What You Wanted

Posted on Wed Apr 1st, 2026 @ 5:09pm by Commander Zhora zh'Roothi & Commodore Wilkan Targaryen & Commander Ash Randall & Lieutenant Commander Sora Bernadotte & Lieutenant Urvasi Elandorn & Lieutenant Rio Kholin MD & Lieutenant (J.G.) Chase Moore & Lieutenant (J.G.) Stacey Moore
Edited on on Wed Apr 1st, 2026 @ 5:10pm

7,655 words; about a 38 minute read

Mission: 8. Epidemic
Location: Bridge, U.S.S. Enterprise
Timeline: 2439-08-27, 02:30

Kuzos sat at the Tactical station, a silent sentinel watching the Bridge’s frantic choreography. As Acting XO, he observed the crew with a clinical detachment that bordered on the entomological, finding them to be as predictable as a fading orbital decay.

At helm, Urvasi maintained her distance, ship 20 degrees up port, while she kept running through scenarios for retreat, parallel, and stealth runs to the planet. As they moved with Talus through the system, various other celestial bodies near them would also move, needing her to adjust her scenarios appropriately.

Checking the sensor scans of the Dominion vessel, his mind turned to Borath. The Medical Attaché’s arrival was too convenient, and his "stabilizer" too precise, not that he'd admit such a thing to the Enterprise's crew. In the Great Link’s grand design, there were no coincidences, only variables managed toward a specific equilibrium. If the Dominion had indeed seeded this resonance, it was a masterful stroke to frame the Federation’s very presence as a toxin. It was the kind of elegant, ruthless diplomacy Kuzos both admired and understood as his own genetic birthright. He may have been a first generation, non-cloned Vorta, but he could admire the history.

Stacey walked onto the bridge, relieving her counter part for the upcoming away mission. She smiled as she walked onto the bridge from the turbolift. With a big cheesy grin she said, "Where do you need me sir?" Stacey asked, as she looked to the duty officer.

"Lieutenant," Commander zh'Roothi greeted the woman mutely, her bright smile felt like a blazing flare in the inky night sky that momentarily stunned the XO. "Take the secondary Ops station," she instructed. "Maintain a watchful eye on those Interceptors and the Dominion vessel on the equator. Alert me the moment they twitch or if anyone else approaches."

Stacey walked over to the secondary operations station. "Aye Commander." She simply said, as she started to track Dominion ship movements. As she logged into the console, she observed the helm. Oh she wish she was flying the Enterprise. For the moment though she needed at operations.

To Kuzos, Lieutenant Moore's exuberant individuality was a noise he chose to filter out. Instead, his violet eyes remained fixed on the tactical overlay of the Talu Central Clinic. A localized transmission burst finally fractured the interference of the expanding masking field. The encryption was Starfleet, but the sub-harmonics carried the unmistakable strain of the Talu chill.

"The Commodore is hailing," Galatea announced, her voice a smooth interruption to the deck’s chatter.

"Put him through," zh'Roothi answered.

"The signal has heavy interference, Commander," Galatea noted, her hands moving over the Communications console, "I can only stabilize an audio link." The speakers on the Bridge crackled once, a sharp, static pop that smoothed out into the rhythmic, whistling hiss of a high-pressure environment.

"Enterprise... Targaryen here," Wilkan’s voice came through, sounding strained and thin, punctuated by a wet, shivering cough, "Listen carefully, because the interference is growing. We’ve established a tentative dialogue with the Talu. Borath has deployed a stabilizing unit that released an emerald aerosol that’s currently masking the cellular decay of a child in the primary ward. It’s working, but it’s a temporary fix designed to buy their silence, not their health."

He paused, a sharp, ragged intake of breath audible over the link as his lungs felt as though they were being pierced by needles. In the silence of the basalt ward, Wilkan’s thoughts were a frantic, cold-sharpened blur. Borath was efficient; he hadn't just brought a cure, he had brought a mirror to reflect the Talu’s own terror back at them that led Wilkan to have to shut off his life-support belt. Dropping the life-support belt had been a tactical necessity to earn Dervimnurk's respect, to show him a man rather than a military officer protected by a forcefield, but now the physical cost was mounting. He needed to stay conscious long enough to prove his gamble was right.

"The Prime Minister has given us one rotation," Wilkan struggled to relay, "and if we fail the Talu's core becomes property of the Dominion. They'll come remove it and probably kill the population in the process. Aidan is moving to their archives to find the baseline data while Rio and Amber are isolating the stabilizer’s chemical composition. We need options though because the clock is ticking."

Sora pondered for a moment, before replying. "Do you have any new information on what's affecting the Talu? Symptoms, how long it takes for it to get worse, how it's transmitted, anything? The more information we have, the more we can try to do."

