The half-hour period was almost over, Chan knew, as she approached the captain's quarters. Maybe he was not there, she thought. Maybe he had been called to some other duty and had not informed her of that. After the escape pod returned, Parouge ordered complete sensor sweeps of the entire planet in order to locate the original occupants of the small vessel in case they somehow got far away from the pod. However, nothing was found. With the sweeps completed, Parouge ordered the Alexandria out of orbit and on to its next assignment. Now that she thought about it more completely, Chan realized that the captain likely had nothing else to do right now but chew her out for her blunders and her attitude.
She stopped in front of the door to the captain's quarters, and pressed the touchplate located on the frame. She could hear the buzzing sound from within.
"Who is it?" came the voice.
"Chan."
"Come," Parouge said simply.
The door opened, allowing the Odonan woman to enter. She walked in, and quickly scanned around the quarters. Unlike Odonan starships, the commanding officer did not have an office of his own on Federation ships, although some newer designs were coming with something called a "ready room." The Enterprise-class ships did not have that feature, so if private meetings between the captain and a member of the crew were needed, then they were conducted in the captain's quarters. Naturally, the captain had the largest quarters on the ship, and they were divided into two parts, an area near the door where the captain could hold his meetings, and a more private section where a crewmember would rarely go. Chan got no further than the sitting area just inside the door. Parouge had a large desk, with some padds and other devices stacked on one side, and along the top, an assortment of electronic devices, including some whose function Chan could not immediately fathom. The captain sat behind the desk, with his back to a row of antique books on a shelving unit. He motioned for the woman to sit in the chair located in front of the desk. "Be seated, lieutenant commander," he said. She followed his orders, and did not say anything right away. It was the job of the captain to get this sort of conversation going. "There are a few things to discuss with you," he finally started.
"About what happened at the planet?" Chan volunteered. She was sure that Parouge could detect the nervousness in her voice.
"We can start with that. After you asked us to contact the transporter room, you perhaps by accident left your communicator open. We heard what was going on. Fortunately for your reputation, we did not ask the computer to translate the Odonien expressions, which I am sure are colourful."
"I can explain that," Chan said hesitantly, wondering if she really could.
"Well, lets start with your remark about 'idiots.' Who in particular were you referring to?"
"Oh, everybody in general, the people in the escape pod, myself, the person who was not in the transporter room when they should have been, the people who wrote the regulations and so on."
"Why did you say that?" Parouge asked. His voice had a slightly angry twinge to it. "You talked about shoddy work in the Federation Starfleet, and how the Odonans make jokes about it."
"I can't help that!" Chan retorted. "They do make jokes about it over there. I've heard them all. I'm sure, sir, that you've heard some too."
"If you and your people have such a low opinion of Starfleet, then why did you apply for this officer exchange program?"
"Perhaps because we know it is not as bad as it once was, and perhaps I felt it was impossible for it to be as bad as the reputation would lead a person to believe it was. However, even you have to admit that the casualty rates were extremely high in the first tours of duty in heavy cruisers like this one. I mean, of the first twelve that were launched, only one was brought back. Isn't such a loss rate a little high?"
"Space is extremely risky, and dangerous, especially in the relatively unexplored regions outside of the Federation Core. The Odonans may say what they want, but their ships rarely leave the relatively secure space of the Odonan Empire. They do very little useful exploration work."
"Well, with the Klingons on one border, the Korpeians on the other, and the expanding Ksassans on the third side, that leaves little room for exploration. Large gaps of space exist between the Odonan Empire and other regions of space, so the volumes around our planets are thoroughly explored. Considering how space is organized, the only really open space is spinward from the Federation, and that huge open area outside of core Federation space. Our ships haven't gotten that far yet. I assume that the Federation values this exploration work more fully than my people do, and the few of us who do want to explore more have to try alternative approaches."
"Chan," Parouge said sharply.
"Oh, of course. That's not the purpose of my visit here."
Parouge cleared his throat, and took a sip from the glass of ice water situated close to his right elbow. He started again, "Now, commander, I'm going to ignore your outburst down on the surface of the planet. Those were words that came close to insubordination, and yet I can understand that they were spoken under the stress of the situation. You called for an emergency beam-out and nobody was there to do it."
"I'm sorry, sir, if I offended anybody. I do have a lot of things still to learn."
"Your apology is accepted," the older man said, as he took another sip of water and reclined in the comfortable, if slightly oversized, chair.
