A Little Recap

Posted on Fri Feb 24, 2017 @ 10:40am by Lieutenant JG Rhe'la Daughter of the Forty-ninth House

1,050 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Rumours
Location: Chief Engineer's Office
Timeline: Sometime during MD 4

ON:

You might be wondering where Rhe'la has been all this time.

Or not - that's fine, too. She is rather forgettable.

Regardless, the short answer is, "she's been in her office nearly this entire time."

However, the short answer doesn't really tell the entire story (as per usual). For while the young saurian chief engineer had indeed spent the vast majority of her off screen time in her office, she was not simply twiddling her thumbs nervously waiting for a return to the spotlight. Not that she would anyway - the spotlight tends to unnerve her.

No, she has been quite busy with a great number of things not directly related to her usual duties. Most recently, the aftermath of Nazl's murder, she has been trying to figure out just how someone managed to scramble the sensors in the diplomatic lifts without setting off alarms. It was quite puzzling, and was doing wonders for taking her mind off of her other troubles.

Said troubles came in a couple of forms. First, she had gotten word that Commander Wyman (her mentor and predecessor as DS5 chief engineer) had been promoted to captain. That had been one of the highest highs of her life - she was so excited for him that it had put a veritable bounce in her step. But then, a matter of days later, came the lowest of the low - Wyman's ship, the Archimedes, was missing.

Initially she threw herself into her work, hoping in vain to keep the worry at bay. But it was hopeless. Then came word that his daughter Gwen had been off the ship visiting family, and was now aboard the Cavalry under the care of her godfather - Commander Drakt. Rhe'la wished she could be there for both Drakt and Gwen - one had lost both of her parents, while the other had lost his best friend. Rhe'la cared deeply for Drakt, and Gwen had been like a little Human sister to her. At least they had each other - she had to mourn alone.

Days turned to weeks, and weeks into months. Starfleet had all but given up hope of ever finding the Archimedes and her crew alive. There was word that Commodore Goddard had refused orders to return the Tokyo to port, and was carrying on the search in defiance of Starfleet Command. Rhe'la certainly couldn't blame him; Goddard had lost a lot of people under his command over the years, and obviously couldn't bear the thought of any more.

But then - a miracle happened. The Archimedes appeared from a time portal. Battered, barely functional - but mostly in one piece. She had been followed out of the rift by a Zarnac cruiser bent on the little Nova's destruction. But the day was saved - the cruiser was destroyed, the Archimedes crew was safe, and the Emperor forsaken future they had visited was seemingly averted.

But then Rhe'la started hearing word of the future the Archimedes had encountered. The Zarnac Empire had launched a full scale invasion of the Alpha Quadrant - destroying most of the Federation's core worlds in a startling opening decapitation strike. Then fell Cardassians, and the Romulans after that. The Breen stood no chance, nor did the Tzenkethi. The Ferengi bought their way out of the conflict (as they are wont to do). The Klingons survived longer, but were all but wiped out in the end.

When the Archimedes arrived, the Federation was reduced to a handful of scattered planets protected by ragtag task groups of half functioning ships. It was more or less a case of Starfleet warlords ruling small fiefdoms. Sometime in the decades between the disappearance and reappearance of the Archimedes, Drakt had become captain of the Agamemnon. Little Gwen had become his chief engineer, and Rhe'la's cousin An'ta was his first officer.

But what of Rhe'la, you might ask? She survived the destruction of Deep Space 5 and been assigned to the USS el-Alamein, only to die when the ship was lost at the Battle of Axanar. The thought that, of the small knot of loyal officers and friends Drakt had surrounded himself with over the years - she was the only one not to survive this apocalyptic future. It made her blood run colder than usual. And it tempered any joy she might have felt at the knowledge that Wyman and his crew were alive and well.

And that was what was truly bothering her. She knew it shouldn't; trillions of lives were lost in this now fictional war - why should she be more important than any of the rest? But none the less - it made her feel weak. Useless. It wasn't a feeling she liked. It scared her more than the usual things that scared her.

It was so much that she wasn't really able to give much thought to the fact that the Agamemnon had followed the Archimedes and the Zarnac cruiser into the present; the future Drakt sacrificing his ship to prevent his timeline from coming to pass, and stranding his crew in their own past. She'd heard that most of the crew were being integrated into the current Starfleet - their knowledge of a now alternate future being put to use. Future Gwen was heading up a team at the Corps of Engineers tasked with unraveling the secrets of Zarnac cloaking technology (as well as just how they managed to send the Archimedes into the future). Future Drakt was on Earth, overseeing the refit of the Excelsior-class USS Reliant (which Captain Wyman had been assigned to command after the decommissioning of the Archimedes).

She wasn't sure what had become of Future An'ta; her time displaced cousin had seemingly dropped off the radar. She knew he was at Captain Wyman's court martial as a witness, but after that there was no word. Not even her family had heard anything.

"Not like I can do anything about him, where ever he might be..." she muttered, going back over the sensor telemetry from the night of the murder. There HAD to be something there, and the fact it was eluding her was frustrating.

But, at least it took her mind off of things...
OFF

Lt. (JG) Rhe'la, Daughter of the Forty-ninth House
Chief Engineering Officer
Deep Space 5

 

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