The audio link hissed with the background roar of the Talu winds, the sound of Wilkan’s struggling breath providing a grim percussion to the silence of the Bridge. Even through the static, the Commodore’s voice carried the rasp of frost-damaged lungs, a sound that made the relative warmth of the Enterprise feel suddenly unearned.

"Symptoms... cellular shattering," Wilkan managed, his voice dropping into a lower, more focused register as he fought a violent urge to cough. "The Talu physiology is crashing. Their own immune systems are incinerating them from within. It presents like an extreme auto-immune failure, but the trigger is a sub-atomic resonance, a crystalline lattice mimicking their natural frequency."

Wilkan paused, a long, whistling breath rattling through the comms. He could feel a systemic malaise settling into his bones, a mounting, flu-like fatigue that made his skull feel compressed. He knew his clarity was slipping. "Doctor Kholin... take over," Wilkan forced out, the words strained as he deferred to his CMO. "Explain the... the breakdown. Give them the clinical data."

Chase stood at security and listened to the conversation around him while he manned his station. He was concerned as the rest of the bridge as to what was going on.

Zhora slowly shook her head as Wilkan explained the situation on the ground. It sounded far worse than she'd expected: the Dominion threat was harrowing, the Minister 's mistrust was ripe and to add more peril the Commodore's health had taken another turn for the worst.

The interactions among the away party was muffled in the interference and howling wind, the definition of their conversation was lost but the compassionate essence travelled the gulf clearly.

"Sir?" Kholin approached the struggling Commodore. "Please, may I take this? You need to just concentrate on breathing, I want to get some work done on your lungs as soon as I can but clearly this is important and you're not going to accept treatment or rest until this is relayed. I understand that Sir but ..... let me do this please?" Kholin’s voice was low and yet insistent as she put her hand gently but firmly onto her Superior Officer's arm, feeling an almost over-riding impulse to treat him first but knowing he wasn't going to allow that until this duty and important information was transferred into the correct hands. Wilkan’s struggling lungs were beginning to make it almost impossible for him to argue so she went on, this time speaking more loudly and clearly into the audio link this time.

=^= Bridge, this is Kholin - the Commodore has damage to his lungs so I'm going to try to explain what he is trying to tell you. This is NOTa biological contagion: it's a resonant fracture. We’re seeing the most aggressive breakdown in high-friction areas, specifically where Talu clothing or environmental gear presses against the skin, however it's NOT a simple rash either.

We believe a sub-atomic resonance is hitting the Talu's cell walls, vibrating them until they lose all integrity. The result is a parchment-like thinning of the epidermis and these... weeping, geometric lesions that we're seeing.

As that primary barrier fails, the Talu people are hitting a systemic cascade showing us high-grade fevers and widespread vascular leaks - that’s the 'weeping blood' the Commodore reported and it’s moving with the speed of a broadcast frequency.

Commander Bernadotte - It mimics a viral hemorrhagic fever, but if this is engineered then it’s got to be a manufactured discord, tuned specifically to tear them apart from the inside out. It's not confirmed yet but ....... =^= Rio stopped, leaving this to hang in the air, handing it back to the Bridge for comment, agreement, disagreement and most importantly - URGENT action.

"Is the most likely explanation," zh'Roothi summarised with a bitter note.

Urvasi wasn't sure if she should speak up. She had been so wrong before in trying to figure out what was going on. Still, this weapon sure sounded like a Vargis Array. She decided to go ahead and speak up as if she was wrong, she could be gladly ignored once more. "Command, Helm, this is sounding like a Vargis Array. They are tuned crystalline structures that are usually used on planets with crystal tech for defense or offense. However, that tuning can also be misused to affect anything within their harmonic and disharmonic patterns. On Seldrarinh we use truck sized Vargis Arrays to tune to a building needing taken down, then activate that particular frequency with the structures of the array designed to create dissonant harmonics that breaks the tuning and brings the building down upon itself in small pieces. The intermodulation distortion of the tuning is the key. To stop it, you need to insert and inverse phase of the frequencies, or just break off a small section of the array as that will throw the whole thing out of balance and it will destroy itself. It sounds like one was created tuned specifically to the immune system regulators of the Talu. If this is a Vargis Array, hone in on that frequency key, then you can find the device and shut it down."

"Can we triangulate our sensors with those on the away team, if we divert more power to the sensor array, we can try to help pinpoint the device?" Stacy suggested, she believed if they diverted more power to the sensor array they could help the away team. Triangulating the source of the signal could lead to the device location.

Kuzos did not move. He remained an anchor of stillness at the Tactical station, his posture reflecting the engineered poise of his species. To any observer, he was merely processing data; internally, he was admiring the symmetry of the trap. The Vorta before him, the clones who had preceded his natural birth, would have called this a "bottleneck maneuver." You don’t destroy an enemy with a fleet; you destroy them with the vacuum created by their own good intentions.