Nevertheless, Chan felt the instinctive need to explain and to get the captain to understand her point of view. "It happened because a man was killed down there," she started, the pitch and speed of her voice both increasing. "More could have died. I understand that space is dangerous, which is why we have all of these regulations and procedures to follow, regulations and procedures that came out of experience. We knew that something had happened to anybody who was on that escape pod, so we knew that risk was involved, and that danger was involved too. To me, the nature of the situation, the possible danger the landing party could have been exposed to, made it unacceptable that the transporter controls were abandoned, even if only for thirty seconds. I am sure that such slips are not routine on the Alexandria."
"Of course," Parouge replied. "Those involved will be reprimanded." He spoke those words with a little hesitation, as if they were not fully true. It was certainly possible that the strict letter of the regulations might not have been adhered to all the time, and that transporters were abandoned for short periods while landing parties were off the ship, among many other minor details. However, before now, nothing of consequence had ever happened, and more often than not, the only person who knew was the person who momentarily left his or her post. Since nothing ever came of it, the practice likely had become extensive through the ship. Parouge was going to have to look more closely into it.
Chan continued, "But down there, I did not know that. I didn't have the time to think through such things, and reacted more to the stories I had heard rather than logic and personal experience. My upbringing and the stress of the moment brought out those thoughts. Odonans regard life highly, as you know, and a commander feels extremely strongly about those under his command. This was my first landing party assignment since coming on board, and I lost a man."
"It's not your fault, Chan. You followed procedures perfectly. Carnivorous plants were the last thing we expected."
"I now, but still. It's always hard for humans to understand this. Humans grow old and die eventually, but Odonans don't age. Only accidents or violence or a medical problem our science has not yet dealt with can kill us. Naturally, we try to avoid deaths that can be avoidable, and although death does eventually come to us all, we do not want it to be a death caused by the mistake of another person."
"I understand that sentiment," Parouge replied. "As the captain of this ship, I feel it inside me every time a man dies, especially needlessly, especially by something stupid or something preventable. Death like this is never easy to take for any commander. I can in a way understand your concern, and your opinions. One of the benefits of having you on board is that we can get an Odonan point of view on things, which can be helpful. It is always useful and helpful when different species of intelligent beings can get together and work together. It allows fresh opinions and fresh views to be brought to whatever matter is at hand. However, Starfleet is a service with a tradition, and primarily on this ship, it is the human tradition that we respect here. We respect the service, what it stands for, and the commanders and the chain of command. It is something that all members of this service are expected to follow at all times."
"I understand fully, sir, and I will do my best to follow that. The hardest times to remember that I'm in Starfleet and not the Odonan Space Service is in stressful moments like the one on the planet. I know it was stressful, because I had built up quite an electrical charge. That always happens when I'm under stress, so it's something I have to watch myself with."
"Would outbursts such as yours be tolerated in the O.S.S.?"
"What?"
"If you were the commander of an Odonan vessel, and a member of your crew reacted as you did on the planet service, what would your reaction be?"
Chan spoke from experience, but she did not tell Parouge that particular fact, nor did she phrase her answers in a way that would imply she had the experience. "Well, if I was the commander, then it would depend on the situation and the person. In this case, because it came due to a violation of important regulations, I guess I would tend to dismiss the outburst. In truth, it would not be considered a major breach of protocol. Because of our upbringing, and so on, the Odonans know that such outbursts are not signs of subverting the captain's authority, just as we know that questioning orders is not a sign of disrespect of the captain."
Parouge looked across the desk to the woman sitting there, looking just a little small, he thought. He said softly, "If you were a commander?"
"What?" Chan asked, lifting her eyebrows in surprise. He had found out so easily, or perhaps he had prior knowledge of that secret in her mind.
"We are not completely ignorant. We are aware that the commander of the exploration cruiser Tola was a certain Chan Chi Lee, and we also know that the name Tola was later applied to one of the newer Omni-class starships. Odonans do not apply a name of a previous ship to a new ship unless the previous ship had been destroyed or dismantled. Our records do not indicate that the ship was scrapped. When the new Tola appeared, it was not commanded by the same individual."
"You want me to explain what happened between the old Tola and the new one?"
"That would be helpful."
"I cannot," Chan explained. A thousand memories, most of them bad, flooded back into her mind as Parouge discussed these things. Chan had worked so long and so hard to purse those memories from her mind. For all of those years, she subjected herself to the menial tasks on Alfe Kree-tasks far below her knowledge, talent and experience-to help her cleanse the guilt and the uncertainty of the one bad moment. She had succeeded to a point, but now Parouge had hit the trigger again, and she was wondering how much she had truly succeeded. What had happened that day so long ago was a supreme embarrassment to herself, her family and her race.
