

Karadis looked at the Chief Science Officer, "What's done is done...Sir."

Finchley interjected "It's been a tough time recently Lieutenant, Karadis most likely won't be very talkative for a little while."

He picked up the coffee and took a drink, it was good, very good indeed, the best he'd tasted in a long while. Placing the cup back down on the table he continued "So, Chief Science Officer now, why the change in departments, if I may ask?"

Steven took a sip of his coffee and nodded.

“ This brew is quite nice. I was worried about the amount of chicory. But you know I need not of worried. It compliments the milk quite nicely. Well. Why the change in department?All of my life I have been fixing people. Bringing them back to full health. Curing diseases and mending limbs.Then one day I wondered what powers the disease. That attacks a body in such a way? Why do Vulcans have green blood? Then I started to look at the common plant. Why is it important for a planets atmosphere. I am a qualified scientist. So when the position became open.I jumped at the chance. Tell me I hear your in Intelligence is that so?” Steven asked.

"I've been an Intelligence Operative for a number of years, and I get recalled when they require a certain skill set or a specific mission needs done, as does my colleague Karadis here" Finchley answered "That's why we had to leave here before. After the last mission, we've been returned here to the Oberon as is" he pointed to both Karadis and himself "and we currently remain as Intelligence Officers."

Karadis looked at Finchley and said "You're missing something out Kerr."

Finchley looked back at Karadis and replied "That's a discussion for another time, not just now."

"I think the Lieutenant here will have noticed" Karadis said back with some force.

"That's as maybe, but again, it's a discussion for another time" he said back.

Turning back to Steven he carried on "Anyway, here we are, all present...if not correct."

Looking around Steven spoke a bit more quietly.

“ Actually I wonder if you could do us a favour? When I was in medical a lot of the crew. Were still having nightmares over the disappearance of DS3. So to give them a sense of closure and hopefully stop the bad dreams. I started to try and find out what progress Starfleet command had made. But I hit a wall of silence. When I became second officer. I thought they would be more easy with information. But still a wall of silence. I was wondering if you have any contacts in Starfleet intelligence, that could help?” Steven asked.

Finchley thought for a moment, it was a big ask to try and get any kind of information on DS3. Not that he himself had ever tried, that incident hadn't come within his purview in any operation he'd undertaken for Starfleet Intelligence, but he had heard of the disappearance and he had heard it mentioned when he was on the Oberon before.

He pursed his lips, then said "I can try for you Sir, I obviously can't make any promises that anything will come of it, but I do believe I have someone in mind who I can ask."

Karadis turned and looked at Kerr, almost a look of disgust on her face "Even now...I can't believe you..."

"This has nothing to do with what's recently happened Karadis, this is a fellow Oberon Officer looking for some help and I'm not turning that down" Finchley said "Just go back to your brooding."

“ There was a Klingon embassy on DS3. Perhaps the empire have some findings. But please be careful people have a habit of vanishing. Like our last two CO’s. Steven warned

Karadis now turned to look at Steven "I knew of DS3, I was an Intelligence Officer in that sector, there was never an official Klingon embassy on the station, I would have been informed by SFI and by my own House."

Finchley now chipped in "That's rather interesting" he said thoughtfully "So if it wasn't an official embassy, what was it then?"

"Search me Kerr, but I can categorically tell you there was no official Klingon embassy there" Karadis replied.

Looking at Steven, Finchley said "What do you know of what was going on on the station, or the surrounding area, prior to it disappearing Sir?"

“ The station had just come down from red alert. The reanimated Borg drones had stolen a freighter. Oddly though, they did not assimilate anyone. Just the dead crew we found. We went off in the USS Pathfinder. I don’t understand something Karadis. If you say there was no Klingon Embassy on DS3. What was General Morg doing there?” Steven asked

"General Morg was a diplomatic Ambassador, yes, but he had no official residence on DS3, he was a negotiator" Karadis replied "Any official Ambassadorial resident would have been given diplomatic status on the station. There was never any Klingon diplomatic status reserved or any application sent. General Morg also had a second role, he was the Head of The Klingon Scientific Research Board...as you can imagine, that had wide reaching scope. If I were to speculate Sir, the Klingon Empire didn't have anything like a facility such as DS3, what if they were working on a way to cloak something as large as DS3, to steal it. Could that have been the reason the station disappeared, their experiment went wrong so instead of cloaking DS3, they made it disappear? I have no evidence to support that theory, but it 'could' perhaps account for what happened."

Steven had a think about that.

“ So. If that is the case. We start poking around we’ll open a wasps nest of trouble. Oh dear. You know I think this is a case of let sleeping dogs sleep. Forget I said anything guys. It’s for the best.” He said.

“Why do you keep looking around you Sir” Finchley asked.

Steven blinked he did not even realise he had been doing it.