As Kholin’s voice bled through the audio link, detailing the agonizing "resonant fracture" of the Talu, Kuzos’s violet eyes flickered toward the helm. "The Lieutenant’s assessment of intermodulation distortion is... astute," Kuzos said, his voice a cool, melodic contrast to the rasp of the Commodore’s breathing. He didn't look at Urvasi, but his fingers danced across the tactical console, pulling up the planetary sensor grid. "However, if it is a resonant lattice, it is not merely 'affecting' the immune system. It is using the Talu’s own biological frequency as a carrier wave. They are the antenna for their own destruction."

He tapped a command, overlaying Stacey’s suggested sensor triangulation onto the primary viewscreen.

"Commander zh'Roothi," Kuzos continued, turning his head slightly to address the Acting CO, "triangulation is a sound tactical step, but we must be cautious. If the Vorta on the equator is indeed using the interceptors as a relay net, any active sensor pulse we send to 'pinpoint' the device may inadvertently reinforce the resonance. We could be handed the hammer and told to strike the final blow ourselves."

Urvasi spoke up quickly, "Commander zh'Roothi, Commander Kuzos is right, do not use active sensors. You must use passive. Have the away team search for any low band energies flowing into the Talu, then scale up into the ultrasonic, above hearing, but below MHz range, with a modulation pattern called IMD (inter-modulation-distortion). That will be the wave. To search for the array, tap into the runabout's passive sensors using pinpoint focused communications. It is on the planet after all, and by using it, we remove the hammer of the Enterprise and now have a pin point scalpel."

Sora listened to her colleagues' suggestions, and looked at the data displayed on her console and the viewscreen. "I agree that we cannot use a wide-band active scan," she finally said. "And that the runabout is our best shot. However, I don't think we should involve the away team in any sort of scanning. The most basic way to block a signal would be for a dampener to emit the inverse of that same signal, overlaying and neutralising the original transmission. That principle is still used even by the most advanced signal blockers, they just attack a wider band of frequencies, among other things." She turned to Galatea. "Galatea, from the readings we have from the dampening device deployed by the Dominion, can you extrapolate likely signals that may be causing the Talu's condition? That way, we can then use the Runabout's sensors remotely to try to find the source, without the away team causing suspicion by running additional scans."

Chase continued to keep his eyes on his station as he looked for any sign of trouble and listened in case something happened and he had to move quickly.

Thinking on what Sora said, Urvasi was trying to figure out how to get a sample of that signal, hence why she had suggested the medical scanners. Wait... "Commander Bernadotte, what about using the Medical sensors on board the Runabout to do a scan on nearby Talu? That would allow for getting a sample of the signal, then scan for it and then perform the invert signal? That way, the away team is not involved while the Enterprise gets answers."

"The tactical logic remains sound," Galatea interrupted, her voice a calm melody over the Bridge’s tension, "however, the away team transported to the surface. There is no runabout." She typed on the control interface, "I am uncertain if we would be able to launch such a vessel toward the surface without getting a response from the Talu Interceptors."

Urvasi frowned. Within her mind, she remembered that the Talu atmospherics were detrimental to Transporters and the away team was supposed to take a runabout down to the surface. She had even volunteered to fly the runabout while the Commodore told her she was the best pilot and to remain flying the Enterprise. She sighed within herself as she tucked that factoid away, then began scheming on how to suggest to get a runabout to the surface.

Kuzos didn't flinch as the discussion of the runabout flickered across the deck, instead he adjusted the cuff of his tunic as his expression settled into a mask of serene, almost pitying patience. To the Vorta, the emotional volatility of the Enterprise crew was a fascinating study in entropy; they scrambled for tools they didn't have because their precious manuals had no chapters on how to defeat a god who arrived bearing gifts.

"The Commodore’s choice to deactivate his life-support hasn't earned respect, it has broadcast Starfleet’s frailty. We must identify what Borath is masking to understand why we appear so toxic, before the Talu decide your rules aren't worth their lives," Kuzos remarked, his voice a smooth, melodic counterpoint to the tension.

"Commander zh'Roothi!" Sulu’s voice cut through the philosophical goading, "The Talu interceptors are breaking their blockade formation. They've adjusted pitch and are accelerating on a direct intercept course for the Enterprise. They aren't just probing us anymore; they’re closing the distance." She tapped a command to put the telemetry on the main viewscreen. "Time to engagement is less than three minutes if they maintain this burn."

"All systems nominal." the Chief Engineer reported while she remotely accessed the life support belts that were in use and reoriented their medical scanners to passively scan the surrounding area and fed the readings, directly, to OPS, Tactical and the Captains station. "Medical scans of the infirmary and its occupants." Ash stated, quietly.