"Why?"
Chan hesitated for the longest time, trying to avoid glancing at the captain. Now, his eyes seemed so sharp, as if they were trying to probe her mind and find out anyway. "I cannot discuss it. It was a vow of secrecy I took then, not exactly classified, but the events were deeply personal and deeply... traumatic. In the interest of myself and the others involved, I have to keep the events a secret."
Parouge leaned forward again, putting his arms on the edge of the desk so that he could lean his chin on his hands. "You have to understand, lieutenant commander, that I must know such details in case there is danger to the ship, the crew or to the Federation."
"I cannot disclose the details. All I can say is that it involved me personally, and a small number of individuals, all Odonans and all in positions of no influence at all. It does not involve any alien race, or members thereof. There are no enemies waiting out there, no surprises to come back to me. Those who approved of my application for the officer exchange program are aware of the incidents, and would never have cleared me if those incidents would in any way imply a risk on the ship, crew or the Federation. My position on the Alexandria makes it impossible for such events to repeat themselves. I've learned my lesson very well." Chan started to stare at the padds and other things on the desk, since Parouge was regarding them carefully too. She began to wonder if the padds contained more of the story of the last day of the Tola than Parouge was letting on. "I hope you can understand that. The secrecy is part of the deal that was made back then."
"Deal? What was the alternative to the deal?"
"Dishonourable discharge from the space service."
"Oh," the man sighed, his voice more hushed now, and almost sympathetic. Maybe he did know, Chan thought. "Was your prolonged stay on Alfe Kree part of that?"
"No. That was my own decision."
"Why did you rejoin the space service, and apply for the exchange program? Does that imply that you cannot serve in the Odonan Space Service?"
"Not directly, not in the capacity that I once served," Chan admitted. "I must say that there is also the matter of politics involved too. My family is an important councilor family from Alarashada, our home planet. My presence in the O.S.S. in the original capacity might have been seen as favourtism on the part of the family, and I could not really rejoin in a lower capacity. However, I could join another space service in a lower capacity. Afterall, captain, even you must realize that once you're in space, once you've travelled on starships and visited these strange new worlds, it doesn't leave you. You always want to return."
"And Starfleet is the only place you could serve in?"
"No, sir!" Chan said, almost too loudly. She had remembered many conversations she had had on Alfe Kree with various individuals, including some officers on a Federation starship that had come to the planet. For them, that was a journey of almost three months from the core of Federation space. "This is just the best one, outside of the Odonan one, of course."
"I see. And you're sure that whatever happened to you that caused you to lose command of the Tola could not be repeated here?"
"I'm sure, captain. Here, I'm just another member of the crew, under your command, and subject to your orders."
"Your outburst on the planet is not connected to that?"
"No, not at all. The events back then were totally different. Regulations were followed. I was the only one who messed up back then."
"Very well," Parouge said, although the sound of his voice was very tentative. He liked the fact that upto now, the Alexandria was crewed by competent men and women, well-trained and intelligent-and with no hidden details in their background. He considered that very important.
Chan was tempted to some degree to ask the captain about the contents of the padds that were spread out in front of him, but she thought better of it because she was fearful of what information they might contain about her. On the other hand, she was pretty sure that Parouge would not disclose that information. After a slight pause, she asked, "How many others on board the Alexandria know anything about my past?"
"Just myself."
"Can you keep it to yourself, and tell nobody else?"
"I will consider it, as long as it in no way impacts upon the performance and safety of the ship. If necessary, Commander Allende will be told."
"I understand."
The two talked for some time longer, before Parouge dismissed her, not because he was not interested in the stories she could tell, but because he had other work that could not be ignored. Chan left the quarters and headed down the corridor, first to her quarters and then to the senior officer's lounge. About half way there, she ran into Terry Clemsen again, and saw that the damage had been repaired and he was in a fresh uniform.
"What are you doing here?" Chan asked, displaying a slight smile in her dark and otherwise alien face.
"Just walking around."
Chan repeated the phrase, "Just walking around?"
"Security officers get used to it."
"How's the shoulder?" she asked, pointing towards the right shoulder.
"As good as new. You can't even tell I was attacked by one of the plants. Solok checked me out completely, and found no traces of any kind of plant venom or anything else in me."
"That's good."
"Where are you heading?" the man asked.
