[Sickbay to Lataro and Benton. There's someone here who needs to talk to you.]
Benton looked up from his paperwork as the call came over the intercom. He glanced over at Sitto, who was sitting at his own desk in the security office pretending to do his own paperwork. Sitto noticed Benton's glance and shrugged noncommittally in response.
Benton stood up, tapped his com badge, and said, "On my way, Doctor." With that, he was through the office doors and was gone.
Sitto sighed contentedly, leaned back in his chair, folded his hands behind his head, and put his feet up on his desk. "Thought he'd never leave..." he muttered through a smile as his eyes drifted shut.
Benton had been apprised of the runabout Limpopo's apparent destruction while still in the Security office. The report had come in over the computer system while he had been doing his paperwork, and his multi-tasking Kelvan brain has assimilated the information on the computer screen without his having to interrupt the paperwork. His thoughts turned fondly toward his secondincommand. He knew that if Sitto had been even marginally awake and alert, he would have noticed the accident report too. That was fine with Benton. Sitto was always awake when the shooting started.
The doors to sickbay hissed open, and Benton maneuvered straight for Doctor Maruu. She pointed toward an occupied biobed, and Benton altered his course toward it. The biobed was occupied by Ensign Bortu, the Benzite that had been aboard the Limpopo along with Major Chee.
He saw that Bortu was awake, so Benton got right to the point. "You had something you wanted to tell me, Ensign?"
Bortu turned his head to see who had addressed him. At the sight of Benton, a look of great relief crossed his blue-gray face and he said, "Yes, sir." A puff of gas from his breathing apparatus punctuated his statement. "It's about the mission."
Benton pulled up a chair and sat down. "All right. Let's start from the top, Ensign."
Benton listened and mentally recorded everything as Bortu wove his tale: how he had arrived at his flight training to find that Chee had replaced his scheduled flight instructor, how they had departed the ship and then encountered two cloaked T'rais vessels, how Chee had thrown him into an environment suit and beamed him off the Limpopo before zooming off to attack the T'rais ships single-handedly.
Bortu had actually seen the matter/anti-matter flash of the Limpopo's warp core explosion, and shortly thereafter, a larger explosion that he assumed was one of the T'rais vessels.
"I'm sorry, Commander. He wouldn't let me stay and help! I wanted to, but he made me get in the suit and then he beamed me off the runabout!" Bortu was losing it. "I should have been there with him right up to the end! Now all we can do is look for the bear!"
Bortu was trying to get out of his bed, but Benton put a restraining hand on his shoulder and held him down. "Don't get agitated, Ensign. There was nothing you could have done. Major Chee sent you to safety so you could report to us what happened, and that's exactly what you've done. Relax."
Ensign Bortu struggled for a moment longer, but then the life seemed to go out of him. He slumped back on his pillow and took a deep breath from his breathing apparatus. "It's just not right," he said finally, despair in his voice. "Why did they attack us? We were no threat to them..." he trailed off.
Benton tried to sympathize with the Benzite. His Kelvan heritage meant that his emotions were somewhat different, however, and considerably less intense. He felt at a loss for words, but he knew he had to say something to the young man. Finally, he patted Bortu on the shoulder, tried a small smile and said, "Don't worry, Ensign Bortu. We'll get them for what they did."
Benton stood up to leave. Bortu then seemed to remember something. He said, "Commander? Major Chee said to report that I passed my flight test..."
Benton paused and turned back toward Bortu. "Very good, Ensign. I'll log it. Is there anything else you can remember that I should know?"
Bortu thought for a moment, then replied, "No sir. I've told you everything I can remember."
Benton nodded in acknowledgment and walked away. Then he seemed to remember something and turned back yet again. "Ensign? Why didn't you report any of this to the captain? He has been here to see you, I believe."
"Yes, sir. Major Chee specifically ordered me to report only to you or Commander Lataro."
"I see. Thank you, Ensign." Benton left Bortu's bedside. A nod at Doctor Maruu indicated to her that he was done with his interview, and she responded with a smile and a wave. The sickbay doors hissed shut behind him.
Benton's thoughts were boiling as he made his way back to the Security office. Ensign Bortu's verbal report coincided perfectly with the sensor data the Virgo had received, but there were two questions for which he had no answers as of right now. Namely, "Why was Bortu ordered to talk only to me or Commander Lataro?" and "Why were two environmental suits beamed from the Limpopo?"
Benton had just rounded a corner near the Security office, still lost in thought, when he ran head-first into a running crewmember coming around the same corner in the opposite direction.
"Oof!" said his victim.
"Oof!" said Benton. He quickly recovered his wits and saw that it was Ensign Milano. "Francesca! Where are you going in such a hurry?"