Urvasi called out, "Bridge, Helm, this is actually a fortuitous event. Commander zh'Roothi, lets react to the interceptors, and in doing so, roll out a runabout in stealth mode. As the interceptors get closer, we flare our engines to maintain distance while the remote control of the runabout maneuvers it to the planet under stealth mode. The Enterprise can be the 'main event', while the runabout can become our scalpel as we discussed earlier. Does this meet with your understanding of mission parameters?"

"I understand your suggestion Urvasi but I will not authorize it," Zhora spoke having studied the data and listened to the ideas from the others. "We will defend ourselves from the Interceptors if fired upon, otherwise we will not engage. If the Talu believe we are toxic as Kuzos says - any and all actions we take will be monitored by the Dominion vessel as they smear our intentions and morals into the mud. Deploying a runabout under pretence and unmanned will be seen as a hostile tactic by one or both parties and strengthen their perception of us as the villain."

Urvasi tilted her head at the helm station. She had not thought of that. Then again, that was why she was still a department lead and not any higher in the chain of command. "Understood, Sir, thank you for that insight." Now, she was at a loss of what to do to help. So, she stayed out of the discussion unless something she heard suggested she might help.

Sora cursed. "I'd be the last to suggest it, usually. But maybe the time has come for us to withdraw. The Talu will see us as the enemy no matter what we do. I'm completely out of ideas." She glanced at the readouts on her console and the data displayed on the main viewscreen. "You know, this all seems like a perfectly orchestrated test. A no-win scenario. And this time we don't have an override chip to solve the problem, like we did with DS47." Suddenly, the Terran frowned. "Hang on. We should run a scan on those interceptors. And check for anything that might be hiding in subspace."

Ash glanced the direction of Sora and nodded to herself a few times. If what Sora suspected was true, the Talu interceptors weren't only going to fire on the enterprise, they were going to try to smash into her. If there was something lurking in subspace it would be tricky to find and, if they were employing the methods that Ash would, pretty much impossible to detect. "Some time ago I felt the need to develop a technology that could prove useful as a solution to the Talu, resonance, sickness." Ash stated, quietly. "It permanently adjusts the base, vibrational, state of a being or object from another universe to match the one they are in." She added and shrugged. "It worked, perfectly, for its intended purpose without any adverse effects." She finished, leaving wide open the possibility it would be utterly useless or worse in this instance and, of course, the question of who or what she had used it on.

"Wait, what?," Sora asked, raising her eyebrow. With her being from a different universe herself, this was the first she had ever heard of anyone even attempting to change a quantum resonance frequency. "We are going to have to talk about that later, Chief."

"If you wish. I just thought the technology might be useful in this case." She replied, quietly.

Each breath for Wilkan Targaryen was a grueling negotiation with a binary choice: pull in the razor-sharp Talu air and endure the internal "shattering," or succumb to the creeping hypoxia that threatened to dim his vision even further than it already was. He could hear the Bridge crew - his crew - debating maneuvers and technical miracles, their voices a distant, metallic hum against the roar of the planetary wind outside. The fire from the ice within his lungs finally pushed him to his breaking point. It wasn't just the physical pain; it was the tactical clarity that comes when the ego is stripped away by agony. He couldn't let the Enterprise become the villain of this story, nor a target for Talu interceptors who believed they were defending their dying children.

Struggling to find the words through a throat that felt lined with frost, the Commodore keyed his comms one last time. His voice was a ragged, forced shadow of its usual command tone. "Commander... get the Enterprise out of there," Wilkan ordered, the effort sending a fresh wave of tremors through his chest. "Don't let us be the reason they fire. Take the ship to a safe distance and await further instructions, or return to pick us up when the Talu deadline expires. Whichever comes first."

He slumped back slightly, the emerald mist catching the sweat on his brow. "Targaryen out."

"Commodore" Rio murmoured probably too quietly for the Bridge to pick up. "please Sir, let me do some vital regeneration on your lungs before the damage becomes permanent. You could still listen to the comms if you must and write on this PaDD...." she produced one and lay it at the table beside the bio-bed she had been trying to detain him in, but failing dramatically thus far. "...then I will relay what you want said and you can begin you super-necessary healing as soon as possible?" she tried to reason with Targaryen 'behind the scenes' as it were whilst the Bridge Staff continued their discussions.

"A logical surrender," Kuzos murmured as the Commodore’s order to withdraw rippled through the Bridge like a dying frequency. "By retreating, the Commodore acknowledges that the Federation’s mere presence is the toxin. We aren't leaving to save ourselves, Commander, we're leaving because Borath has already won the Talu’s hearts, one emerald breath at a time."

Though he'd ordered their retreat zh'Roothi wasn't ready to commit in the hope there was another option dangling just out of reach. As she expected the other members of the senior staff voiced their thoughts and opinions as she toiled with the decision while the invisible clock continued to tick down and the squadron of interceptors drew closer.

