Commodore Rick Hunter scratched his head, but there wasn't an itch there. Well, not exactly. There was something tickling him in the back of the brain, but it wasn't something you could scratch with your finger. It had been there when he had woken up that morning, had stayed through breakfast, followed him to the office, sat down behind him at his desk, and seems to have settled in for a nice long stay.
It was driving him nuts.
For some inexplicable reason, the tickle gave him the unshakable feeling that someone was coming to pay him a visit, and that made him vaguely uncomfortable, though he had no idea why it should.
He tried shrugging it off and concentrating on his work. Captain Matthew Cross had an appointment with him at 0900 hours. An irritated glance at the clock on the wall told him it was already 0915. His frown deepened. It was one thing to be a little relaxed here on this frontier planet, but to be so late to a meeting with your superior officer was just plain rude. He stabbed the intercom button with his forefinger.
"Yeoman Piper, see if you can track down Captain Cross, will you?"
There was a moment of silence on the intercom's other end, then Piper's confused voice came back. "Uh... Commodore? Captain Cross has been sitting out here in the foyer since five minutes before nine. I called you when he arrived, remember?"
"Oh. Yes, of course. Send him in." Hunter had forgotten Piper's earlier call. The irksome brain tickle had completely crowded it out of his mind.
The door from the foyer swung open and in walked Captain Cross, smartly dressed and looking sharp in his black & white pilot uniform. Hunter stood to greet him. "Sorry to keep you waiting, Matt. Been having this really odd... well, I don't even know what to call it. 'Mental tickle' maybe. Anyway, it's very distracting. I don't suppose you ever had anything like that."
"No, Commodore."
"Didn't think so." Sometimes Hunter was convinced that Matthew Cross had Vulcan blood in his veins. The man's self-control never wavered. He was always the very epitome of discipline, conservative, unflappable, ultra-professional. He idly wondered what Cross would be like at a party, and resolved to throw one just to find out. "Let's get down to business then," he said, reseating himself and indicating that Cross should take one of the other chairs.
"We've been getting some very strange long-range sensor readings from the general locality of the Trojan Planetoids."
"What sort of strange readings?" asked Cross.
"Elevated neutrino levels for one thing," replied Hunter, "though nothing hazardous as far as we've been able to tell. Still, it deserves looking into. I want you to take the Longbow and the Banshees and check it out.
"Why the Banshees?"
"Just in case."
"In case what?"
"I don't know, dammit! Something unforseen."
"You sure you're telling me everything, Commodore?"
"Of course," replied Hunter, not liking his orders or his motives questioned like this. "You're scheduled to depart tomorrow morning."
"Yes sir!" snapped Cross. "We'll get the job done. You can count on us."
"I know," said Hunter. "Dismissed."
Cross rose from his chair and left. It wasn't until he was out of the foyer that he let his face betray a tiny portion of what he was feeling. He knew the Commodore wouldn't deliberately put him and the Banshees in jeopardy with false or partial information; that Hunter had told him everything he needed to know, but he hated going into a situation not knowing all the facts, whatever the reason.
Well, at least the Banshees would get some easier duty for a change. After their traumatic ordeal on Rostella where they lost Jazz Phoenix, and their aborted vacation which was interrupted when Vincent Kelly kidnapped Sam Beckett, both of which episodes starred a vile Jelly Brain as the main villain, they definitely needed a break, and babysitting the Longbow while he and Dexter ran scans on a space sector was just the ticket.
So, his dissatisfaction with the lack of mission data offset by his satisfaction with the benefits to his squadron, Cross reaffixed his normal stoic expression on his face and set off to inform the rest of his team of their next assignment.
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