"Haven't you heard? Jenara has had her baby!" Francesca dodged around him and ran on down the corridor back the way he had just come.
For a moment Benton was torn between his duty to continue the investigation and his duty to his friend Jenara, but his friend very quickly won that contest. He reversed his course and followed Francesca back to sickbay, except at a slightly more dignified pace.
As he walked he couldn't help but wonder what Francesca had been doing in the Security section of the ship anyway...
When Benton arrived back in sickbay, the first thing he saw was a small crowd around one of the biobeds. People were oo-ing and ah-ing over something, so it wasn't hard to tell where the baby was.
When he made his way over Jenara caught sight of him and said, "Benton! I'm glad you're here. Take a look at my daughter." Jenara held up a tiny humanoid infant. It kicked and goo-ed in Benton's direction.
Kelvan emotions notwithstanding, Benton felt something stirring deep within him. He looked at the baby and said softly, "She's beautiful, Jenara."
Jenara smiled and said, "Yes, isn't she? If only Johnny were here." A hard edge entered her voice. "All we can do is look for the bear...."
Those last words froze Benton's mind. He had heard them before, but where?! He rewound the record of his memory and suddenly he found it. Bortu had said the exact same words: "Look for the Bear." Surely that must mean something!
"Jenara! What did you just say?"
Jenara sniffed and said, "I said, 'If only Johnny were here.'"
"No! After that!"
Jenara thought a moment, then said, "Look for the bear?" She looked puzzled.
"Where did you hear that?" demanded Benton.
Taken aback by Benton's sudden intensity, Jenara shrank away from him a little, shielding her newborn. "From Ensign Bortu," she said. "He said it was a message from Johnny."
"From Major Chee! What does the message mean?"
"I have no idea!" sobbed Jenara. These reminders were more than she could take.
Benton's mind was once again boiling. This could be a clue to Major Chee's location, assuming he wasn't dead. Benton knew how hard it was to kill the major, so he was still assuming the major was alive.
Suddenly he had an inspiration: he remembered something from Earth history. He looked about the room and spotted who he was looking for. Striding for the Sickbay door, he snagged Francesca's arm en-route and dragged her after him. "Come on," he said simply.
"Aaah! What? Oh. Hi, Benton," she smiled. She tried to wriggle free but Benton's grip was iron-tight. "Wait! I was just talking to..." she sputtered ineffectually. She stumbled along after Benton spewing "Wait a minute!" and "Hang on!" Eventually she wrested herself from Benton's grip, and followed him to wherever he was going on her own accord.
Where Benton was going was the main Stellar Cartography lab, an invention only four years old, which just happened to be Francesca's specialty.
Benton motioned her to the main control seat in the center of the cavernous chamber. Franny took her seat and touched a few switches. The walls of the room lit up with the brilliance of the cosmos. For 360 degrees around the pair, the chamber's walls, floor and ceiling were painted with holographic images of the surrounding space sectors. It was as though Benton and Francesca and her small control console were floating in the center of the universe.
"Why are we here, Benton?" asked Franny.
"We're here to discover where Major Chee is, Francesca," said Benton frankly. "I have discovered a clue."
"Okay. How can I help?" said Franny, eager to help Benton.
"Well, his last message was 'look for the bear,'" explained Benton. I remembered that on Major Chee's homeworld, Earth, there was a constellation called the 'Great Bear.'"
Francesca was completely serious now. "Yes, the Great Bear, also known as Ursa Major and the Big Dipper." She worked her console and the star field on the walls swung wildly around, then steadied once more in a different direction. "The Bear," she announced.
"I don't recognize it," said Benton.
"Of course not. You're looking at it from the opposite side now. The Virgo is far behind the Ursa Major cluster as seen from Earth."
"How far away are the Ursa Major stars?"
"Most are about two thousand parsecs."
"Hmm. Much too far for a shuttle to travel in a few minutes..." mused Benton. He studied the star view before him. The names of the stars of the Earth constellation Ursa Major, the Great Bear, were marked by the computer on the screens, otherwise he wouldn't have recognized them. At this distance and angle, the "bear" pattern was broken, and didn't resemble a bear by any stretch of the imagination. All the stars were severely dimmed by distance, even with computer enhancement.
All but one.
The star marked as being the "Eye of the Bear" was a brilliant sparkling diamond of light.
"Francesca, zoom in on the sector marked by the Eye of the Bear."
"Okay." The computer generated holoimage once again shifted and seemed to shoot toward them. When it stopped, one nearby star was prominent in the center of the screen.
"Francesca?"
"Um," stalled Francesca as she worked her controls. "The Eye of the Bear is more luminous than the others because there's another star, much closer, along the direct line of sight of the actual eye. Distance, less than one parsec."
"Name?" asked Benton.
"Portanus."