Want To Know A Secret ?

Lieutenant Chu Barker waited at Science station one, occasionally looking towards the conference room doors. Eventually Lieutenants Harris, Toran, and Rashad came out from their briefing with the Captain and Lieutenant Toran nodded at Chu. Leaving his station, he walked over to the officers and approached the Captain as he and Lieutenant Toran entered the turbolift. "Sir, May I have a word with you?"

"Just a moment, Lieutenant Barker." Devore said noticing Lieutenant Rashad taking her seat next to Lieutenant Rhoukann and starting mess with her console. "Lieutenant Rashad, you too. Go get some rest. I need you fresh and alert in the morning."

"Yes sir." She said with a smile

In the turbolift just before the door closed, "Now what was that Mr. Barker?"

"Sir, I would like to have a word with you?"

"Can it wait till I get back, Lieutenant."

"Of course, sir." Barker said as he returned to his station.

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Barker sat at his station running sensor sweeps when the Captain finally returned. *I will give him a few minutes*, he thought as he noticed him go directly to his ready room. After a few minutes, Barker walked to the door and activated the door chimes.

After a couple of seconds, Captain Devore said "Come in" and the doors opened.

"Ah, Lieutenant Barker. Toran reminded me that you wanted to speak to me. I've got a couple of minutes." Devore said in a voice loud enough for the Bridge crew to hear.

Chu walked into the room and let the doors close behind him before sitting down.

"Excuse me Captain, there is something that I think you ought to know."

"What is it Mr. Barker." Devore inquired.

It's about Lieutenant Rashad sir, she is quite a mystery lady and certain members of the crew have noticed various activities. The security logs show that Lieutenant Rashad attempted to access several restricted areas within the computer, including the crews' personnel files. So far the Starfleet security protocols and lockouts have been effective at keeping her out, but only because Lieutenant Toran brought them to my attention and I added a couple of additional locks. Since the first attempts on the computer files, Lieutenant Toran has had the computer keep track of the Lieutenant's whereabouts."

"Go on Mr. Barker"

"A couple of hours ago, Lieutenant Toran noticed that the Lieutenant had entered the ready room to speak to you, but he only saw you leave. He checked the room afterwards and upon finding it empty quizzed the Bridge crew, most had not even seen her arrive. However, several of the crew, included me confirmed that she had entered but not left. That's when we looked at the computer trace of her location. Somehow, she managed to initiate a site to site transport, how we just don't know. All the transporters are still off-line after our encounter with the Xavier entity. Lieutenant Hansen says that it will another hour until we can get transporter room one operational." Lieutenant Barker told his Captain.

"I have been expecting our intelligence officer to try something like this, I am however glad to see that my crew is 'on alert'. You did the right
thing bringing this to my attention. However, I would request that your attempts to keep Lieutenant Rashad out of the computer system should stop. I've left a little surprise of my own for her and we all have more important things to do."

"Which brings me to my next point. However, Lieutenant Rashad transported herself from your ready room, it did give me an idea. All transporters work in the same way, whether they are Starfleet, Romulan, Klingon, Cardassian or BORG. So, what if we could prevent anyone from coming aboard ?." Barker continued.

"Disrupt the targeting scanners. Flooding the ship with some sort of particle you mean." Devore replied.

"Actually sir I was thinking more of 'flooding' the shield bubble with Thorion particles, flooding the ship itself was something that I hadn't considered. The most obvious choice to flood the ship with would be verteron particles. I would say about five parts per million would be enough . You'd have to ask the Doctor about the possible side effects. It probably won't keep the Borg from somehow neutralizing the particles, but it would give us some time. And with the Borg, every second counts." Lieutenant Barker said.

"Then we'll consider trying both, I'll get onto the Doctor about possible effects of the verteron particles. Get back to your station and again don't worry about my new intelligence officer."

Chu left the conference room and returned to the Science station. He nodded to Lieutenant Toran as he passed and both Lieutenant Rashad and Lieutenant Shaka noticed that for the second time that day, there was something going on.