The Wolves of Ourea Colony

Posted on Tue Nov 26th, 2019 @ 2:06pm by Commander Kreitenne R'tanya
Edited on on Tue Nov 26th, 2019 @ 4:25pm

893 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: [OS] A New Dawn
Location: Ourea
Timeline: MD01 || 1530

Commander Kreitenne R’Tanya knelt in front of a portable shield generator, tapping away at its control console. This was the fourth unit she had deployed in the last two hours, and the fiftieth overall by her team. The Barzan woman wasn’t sure how much time had passed since the initial alerts came through, and as a consequence, she did not know how much time remained.

“Commander?” she heard a voice call out several feet away. A glance up didn’t reveal a physical body, but she had to assume that whoever it was was about to come around a corner. Kreitenne refocused on the control panel. She had to finish her task before she could devote her attention to someone else.

“There you are!” said the owner of the voice, a short Bolian collared in command red. “The station called again, they’re demanding--”

“Wait.” Kreitenne typed faster, entering in the last sequence that would sync the generator to the capitol’s control grid. She glanced up at the Bolian yeoman just as he was about to interject once more. Though the Bolian was part of the small contingent of personnel permanently assigned to the colony, he had gotten to know the woman assigned as the Executive Officer of the orbital station very well, especially since he was to be part of the station’s eyes and ears on the planet below.

The console flashed its acceptance, and most of its controls disappeared save for a button to access the override menu. Kreitenne then picked up a padd she had beside her and stood up. “All right, Lieutenant Tokk. What is it?”

“It’s the Governor, Commander,” Tokk stammered as he followed the tan-skinned woman out from the side of the capitol building. “He’s demanding that we reduce the patrols again.”

“Reduce?” she asked, studying the updates on her device. “The Governor knows that the wolves have multiplied around the colony.” This, of course, was the approved code that she was using. As long as they were in public, there would be no mention of the Vaadwaur.

“He is insisting that we bring half of them back to the central portion of the city. To pro…” Tokk paused, giving a passing colonist couple a hollow smile as a bad actor would give in an amateur performance. As soon as the colonists were behind them, he stammered, “To protect the--”

“The locals? You mean for the festival the poor excuse for a social director wants to throw tonight as a distraction?” Kreitenne sighed before inhaling a strong puff of nitrogen dioxide, a chemical common on her homeworld and almost absent everywhere else. “There’s roughly five thousand people on this planet, and each one of them is smart. You put a large group of people in the town square and forty security officers around it, they’re all going to think they’re being lined up for execution.”

“Right, and I’ve tried to tell them that--”

“You have to stand your ground, Tokk.”

“W-w-what do you think I’ve been doing while you’ve been setting up shield generators!?” Tokk exclaimed. “They won’t listen to me. Captain Edral stopped taking my calls. The Governor is avoiding me. Even the Trill Lieutenant Governor manages to evade me. I’m starting to think that I shouldn’t have accepted this assignment and that my life is doom--hey!”

Kreitenne, having led Tokk up the steps to the capitol building quickly pulled the Bolian aside to a secluded area. “Collect yourself, Lieutenant,” she whispered sharply. She sighed and lowered her head, shaking it as she realized the situation the Bolian was in. Not a single person in this expedition had thought anything would happen on this scale, at least not so quickly. Kreitenne had herself estimated it would be at least five years before a ship in the task force even picked up a Borg scout ship on a long-range scan.

Nevertheless, they’d have to make do with what they had. Sighing again, she looked down at the padd she held. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” she told Tokk. Kreitenne tapped a couple buttons to pull up a map of the area and showed it to the Bolian. “You pull twelve people off the patrols. Then grab another thirty from the reserves and post them at the city entrances. If anyone asks, call it a training exercise. We’ve been overdue on one of those anyway. I’ll go talk to the social director… see if I can get her to cancel her festival. The last thing we need is the entire colony in a location where it can be vaporized by one torpedo.”

She locked eyes with the Bolian and asked, “Got it?”

“Yes, Commander,” the Bolian said without fault or delay. “Ferrying instructions to those who will listen without argument is what I live for.”

“Sooner or later, Tokk, you’re going to have to get used to it.” Kreitenne smiled. “Get going.” As he left, Kreitenne was left to sigh once more. She expected to have to reassure the civilian government, not Starfleet officers, especially those who had been selected for the hardship of frontier positions. Officers like Tokk were going to have to mature very quickly, especially since there were now fewer opportunities for reassignment.

 

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