Urvasi checked her previous courses she had entered. Several of them for going out system in case the interceptors began closing were still viable. She awaited orders from zh'Roothi.

Sora shook her head. "You heard how he sounded. He's dying down there, even if he's too stubborn to acknowledge it. If we leave now, we might never get him back alive." She turned to the holographic representation of the ship's AI at her post on the bridge. "Galatea. Can you, like I talked about earlier, extrapolate the signal that the Dominion device is dampening from the data we have got? At this point, any kind of new information has to be helpful in some way."

"Analysis already in progress, Commander," Galatea replied, her form shimmering slightly as she processed the deluge of data from the away team's passive medical scans. "I am cross-referencing the dampening frequency with the atmospheric baseline. By identifying the specific wave-gap the Dominion is filling, I can isolate the discordant 'noise' by its absence."

A series of complex, shifting wave-functions began to populate the display of the Life Sciences station. The curves were jagged, filled with the "intermodulation distortion" Urvasi had predicted.

Urvasi glanced at it. It definitely was a harmonic IMD wave with sub Hertz waveforms with interleaving harmonic above 30 tonals interspersed with tones just under 1MHz. Yippers, it was exactly what she described to the bridge earlier. Sciences and Medical just had to understand the patterning as that was the key to the disharmonance affecting the Talu.

"The resonance is not a single tone," Galatea continued, her voice coolly analytical. "It is a layered lattice. It appears the Dominion's stabilizer is emitting a wide-spectrum white noise tuned to the Talu’s biological median. It isn't a cure; it is a shroud that effectively 'muffles' the shattering effect; however," she paused as a new spike appeared on the readout, "As the aerosol dissipates, the underlying lattice is re-asserting itself with increased amplitude. It’s as if the noise is pushing back against the dampener with a vengeance. I estimate that the patients exposed to this aerosol will suffer complete cellular breakdown within 14 hours."

Kuzos watched the screen, a faint, knowing tilt to his head. "Physics is so often a metaphor for politics, isn't it? The harder you try to silence the truth, the louder it screams when the veil is lifted."

Sora stared at the readouts as they transferred over to the main viewer. "Okay. Right. I can't really make sense of any of that, I'm an engineer and a soldier, not a scientist. Well, not much of a scientist." Nevertheless, she studied the data for a moment, looking for anything even slightly familiar. After a few seconds, she suddenly frowned and began entering some commands on her console, accessing her personal files. "Okay, look at this," she said as a second graph appeared on the viewscreen, complete with the insignia of the Terran Empire in the corner.

"The data on the left, that's from the surface. The data on the right is recorded data from a Terran weapons test some thirty-five years ago, when the Empire was developing a way to easily control a rebelling, alien population. And, of course, by control they meant exterminate. Look at the spike pattern. It's not exactly the same, but it's similar enough to suggest that whatever is affecting the Talu is operating on the same principles." She sighed. "The bad news, however, is that that particular partial test report is the only thing about this weapons system that I have. And it doesn't include anything about any weaknesses or ways to stop it."

"We stop it by exposing the source." Ash stated, quietly, while she studied the graphs. "If its hiding in sub-space we could spend hours to days finding it unless we do something, very, aggressive and generate a tachyon burst of sufficient strength to temporarily disrupt sub-space in the area and force them into normal space. That would also make it impossible for us to depart until sub-space recovers and may put us, immediately, at war." She suggested.

Urvasi thought about the Coaxial drives, where the Talu interceptors were, and despite her input mostly being wrong, decided to say something helpful, with trepidation. "Commander Randall, if we were to do a short Coaxial Warp drive hop... wouldn't that produce a subverse burst similar to a tachyon burst to disrupt sub-space around us, especially as we are within the main sequence stars gravitational field?" She wasn't an engineer or scientist, but she hoped she remembered the advances schooling in various warp drive energy signatures to have remembered that correctly.

"Lieutenant," Kuzos began, his voice so cool that it seemed to physically lower the temperature of the deck. He did not look at Urvasi, this attention remaining fixed on the tactical icons of the approaching interceptors. "Your technical enthusiasm is... vibrant; however, you are all remarkably quick to forget the most fundamental directive currently governing this vessel." He turned his head slowly toward Commander zh'Roothi, "The Commodore was explicit, his order was to withdraw."

Kuzos tapped a key, highlighting the Enterprise's heading. "A 'short hop' or a 'tachyon burst' are the actions of a cornered animal, not a retreating ship. If you disrupt subspace now, you prove to the Talu that the Federation is willing to destabilize their entire system just to satisfy its own curiosity. We have our orders and, as your Acting XO, I suggest we follow them. We need to leave, now."

Urvasi's tail momentarily stilled, then once more began its gentle swaying behind her. She answered, "XO, Helm, understood sir, do not use coaxial or warp for a short hop to extricate the Enterprise from in system. Waiting orders from Commander zh'Roothi for propulsion type and vector for leaving in system."

