Chapter III: Reunited

Lorq scans our ship. Is there a path to the shuttle bay not blocked by the infected?

On the Potential’s bridge

Moira fidgets in her place. She’s ordered engineering to lock on to everyone and their pet turtle, but she’s antsy. She talks to Darcy while sending Cassano the same message via comm.

Darcy, this ain’t goin’ anywhere. Tha longer tha delay tha worse our chances are. Please. Let me beam ta tha pirate ship Cass is on. Ah’ll stage a fake mutiny, take tha comm, an’ ask ‘em ta bean me aboard ta rescue me. Ah’ll disable their shields. If it’s them, ah’ll help ‘em find tha others an’ give tha okay ta beam us all back. If it’s not, their shields’ll still be down. Yeh can extract me an’ any friendlies then open fire.

Zephyr is infected. If we do not get help soon it will be too late. Why not offer a trade? Send Zephyr in a run about to their ship, and the send someone to us. We are fairly sure it is a human controlled ship. But they seem loathe to just say that, and if we don't do something our position could be over run

Zephyr, would you be willing to go to the other ship. It may be the only way to debug you.

Aboard the Verdun

"Leave the bridge? You saw that thing that attacked us... we hit it at maximum stun, and it still overpowered us like we were children," Alex says. "Going out there is a death sentence." She rubs a hand over her face and takes a deep breath. "Zephyr, if you're willing to chance it, I will propose the exchange. We can both drop our shields, and exchange you for another of your crew mates, while you get treatment."

Cass slaps her forehead and mutes her comm mic. "I can't believe I forgot this but scan the pirate ship for M1-K3."

Darcy

Fair. Jus’ know ah’m willin ta stick mah neck out. Ah trust yeh.

Darcy

With a perfectly straight face:

Thank yeh, Lieutenant Commander.

Okay, so M1-K3 isn't on that ship, or any other within scanning range. There's no reason, then, to assume the other missing away team member is on that ship, either. So her priority, as Cass sees it, is to get the four people on the bridge safely to the Potential as soon as she can manage it.

But.

She can't beam all of them, because Zephyr is infected and it might kill him. She could beam the three uninfected ones safely... assuming they aren't really infected and just don't know it. Or do know it and this is all just a... no, that's unlikely. Focus.

The smartest thing would be to have them make their way to a runabout and fly to the Potential. But there are fifteen slug people on that ship. Their chances of their making it safely to the runabout seem relatively low.

Okay, so the second-smartest thing to do would be to send a security team via runabout to the pirate ship to pick up the Spacefleet officers and take out any slugs that got in the way. But she is afraid that a vehicle coming out of the Potential might prompt action from one or more of the ships watching from a distance.

Still muted to the pirate ship, Cass says, "Darcy? I'm thinking that we need to go pick up our friends on that ship with extreme prejudice. There are also a couple of ships watching this encounter from a distance, so we could stand to increase the size of our little fleet. Maybe if we send a runabout full of phaser-carrying badasses, we could even take over that ship and even the odds. What do you think?"