Seven figures strode purposefully across the shiny floor of the cavernous spacecraft hangar building towards a wing of planes already being warmed up by the ground crew. Captain Matthew Cross and his copilot, the young Ensign Dexter Gray headed for the largest of the craft, the Cat's Eye class recon vessel Longbow, while Commander Lee Carter, Max Vasser, Sam Beckett, Jo Schmidt, and Alex Dalton angled towards five smaller, sleeker ships, their Scorpion class fighters.
As they approached, Carter noted with interest the diverse mission pods that had been attached to their planes for this assignment. Jo's Scorpion sported an enhanced sensor pod capable of detailed scans at a range of up to 60 light years. Max's was armed with a torpedo pod, a truly devastating weapon system capable of launching a dozen micro-quantum torpedoes simultaneously. Alex's plane carried a heavy-duty replicator pod, Sam's a stealth module, while her own was equipped with a long-range communication pod.
Quite an odd assortment for something that was supposed to be little more than a babysitting mission in a supposedly tame region of space. Heavy weapons, industrial replicators, stealth equipment? What did Starfleet know that they hadn't told us, wondered Carter.
At the rear of the procession, Jo fell into step beside Alex. "I saw the big stuffed Glommer toy in your room this morning," she said. "Looks like you had a fun date!"
Alex smiled and let her gaze wander over to where Dexter marched alongside Captain Cross. "Yeah," she replied. "We did. I think I really like Dex. The only weird thing is that this morning when I woke up, the Glommer wasn't where I had left it the night before, and some of my stuffed tribbles were missing!"
"Very funny," said Jo, grimacing at the painful joke.
Jo stopped when they reached her starfighter and waved Alex on. "You'll have to fill me in on all the details later," she said, and climbed the ladder up to the waiting cockpit. The other Banshees were doing the same, and the ground crews busily buckled them in, made sure all the hoses and linkages were secure, sealed the cockpit canopies, and wheeled away the ladders. By this time, Cross and Dexter were securely ensconced in their own cockpit, and soon the hangar was filled with the deafening roar of fusion generators and revving impulse engines.
Once all the ground crew was cleared, the starfighters rolled out onto the runway outside in single file behind the Longbow, and one by one, gained clearance from the tower and rocketed down the strip of asphalt and into the clear blue sky. Distant sonic booms clapped in the ears of onlookers as the Banshees passed the speed of sound on their climb to outer space, and within seconds were out of sight.
The flight out to the orbit of the Trojan planetoids was uneventful, and Lieutenant Jo Schmidt spent it reviewing the available data. Should the Commander call upon her for information, she wanted to be ready for anything. She had her reputation as an inexhaustible font of knowledge to uphold, after all.
Crassus, Nero and Pompeii, the three Trojan planetoids, were an unexplainable oddity in the Serenity system -- by no means the only one, but perhaps the most unique. Aside from coloration, the three bodies were virtually identical to each other. They were smaller than a class M planet but much denser, so the gravity was just under 1g. Though at a distance of over 9 AU from the sun, their thick atmospheres and internal temperatures kept surface temperatures almost comfortable. They were bare of life with the unfortunate exception of Pompeii, which hosted large, non-native colonies of Smelly Jelly, origin unknown.
The three planetoids orbited each other around a common center of gravity, locked in an eternal merry-go-round by their mutual gravitational attraction. What was more, they orbited the Serenity sun at the exact same distance as Serenity IV, the gas giant Txamsem, in its trailing Trojan position, hence their name. The whole arrangement was totally unstable -- no natural phenomenon could have sustained itself in that configuration for more than a few tens of thousands of years, yet quantum dating had verified the planetoids to be billions of years old. If they were artificial, they were built a long time ago.
Their mission was not to study the planetoids themselves however, rather the new anomalous energy reading emanating from their general vicinity, and on that subject, there was very little reliable information so far. Elevated neutrinos and verteron particles suggested a wormhole of some kind, but only time and a close examination would tell for sure.
A new signal on the scanner readout diverted Jo's attention from her science studies. Her long range sensor pod was picking up an unexpected signal. She thumbed the comm switch. "Commander? Are we expecting any company?"
"No, not that I know of," replied Carter. "Why?"
"I'm picking up a small ship already in orbit around Crassus."
"Hmm." Carter linked to the sensor feed from Jo's Scorpion and saw that there was indeed an unexpected blip on the screen. Was this the reason Starfleet had felt it necessary to equip their starfighters with such an esoteric array of options? She felt a sudden surge of adrenaline as she watched the uninvited blip circle their target planetoid. Maybe Cross would divulge more in the face of this new development. She switched channels. "Captain, we--"
"Yes, Commander," came back Cross' voice through the speaker grille. "We have just detected it too. Stand by."
Figures, thought Carter with a small measure of irritation. Cross always seemed to be one step ahead of everyone else, no matter what was going on. It didn't take him long to come back on the line.
"Dexter can't identify the vessel even with the sensors aboard the Longbow. It must be using some kind of shielding. It might be a good idea to deploy your team, Commander."
"I agree," said Carter. She switched channels again and addressed the other Banshees. "We've detected a ship waiting for us at the Trojans. Sam, fire up your stealth pod and swing around to come at them from the other side. Jo, keep your sensor pod focused and hang back a bit. The rest of you, look sharp and follow me in."
From the corner of her eye, Carter saw Sam's Scorpion peel off and head away on a parabolic intercept course while she led the rest of her team straight up the middle. At full impulse burn, the remainder of the journey to Crassus took only fifteen minutes, and all during this time, neither the sophisticated sensors aboard the Longbow nor Jo's Scorpion could penetrate the unknown ship's shroud of mystery.
At last, the dull orange orb of the planetoid Crassus came into view. The purple and green of Nero and Pompeii hung in the further distance against the backdrop of stars, while the anomalous energy phenomenon lurked somewhere, invisible, enigmatic. Somewhere also was Sam's Scorpion in full stealth mode, sneaking around the back side.
Jo and the three remaining Scorpion starfighters and their Cat's Eye recon escort made a quick orbit to the far side of Crassus where the alien interloper waited. She felt herself tense in anticipation of the coming encounter. She hoped it would go smoothly, that whoever it was that was lurking here was simply on a scientific mission as they were, but the fact that they were using a stealth ship told her that was probably not the case.
Finally, the alien ship appeared over the planetoid's dusty ochre horizon. It was small, sleek, decidedly asymmetrical, and vaguely biological in aspect. Jo gasped involuntarily when she saw it, and heard similar reactions through the comm-link from the other three Banshees.
The ship was Breen!
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