Sora stood from her console and turned to directly face Kuzos. "Commander Kuzos. I recently had a conversation with Commander zh'Roothi about the chain of command, and I believe a similar reminder is in order here. You may be acting executive officer, but she remains in command. Your insistence on our departure, frankly, makes me question your loyalties. Right now, as we were clearly able to hear when he contacted us, Commodore Targaryen is in medical distress on the surface, surrounded by potentially hostile aliens that are being misled by the Dominion as to the situation on their planet, no doubt in order to win them over to the Dominion and accept their 'protection', while at the same time painting Starfleet as a hostile force. Our departure right now would only play into their hands, as it would indicate that we do not have the means to aid the Talu. And it would mean abandoning the Commodore and our comrades currently planetside."

She shook her head. "I recommend that we consider the Commodore's last order as having been given under duress. We do not have a clear idea of what is going on down there, other than that he is close to being incapacitated and may require emergency transport without any notice. So no, leaving right now is the last thing we ought to be doing."

Commander Randall regarded Sora for a second or two, glanced the direction of Urvasi, then Kuzos and, finally, zh'Rhoothi. "Level 10 decision time, sir. We have a direct order from the Commodore. Commander Bernadotte has put forth a fig leaf for not following that order. It is a, no win, situation and the choices are between shitty or shittier options. We withdraw, with the hope that the Commodore and the away team pull of a miracle, on their own, and manage to also survive the experience with the added bonus of Borath signalling our helplessness to the entire Gamma quadrant, fouling any future contact with other species and, basically, ending our mission here regardless of any proof to the contrary." The Chief Engineer stated. "The other options are worse and, potentially, far more destructive." She added. "But, if our mission is screwed, regardless of what we do...what are your orders?" She asked, pointedly.

Urvasi had been racking her brains to figure out any way to help the away team. Well, there was one more chance, probably to be shut down, still, she had to try. "Bridge, Helm, request permission to send information about the vargis array and the particular waveform found to the life support belt worn by Commander Datari so it appears on the HUD so as to better inform the away team as to what is occurring before we leave in-system." She had already programmed the information into her wrist computer to send over its high order communications psi bands.

Stacey really did not have anything more to offer to this order. She was curious if Urvasi request would be followed. She was also concerned for the safety of everyone involved. Part of her was glad that she was safely on the Enterprise. And not caught up in this situation.

"Commander Bernadotte, your passion for 'loyalty' is as predictable as it is technically irrelevant," Kuzos said, his voice a silken thread of calm. "I took an oath to the Federation and this crew alongside my duty to the Great Link, it is precisely because of those dual obligations that I must point out the fallacy of staying. True loyalty is not found in a sentimental suicide pact; it is found in preserving the assets of the Fleet when a position has become untenable."

"Commander!" Sulu’s voice cut through the debate, sharp with urgency. "Sensors are spiking across the primary settlement: we're seeing a 40% increase in Talu showing the same resonant symptoms as the away team reported."

He settled back into his seat, his posture returning to that of a silent sentinel. "I have provided the clinical reality of our position and fulfilled my duty to advise. I have said my piece, Commander, whether you choose to follow the Commodore’s final directive or succumb to the 'fig leaves' of the crew is your prerogative. I await your orders."

"I won't abandon our crew nor allow the Talu to suffer," Zhora declared rising to her feet. "We came to the Quadrant to strengthen the values of the Federation, to heal old wounds and build new bridges. We knew they'd be challenges along the way but I'll be dammed if we're going to turn tail on a newly formed alliance just because we hit a snag. Any objection to disregard the Commodore's order will be noted in the log."

Sora smiled as she nodded. "Aye, Commander. Knew you'd see it the same way I did," she did, giving a mock interpretation of the Terran salute as she sat back down.

Kuzos remained an anchor of composed stillness, though internally, he marveled at the sheer, reckless consistency of the "Starfleet spirit" that surrounded him. It was a fascinating display of biological error: the prioritization of sentiment over survival. As far as the Vorta was concerned he had fulfilled his dual mandate. By advocating for withdrawal, he had honored the tactical logic of the Vorta and the preservation of the Federation assets he was sworn to protect. If they chose to burn in the atmosphere of their own idealism, his conscience remained clear.

The Security Chief watched the tactical display, noting the closing interceptors. The crew saw a heroic stand; Kuzos saw the inevitable friction of a collapsing orbit. They were no longer following a mission; they were performing a tragedy. He would play his part with perfect, engineered grace, a silent sentinel waiting for the moment when their "new bridges" inevitably buckled under the weight of Borath’s superior architecture. As far as Kuzos was concerned, Borath had tricked them into giving him the winning hand.

"Urvasi," Zhora turned to the helms officer. "Send the data, the away team will need everything they can get right now."

