((Derganix, Capital District))

Barka had dealt with more 30 different issues that day. The secret plan to hopefully rid themselves of the Ferengi with some engineered, covert assistance of the newcomers from the Federation, only accounted for about half. The rest of the stuff revolved around his duties as the Launch Director.

The crises he was dealing with at Launch Control involved 2 separate cases of ships requiring assistance. One, had been helped by the Culver City after not having enough power to return to Derganix after a malfunctioning thruster had sent them off course and led to them being caught in the stars gravity well and the other had been a sphere that had been struck by a meteorite and had started venting atmosphere which had required a rescue from a nearby Ferengi shuttle. Along with that they had several upcoming launches of newly outfitted larger spheres that would be testing some new devices and engines that required his immediate attentio.

Barka had not slept well in several days, and it was beginning to show. His nephew and assistant had been nearly useless the past few days as he had been struck hard by the withdrawal effects of the drugs, signifying he was far more than just a recreational user. A few of the not so hopelessly addicted members of his staff had been able to step up and help him deal with most of the issues and by sun down that day, the majority of the most pressing issues had been addressed.

The plan to liberate their people from the Ferengi yoke was another matter entirely though. Many of the people he was having to parley with and use for various components of the scheme were less than reputable, and it would still require a large amount of luck to succeed. Though the Federation Diplomat Aruin had seemed quite amenable to the basic plan, and had offered all of the assistance he had requested so far. But a lot of work still needed to be done, and the longer they waited the more indebted to the Ferengi they would be.

The series of crises had all come to a head that day were all the more difficult due to the fact that half of his staff had been outed as ‘functional addicts’ with the recent rationing program that had been installed on all the replicators planetwide in the last few days. The withdrawal symptoms, though known on a basic level to the addicts themselves and the medical community at large, could be quite severe.

Daily functional addicts who would consume anywhere from 2-10 cabbages usually suffered various symptoms including irritability, malaise, depression, extreme exhaustion, profuse sweating, cabbage breath, hoof pain, gastro intestinal distress and brain fog when quitting, and suffer from the same at lesser degrees when forced to ration themselves. The drug did create mental and physical dependence after just a few weeks of daily use, and withdrawal symptoms would usually begin 6-24 hour post ingestion, based on the users level of addiction.

Users would also develop a limited tolerance to the drug, that would cause them to eventually need to use double the standard recreational dose after a few months of use to fele the effects. After this point the psychotropic high of the drugs would begin to slightly diminish without a period of abstinence of at least a few days. The junkies had started referring to a period of ‘Cabbage rot’ that they would force themselves to endure each month.

The Cabbage epidemic had only be raging for roughly three and half years at this point. The rationing program had shown the Dergans how much they had underestinated the scale of the problem, as the readily identifiable withdrawal symptoms showed that it was much closer 70% of the Dergan population of 900 million that had succumbed to the affliction.

((Formica, Colony 874 Shipyards))

The assistance that the A-1 had provided had been enough for colony 874 to actually slightly exceed their goals. They were nearly complete with the next batch of 4 ships, bringing their total number produced to 14 so far, more than double the amount any other Colony had produced. The forthcoming vote that would decide who would lead the Colonization mission would essentially be a 3 person election, only he and the leaders of 17 and 506 had put together the required nomination package so far, and the vote was only 2 weeks away.

The lack of production from several of the other Colonies that he had expected to be more actively engaged in shipbuilding was surprising to him on several levels. The current grand total of ships built so far by all the Colonies sat at just 33. So at this rate 874 might account for more than half of the 50 ships planned for the mission.

Power production from several of the most prominent Colonies furnace tunnels had been running near maximum capacity for a few months and signs of wear and tear on the equipment was beginning to show. Though it was nothing that a good overhaul and wall scraping wouldn’t clear up, pushing the fragile systems this hard was never ideal.

((Bok Station, Orbiting Formica))

After hearing back from the shuttles he had assigned to test and see if they were able to travel faster then warp 2, Pogg was in a terrible mood. He was vacillating between wanting to kill his chief engineers, and calling off the entire plan here in Duwalla and just breaking up the consortium. The shuttles had been able to reach speeds of warp 5.8, proving that the engineers initial assessment of their engines had been totally incorrect, and that what the Starfleet Captain had told him had been the truth.

So the whole reason for them deciding on setting themselves up the system had been a error by engineers for not knowing that their engines were actually. Fault also laid as the feet of his academics and sensor operators who had also failed to notice the shroud they had stumbled into 5 years ago. Pogg had told his Daimons responsible for dealing with the Formicans to influence the ants into asking the Starfleeters to help them upgrade their warp engines, that were still limited to warp 2 due his engineers incompetence and the more primitive materials they were using.

That night after carefully weighing his options, albeit while being thoroughly drunk, he resolved to make the most of it. He would reprimand those who jeeded reprimanding and dock their pay accordingly. But it wasn’t like they could get back in their ship and head somewhere else. The shuttles they had built could only accomodate about a 1/10th of his people at the most. The dilithium mines were still viable, they just needed to figure out a way to ship it. That’s where the Formican ships they would recieve as payment came in. In his drunken stupour he also resolved to meet this ‘Captain Tyler’, who had treated his Daimons so rudely thus far. It was clear that he was in charge, as the other Starfleet vessel was commanded by a lower ranking officer and the Klingon ship was a small B’rel that had appeared to do Tylers bidding thus far.