"Headaches"
Written by Cyndi Fryar
Commander Rhea Kennit, Executive Officer

Location - Bridge:

Not long after standing down from red alert, the Captain had turned the bridge over to Kennit with a muttered order and departed to his Ready Room where he remained still.  Left to her own devices on the Bridge, while enroute back to the Livingston's coordinates Kennit focused her attention on trying to get a little more data on the small ship itself in the hopes that something might pop up from the computer which would prove to be of use.

Calling up the technical data on a Nova-Class ship, Rhea read over the specs more to refresh her memory than anything else.  And, it was possible that doing so would enable her to then review the data taken by the sensors on the Livingston and spot any irregularities which might have been missed when they'd first scanned the ship.  Those first moments had been understandably stressed, the Livingston's crew dead or dying.  Their bodies deformed horribly..  While she hadn't been part of the away team, Rhea had read the reports and seen some of the tricorder data.  It was enough..

Pushing back a wave of involunatary nervous stomach at the thought of what the away team had found, Rhea's gaze focused on her display.  The Nova Class ship was a small planetary survey vessel not designed for long periods of time spent in space.  A small ship, the Nova Class dimensions were 165 meters in length, with a width of only 62 meters and a scant height of only 34 meters.  Eight decks, capable of sustaining a crew of seventy-eight with a displacement mass of 80,000 tons the Nova Class was by no means a threatening ship.

What had they encountered which left them in this state?  An as yet unknown natural phenomena or some more sinister device which had created the temporal and spatial rift which resulted in the horrible deaths of the Livingston's crew?

Scans of the sector of space where the small ship had appeared still picked up traces of tetryon particles marking the ship's entry path.  The words of spoken by Kylie Utex echoed like faint whisps of shadow in the back of her mind.  What was it the woman had said?  ::"“You know that this is not right. You know that where I am from is nothing like this. You know that something happened here.  Here and now, This is right. What is to come later – that’s wrong!”::

Something happened clearly, something which resulted in a cascade of events leading to a future bad enough that this Kylie Utex had felt it was worth breaking the Temporal Prime Directive to come back and try to change it.  ::Damn shame she didn't just tell us what she wanted to prevent..::

Whatever it was, Rhea was fairly certain it dealt with that tiny ship out there and its lost crew.  ::I hate temporal problems.  Why is it that there's always someone out there who decides to try and 'fix' things by going back in time and trying to alter some event which shapes the future?  For crying out loud.. for all we know its this Kylie Utex's trip back and warning us which sets everything in motion she was trying to prevent!::

A steady, throbbing ache had now settled itself firmly behind Kennit's temples.  A solid, painful headache was just the perfect cap to the events of this day.  The muscles in her neck were tightening up into what felt like steel bands running down along her neck and into her shoulders.  This headache meant business and it wasn't giving any quarter.

Rubbing at her temple with her left hand, Rhea transferred the specs for the Nova class from the computer into a data padd and then rose.  Crossing the Bridge, she rang the chime at the Ready Room door and then entered upon hearing the Captain's voice call out for her to come in.

"I pulled up the technical schematics on the Nova Class starship Captain," she told him.  "I'm not sure at this point what good it will do, but once we get back to the Livingston it might prove of use in inspecting the ship and trying to piece together what happened to her and her crew.."

<<Captain?  Reporting as ordered..>>

tbc...