"To get something to eat."
"That sounds like a good idea. Do you mind if I come along with you? Ever been to Kent? There's this absolutely incredible dish from the Psarakats section of Kent that I know you just got to try..."
Lieutenant Commander Chan Chi Lee was getting used to her duties on the Alexandria. The incidents on Transcestus IV were increasingly forgotten as the ship continued on its assignments, which were not spectacular nor significant. Chan was along for the ride as the starship was setting on a course to conduct some mapping missions in regions of space that had before received only a courtesy visit from probes, and they also were to provide supplies and assistance to several archaeological sites. Chan knew that archaeology was one profession that had many locations to practice the craft, although at times, Chan began to wonder what was the purpose or examining these sites, which had been examined before and their languages and cultures decoded by others, with most of the interesting artifacts already removed. Finding a planet that had all of those records and artifacts intact would have been the archaeological site to investigate, she thought.
Somebody had composed a letter of sympathy for the family of Calij Renadhi, and it was signed by Captain Parouge, Chan and the others on the landing party. Along with it was a recommendation for a Silver Heart, almost a standard honour for someone killed in the line of duty.
After leaving Transcestus IV and before getting involved in its primary mission, the Alexandria had encountered a small Klingon raider ship that had overheard the distress call from the Colonial Explorer. The Klingon ship had come, perhaps to see what it could pillage from the wreckage or the survivors, or perhaps it was involved in the mysterious surroundings about the pod that landed on the planet. Unfortunately, the Klingon ship had not anticipated the presence of the Alexandria, and its gunner had decided to take some practice shots on wreckage nearby.
The second-shift crew on duty at the time put the ship on red alert, and the first shift crew was recalled to the bridge, even if they were a little tired. Chan was the pilot on the second shift, and when Parouge arrived on the bridge-and he was about the last one-he had Chan stay on the bridge, if only to get an Odonan perspective on battle strategies. Afterall, a large volume of space separated the core of the Federation from Klingon space, but the Odonans and Klingons were virtual neighbours in space.
"Al-Calihad?" the captain said, turning to the science station. "Any sign of the Klingon vessel?"
"Negative. It's probably under its cloaking device," the woman answered. "I gather that the Klingon ship, once it dropped its cloak to fire on the wreckage, became aware of our presence."
Within five minutes, the crew found the raider, or more precisely, they were found by it. The raider was a small warp-capable ship that the Klingons were increasingly using. It was based on a Romulan bird-of-pray design, with some Klingon touches, such as the forward prow on the long boom, and the broad "wings" that spread out in a bird-in-flight pattern before tapering down to a bank of powerful disruptor banks on each end. The ship was small, with a crew around twenty, but the ship was designed to be fast, manoeuvrable, and it packed the punch of a heavy cruiser. The cloaking device was also especially effective on such as small ship. Chan had heard of this new type of ship, but the Klingons had not deployed them in any number against the Odonans.
As the Klingon bird-of-prey decloaked, the red alert klaxons came on immediately. "There it is!" helmsman Sakapsatimolos yelled out. The screen automatically changed its orientation to display the green-hulled intruder, so they all saw it turn and lock its weapons on the Alexandria. "Shields at maximum!" the woman yelled, anticipating the orders. Against a possible hostile, no captain would begrudge a crewmember quickly bringing the shields up to power.
The bird-of-prey fired its weapons at extremely close range, severely jolting the ship. Chan was thrown against the railing, and instinctively grabbed hold of it to avoid being further tossed about the bridge. "Forward shield in trouble," chief engineer Etcheberry said from his station.
"Return fire!" Parouge ordered, almost at the same time.
"Klingon's cloaked again," reported al-Calihad.
"Can you find it?"
"Negative."
Chan, having regained her balance and her confidence to let go of the railing, spoke up, "Captain, if I may be permitted, I think I can recalibrate the sensors to pick up the Klingon vessel."
"Even when it is cloaked?"
"Yes. I'm not sure that the sensors on this ship can be adapted, but it is a standard technique we use and is based on the fact that the cloaking device cannot completely hide the mass of the ship. These techniques are the reasons the Klingons have not used these particular ships, cloaked or otherwise, against us."
"Okay, try it."
Al-Calihad willingly left the science station for Chan, who sat down in the seat and quickly went to work. She explained the procedure as she went, but to al-Calihad and Parouge, what she was doing was not completely clear despite what she was saying. The basics seemed understandable enough. A cloaking device could render a ship invisible to electromagnetic and even subetheromagnetic radiation, but a cloaking device could not fully hide its mass, especially if it was moving on impulse with a mass factorization. The mass left a very faint but recognizable signature both in normal space and subspace, although the trick was to be able to separate the effects resulting from the cloaked ship from the background effects.
