Ready Room

Tyler stirred gently when he awoke, he stretched all four limbs, spreading as much as he could on the sofa before asking the computer what time it was.

“Hmm, a 2 hour nap…that should help.” He hopped up and made his way over to his small ensuite and washed the sleep off of his face before he grabbed a hot lemon honey tea from the replicator.

A lingering notion that he had been mulling over in his head right before he had dozed off began to resurface as he sat at his desk and activated his consol. What was it, the sensor reports from the Salvation and the grainy readings they were receiving from the border sensor bouys. Yes, that was it. He was a veteran science officer after all, sensors were his bread and butter.

If he hadn’t been here defending against a possible Tholian invasion he would certainly love to sink his teeth into studying the nearby massive pulsar known as Rhontaka 2. It was an odd binary system, which the more massive star appearing to orbit around Rhontaka 1(a G type star only twice the size of Sol). Detailed observations over the past few decades had shown that the system was actually less then two million years old, and that the 30000 year highly elliptical orbit of Rhontaka 2 wasn’t fully stable and the large pulsar would cast off its smaller companion some time in the next 200-300 orbits.

As a warp field theorist with a minor in applied astrophysics it would be something right up his alley in terms of research. There was a range at which no ship could enter warp around each and every pulsar, varying in size and defined according to an inverse square equation based on the mass and spin rate of the given pulsar. In the case of Rhontaka II any vessel within 2 light days of the sky blue coloured pulsar would be functionally incapable of going to warp.

Tyler furrowed his brow and gently bit his tongue between his two left incissord as he always did when he was deep in thought. The Tholians only had a corridor of about 3.5 AUs wide in which they could operate in the Rhontaka system and remain able to achieve warp speeds. The small, what Starfleet presumed was a space station orbiting the lone terrestrial planet in the system did seem to be the focus of the Tholians activity….but why?

“Captain to the Bridge. All hands stand by for orders. I say again…” Ingrams voice piped through the ship.

“Report Commander?” Tyler said as he walked out onto the bridge.

“Orders coming in from the Farragut sir. Inter system patrol through the asteroid belt with the Sacremento on our side of the border . Sweeping for hidden Tholian ships or devices is what it looks like. The orders call for us to be on mission within 2 hours. And apparently as the senior officer, you’ll be in charge sir.” Ingram noted after summarizing the text readout of the orders they had just recieved.

“Very well Commander, call the senior staff to the conference room in 10 minutes, send the orders to each of their padds. Contact the Sacramento and have her Captain join us via subspace….lets the rest of the crew who arent on duty sleep for another hour though commander. Lets have all hands stand to at 2215h(giving another 75 minutes for the weary crew to catch some shut eye before they went back out on another patrol).”

“Aye aye sir.” Ingram replied.

XOs Quarters, Deck 2

Wong had overcome his initial revulsion to hearing Lizzy McNizzy gossiping about events hisbown ship was involved in and had decided to listen to the rest of the holocast.

“So, sports fans, if you’re following what I’m saying, it seems like the Sheliak may have bitten off more then they could chew when they tried to evict the Tholians from those two class D worlds last year. Not many known this but these 2 powers share a very long and undefined border that stretches out to the rimward of the galaxy. And now it appears like a few Starfleet ships might be getting caught in the middle of their border skirmishes. Subscribe and share, and catch me next week when I plan to take all of you on a journey to the front lines on a Type T freighter. Later McNizzits.

Just then Wongs comm chirped as he was summoned to the conference room to prepare for their patrol with the Sacremento.