Earth Pt2
Posted on Thu Apr 9th, 2026 @ 6:45am by Commander Dean House & Captain Rhenora Kaylen & Commander Jenna Ramthorne & Commander Savar cha'Salik hei-Surak Talek-sen-deen & Lieutenant Commander Thriss Kla'ren & Lieutenant Commander Aurora Vali & Lieutenant JG Micheal Stevens & Lieutenant JG Jacob Rosen & Lieutenant JG Rowan Hale & Lieutenant JG Olivia Voight & Lieutenant JG T'Lar & Ensign Kitiuas Thenis ie-Jia'anKahr & Commodore S'thenosis Gorgox & Commander Jennifer Baldric & Commander Rosa Coy & Lieutenant Commander Bonnie "Bon-Bon" Durnell & Remal Kajun
3,356 words; about a 17 minute read
Mission:
Beholder
Location: SOL Solar System
The next morning Captain Kaylen woke early, putting the finishing touches to a speech she would deliver at Batel's memorial. Whilst the Captains wishes were that she rest with Captain Pike, investigations proved he was not interred on Earth. A memorial for the Cayuga and Enterprise crew killed by the Gorn stood outside Starfleet Command, and a subterranean crypt with the remains of those poor souls that had been recovered. Here was where Marie would rest.
She looked absently out the window, drawn back by the warm touch of Remal and the grislings of a waking Patina. This was home, this was where she needed to focus her attention for the here and now. It was a struggle, one she carried some times more than others, to park the fleet business and focus on family. She turned back to Remal, wrapping him in a hug that meant more than life itself. "Good Morning."
“Mmm, good morning,” Remal murmured, his voice still carrying the warmth of sleep as he returned her embrace, one hand settling gently at the small of her back while the other came up to rest against her shoulder. He drew in a quiet breath, grounding himself in the moment before letting it pass. “You have a heavy day ahead,” he added softly, his gaze meeting hers with quiet understanding rather than concern. His thumb brushed lightly along her arm, a small, steadying gesture. “Would you like me to walk with you... or stand with you, by your side?”
"Meet me there, I need to make sure everything is on order before the memorial starts." Rhenora replied with a sad smile. She hated having to leave him.
Rhenora negated breakfast for a strong coffee, and dressed in her dress uniform, the black, red and gold tunic almost mocking her with its crisp presentation. Nonetheless it was expected and thus would be worn to honour the fallen that the Admiralty privately wished had been left on the far flung Skygowan. The public facing side of Starfleet had organised a large memorial, labelling Batel a hero and a protector of peace. Many dignitaries as well as the Sunfire crew and all crews in port were expected to attend. The Bajoran captain fixed her hair, applied a light makeup and headed for the morgue where she would escort Batel along with an honour guard to her final resting place.
Remal saw her off, making certain to give her that boost of confidence he felt she would need. He offered to go with her, but in the end was relegated to the sidelines once more. This was a military burial, a Starfleet one at that. His place was at home raising their daughter and he knew it. Patina waved by simply opening her hand and closing it, muttering "buh-by".
The security crewman checked the chronometre, expecting Kaylen back at any moment. The timing had to be perfect. His wingman would override the medical protocols in place, whilst he neutralised the Sunfire's pesky Captain and beamed out with the body a moment later.
The security panel turned green, indicating an approved security pass has unlocked the door before the security system deactivated, shutting off all internal sensor recordings, as well as visual and audio feeds. To anyone inside the morgue though, nothing had changed.
Rhenora stepped in in full regalia, pulling at the stiff colour and cursing it as she entered. The small padd slipped into a concealed pocket and she headed for the room where Batel was being held until the honour guard arrived shortly. The crewman on guard looked up as she entered, hand in pocket and looking mildly bored.
"Crewman, I relieve you" Rhenora said formally, standing at parade rest.
"I stand relieved" he replied equally as formally, saluting the senior officer before falling back into parade rest. "By your leave Ma'am" he nodded and walked behind her, his hand coming out of her pocket as he did so. The movement caught her eye and she started to turn, only to find a hypo connect with her neck. There was a moment of shock, then as she fell to the floor her last vision was of the crewman and Batel's body shimmering away in a transport beam.
A few minutes later, the honour guard assembled outside, a mixture of both Sunfire and Command staff.
The lead officer pressed him thumb against the control panel.
Nothing.
