Home, Home On the Range

Posted on Sun Aug 11th, 2019 @ 4:49am by Lieutenant Commander William Gunnison

Mission: Getting To Know You
Timeline: concurrent with Fanning the Flames

Will headed back to his quarters after his shift ended. The Trion rebel faction had been beamed aboard without incident. The transporter system hadn't detected anything out of the ordinary, but admittedly that didn't bring much comfort to Will. After all, the Zendaya's own security measures hadn't detected anything, either. He didn't want to be paranoid about things - in many ways, he hoped that what had happened on board the Zendaya was nothing more than a series of really bad coincidences - but as the old saying went, "Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get you."

But then it lead to why the rebel faction would do something like that in the first place. It wouldn't have just been to get onto the Astraea - they would have to have some sort of plan, presumably to make an attack of some sort on the Trion government delegation. But Will couldn't quite figure out why the rebels needed to get onto the Astraea to do so.

Certainly the government delegation was on board, but from what he'd read in the official reports about the failed peace talks, it seemed that if the rebels had planned to make any sort of assassination attempt against the Trion Minister of Internal Security or his aides, it seemed like they'd had several possible opportunities during the conference itself to pull it off, especially if they did have access to weapons technology of the type that could avoid detection long enough to bring down the Zendaya. And in fact, attacking a Federation starship would only draw unwanted attention to them before they could even launch an attack against the government delegation, even if it couldn't be immediately proven that they were behind it.

A small part of his brain wondered if perhaps, for some unknown reason, the rebels wanted to not only assassinate the government delegation but make some sort of strike against Starfleet at the same time. But of course Will had no more proof to back that particular accusation up than he had to back up the belief that the rebels had been behind the explosion on the Zendaya. As another Starfleet officer had once pointed out many decades ago during another investigation, all he had at the moment was a theory which happened to fit the facts.

And more pressing, if the rebels were planning on something nefarious to carry out on the Astraea, how were they planning on doing so? They would be under constant surveillance, and accompanied everywhere they went by a security detail. Plus, they'd brought nothing on board, so far as he could tell, that could be used as a traditional weapon, though that didn't mean that they couldn't use something that could be modified to be a weapon in a pinch. During Will's conversation with Chief Konig about Lt. Voroshilov's replicator privileges, when Will had commented about all the different things within his quarters that could be used as a weapon, he hadn't been kidding.

One thing Will could do was that he had quietly programmed the replicators (which was beginning to be a bit of a habit) to alert him if any of the Trions from either group replicated anything outside of standard Trion food, or if they replicated anything that could easily double as a weapon (like, say, a steak knife), as well as double-checking to ensure that the standartd security measures were in place to ensure that unauthorized individuals could not replicate outright weapons.

Entering his quarters, he noted that Cole was in the sitting area, doing his homework. "Hey, Dad," Cole said, looking up.

"Hey, Cole," Will said. "I don't know about you, but I'm ready for some dinner."

"Me, too. I was waiting for you to get home before I had anything."

"Appreciate that," Will said.

"Here or in the lounge?" Cole asked.

"Here," Will said. "Normally I might say the lounge, but we've got this new Klingon chef, and I'm not quite sure I'm ready to tackle Klingon cooking yet."

As the two got dinner ready, Will asked, "So, how is school so far? Making any friends? Any cute girls?"

"Daaaad," Cole said, rolling his eyes, and Will laughed. "The other kids are all right, I guess," Cole continued, "though I'm not quite sure what to make of them, yet."

Will told him, "I have to get to know new people on my job as well, and for what it's worth, right now I'm not quite sure of what to make of them, either. But, I suppose some might say that that's a part of what makes life interesting - finding out what to make of other people. Now, how about telling me what you're studying in this new school..."