Forced into Exile (Part 3)

ORIGINAL WRITING This page was originally published elsewhere as part of a joint sim or fleet effort. It has been duplicated here for posterity.

Characters:	Commodore Zachary O’Connell
Location:	Starbase Unity
Time:	Mission Day 8, 1000 hours
Author:	Greenfelt22
Template:Post

It was hard to believe it had been more than a week since the uprising. Repairs aboard Unity, the reclaimed dilithium processing plant that was once operated by the Dominion, were progressing nicely. Of course, at this rate, and with their limited resources, only critical repairs were being affected. Several starships who had avoided takeover by the Consortium had begun to show up, and the same practice was being observed on those ships.

Zachary was reminded of the Dominion War, having seen many a starship still navigate the cosmos with scars and charring still on their hull, outlining newly replaced hull plating. He had a feeling this was how things were going to be until Deep Space 11 was reclaimed and the obstructed path to the wormhole was cleared.

The atmosphere itself had been rather gloomy the last few days, but there was something different today. A few days ago, the starbase’s Strategic Operations department had been abuzz with a flurry of activity, and it wasn’t just trying to sort available intel into appropriate groups for dissection. Zach had taken a natural interest in their activities, but his focus was still to repair the base as a whole and the ships that came to port.

He found himself constantly bombarded by additional power requests and supply resources from both Strategic Operations and Intelligence. As much as he wanted to deny more than half of the requests, he was under orders by Cameron to provide them with whatever they wanted. She still hadn’t totally filled him in, but her tone indicated this could amount to a life and death situation.

Zach had been supervising the repairs to the shield generator when a yeoman came by with another PADD of requests. Accepting the PADD without a verbal reply, he glanced down at it to see it was yet another request from Strategic Operations, this time for clearance for an additional power output of thirty percent, as well as padding for an energy peak to bring some equipment online. While he could just as easily thumb over his approval, Zach felt it was time to check in on this project. He did, after all, have the clearance, and if something went wrong, he wanted to be nearby to take care of it.

The Commodore followed the yeoman back to the Astrometics lab that Strategic Operations had obtained. He recognized all of the equipment in the room, items he’d authorized over the last few days.

“Commodore!” Commander Gwendolyn Kane, the station’s Chief Strategic Operations Officer, greeted the flag officer. “I’m not surprised you’d want to be here when we fired this up.”

Zach chuckled in response. “I had to pay you a visit sometime.”

“You picked a good time,” she replied. “That is, if we have your permission to proceed.”

“Commodore Cameron tells me this will be one of our greatest assets in our fight against the Consortium,” Zach said. “Who am I to hinder it, Commander?”

Taking that as permission, Gwendolyn began to issue orders to her team to bring the equipment online. After a couple minutes of powering up the gear, the large viewscreen flickered to life, displaying a map of Task Force Nine’s territory, as well as multiple blips spread across it. Several icons appeared on them, including the Starfleet combadge, Dominion insignia, as well as various merchant logos.

“Is this real time?” Zach asked, watching the speed at which some of these insignia moved.

“It is, sir,” Commander Kane replied.

“And how is it possible?” Zach asked. “How can we do this without tipping off the Consortium?”

Gwendolyn smiled. “Unity has a subspace telescope, more compact and sophisticated than the Argus Array. It just wasn’t working until now.”

Zach smiled, clasping his hands behind him. This conflict was nowhere near an end, but at least they finally had something in their corner.

Read the Next Part

Accreditation

This post was originally written by Greenfelt22 for Bravo Fleet and posted on the Bravo Fleet forums. Use of Bravo Fleet's Forced into Exile (Part 3) is permitted under the Creative Commons 4.0 License and has been modified to suit the story and purposes of the USS Black Hawk Star Trek Role-Playing Simulation.