Urvasi's ears flicked twice as well as her tail shook twice, both gestures meaning affirmation. She replied, "Sending now, Sir."

The information sent to the L'Tandrey Life Support Belt HUD was as follows:

== Immune System Hyper-aggresivity being caused by a large Vargis Array Nearby. The Array's IMD Specific waveform attached. There are 7 main tones with 5 shift tonals tuned against the main tones to cause the specific InterModulationDistortion to directly interact with the Talu Immune System Cellular RNA Harmonic signature. One tone and one tonal are in the sub 20Hz range, the rest are above 30 KHz yet below 1 MHz. A 180 shift cancel waveform can be used to suppress it, however, if one of the tones or shift tones is unbalanced, say a small piece of the Vargis array is broken off, the waveform will collapse. ==

"Kuzos," the Andorian half turned. "I value your insight, however right now I'd like you to focus on those Interceptors bearing down."

Kuzos did not immediately respond. He remained as he was with his back straight, hands resting with terrifying symmetry atop the console while the violet light of the tactical display reflected in his unblinking eyes. The Andorian’s decision was a masterful study in sentimental inertia, a commitment to a bridge that was already on fire.

He allowed exactly two seconds of silence to hang in the air, a subtle but sharp punctuation mark to the Commander's choice, before he spoke, "Understood, Commander." His tone was devoid of its usual melodic lilt, stripped down to a cold, functional resonance.

"Targeting sensors are locked to their lead thruster arrays. I am prioritizing defensive displacement patterns," his fingers began a rapid, rhythmic dance across the interface, isolating the leading edge of the Talu interceptors. He didn't offer a rebuttal, nor did he look at Zhora. To Kuzos, the debate was over; the error was logged. Now, there was only the clinical management of the consequences. "If they maintain this acceleration, they will enter optimal firing range in ninety seconds. Tactical analysis suggests a single hit will disable, two would destroy the vessel."

"Understood," Zhora nodded in response. "Sora, please take your station," the acting Captain signaled to the Terran glad the woman hadn't left her fighting spirit in her bunk. "Work with Ash, we need to identify the source of the newest spike before it happens again."

Sora nodded again and began entering commands into her console. "Galatea, we'll need your help on that. I'm sending you all the data from the Terran weapons test that I've got. Benefits of having been a rebel spy for a bit, I guess. Sending the same data over to you as well, Chief Randall. I hope that between this data and the data we have from the surface we might be able to extrapolate some sort of detection algorithm?"

Kuzos tapped a final command, the sharp click of the console echoing in the sudden quiet of his station. "Tactical is ready. At your discretion."

"Data integration complete, Commander," Galatea announced, her voice regaining its smooth, rhythmic precision. "The algorithmic crossover with the Terran weaponry is indeed high, but the intent profile is inverted. My core logic has identified a critical distinction with a 97% chance of accuracy: the Dominion stabilizer is not masking a cull, but acting as a life-support shroud for the entire planetary biosphere. My estimation is that Borath is being truthful in his efforts of assisting the Talu."

A rapid trilling came from the Communications console. The hologram looked down at the keyboard, seeing the incoming announcement, "Hail from the surface, audio only."

"Put it through," zh'Roothi ordered returning to her seat.

"Kholin to the Bridge. I have some more information - Commander Datari has discovered that the fabric of our uniforms is causing some kind of magnification of the resonance that is affecting the Talu. It seems to help them at first but then amplifies their suffering afterwards with alarming speed and sudden onset. I am wondering if it's possible that somehow, and I can't imagine how, the resonance has been attuned to use our fabrics to transmit, reflect or intensify the effects so that it seems to indicate that those of us who are wearing it, are thought to be the source and the attackers. I wonder if you could investigate whatever scientific possibilities could be being engaged or utilised please? We're proposing to change out of our uniforms here in the meantime to try to limit the effects."

"Commander," Sulu noted, her voice a flat, functional resonance of interruption. "The Dominion vessel has altered course. They are no longer maintaining their holding pattern. They are moving into a high-orbital position to put themselves directly between us and the primary settlement."

Through Rio’s open comms-link, a seismic rumble bled into the Bridge - the sound of grinding stone and shifting glaciers. Even through the background sound dampeners, Prime Minister Dervimnurk’s voice was unmistakable. It was a jagged, threatening cadence that made the speakers hiss with his subsonic fury.

"The Dominion is positioning to shield the planet, but they are also screening our transporters," Sulu stated, her unblinking gaze fixed on the readout as the Talu interceptors moved into formation with the Dominion vessel. "And if the Prime Minister's tone is any indication, our presence is no longer being tolerated."

"Borath is no longer the observer; he is the wall, and we are the interference," Kuzos observed, his hands resting with terrifying symmetry atop his own console.

"I've prepared sub-space probes for launch to try and locate the array." Ash announced.

