The Shadow

Captain Devore sat in his quarters making preparations for his wife to join him. For the past three weeks since she has been on board the Leviathan, Counselor Devore was residing in her own quarters. At the time, Captain Devore thought that it may have been a good idea for her to stay there for her protection, but protection from what ? The Leviathan was big as it was was confining. If any harm was to come, then it was going to come no matter what precautions were taken.

The rumours that a "shadow" was on board his ship was beginning to become a reality. Something was happening aboard the Leviathan, but Devore didn't seem to know anything. He quickly assigned Commander Toran and Commander Harris to investigate these rumours to either give credence to the stories or invalidate them. At the same time he had given their new Marine the job of protecting vital systems aboard working closely with Toran. The two commanders' investigation turned up nothing initially, but with Lieutenant Shaka still making regular trips to Sickbay incase of a relapse and the rash of mysterious malfunctions, the investigation were starting to find facts.

Fact that this "shadow" had been accredited with disabling the warp drive, damaging the deflector array and cutting power to life support that critically injured a crewman on the lower decks. But the most compelling evidence came when a small explosion took place in the forward lounge's replicator. The replicator was on a very precise feedback loop that given the start point would explode at another time. This was the work of someone who knew what they were doing, and not a freak accident as first thought. However, Commander Toran put the pieces together and concluded that there was in fact a saboteur on board. With the precise timing of the replicator exploding, Toran began to speculate that it was even more than just a saboteur but an assassin.

Devore laid down on his couch and began to think that that possibly just possibly, that this mysterious person could be one of his senior staff. This person seem to move freely about the ship and goes unnoticed as if he or she was supposed to be there. The senior staff could do just that, move about from deck to deck and no questions were to be asked if the staff member was say in engineering, when he was medical. Even command personnel could be this person.

Devore almost dozed off thinking about the identity of the person when his door bell rang. "Come." He said sitting up right. Devore had his tunic thrown against the opposite chair and he was totally lounging around, so when the young crewman came in followed by Commander Harris, he felt out of uniform. "Yes commander ? What is it ?"

"Sir, I am sorry to disturb you, but I think that you might want to hear this." Harris said.

"Go ahead crewman."Nervously, the crewman swallowed very hard and began to speak.

"Captain. I am Crewman Stotely. I work in science lab 1. I.. I ... think that I have some information about the replicator accident in the forward lounge."

"Really Mr. Stotely. Please go ahead."

"Sir. I was having my dinner in the far corner. I usually sit there every day because well, I am not well liked around here. I sit in the corner usually where I am not seen or heard. Well I was sitting there and I saw one of the senior staff tinkering with the replicator. Lieutenant Commander Toree came in and said something to him, but the officer continued to work on it."

"Okay son, I am not seeing any relevance here. Who was the officer ?"

"Sir, I didn't pay any attention to the fact that he was working on the replicator. But the officer gave Toree something then left. Shortly afterwards he choked on something. I helped him out and called the medical emergency. Toree died by analgesic shock. He was allergic to something."

"Stotely.. I am not following.."

"Toree was eating tomato soup like he did all the time, just like you always go there at 19:30 for dinner."

".. and this officer knew that," Harris interjected. "Okay. Who was the officer ?"

"Captain. The officer was Lieutenant Anderson !"

"What !" Devore replied.

"Yes sir. As my eyes are brown, so is my information, true and gold !"

Captain Devore tapped his combadge. "Commander Toran. Yellow Alert. I want you to locate and detain Lieutenant Anderson."