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Everyone sat except for Pattie, who explained quickly that chairs on starships “weren’t built with me in mind,” and Gold began the meeting.

“First of all,” he said in a pleasant but authoritative voice, “I’d like to welcome our two new crewmembers aboard. Fabian Stevens, P8 Blue, welcome to the da Vinci. I’m Captain David Gold, and they tell me I run the place. I assume you know most of the team. This,” he indicated the human, “is Lt. Commander Corsi, our chief of security, and our chief medical officer,” he now indicated the Bolian, “Dr. Tydoan.”

The Bolian nodded his head and said, “A pleasure. You’ll both need to report for physicals within the next three days.”

“Assuming they have time to,” Gold added quickly. “I know we’ve got that widget from Starbase 375 to look at, and that still needs to get done. But we’ve got another priority ahead of it.” The captain touched a control on the desk, and the viewscreen behind him lit up with a schematic from what looked to Fabian like a standard Federation communications relay station. Such stations were positioned throughout Federation space, boosting comm signals a thousand-fold and allowing near-instantaneous communication across most of the Federation. During the war, those relays were of even greater value. Fabian also noticed that the one showing on the screen had taken some rather severe damage.

“This is a comm relay in the Phicus system. Some Cardassian ships carved a chunk out of it yesterday, and we need to fix it, pronto.”

Corsi leaned forward. “Sir, the Phicus system is hardly what I’d call secure. We’ve been holding on to it by our fingernails.”

“Calm down, Corsi,” Gold said, “we’re gonna have support. The Appalachia and the Sloane will meet us at the relay.”

Fabian recognized both ships as Steamrunner-class vessels. Not bad for support, he thought, but a hair skimpy.

Apparently, the security chief felt the same way. “Sir, that’s insane. The Cardassians have been dancing on the edge of that system for weeks. We can’t go in there with only two ships for backup. Starfleet has to—”

Gold held up a hand. “Way ahead of you, Corsi. I already asked Starfleet what was in the Saurian brandy they were drinking when they cut those orders. Turns out that’s all they can spare for now.”

“We can’t wait until more backup’s available?”

“It won’t be for forty-eight hours, and the relay can’t wait that long to be fixed.”

Security chiefs are all alike, Fabian thought as he watched Corsi fold her arms. She had the universal cranky look that all the security chiefs that Fabian had ever met had.

“We’ll arrive at Phicus in twelve hours.” Gold then gave Salek a nod.

The Vulcan, who had been sitting with his elbows on the table and fingers steepled together in front of his face, leaned back and unclasped his hands, leaving them to rest on the tabletop. “We will continue our examination of the Dominion device until we arrive at Phicus. At that point, Duffy, Blue, and I will commence with repairs on the communications relay. Stevens, 110, and 111 will continue their examination of the device, with the assistance of Okha and Abramowitz.”

“Hey, maybe we’ll luck out and dope it out before we get there,” Duffy said with a smile.

Salek turned to Duffy. “Luck is not something upon which we should depend.”

Still smiling, Duffy said, “S’why I said ‘maybe.’”

“Let’s get to it, people,” Gold said, rising from his chair. Everyone else did likewise.

Corsi, Fabian noticed, still looked aggravated. Okha and Tydoan looked bored. The rest of the team, however, seemed eager to get at the problem, as everyone made a beeline for the lab.

I think I’m gonna like it here, Fabian thought.

* * *

Twelve hours later, Fabian wasn’t liking it here so much.

The Bynar pair had attempted to interface with the golf ball, but had found no way to access the systems. Sensors indicated some kind of mechanism, but if there was a computerized intelligence behind it, they couldn’t find it.

At least, they couldn’t find it via sensors. Ideally,