"You came up with this technique?" Parouge asked.
"Yes," she explained. "We came up with it on Alfe Kree, since the planet and the shipping was being menaced by Klingon raiders, who were determined to make sure that neither us nor the Korpeians established a strong foothold in that region of space. The technique of mass-sifting works best with multiple sources, like the network we placed around the planet, but a single ship can do this under the right circumstances. By doing a proper sift of the mass readings through time, we can use the parallax slope function to isolate the location of the ship, if it is within two billion kilometres of us. The faster it is moving, the more precise is the information, and once we lock onto the reading, we can track it. The ship is as good as uncloaked, and best of all, it uses passive sensors only. Although this works best from multiple sources, we can simulate that by moving the ship on a precise course." She entered the necessary courses and course changes into the computer, and said, "We need the ship to follow this course."
"Relay to the helm. Sakapsatimolos follow the inputted course."
"Understood," the woman at the helm remarked, and when she saw the numbers, she added, "Oh man, look at this."
Chan let her voice drag as she turned to the controls and concentrated on what she had to do. As the ship followed its course, Chan took sensor readings from the various ports on the ship, and by plotting the location in space of each port as it made its reading, she was able to build up a layered sensor map of mass differentials in space around the Alexandria. The computer was sifting through those readings by using the parallax slope function and generating iterative data on how subspace and space should look like assuming no cloaked vessel. This was all compared with the new sensor readings, and each reading improved the accuracy of the data. Al-Calihad tried to follow what Chan was doing, but she was convinced that the sensors were not really designed for this function and the algorithms she used made no sense to her. Perhaps out of the heat of the moment, she could learn more from Chan about this technique.
"It's starting to work," Chan started, as she looked up. On the main monitor, she displayed a grid, and on that, a uniform gray. "The gray represents zeros, indicating zero divergence in the data from the mass sift. In general, zero divergence indicates no cloaked vessels." The computer highlighed areas of non-zero divergence, and one of those regions looked promising. Chan enlarged that section, and concentrated the sensors and their sifting algorithms on that region of space. As the seconds went by, and the ship continued on its course, the computer laid on more and more data. The gray generally remained, but in the centre, the colours began to darken and take on a shape that became rather distinct. In no time at all, the sensor display from the mass-sift data was almost as clear as directly-scanned data would be. The image was clear enough that the individual hull plating was becoming distinctive, indicating that a potentially serious gap was appearing in the top of the wing section.
Seeing the screen, Parouge said simply, "Amazing."
"The algorithms that produce this must have been complicated."
"Not really," Chan remarked. "The secret is the multiple sources. Note that the Klingon ship is moving in a simple linear course. Its commander must be aware that we are travelling in an erratic manner, in an attempt to find it out, so it is doing what it can to avoid detection."
"Without success," al-Calihad said softly.
"Now watch what will happen." Looking back towards the centre of the bridge, Chan called out, "Natasha, abandon the erratic course and assume a course parallel to the Klingon vessel."
Sakapsatimolos looked to Parouge for confirmation of the orders, and he simply nodded. She made the changes, putting the Alexandria back on a linear course. Within seconds, the Klingon bird-of-prey turned towards the starship and accelerated.
Parouge stepped away from the science station, saying quickly, "Prepare for the attack! Shields up, phasers ready."
"Phasers ready," Sakapsatimolos remarked. The shields were already raised, but she was assuming that the Klingon vessel was hoping to get in close and surprise the Alexandria with a barrage of disruptor fire that would take the shields down. She had the co-ordinates for the Klingon ship and manually entered them into the fire control system. The computer tracked the target through the sensor readings and did not use weapons-level sensors.
"The Klingon knows he's been detected," al-Calihad remarked.
"And the commander probably just lost another of his crew, frying him after thinking that the crew did something to reveal their presence."
"Range is one point seven million kilometres."
"Maintain course," Parouge remarked. "Stand by weapons."
Allende spoke up, "Perhaps we should warn the Klingons."
"They already likely know we're ready to fire on them," Parouge remarked. "He's gambling that we really don't know his location precisely enough. I don't think that the Klingon commander wants to be warned off. This is a game to him."
"And one he's going to lose."
"One million kilometres," Sakapsatimolos remarked. "Still closing. Target lock holding."