He tried again.
Nothing.
Something was off, he twigged, and called for security override.
"Security systems offline"
"Beam me into morgue room 27 beta"
"Transporter systems offline"
He called for a security team that took way too long to get there now the transporter systems had been sabotaged. The blasted the door controls and levered the door open, squeezing through the narrow gap.
There was one victim on the floor, and the stasis unit was empty.
"Command, we have a problem"
The alert on Rowan’s PADD was a flat, rhythmic pulse - the digital equivalent of a flatline. It wasn't a breach alarm. It was a Success notification. According to the Medical handshake he had initiated, the transfer of Marie Batel’s remains was 'Complete', signed with a digital Signature: CMO, Rowan Hale.
The problem was, he was still in his office, and the handoff wasn't supposed to happen for a least another 20 minutes. He grabbed his med kit and headed for the morgue with a heavy purposeful stride. He didn't run. Running was kept as an intervention for a patient that could still be saved. This was an autopsy of a failure.
As he arrived in the morgue, he noticed the doors had been forced, a standing testament to a security team that had arrived too late. He ignored the empty stasis unit Instead, he knelt beside Rhenora, his gaze fixed on the flickering vitals of his tricorder
"Neuro suppressant," he murmured, his thumb scrolling through the chemical breakdown. "High grade. Not something a standard security crewman carries in his kit."
He placed a counter agent against the Captain’s neck. The soft hiss of the hypospray the only sound in the deadened room.
"The internal sensors were slaved to a ghost loop," the lead officer stammered, staring at the dark consoles. "The Handshake... it said it was you, Doctor."
"It didn't just say it was me," Rowan replied, as he watched Rhenora’s pupils begin to react. "A Level 4 Handshake requires synchronised resonance. They didn't bypass my protocols. They mirrored them. They used my own internal logic to mask the sig..."
He stood up slowly as the Captain began to stir, his gaze finally drifting to the empty space where Marie Batel had been. It was the one place on the Sunfire where he felt he was still maintaining the machinery. Now, even that had been used as a cloak for someone else's narrative.
He looked back down at Rhenora, "Wake up, Captain. We have a problem."
"No kidding." Dean was supposed to be on the Honor Guard also and if he could, speak. Now he's pissed after getting through the other way. "Is she good Rowan?" He went to one of the lockers and grabbed a phaser rifle. He reached for his combadge. "House to Bridge. Find those beam sites right now. Light the area up if you have to."
"We are currently working on doing just that Mr. House." Savar's cool, unruffled voice came back through the combadge.
Back in the morgue, Rhenora roused, confusion evident on her expression as she took in the room that was not how she last remembered it. She ran a hand across her nose ridges, sneezed, and tried to focus through the headache. Her eyes settled on the empty stasis chamber, and the honour guard. "They took her..."
Rowan didn't move as House grabbed the phaser rifle. He didn't look at the weapon; he kept his fingers on Rhenora’s pulse point, counting the steadying rhythm as the counter agent flushed the last of the suppressant from her system.
"Physically, she’s stabilising," Rowan said, his voice low, "But good is a relative term, Commander."
He offered a hand to Rhenora, his grip firm and professional as she tried to find her footing. He heard her whisper, 'They took her...' and for a fraction of a second, his jaw locked. The violation wasn't just the theft; it was the fact that they had used his own professional signature as the crowbar.
"They didn't just take her, Captain," Rowan said, stepping back to let her stand, though he stayed close enough to catch her if she faltered. "They walked out through the front door. They mirrored my resonance keys and slaved the sensors to a ghost loop. To the computer, the 'CMO' authorised this transfer three minutes ago."
He turned his gaze towards Dean with a look of pale, clinical detachment.
"Commander, you can light the area up all you like," Rowan added, his voice dropping to a weary, vibration. "But if they had the technical sophistication to mirror a Level 4 Handshake in real time, they aren't sitting in a shuttlecraft waiting for us to find them. They were gone before the Captain hit the floor."
He looked back at the empty stasis unit. The "Active Pathogenic Risk" he had fabricated was still blinking on the secondary monitor - a protocol he had put in place to protect her, now rendered useless by a mirrored signature.
"I told you I was practiced at being the most difficult person in the room," Rowan murmured, more to himself than the others, before looking directly at Rhenora. "It appears I’ve met my match."