"That won't be required any longer Ash," Zhora shook her head towards the engineer. The away parties discovery providing a direct link to the Enterprise and the Talu suffering had been difficult to process. Her choice to remain in orbit, served on good intentions had not been warmly welcomed - given the new evidence discovered it was understandable.

Seconds passed and another announcement came through. Galatea looked at her screen, but didn't need to to answer, "We're receiving a hail from the Commodore. Audio only."

Chase was listening now. He needed to be apprised to what the Commodore had to say. All stations would be listening he was certain but security was crucial to understanding what was going on.

The channel opened with a burst of static, unable to mask the labored, rhythmic whistle of Wilkan’s breathing. On the surface, the Commodore stepped out from the clinical quiet of the Primary Ward and into the vast, echoing cathedral of the Talu settlement. To his sensitive, bloodshot eyes, the majestic basalt pillars and shifting ice felt like a jagged, hostile weight. The "Song" of the planet was no longer a melody; it was a rhythmic, pounding ache in his skull.

"Enterprise... Targaryen here," he rasped, his voice sounding like dry parchment. He stood at the threshold of the cave, looking out at the glaciers he had accidentally poisoned. It was haunting. When they first visited the streets were filled with celebration, today they were quiet as the tomb he'd forced upon them. It was an accident, yes, but it has hard to comprehend how it had grown to this magnitude.

"Commander... the Prime Minister has made his position clear. We are the toxin. The very fabric of our uniforms is acting as a resonant conductor for their suffering. I have... I have agreed to his demand. We are to leave Talu immediately." He paused, a wave of nausea nearly doubling him over, but he forced himself to remain upright - a final, painful mimicry of the Talu's "visibility of strength" before the cavern's residents. "I am declaring a total molecular quarantine. Lock transporters onto every thread of Federation material in this settlement. Scan for every commemorative bracelet, every scrap of Starfleet fiber, anything that has a signature even remotely related to us. Pull it all into a high-security containment field aboard the Enterprise and have the science teams start investigating it. We will not leave a single micron of our presence to scream in their ears."

He looked toward the horizon where the Dominion ship sat like a silent, emerald judge in the sky, shielding the world from the shadow of the Federation. "Once the sweep is complete, beam the away team directly to isolation. Move the ship to the extreme outskirts of the system and hold position. We’ve done enough damage for one lifetime."

His voice trailed off into a hollow cough, the audio cutting sharply as he signaled for extraction.

The Andorian's frame once stiff with tension now roiled in despair and frustration. "Sora, Ash, scan for everything scrap," she fought to keep her tone steady. "Kuzos," she turned to the Vorta biting down on the urge to say something she'd regret based on his goading. "Ensure all items are secured.

Sora nodded slowly. Just as they had reached a point where there might have been a solution beneficial to the Federation, things had gotten even worse. "Looks like that's it, then," she said in an almost exhausted tone. "Setting up the scan now. Should be done in three minutes."

"We can make a hop to the heliopause of the system at warp 5 in a couple minutes." Ash suggested, quietly, the heliopause being the generally accepted edge of a star system.

Urvasi's right ear remained trained on zh'Roothi while her left ear roamed to listen to others. To her, the Commodore's words made some sense. The Vargis array is a crystalline network array working in the under 1 MHz range, meaning it had to be on planet and near the Talu. However, that the crystalline structure itself was a natural or grown crystalline array where the city is located was unusual, but, that could be. Still, though, she had her doubts. Someone knowing Vargis arrays could have created it, then activated it when convenient, and then would deactivate it once all Starfleet material was gone, making the Federation the Enemy even though it wasn't. She withheld a sigh, thinking about any articles of clothing left behind. If any of it had any type of crystalline lattice threads or decorative crystal stones, that could also alter the local natural crystal harmonics, which could be just really bad timing. She shook her head to clear it and get rid of her thinking. Now, it was listening to orders to move in, beam up the crew, then go to the heliopause of the system to see what would happen next.

Kuzos watched the sensor grid with a detachment that was almost architectural. The Enterprise was now a vacuum, pulling every microscopic fragment of its identity from the Talu soil. To the crew, this was an act of desperate contrition; to Kuzos, it was the final stage of a successful displacement. "The resonance signature of the settlement is shifting as the Starfleet fibers are removed," Kuzos reported, his voice a steady, clinical pulse. "The Dominion shroud is expanding to fill the void we are leaving. The strategic transition is complete."

"Urvasi, move us to the far edge of the system," zh'Roothi called deliberately avoiding the Vorta's confirmation as it signalled their failures and the loss of the Talu's core.

He did not look at Zhora or Sora. Their "spirit" had been neutralized by the physical reality of the Commodore’s broken voice. As the transporter hum signaled the return of the away team, Kuzos finalized the ship's defensive posture.

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