Log 4
SD: 0905.02
Fangs at my throat:
By the Gods! what have I done to deserve this! It’s hard not to tear up and cry, or shoot something just knowing that I was thawed out only to be tossed back into the underworld of Kzin space I’d only days ago, in my reckoning, escaped!
I’ll take a few deep breaths and try to calm myself enough to recount what has happened up to now so that perhaps a court-martialed in absentia can occur, if this recording is ever found. Maybe they will eat it too and this will all have been for nothing.
We were still in hot pursuit of the ship that took our people, and I’d almost figured out what all they had done to modernize my station when Demian Tempres breezed onto the bridge.
He is the Chief Engineer and to say he is a headcase is an understatement! He makes everyone I’ve ever known, including my former skipper, seem sane and rational by comparison. The fool brought two small children onto the bridge and set them in front of the main viewer. Not only that, but he went on to put up an image of a man jumping around in an ugly purple suit singing horrible songs. I wanted to kill it the moment it came on screen, and him as well for putting it there. If this was not bad enough the moment he had finished commandeering the screen, he went to his station and started playing some sort of archaic computer game from the 20th century! Could he not see and hear the red alert in progress? Did he even care or understand we were in danger? And why the blazes didn’t the Captain say something to him about this????!!!!!!!!
Later when Captain Lee ordered "All power to the engines!" and the idiot took it literally channeling all power to the engines including weapons control, scanners, and life support, breaking my link with the fleeing ship and draining the phaser capacitors! I swear I smelled smoke before the Captain was able to revise the order and reduce power to the engines. Gods help us if the containment fields in the warp nacelles fail because of what he did.
When we got power back, I’d lost the lock on the other ship and they had dumped the stolen shuttle the two women had been in overboard. This was when Demian leaned over and mentioned he hadn’t a clue how the ship’s scanners worked. If I’d had anything in my stomach I think I would have lost it then and there.
I knew what to do, even if I didn’t know the panel. It took me a bit to figure out how to get a lock on the ion trail of the other ship, but it likely would have gone faster if that maniac Engineer hadn’t tractored the shuttle at high warp and used it like sledgehammer on the ship! Damn good thing for us the hull of a starship is made of tough stuff!
Anyway, I finally got a lock on the trail of the escaping ship and found to my horror it was making for Kzin space, and a nebula on the other side of the border at that! The improvements in technology hadn’t made much headway in reading through those clouds, so we would be effectively blind as to what was on the other side, and at the same time I heard from a recording salvaged from the shuttle that Chaal Riit was responsible for the kidnapping! Not only that but he had risen to the level of admiral while I’d been on ice! I could see it in my mind’s eye. There would be a large chunk of the rat-cat fleet sitting just the other side of the nebula, just waiting for us! It would be the Tang all over again!!!!!
I tried to talk the Captain into going back, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He would risk another Federation – Kzin war to save the women they had taken. To him those two lives were worth more than those of the two children on the bridge, my life, or even the millions or more that would die in another war. That was when I realized that he was as mad as M’Rander, but in a different way.
As a last resort I asked to be put off the ship, in hopes I could attract the attention of a border patrol ship and save my butt before the ship crossed the line and a war started, but it was too late. We had passed over into Kzin space before the Captain answered, before he even requested permission of Starfleet.
Now all I can do is to hope to die well, and kill as many of them on my way out as I can. As soon as possible I’m heading to the armory, and a food replicator for some ration packs!