He tapped his own comm badge, his voice regaining its sharp, departmental authority.
"Rowan to Bridge. Savar, the logs are a fabrication; they’ll show a standard handoff. Widen your scan parameters to include sub space transients. Don't look for a transport signature... look for a resonance echo matching my personal encryption. If they used my keys to mask the beam, they’ve left a trail of my voice in the buffer. Find where that energy actually discharged, and you should find Batel."
Savar listened to Rowan and all he was saying. "Understood Rowan, The logs fabrications. Widening our scan parameters now. Commencing search for audio signal." He replied.
Rhenora leant against the now empty stasis unit, the world slowly losing the lazy rotations it had been doing on a tilted axis to her eyes. She felt lethargic, the hangover after a hit she hadn't wanted. The need to find Marie kept her upright, and somewhat coherent. "They're gonna expect sensor scans, and transporter logs. You're right Doc, they're smarter than that. We need to get to the bridge"
On the bridge, Bonnie had been listening for a while before anyone thought to look her way, the overlapping voices from House, Savar, and now Rowan threading together into something that felt less like conversation and more like a problem. She didn’t try to follow every word. She let it wash over her instead, catching the intent. Her fingers were already moving.
She slid into her console with a quiet urgency, pulling raw telemetry beneath the surface logs, peeling back the polished narrative the system was offering and digging for the parts it couldn’t quite hide. Her brow furrowed as she widened the scan parameters, chasing the idea Rowan had seeded, not a transport, not a departure, something left behind.
“Computer, isolate subspace fluctuations within the last five minutes, prioritize anything that carries a harmonic match to Commander Hale’s encryption profile,” she said, voice soft but steady as her hands adjusted filters in rapid succession. The display shifted, patterns emerging in uneven clusters, most of them noise, some of them almost something.
Bonnie leaned closer, eyes narrowing as she felt it before she fully saw it, that slight hitch in the data where it folded wrong. “There you are...” she whispered, fingers dancing to lock it in place before it could slip back into the background. She then flicked the information over to Savar's console as well as Security and Ops for all to see and judge as they saw fit.
"Good job. Once we get a lock, I'm beaming over. If you have to use the ships phasers. One percent power, 360 degree spread, target any shield or hull impacts." Dean nodded. "And IF they are are gone already, sniff their warp signatures out. We are not going to lose her...." said quietly, "again.."
"Sir's Transporters are back online" Came a voice from the communications systems, indicating that whatever loops and ghosts the sensors and transporters had been locked into had been released.
"Beam us to the bridge - NOW" Rhenora ordered.
"Aye Captain." Ensign Gonzalez said from her Operations console. As they materialized an idea formed in her brain. Looking over Bonnie's data on one screen, her hands accessed the deflector controls. Gonzalez began to enter commands to send out a low frequency spread, barely detectable. As the signals came back, the display began to coalesce into a distinct shape.
"Captain, I am using the deflector to find this ship. It's heading away at full impulse bearing 192.53 mark 4." Gonzalez's face turned to a rare frown, as if in disbelief. "Captain the shape appears to be... an old T'Liss Class Bird of Prey."
Kaylen made a beeline for the command chair, if nothing to stop the room from lazily spinning. "Send a message to all crew on leave, beam whoever is available back within 5 minutes - then follow that ship...but I want full active scans in case it's a decoy"
The profile settled into something unmistakable, old warbird geometry wrapped in just enough distortion to make it feel wrong.
“How the hell did they slip past the cloaking sensor nets…” Bonnie murmured under her breath, not expecting an answer and not slowing down to wait for one. Her console shifted at her touch, routing power, tightening filters, chasing residuals the cloak might have smeared thin but not erased entirely.
She tapped her comm panel without looking up. “Durnell to all off-duty personnel. Priority recall in effect. Report to your stations or nearest transporter immediately. Five minutes.” Her voice carried clean and steady across the ship, a practiced cadence that held just enough urgency to cut through whatever anyone else was doing.
Bonnie leaned in again, refining the lock Gonzalez had found, feeding targeting data into navigation and tactical in overlapping streams. “I’ve got a partial harmonic bleed from their cloak,” she added, quieter now, more to the room than any one person. “It’s not much, but if they stay at impulse, I can keep us on their heels.”
