Shouts and laughter filled the recreation hall on Deck 73 of the Starbase, as Cecilia Yilaan, the brown-haired, dark-eyed First Officer of the U.S.S. Bristol, and the Bristol's hyperactive raven-haired Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Marisa Giovanni, played a fascinating 24th century game of darts.
Giovanni shouted chastisement as her superior officer stepped to the line. "You're going to miss Commander! I can feel it! The game is mine sure enough; you should quit now and save a little face."
Cecilia gave her a pained look; she'd been hearing the same sort of thing from the doctor the whole game. As Yilaan turned back to the game at hand, she made a mental note to not play darts with the head of medicine of the U.S.S. Bristol. Yilaan squinted at the board, concentrating.
"I should maybe fit you with a pair of contact lenses," Giovanni teased.
Commander Yilaan ignored her. 'I need only a twenty and two bulls-eyes to shut Marisa up for good,' she thought to herself grimly. She got the twenty on her first throw, but missed the bulls-eye with her other two.
Giovanni was all smiles as she stepped to the line. "Thank you Commander; now watch and learn," she said, posturing almost unbearably for her competitor. The doctor needed only one bulls-eye to win the game, and Yilaan watched, believing her over-confident comrade would indeed emerge victorious here. However, Marisa managed to miss the bulls-eye with all three attempts.
Yilaan fought back the urge to laugh aloud, instead stifling it with a small giggle and a comment of her own. "I already know how to miss," she told Giovanni sarcastically, to the amusement of the crowd. The first officer then stepped to the line and threw, striking the bulls-eye with her first attempt. The crowd around her cheered; those from her ship chanted her name. Yilaan smiled as Giovanni sharply caught her breath in a barely audible gasp. She aimed the second dart and missed with the throw. Frowning slightly, she squinted at the board again, concentrating on her final shot. The crowd quieted down a bit and waited patiently.
Giovanni's stomach growled. "You make me wait so long, my dinner three weeks from now is getting cold," she commented abruptly.
Yilaan smiled serenely to herself as she let the final dart fly, striking the bulls-eye directly in the center. A loud cheer went up from the surrounding audience as Giovanni sighed.
"Good game Commander," Giovanni said dejectedly. "Are you up for a rematch?"
"Some other time," Yilaan answered, smiling graciously. She turned and walked out of the area, amidst cheers and pats on the back.
As she was rounding a corner entering the hallway outside the recreation area, she nearly ran headlong into Commander Jevor, the Andorian Chief Engineer of the Bristol, who was wiping his hands on a rag he was carrying and looking back the way he came.
"Oops! Sorry Commander," he said abruptly.
She smiled at him. "No problem Commander Jevor. What have you been up to? Enjoying your time off?"
Jevor gave her a flat stare. "So long as something somewhere isn't working, engineers never get time off."
"Well the good ones don't anyway," Yilaan said, complementing Jevor. "Good day Commander."
She turned left and started down the corridor, when suddenly a small explosion rocked the station. It had come from far down the corridor behind her; she thanked her lucky stars that she hadn't chosen to walk that way. She shuddered as she thought about this, as screams of surprise and pain came from the direction of the explosion. Commander Yilaan raced down the corridor towards the explosion, as the station's red alert klaxon blared obnoxiously in the background. The sight she was greeted with horrified her; there were several humanoids lying on the floor of the hallway, amidst twisted metal and downed ceiling tiles. Two were of a race she couldn't identify; whether it was due to their wounds or her never having met anyone of the race in question was unknown. The other four appeared to be guards of some sort. One of the guards was actually conscious enough to be getting back up, and he stumbled over to check on the condition of the two aliens.
Cecilia moved over next to him and did a quick survey herself. It appeared that the other guards were still alive, but one of the two aliens was most assuredly dead. The other alien appeared to be in serious condition. The lone conscious guard had tears in his eyes as Yilaan was about to ask him how he was. She watched breathlessly, as he mouthed words of dismay and pain. Blood was coming out of his left ear.
"Take it easy," Yilaan told the guard, as she pressed her comm-badge. "Ops, this is Commander Cecilia Yilaan; there's been an explosion on Deck 73, Section 31. We have numerous casualties, and we need medics down here now!"
A female voice responded, "We're already on it Commander; thanks for the report."
Yilaan nodded and turned her attention back to the guard next to her. "It's going to be okay; there are medics on the way."
The guard barely acknowledged; he was clearly going into shock. Though she knew better than to open her mind to what everyone around her was feeling, she knew he was scared as much as hurt. She looked at him more closely; he appeared to be human. 'And hardly 18 years old at that,' she thought to herself. 'He's just a kid.' She took his hand and told him that he would be okay. He squeezed it to show that he understood.
Several tense moments went by before the medics showed up. The first was Dr. Giovanni, who had been playing darts in the recreation area a couple hundred meters down the corridor. She felt the explosion, but didn't know where it was, or if there were casualties, until Yilaan's call for help. Marisa had hastily thrown down her darts and grabbed her field med-kit, something she always had with her, and ran to assist. She went over to where Yilaan was crouched.
"Are you alright Commander? Are you hurt?" Dr. Giovanni asked.
"I'm fine; the guard with the vise grip on my hand is the only one conscious. I think he may be in shock. I don't know what to make of them," Yilaan said, pointing with her free hand at the two aliens. "I think one of them is dead."
Giovanni moved over to examine them, and, after doing some scans with her tricorder, reported, "They are Grizzelas, and yes, one of them is dead. We've got to get these people to the Sickbay on this base; where the hell are the medics?"
Giovanni injected something into the Grizzela that was still alive, before attending to the others. As she moved to do so, several forms materialized ten meters down the corridor. Most were medics, but one appeared to be the base commander. The medics rushed forward to help the injured as the base commander approached more slowly. "Which one of you is Commander Yilaan?" the base commander asked.
Yilaan managed to detach herself from the young guard, stood up, and walked over to him. "I am sir," she replied simply.
He offered forth his hand. "Commodore John Miller," he introduced himself.
Yilaan shook his hand, "What can I do for you Commodore?"
"You were apparently the first on the scene here; I'm going to need a report of everything you saw and heard. This assassination attempt will be fully investigated."
Yilaan was slightly taken aback by the commodore's words and his tone. "Sir? I don't understand."
The commodore pointed at the lone surviving Grizzelan. "That," he said matter-of-factly, "is the Prince of Grizzela. Due to take the throne from his ailing father any time now. He was here to offer friendship and promises to continue the good relations and economic partnership between his world and the Federation." He then pointed to the breach in the wall where the explosion occurred. "And that," he continued, a certain cockiness entering his voice, "is not the explosion caused by a power conduit overload or some other 'accident.' I wasn't Chief Engineer on board the Endeavour for sixteen years for nothing; I know what a power conduit rupture looks like, and I know what an explosive charge can do. This was definitely the latter. Which means," he paused dramatically, a half-smile of overconfidence creeping onto his lips, "we have a problem."
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