“ Sorry Finchley. It’s just everyone who has been looking into this has vanished. Commander Bishop was the first. He vowed to leave no stone unturned. Then he was gone. On retirement and unreachable. Then our next CO said the same and two months later. Gone.” Steven said

"I need to reach out to some contacts" Finchley said "Someone knows something, you can't just have two CO's who tried to look into this disappear without no-one wanting to know why."

“ Please be careful Finchley. I don’t like what I am hearing here. From what Karadis said by all wrights it seems the Klingons should not of been on DS3. Whatever they where up to. It’s clear someone wants this hushed up and is not to squeamish. To see this accomplished. Maybe……..I don’t know…..maybe…..we should drop it? Enough people have vanished…..or do we owe it to our missing friends. To find out the truth no matter what the danger?” Steven said

"Neither Kerr in me have a stake in this Lieutenant" Karadis said "we weren't involved in the incident, and we have no-one connected to us that we know of who was involved either. You brought this up, you came to Kerr to ask for help, and for me, I think subconsciously you want to know. If you weren't concerned, you would 'let sleeping animals lie'"

"Dogs" Finchley interjected.

Karadis looked at him puzzled.

"The phrase is let sleeping 'dogs' lie, not let sleeping 'animals' lie."

Karadis turned back to Steven, saying "Whatever.."

She fixed the Science Officer with a fixed stare "You want this, you want to know what happened, but you're not willing to do anything about it yourself, so you came to the only two people you know have possible access to find out, and we're expendable. You know if it all goes pear shaped we won't land you or anyone connected to this ship in trouble, we'll take the fall. But that's fine, we've been there before, in fact, we've just come out of a situation where that's already happened, hence us being back here."

She stood up, looked at Finchley and said "I suggest you get the details the Lieutenant knows of the DS3 situation and we work from that, in the meantime, I'm going to contact Valerian, get us some time with 'The Book'."

Finchley watched Karadis walk away, then turned back to Steven "She's not wrong in what she said you know, so let's start with everything you know about DS3 from its inception as a station, to when it disappeared."

Steven could see Karadis point of view. Maybe he should of rephrased himself. That was his problem he always had trouble saying what he meant.

“ That’s not the reason Finchley. After what she said about the Klingons. I put two and two together. Two CO’s in as many months and a Klingon General pretending to be an Ambassador. Someone very high up in our food chain is involved. I don’t want the same thing to happen to you guys. I have lost enough friends.” Steven said

"Look Sir, if that's the case, we need to find out who" Finchley replied "If you can furnish me with the information you know of on DS3, you can let us worry about the rest."

“ Ok. DS3 was set up as a rest stop for vessels heading out to deep space. It was the first space station to be towed into position rather than built on the spot. Before it had been orbiting Earth. Until they discovered the new Sovereign class could not fit the doors of any airlocks. So it was towed away and a new station constructed. When I joined they had just beaten an attack by miniature robots called replicators. Then consumed metals and constructed new versions of themselves. The Chief Security Officer a Klingon called Kimpok was killed.” Steven said.

"That's an interesting piece of information, the last part, about Kimpok being a Klingon" Finchley said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. His mind began going through the permutations of what could have happened.

"A Klingon Chief of Security, watching over a so called Klingon Ambassador...who's really a General...on a station that's been towed to a region of space that at first was the hind quarters of Starfleet" Finchley said "What better place to steal a station from that the back end of nowhere. It actually begs the question, did Kimpok realise what Morg was up to, and if he did, did Morg have him killed for it?"

Steven considered this. His photographic memory kicked in.

“ I remember reading the morticians report on Kimpok’s death. Usually the relatives don’t care once the soul has left the body. They treat it like an empty shell. But Kimpok’s family were really fast in dragging the body away. Which was odd considering how they felt about him when he was living.” Steven said

"How did they feel about him when he was living?" Finchley asked, now intrigued.

Steven took a sip of his drink.

“ That’s the thing. He was considered the runt of the litter due to his size. He was rather short for a Klingon. Sickly as a child. Seems his grandfather thought he was some kind of reincarnation of his dead firstborn. That was the only thing stopping Kimpok from being strangled at birth with his own umbilical cord. But that was the only thing. The Imperial fleet laughed in his face when he tried to join. So he joined Starfleet. His family seemed not to care less. The runt of the litter was out of the way. But once he was killed. They turned all religious. Maybe it had to do with the grandfather’s belief Kimpok was who he thought he was. They cut themselves off from Starfleet.” Steven told his friend.

"Can you do me a favour Sir, can you try and get a copy of that morticians report on Kimpok for me" Finchley replied "Meantime, I'm going to see how Karadis is doing getting us some time with 'The Book'. If she's successful, then I'm going to get her to pull in a couple of favours to see if she can get anything on what happened to his body once it was taken away."

“ I will my friend. Please be careful.”Steven said

"I will Sir, and you take care" Finchley said rising from the table. With a nod, he turned and left the Mess Hall.


[OFF]

Lieutenant Finchley Kerr
Intelligence Officer
USS Oberon


&


Lieutenant Steven Edgeware
Second Officer/Chief Science Officer
USS Oberon