Time: 0300 hours
Most of Supply Base 901 was still asleep -- the corridors were still shrouded in the somewhat dimmer nighttime illumination mode. Everywhere there was quiet. Everywhere that is, except in the Banshee's ready room.
There, under full day-mode illumination, Lee Carter occupied her customary place at the head of the briefing table. The large tactical display screen on the wall behind her currently displayed a three-dimensional diagram of the space sector surrounding their mission objective: a Jem'Hadar repair depot behind Mulluran lines.
Three of the four other chairs in the room were also occupied with their customary occupants. Sam, Max and Jo were paying close attention to the briefing, despite the early hour, and were taking notes on their PADDs. The fourth chair at the table was empty this morning -- Kim Tycho was grounded until further notice by order of the Captain and per the recommendation of Carter herself -- the result of her little "adventure" with Thomas Riker.
Carter paused in her dialog momentarily and looked at the empty chair for the hundredth time already this morning and sighed inwardly. She'd been sorely disappointed by Kim's actions. She realized that Kim was still very young, but what she'd done was inexcusably childish. Kim was lucky she wasn't court-martialed. Going absent-without-leave, theft of Starfleet property, destroying Starfleet property -- those were all serious charges.
Captain Wallace had been very lenient -- it would probably taint his credibility, but the Captain had a soft spot for other veterans of the Dominion War and felt it was worth it. Even though Kim didn't join the Banshees until after the War, Wallace went easy on her as a favor to Carter. Disciplinary action consisted of Kim being reduced in rank to Ensign and being banned from flying until further notice.
Which was completely academic of course, when you took into consideration the fact that her plane was in billions of subatomic pieces in a decaying orbit around the Pompey, the small planetoid that was home to the Smelly Jelly.
But enough daydreaming -- the others were starting to look at her funny, wondering why she was just standing there staring off into space. Carter cleared her throat and resumed the briefing.
Time: 0330 hours
Kim sat on the deck of the station's main hangar bay craning her neck up at an open hatch on the underside of the port wing of the Lambda Flier. It was 3:30 in the morning, but she couldn't sleep -- too much on her mind.
Yesterday she'd started helping Garek upgrade the phase couplings in the targeting sensors, so she thought she'd return to that task, in lieu of sleep. But instead of being a relaxing activity as she assumed it would be, the stupid self-sealing stembolt she was holding in her hand simply refused to fit into its socket, and she was getting more frustrated by the second. Considering recent events, she wasn't in the best of moods to begin with.
She set down the ornery appliance and tried to find something to wipe her hands on, then remembered painfully that she wasn't wearing her uniform and didn't have to be so careful. She hated the crewman's coverall she had on -- in her mind it had become the symbol of her punishment -- so she savagely smeared her greasy hands all over the front until the beige fabric was mostly oily green and purple.
Strangely satisfied and suddenly in a much better mood, she smiled, and took up the stubborn stembolt once again. "You're gonna fit even if I have to take a hammer to you!"
"Now, now," said a voice from behind her. "What do I always say?"
Kim turned around and saw Garek standing there with his head ducked under the wing and his arms up above his head, hands gripping the wing edge.
"I know, I know," she said, smiling. "The right tool for the right job!" she mimicked in a stern, lecturing voice.
"You got it."
"So I'll hit it with a hydro-spanner then," she laughed, standing up from her crouching position. Immediate she was in Garek's arms, he straightening up to receive his girl.
If it hadn't been for Garek, she didn't know how she could have dealt with this difficult time. Being reduced to Ensign was embarrassing enough, but to be denied flying time -- that was almost too much to bear. He'd been there for her though. Eschewing his usual nonchalant, carefree facade that all others saw, he had sat with her during long lonely nights and just listened to her troubles.
"Problems?" he asked.
"Hm?" For a moment she couldn't figure out what he was referring to, then realized that he meant with the phase couplings. "Oh. Just the stembolt." She nudged the thing with the toe of her boot. "Won't fit," she shrugged.
Garek smiled. With his hand on the small of her back, he gently guided her back to the open panel on the underside of the wing. "All right. Let's have a look," he said.
Time: 0430 hours
Four sleek shapes, normally five, floated from their allocated hangar spaces, propelled by tractor beams, out through the giant clam-shell doors, into open space. Their commander ordered a tight formation as soon as they were clear, and as one they angled toward the USS Lexington, in orbit around the station.
Each craft was, in turn, pulled into the starship's cavernous hangar bay by yet another tractor beam until open space was once again clear.
Mere minutes after the last of the small craft was aboard the giant starship, the very fabric of space if front of it was twisted and rent, and the Lexington vanished in a starburst of extraneous tachyons. Its next stop would be the Jem'Hadar repair depot.