| May 15th, 2155
| Captain's Ready Room, Discovery NX-04, Deep Space
| 1400hrs
1st Lieutenant Wakefield walked briskly through the corridors, his gear unceremoniously placed in a corner of his office on E-Deck, before about-facing and marching straight out to meet the Captain. He had left his Sergeants to get his people squared away, he had given them an hour to have everything stowed and ready for an inspection. The MACO section on E-Deck was basically a mess, some bulkheads were missing their allotted lockers or consoles. The situation table was still in its shipping container, disassembled. Dalton's office was almost completely barren, with everything still residing where it was dropped by the Starfleet installers. He had given them a massive task he knew they wouldn't finish, but they would try their darnedest. He had his reasons, the more stuff they put away or assembled themselves, the less he would have to request the Captain get her Engineers to do, their time was precious. Especially now, having to put the Armoury back together.
He had also instructed Staff Ragnar to have them in 'Garrison gear' and assembled for a briefing upon his return. Rifle, sidearm, webbing belt and baton, he wanted to be ready to move if the Captain needed him to. Dalton was looking forward to knowing exactly what was going on on board ship, why everyone seemed so grim. Looking down to his PADD, Dalton was glad he brought it along as he finally found the turbolift he had been seeking.
Stepping out onto the bridge, he marveled for a moment at the complexity of the panels and consoles, the Docona was a little more on the simpler side, but they had been at space longer than humans. He envisioned a day were there would be mahogany wood paneling and carpet on starship bridges such as these, and leather seats. Probably not his lifetime he mused. Finding the Captain's ready room he walked up and pressed the door chime, awaiting a response.
"Come in!" came the call from inside the room.
"Thank you ma'am," He said entering the rather cramped room, he made a mental note to check the blueprints to see if his office fared better for size.
"Welcome aboard Discovery, Lieutenant, Curtis said, standing as she saw who it was who had come to the ready room. She was glad the MACO hadn't taken too long getting his men sorted - the Docona had departed as soon as the MACOs and their equipment was aboard, and Curtis had told the MACO commander to come and see her as soon as he could.
"Captain, might I say Discovery is mighty impressive, and atmospherically very comfortable," He said, flexing his fully thawed fingers behind his back.
"Yes, I understand the Andorians keep the temperature on their ships a fair few degrees lower than we do," the captain answered, picking up on the particular wording of the man's compliment. She felt sorry that she wasn't in the mood to trade a few more light comments with their new arrival, but she needed to get down to business, and the MACOs were going to be critical to keeping the ship safe.
"Lieutenant, I'm sure you've noticed the grim atmosphere around the ship by now. And I'm sure that you are curious as to why we left spacedock two weeks before we were supposed to. The truth of it is, we're on a time-sensitive mission that Admiral Gardner wants to keep compartmentalised - at least for now. We have intelligence that indicates an operative of Terra Prime is going to try to bomb the Tellarite compound on Deneva Colony. We've been sent to stop him."
The tone of his Commanding officer hit him with a smack of guilt, he shouldn't have been so jovial, "My people stand ready in any way to assist," He said, about halfway through his sentence, he realised he spoke of something the Captain already knew.
"Unfortunately, I'm afraid that a sympathiser of Terra Prime is aboard this ship. There was an explosion this morning in the armoury that killed my armoury officer and XO. We found evidence that an explosive device was placed on the portside proximity sensor components behind the bulkhead - a device that wasn't there yesterday."
Dalton's clenched his jaw tighter, and nodded curtly, "Captain, I am sorry for your loss," he said, pausing a moment before thinking the right question to ask, the flurry of questions and adrenaline didnt help.
"Are there any suspects, or possible areas they may place additional charges?" He pulled his PADD out of his pants pocket, and brought up a fresh notes page, ready to take down as much detail as needed.
"Commander Carpegiani is going through service records of the crew now; trying to find any possible ties to Terra Prime or hints at who might sympathise with them. So far we haven't been able to put together any suspects. I'm also having Lieutenant Anziano and his engineering team sweep the ship, looking for any other devices. Of course it doesn't help that we don't know if one of his team were responsible in the first place, so they're all being supervised by ship security.
"Your MACOs are, for now, the only people aboard this ship who I can be absolutely certain were not involved, so I want you to take point on security for now. I want you to have men stationed in critical areas of the ship - engineering, the bridge, the armouries, and the antimatter storage pods. I don't want them to get in the crew's way, but they need to be watching for anyone who may be attempting to sabotage other areas of the ship. As soon as we can confirm that there are no explosives on any of our critical systems and those areas are secured, we'll be resuming course for Deneva."
"Understood, It pains me to say I feel I don't have enough people to meet demand. I recommend pairing one of mine with one of yours, maintain a high level of presence. They will operate on closed comms and any actions will go through my MACOs. It will also help to show that you still, to a degree, trust your people," Dalton said after a moment of contemplation. He wrote down his ideas to his PADD, starting to assign duties on his roster.
Christina nodded, agreeing with the military officer's judgement.
"Do we know the sit-rep on Deneva?" He asked, pretty sure he knew the answer.
The captain shook her head. "There's been nothing in any news reels about anything happening there, so our best estimate is that Mosstaff hasn't arrived yet. Or if he hasn't he hasn't carried out his plan yet. Admiral Gardner doesn't want to risk contacting the colony unless we are certain we won't get there on time. He doesn't want any threat leaking on the newsnets, and he doesn't want Mosstaff to find out that we know what he's up to, for fear that he'll accelerate whatever plans he has."
"If the terrain and time provide, I would like to send a advanced team down to observe and report. A couple of hours should do. Then keep them in place as a support asset," Dalton asked, hoping he would get a good amount of intel, besides orbital scans.
"If Starfleet had been able to reverse engineer the Suliban pod that Enterprise got their hands on a few years back, then we'd be able to send you on your way now," Curtis sometimes relished the level of technology that the other races around them had been able to achieve. She shook her head slightly. "Unfortunately Starfleet's best can't figure out how they made a ship so small and with no nacelles warp-capable, let alone quick enough to keep up with an NX class. As it is, when we get there we're probably going to have to play it by ear. I'll try and give your men a couple of hours in the colony, but if we need to move to stop Mosstaff from doing what he plans, then we can't delay."
"Thats all I can ask for ma'am, thank you," Dalton answered, "Was there anything you needed to ask of me. I would rather get any of your concerns out of the way now rather than later?"
Curtis looked at him for a moment, and considered asking him about how his teams would integrate with the less-rigid and non-military structure of the Starfleet crew onboard, in light of previous incidents between MACOs and Starfleet officers during the first few months of Enterprise's mission to the Expanse. She then recalled the later reports, both from Enterprise and Columbia, that had stated that the MACOs had merged with the crew quite effectively, and that any incidents between them were now relatively rare. "No, thank you, Lieutenant," she said after a pause. "That'll be all."
Dalton stood, head already buzzing with his next actions. He nodded to the Captain as he took his leave, "Oh and ma'am, 0500 I'm scheduling a 2km jog around D-Deck, going to be a regular thing. Any personnel are able to join, but if it gets too popular we may have to stagger the timings," He said, rambling a bit, looking at the Captain's stern look, "Just a thought," He finished before leaving the room.
Unzipping his communicator pouch, Dalton opened up a closed channel to Ragnar, "Actual to Thegn, message over."
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