The turbolift doors parted and Jenna stepped through like she had left something unfinished. The formal lines of her Honor Guard attire still carried the weight of a funeral that clung to her. The polished fabric caught the bridge lighting in sharp edges. Jenna kept moving.
The Navigation officer looked up just in time to see her approach and rose at once. The exchange held no ceremony, a nod, a step aside. Jenna took the seat as if it had waited for her. The display shifted under her touch.
“Moorings are clear. We have clean separation from spacedock.” Her gaze tracked the evolving pursuit solution, Gonzalez’s deflector sweep painting ghosts into something real.
“Helm control is live.” A brief pause as her fingers adjusted the pursuit arc by a fraction. “Impulse engines are hot and waiting. Navigation systems are within full operational tolerance.”
She leaned forward slightly, a subtle tightening in her jaw as the Bird of Prey’s vector resolved with greater clarity. Old geometry. Wrong in a way that pressed against instinct. “Recommend immediate departure, Captain,” Jenna finished, quiet, though steel settled beneath the words. “We can match and overtake at full impulse within two minutes of clearance.”
"Force beam the remaining essential personnel up if you have to. This isn't going to happen, whatever it is. Once they are on board, engage the pursuit course. Red Alert." Dean was already on tactical now that Rhenora was deemed alright. Also he'd not noticed that she was back on the Bridge. His attention obviously else where.
"How many crew did we get back?" The Captain asked after a moment, watching junior officers get replaced with more senior ones in all manner of attire. She knew there would be some left behind, and no doubt Command would send another ship to sort the mess out. She sent a hasty message to Command with their current vector and intentions, and watched the planet Earth wheel out of view as the ship arced away from it.
Commander Jennifer Baldric stalked out of the turbolift - clearly having been in the middle of 'something', wearing tight ripped jeans, a red singlet, knee high black boots, and a tassled black leather jacket. She made a beeline for the rear tactical station and fired it up, a glare at the young officer there sending them scurrying.
Thriss entered the bridge via the opposite turbolift. He was sporting a black t-shirt with the logo of an old Earth band known as ACDC. It was out of place for an Andorian, but that was who he was and that wasn't even important at the moment. He took over the engineering console. "We're ready for warp. I got my people working fast. What happened?" The Andorian asked, knowing damn well that this was no training exercise.
"We got played...they've stolen Batel's body, using our own protocols against us" Rhenora said grimly. "It's like they knew what we would do..."
"Damn" Thriss cursed before a realization. "Could they be heading towards Skygowan?"
" I don't know - Bonnie and Jenna are working through the sensors ghosts and have a bearing" Rhenora explained, "We're gonna need everything we can get out of the engines if we're to have a hope in catching them"
"Yes ma'am" Thriss said as he typed a message to Rynn down in engineering. "Once we pinpoint their destination, I recommend using the transwarp drive to get ahead of them. Provided we can do so without giving away our own whereabouts."
" We need to know where they're heading first, but they seem to be matching our every move. It's like we have a tracking beacon stuck to our hull or something" Kaylen mused, wondering if there was such a thing tacked to their hull.
It may have been a muse, but the skipper was on to something. "Captain, you may be on to something. I'm running a systems check for anything anomalous" Kla'ren reported as he got a report in from Rynn.
"Commander Upland reports that the engines are at their maximum output for now" he added.
"I'll take it, Commander Ramthorne, use whatever you need to" She advised the helmsman.
"Let me know what you find regarding anything...hinky" Kaylen turned to look at Thriss "My gut tells me there's more here than meets the eye"
"And I said, do it now. Let's go once everyone else is on board. Dean glanced a moment, "Autobot or Decepticon?"
"Huh?" Rhenora looked at Dean with a question in her eyes "Whoever we don't have on board get's left behind - Command is sending the Juniper as our backup in 6 hours, they can hitch a ride there" she confirmed as the message from command came through.
Rowan moved with practiced, efficient strides toward the secondary Science station, his med-kit still slung over his shoulder. He barely glanced at the mix of leather jackets and band T-shirts filling the bridge.
"Captain, your feeling is likely correct, but don't waste time looking for a physical beacon on the hull," Rowan said, his voice cutting through the bridge chatter. "If they had the sophistication to mirror a Level 4 Handshake in the morgue, they didn't just leave a ghost loop - they likely left a tether."
He tapped a sequence into the console, pulling up the raw telemetry streams that Bonnie and Gonzalez were already chasing.
TBC
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