Catching Our Breath

Posted on Thu Jan 12th, 2012 @ 10:07pm by Captain Vorn Krace & Commander Jordan Gunning & Lieutenant Commander Sara Archer & Lieutenant Elena Valdez

Mission: The Fate of the Swiftsure
Location: USS Iapetus - Sickbay
Timeline: MD09 1015hrs

As Captain Krace walked into the Iapetus' medical bay, he was pleased to see that many of the scraped and bruised shuttle crews had been cleaned up and cleared out in an orderly fashion, and aside from one or two others, Commanders Archer and Gunning were the only two Starfleet officers under care, along with the individual Krace had been informed was Mister Varro, all under the care of Doctor Valdez.

"I'm glad to see you two are recovering well," he commented, as he approached the two senior officers. "I trust our rescue attempt didn't cause too much of a disruption to your holiday plans?"

"Oh, you know me Captain," Gunning replied as he slowly rotated his wrist. It had felt a bit... clicky... ever since they had been back, "if I'm not placed under lock and key at some point during a vacation then I don't really feel like I've had a proper getaway."

"For me, it was just another Tuesday," Sara added. She had been slowly settling in to using sarcasm like her gold shirted counterpart.

Smiling at their responses, the captain turned towards the doctor, who had - typically of physicians with patients under care, Krace had found - come to hover nearby, to ensure that the captain didn't interfere with the recovery of her patients. "How is he doing, doctor?" he asked, inclining his head towards Mister Varro, who was in a slightly more secluded portion of sickbay, just a little distance away from where they stood.

"He's a little shaken up, Captain, but there's nothing physically wrong with him besides a few minor abrasions." Elena glanced back over her shoulder at Varro. "I'm running a couple of scans as a precaution, but am not expecting to find anything abnormal. He's free to go at any time."

The captain nodded. "I hope you don't mind if I have a few words with him then?" he asked, waiting just briefly for her confirmation before moving over to the bio bed the man was settled on.

"Mister Varro?" he asked as he got nearer. "Captain Vorn Krace, commander of the USS Iapetus."

The man nodded in response. "Captain. I want to thank you for your crew's efforts in rescuing me from that place. I had almost resigned myself to the fact that I might never leave that prison."

"It was nothing," the captain said, though inwardly he thought of those crew members who had been injured or worse during the course of the mission. "I'm sure you can understand that Starfleet Security will want to debrief you once we get back to Starbase Nine Hundred, but I presume that your confinement aboard the other vessel would lend to the impression that you were being coerced against your will?" The captain knew that it could all still be just an elaborate ruse still, but he wanted to have something to report back to Task Force Command - he also wanted the chance to judge the man's mannerisms during his answer himself, to make his own assessment.

Varro nodded. "They had me altering the star charts that I have been supplying your Federation with. Removing hazardous anomalies, systems that would otherwise me marked with a warning for the inhabitants being overly aggressive, or in some cases just changing the whole layout of the maps completely."

"How many altered star charts were supplied to Starfleet?"

"I don't know exactly. Maybe a dozen, half a dozen?" the man responded, clearly searching his brain for an answer.

"Do you still have the unaltered star charts, or a list of the charts that were altered?"

The man nodded. "They're aboard my ship. I was on the trading station when they came for me, so if you can find it in the asteroid field, then you can get the data you need."

Krace simply nodded, knowing that they had already recovered the ship, and that it, along with any data held within its computers, had been destroyed when the apparent prisoners they had held had escaped. "Thank you," he said aloud. "I'll have the quartermaster assign you some guest quarters until we arrive at Starbase Nine Hundred." With that, he gave a brief nod of farewell, and turned to head towards the door, beckoning Archer and Gunning over as he walked. As soon as they left earshot of the supplier, he quietly told them;

"Mark all of our star charts supplied by Varro for review, and inform Starfleet to cascade the orders to the other ships out here," he said. "Anything that Varro has supplied us needs to be verified for its accuracy. We don't know how many he was forced to alter until we retrieved him."

With that task done, he began heading off to the bridge to give the order to return to the starbase. This mission hadn't quite turned out to be the success he had hoped his first mission in the Delta Quadrant to be.

---------------
Captain Vorn Krace
Commanding Officer

Lt. Commander Jordan Gunning
Chief of Security

Lt. Commander Sara Archer
Chief Intelligence Officer

Lieutenant JG Elena Valdez
Chief Medical Officer
USS Iapetus

&

Varro (NPC)
Star Chart Supplier