"Manaburri," the captain started, "open hailing frequencies to the Klingon ship."
The communications officer replied after a few seconds of tapping at his console, "Hailing frequencies open, sir."
"This is Captain Parouge of the Federation starship Alexandria. We can track you, and we are aware of your attack run. This is your only warning."
"No response," Manaburri remarked.
"No change in its approach course," Chan added, without looking up.
"Eight hundred thousand kilometres."
Parouge waited until the ship was down to five hundred thousand kilometres, and all the while he wondered about the death wish that the Klingon commander had. Could he really and truly believe that the Alexandria could not track the cloaked ship, that the Federation ship could not see his own vessel? Finally, he said, "Fire phasers!"
Sakapsatimolos glanced down and confirmed that the computer was holding the target lock on the bird-of-prey. All she had to do was to hit the trigger switches on the panel in front of her. Two bright beams of blue instantly appeared, apparently converging on empty space ahead of them. However, once the phasers touched the Klingon ship, its cloaking device shut off. The crew on the bridge of the Alexandria had perhaps a tenth of a second to see the green-hulled bird-of-prey ship before it exploded and reduced itself to a spherical distribution of rapidly cooling and rather tiny fragments.
Chan left the science station, and watched momentarily as al-Calihad sat down and tried to figure out what the Odonan woman had done. Walking back over to the conn, she said to Parouge, "Captain, I will have to clean up that procedure and program it into the computer so that it can be used again. It would work better if there was a better distribution of sensors, especially subspace and mass-sensitive, sensors, over the ship."
"The sensors were never designed for that sort of thing, and for what they were designed for, they were adequate."
"But those who developed cloaking devices know that. They know that it is impossible to truly hide a ship, and are only really effective if you don't know that the ship is there. If you know that a ship is there, but cloaked, you can find it. Cloaking devices are strong where the designers know detection devices are weakest, so it is always an exercise to improve the detection devices and hence the cloaking devices."
"So in time your trick might become less effective?"
"Perhaps, but remember that it is much more difficult to hide mass than it is to hide anything else about a ship."
"I see," the captain remarked, softly. To Sakapsatimolos, he ordered, "Return to our originally-scheduled course."
"Aye, sir," the helmsman replied.
To Chan, the captain said, "I've always been amazed by the things that the crew can accomplish. At times, some things seem impossible to do, and yet, the crews I have been working with, and especially this one, have been able to do it. Any more tricks, Lieutenant Commander?"
She pondered the thought for a moment, and then said, "I can't come up with any right now, but maybe one will come to mind when it becomes necessary. It's all due to my own long experience, in a different situation with different technology."
Chan left the bridge feeling hungry and quite thirsty-and she looked it too. The temperatures on the human ship were a little above her liking, and just high enough to make her sweaty and hot whenever she had to apply herself. Working on the mass-sifting technique was not all that physically demanding, but Chan had forgotten about the cooling function of her forcefield belt, and had not really noticed that she had started to noticeably sweat. Among her own people, sweat was not a concern-Odonan sweat was for the most part odourless since it was low in salt and other excreted minerals-but among humans, she had been told, sweat could be viewed as unpleasant. She had wished that the turbolift would be cooler, but it was not. However, once in the car, she was able to manipulate the forcefield belt to generate a slight emission of negative energy, just enough to carry off the excess heat as if the ambient temperature was twelve degrees.
She ate in the senior officer's lounge, but it was mostly deserted because this was not a common hour for breaks or for off-shift officers to eat meals. She took one of the tables near the front, near the windows, and she looked out, at the stars leisurely moving past. Stars were a vast distance apart and light took years to travel between them. However, the Alexandria was travelling fast enough, many times the speed of light, that she could watch and see the stars move, spreading further apart and then sliding past the starship on any of the sides. It was a view, she thought, that she could never tire of, and she wondered why. All it represented was that they were going somewhere. Maybe that was it, she realized. She was going somewhere again. It felt so good to get off of Alfe Kree, although the heat of the human ship reminded her of that cursed planet. It felt good to be on a starship, where her abilities and talents were more useful, and she did not have to spend her time devising ways of keeping her people and their allies alive against a much larger group that wanted them, at best, off the planet, and at worst, dead. Out here, she thought, she could enjoy a little anonymity, something she had been craving for a long time now. Out here, she was just another member of the crew, with different experiences, abilities and perhaps even expectations, but just one of the crew in the overall scheme of things. It felt good.
(End of Part 5)
