Four bikini-clad women lay on their building's rooftop sundeck, whiling away the day catching some rays and catching up on their much-needed rest. The sun was bright, the air was warm, and the sounds of everyday city life below didn't penetrate their fortress of leisure.
When the doorbell rang, four women groaned as one.
"Not again!" exclaimed Lee Carter.
"Where's Alex?" asked Max.
"On a date with Dexter," replied Jo. "That's who was at the door before."
"A date?" said Carter, surprised.
"No good can come of this," prognosticated Max in typical dark humor. "Jo, why don't you go see who it is and get rid of them."
"Why me again? I got it last time."
"Because you're up."
"No I'm not, and I'm not falling for that one again," replied Jo steadfastly.
From below, the doorbell rang again.
"I'll go," said Sam Beckett, rising from her lounge chair and stretching her long limbs luxuriantly. While shy and withdrawn to the point of incapacitation around strangers, among her close friends she was completely unabashed. She put on a robe before going downstairs.
The granite visage of Matthew Cross greeted her upon opening the front door. "Captain!" she exclaimed, surprised to receive a higher-ranking visitor on their day off.
"Lieutenant," replied Cross, nodding in formal greeting and stepping through the doorway. "Time for our next mission briefing." In addition to the building being the Banshees' home, much of the downstairs area, aside from the living room and kitchen, served as their mission planning and logistics nerve center. For Cross to show up unannounced wasn't unusual, but he had the unnerving habit of always showing up when they were in the middle of some serious relaxing.
"I thought I felt the temperature drop," quipped Carter's voice from the top of the spiral staircase. She, Max and Jo were descending to the living room, their shapely figures only moderately concealed underneath their robes.
"Like a chill up my spine," supplied Max with a deadly serious voice, but the twinkle in her eye belied her harsh words.
"I thought today was our day off," continued Carter.
"Today was your day off," corrected Cross. He checked his watch. "Your downtime officially ended at 1200 hours. It is now 1205, so let's get into our uniforms and get back to work!" A sudden realization struck Cross. He looked around the room. "There are only four of you," he said.
"The man's grasp of arithmetic never ceases to amaze me!" said Carter to Max.
"That's why he's a captain and you're just a lowly commander."
Cross smiled indulgently at their humor. "I see the sun has gone to your heads, ladies," he retaliated. "We can remedy that with a long patrol in the Kuiper Belt, a hundred AU's from Serenity. No sun at all there."
"Alex is on a date," said Jo in response to the Captain's original mathematical observation. She definitely preferred the warmth of the inner solar system to the cold wastelands of the rim.
"With Dexter," added Sam softly.
Matthew Cross' right eyebrow shot up in a very Vulcan-like manner. It took a few seconds for him to digest this new development. "Nothing good can come of this," he finally muttered dubiously.
Max shot a knowing glance at Carter.
"Well, we'll have to fill them in later then," said Cross. "I'll be waiting for you in the briefing room." With that, he strode away, leaving Carter and the others to get dressed.
Four women, fully clothed now in their black & white uniforms, though none the less alluring for it, were seated around the large central table in the Banshees' briefing room. The lights were dimmed and a holographic projection hung suspended above the table top, slowly rotating so all could get a good look. It was a basic diagram of the Serenity star system: a yellow-orange G7 star in the center, circled by 5 major planets. Sharing the orbit of the gas giant Txamsem were three smaller bodies, bizarrely and inexplicably circling around a common center point in an eternal merry-go-round, completely yet impossibly stable in the giant's trailing Trojan position, and it was these three that were highlighted in the holographic display.
Standing beside the table, Matthew Cross was narrating.
"An anomalous energy reading has been detected in the general vicinity of the Trojan planetoids."
"Anomalous?" asked Jo, scientist of the group.
"It means the writer was too lazy to think of anything specific," replied Max.
"Oh."
"Specifically," continued Cross, directing a scathing look in Max's direction, "elevated levels of neutrinos and verteron particles."
A light of recognition went on in Jo's eyes. "That almost sounds like--"
"Yes," interrupted Cross, determined to reserve the punch-line for himself, "it sounds like a wormhole aperture."
"And we're just now noticing it?" said Carter skeptically. "This system has been inhabited for almost two decades. How can Starfleet not have detected a wormhole in their back yard for so long?"
"Part of the problem is the nearby Briar Patch. Even at this distance, it throws off a lot of background radiation, making it more difficult than usual to get clear sensor readings on anything. Another possibility is that wormholes are generally unstable. It could be that we're just now noticing it simply because it wasn't there before. Or it might not be a wormhole at all, but something completely different. Whatever the case, it's my and Dexter's assignment to go check it out in the Longbow.
"Your assignment is to fly cover for the Longbow in case whatever it turns out to be turns out to be not entirely friendly. Get it?"
"Got it," replied Carter.
"Good. We leave tomorrow at 0600 hours. Until then, enjoy the rest of your afternoon, ladies."
A ghostly figure silently entered the front door of the Banshees' apartment and crept on tip-toes across the carpet to the spiral staircase leading up to the bedrooms. A hand was on the railing and a foot on the lowest step when it froze, startled by a sudden voice out of the darkness of the living room. "You're home late."
"Lights!" said the figure.
The room's A.I. heard the order and brightened the illumination, revealing Alex Dalton carrying a huge, red, stuffed Glommer at the bottom of the stairs, and Lee Carter sitting on the living room sofa with a PADD in her hand.
"Oh! Lee! I didn't see you in the dark. I was trying to be quiet so I wouldn't wake anyone up," said Alex.
"Just going over the mission plans for tomorrow, which, by the way, I'll have to brief you on tomorrow morning since you and Dexter were AWOL this afternoon." Carter pointed at Alex's big stuffed toy. "Looks like you had a good date."
"Yeah! Dex took me to the amusement park down on the pier." Alex hefted the Glommer and jiggled it, causing the four dangling legs and two gangly eye stalks to dance merrily and jingle. "He spent a fortune trying to win this for me at the 'Whack-a-Vole' table." She giggled at the memory.
Carter smiled. "I'd say he was smitten," she said. "For now though, you should get some sleep. Our mission starts tomorrow at 0600 hours.
back to TOC